Show HN: My one-sided anonymous chat startup reached 150K+ members virally | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: My one-sided anonymous chat startup reached 150K+ members virally

connected2.me

29 pointsozzzy32 comments

It's a bit like a realtime version of Honesty Box. For those that don't know, Honesty Box is a Facebook application that allows your friends to give you anonymous feedback.

Overall, the site design is simple and to the point. I like it.

But, if you wanted to make a really interesting contribution to HN, I'd like to see a follow-up blog post going into minute detail on how your application spread.

Lots of people write about how their app has 'gone viral', but very few actually talk about their initial user pool, how they tweaked their application for broader appeal or faster spread, etc. You'll sometimes see that for bigger apps, but having a ground-floor view would be something else.

I will prepare a detailed blog post explaining how our application spread :)

looking forward to it!

This is my new startup and I'd love to get your feedback. It reached 150K+ members with only viral.

Basically you can think of it as Formspring with chat. You set up an account for people to chat with you anonymously. As their identities are anonymous your friends can ask everything to you that they normally cannot ask. They can tell their thoughts and criticisms about you.

Moreover, you have an opportunity to chat anonymously with celebrities you admire through Connected2.me. You can tell your problems to specialists such as psychologists by keeping your identity secret and get an instant answer. Companies also use Connected2.me in order to get anonymous feedback about their products and give support to their customers real-time.

Please try and tell me what do you think.

It's a really good idea. But I will give a little more of importance to the "How it works video?", maybe put it on the top of the page.

Actually I cannot decide the placement on the homepage. Our important areas are: "Users online", Signup form, and "How it works" video.

Maybe I should replace Signup form with the "How it works" video.

I was waiting for someone to start to speak in the video.

Have you thought about adding a narrator to the video?

Nice design, but from a usability point of view don't open new tabs in the browser for each user. I clicked trough a few profiles and had close tabs left right and centre.

You are right. Actually if you log in, we have an interface where you can chat with more than one user in the same windo. We may try to use that interface for those are not logged in.

Quick feedback: you should let people filter by language or something. The first three I tried (after that I didn't try anymore) all had statuses in some Eastern European language which I don't speak, so I assumed they wouldn't speak English. I have to say this is also a problem with Facebook's News Feed when you have friended people from all over the world, and it's annoying.

Yes, we need to differentiate users at least based on their language.

I am not sure which method to use in order to differentiate users. We can use geo-ip databases but I want to be sure that they are reliable. Maybe we can just let users select a location.

Any ideas?

Don't mix language and location. I might be in Spain but I might want to chat in Finnish.

For language, yes, allow the user to set it. However, you can probably use the Accept-Language http header to get the right language for most users.

Yes, we may try the Accept-Language. But I need to make sure that it is reliable.

There is a discussion about this: http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-accept-lang-loc...

Why not try a combination?

As long as the user can ultimately decide on their own, you can try a best guess for them. Just make it easy to switch and let the user know first thing.

Yes, I think that would be the best solution.

As a follow-up I ran into the exact same issue as above. I think the language-matching is really a must for an app like this to ensure users have a good experience their first time.

How long did it take you to get those 150K members? What is your revenue model?

We got those users in 8 month. We don't advertise, we acquire users virally.

We are sending text advertisements to users as chat messages. An automatic chat bot makes the advertisement. This also allows us to track which users are interested in which kind of advertisements.

Sorry, but what is the idea? Chatroulette with no video?

Actually, Formspring with chat :)

I miss the times when "innovation" meant "killing more people at once" :)

(Disclosure: I'm in the business of social-online-stuff as well. Also, I collect knives.)

mind sharing your tech stack?

Nginx - web server

Tornado - chat system

PHP Symfony2 framework - web page generation

very very very good site

lol :)

in a world where a dumb-lame-spy site such as faceshmuck has close to a BILLION mind< users. 150k is not impressive. But keep trying

If you are considering using Hacker News often you should realize that this isn't Reddit or 4Chan. If you don't have something intellectual to add, then don't say it at all.

Anyway, I like the design on the site. However, one thing that I think might be improved is making a more obvious CTA. I'm pretty sure that you wanted me to click on a person and then I started pressing shuffle because that was the only button.

Also, the box that says "Select someone to chat anonymously, no need to register!" I actually thought was the chat box. (But this became obvious that it wasn't when I clicked on a user).

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#Update 2

Also.. #Update 2, based on the comments in this thread, (and also my own usage of the chat), I've identified that you could perhaps try and educate the users better about how this is different from other chat sites.

I'd try and place emphasis on some kind of client->server terminology, where the "server" is known ahead of time, (these are the people who have connected with Facebook), and then the "server" accepts anonymous connections. Clearly you have to try and get that point across without using "server"/"client" since you will confuse your users, but that's the gist of how this startup works.

Also, even if you have registered on the site, you are still connecting anonymously to other users of the site..

did you mean intellectual or maybe - intelligent?

anyway, if you have facebook connect on the site, don't advertise it as anonymous...

+ if you are a mod on HN just ban me and go about your day...

not everybody needs to be freakishly nice to everybody...

edit: I don't run a start up. I am not part of the 2nd .com bubble.

Only one side of the chat is anonymous (that's why I called one-sided).

You don't need to register to use the site. You can just select someone and start chatting immediately.

How many users does your startup have?

It is in the title :) We have 150K+ users right now.

Thanks for your valuable comments about the user experience. We are testing our new homepage right now, we will try to make a more obvious CTA.

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