Show HN: My weekend project, TrickedOutTimeline | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: My weekend project, TrickedOutTimeline

trickedouttimeline.com

70 pointsmaxjaderberg29 comments

"Click the "Like" button to get your tricked out Facebook photos!"

Nope. Closed the window, never going back. If I like your service, I'll tell my friends about it. I won't promote it just to try it out though.

(Yes, I saw the "Already liked us?" button. It doesn't negate the intent to spam people's timelines.)

I have all apps disabled, so couldn't "like" even if i tried. did not see "already liked us" until i saw your comment, thanks.

I concur. Requiring likes (in wording, even though technically there might be no enforcement) as a payment method for a service is a bad idea. The like is not customisable so you're basically putting words into your customer's mouth.

I'm not sure how I feel about "Pay with a Tweet", but at least people can actually customize the message to reflect what they thought of the service.

I would rephrase the "Already liked us?" to "Skip this step" or something like that.

i do agree, but also eager to get the likes in. may a/b test like to download/suggeting a like after download.

A/B testing is fine and all, but you might want to think of it from an ethical standpoint.

Are you okay with requiring someone to shout "I like this service" to be able to use said service, on first use? Does it feel right to disclose the like requirement after the user has already put time in using the service?

It sounds backwards to me at least and you're definitely alienating some people, but if you think it's no big deal then you're entitled to your own opinion.

Rather than A/B test the conversion rates of liking before-or-after, think really hard about what you want to convey. What does a like give you? Is it worth alienating potential users?

You don't need an A/B test to tell you that "If you enjoyed our service, please Like us on Facebook." is a friendlier, more positive request. People have already tweeted about it more than they liked it on Facebook without additional prodding. Let the site stand on its own merits, rather than trying to force promotion through potentially sleazy methods.

You really should give an example of the steps and what things will look like.

I have no clue exactly what you're trying to do. My guess is to make the timeline look a bit fancy, but I can't tell. Your second step is to upload a photo without telling me what else to expect. If you ask for a credit card number in step 3, you already have my personal photo, which I have no clue what you'll do with.

hah yes you are right, thank you

I have a vague sense of what the service does after several minutes of staring at it: it appears to either make your cover photo look like the bottom was torn off (why??) or it can make it look like your profile photo is part of your cover photo (which is kind of cool.)

To the OP: I would provide larger example images that show what this is and why I care. Also, it took me several minutes to figure out what to click on, as someone else in this thread pointed out.

It seems odd that you want something to go viral, but you explicitly request people not to share it without checking with you first.

From your Terms & Conditions: "You may not create a link to this website from another website or document without trickedouttimeline.com’s prior written consent."

took me a while to figure out what 'rip off' was (maybe call it 'torn bottom edge')

yes may rename this to "torn edge"

I had to come look at the comments here to figure out what this thing did. I'd suggest adding a red circle around the "ripped off" area to highlight what's actually happening.

I had to think way too hard to puzzle out "Two for One" was.

Don't ask me to like something before you've given it to me. Lame.

Swap the order of the steps: first I upload my photo, then let me toggle between effects.

Make the effect copy actionable. "Tear off the bottom edge" rather than "Rip Off". "Match my profile pic to my timeline photo" rather than "Two for one." Communication > cuteness.

thanks for your thoughts - will definitely implement some changes. doing the "like to download" as an experiment, may well take it off

No problem. It's a cool idea that could gain some traction. Don't be discouraged, HN is a tough crowd :)

thats why i love the feedback from here - its top quality ;)

Nice. You might want to give some more examples of what each setting does - as someone else mentioned, I wasn't sure what the "Rip Off" setting did.

I realize I'm not your target user-base, (I browse with no-script and don't own any social media accounts) but you should know that without javascript to load your fonts the default "cursive" font for most people is going to be (what appears to be) comic sans....

https://imgur.com/p1i6P

Nice, but I was just wondering are you keeping or dumping any images we upload? There's nothing in your terms relating to that. Not that I suspect you of anything nefarious, but it would be nice to see any (non)retention policy mentioned.

Yes the images get dumped after 30mins - shall add that to the TOS

Cool, thanks for clearing that up.

In your TOS: You may not create a link to this website from another website or document without trickedouttimeline.com’s prior written consent.

Why would you want this?

I uploaded a huge hi-res image, did the two-for-one, and the output images it gave me were horrible quality! What happened? Cool idea though.

Make it more obvious that the buttons are clickable. I couldn't figure out how to sign up.

thanks for the feedback, i suspected that could be the case

Good luck with going viral. Let us know how did it do.

neat and simple - i like it! unfortunately I just changed my cover photo, so I'm gonna stick with it for a while.

thanks! there are so many crap fb tools out there we need something simple. need ideas for more effects to add though!

and i hope a blog post coming soon on the awesomeness of google apps' image api!

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