Bump 3.0 launches today, pared down to just two features | Hacker News Reader

Bump 3.0 launches today, pared down to just two features

venturebeat.com

64 pointsdabent12 comments

Initial Impressions, before 3.0 becomes available:

Crap. My 'improvements to Bump' cover letter for their iOS internship is now completely irrelevant. It'd be my guess that 3.0 will still feature an overlay prompting first-time users to enable location sharing (I really like this idea), but not the second screen showing what the user can do now that the app's been streamlined to less features. That screen had major usability issues based on the people I tested it with--people were frustrated to find what they tapped on was not a button.

Based on what I've read of their iOS reviews, this could really help their ratings. Lots of 1-star reviews about only sharing samples of music, having to buy apps someone 'shared' to you, etc. This is probably fair--Bump atleast gave the impression of promising those things.

Their new video is much better than their old one; I can't find the old one, but it was narrated poorly, whereas the new video feels much more professional and helps communicate their use-cases better, even though its still a little hard for me to see two people wordlessly Bumping than sharing a phone number.

The new FAQ is really hard to read because the section headings (General,iOS, Android) blend right in with the Qs.

I think the larger question though is where does this leave Bump's revenue model? Bump's been experimenting with 'BumpStations' [1] and has prototypes in their office. But does this streamlined feature set coordinate well with expanding to NFC merchant stations, etc.?

[1] http://www.quora.com/What-is-Bumps-business-model

Having the courage to look at the hard data and respond to what your users want, even if it feels like a step backwards for the product, shows courage and insight.

Sometimes the best iteration is removing most of your features. Kudos for overcoming feature creep.

Bump was a huge winner at SXSW two years ago. I think this release will help with a strong comeback. It's still a pain exchanging information.

OK, raise your hand if you believe the decision to drop music sharing was something they made on their own.

I know this is counterintuitive, but I think people would pay more for a simpler version. You can call it reverse Freemium; we'll give you less for more.

And Bump is still not profitable.

What do you mean by still? It wasn't profitable, it made changes, and now we have to see what happens. It's a bit early to say it's still not profitable.

At version 3.0 and no clear indication of how they are able to monetize their "network".

It is far harder to get traction to reach their scale than to make money from your users when you have so many. They explicitly are focusing on growth.

Yes, focusing on growth to firmly establish their brand as the go-to phone-to-phone sharing app. Network effects will help them keep that position once they attain it.

Also focusing on user engagement, as they are narrowing down on solving needs that are a) painful and b) frequent. They want users they've already attracted to be firing up the app daily, not weekly or monthly.

With the amount of downloads that they are publicizing "60 millions", I find it hard to believe that they are still in "growth" stage?

User retention is probably the biggest problem they have now and if that is not squared away, no way can they ever monetize or be profitable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com