Hacker News Reader

Comment by king_magic | Hacker News Reader

Might want to work on your website's copy. "What a pain in the ass!" and "Holy smokes!!!!!" doesn't instill much confidence, to be frank.

View on HN

This comment is part of an annoying trend on HN lately, of people looking at announcements for new companies or products and then picking nits with the copy, the layout, the formatting, the SSL configuration, and screenshots, and what- have- you to talk about the "lack of confidence" they have in the announcement.

What makes this such a great example of that trend and how silly it is is that you are here discussing the confidence you have... in a free app switcher.

It doesn't happen often, but I disagree with you on this, Thomas.

OP said, "Would love feedback" and king_magic gave it to him.

When someone posts their app here for feedback, we should be ruthless. Nothing, not even the smallest nit, should be safe from scrutiny. Let OP decide how important that feedback is to him, but we should not be holding back how we really feel.

This reminds me of a phenomenon from my fraternity days, when we voted on prospective members. It worked like this: 1. Positive comments. 2. Negative comments. 3. Secret vote. Prospects were often blackballed even though there were no negative comments, and people bitched about that. So what happened as soon as someone made a negative comment? 1. Everyone jumped all over him. 2. Someone would inevitably say, "That's why there are never any negative comments."

If someone asks for feedback, we should fire away. Better they hear it from us than their prospects out there in the real world.

This applies to all apps, even free ones. Remember, it's not "Practice makes perfect," but "Perfect practice makes perfect". king_magic may have done OP a much bigger favor than any of us can see right now.

I definitely appreciate the honest feedback provided, even if I don't act on it. Plain, honest feedback of your own experience is very valuable.

I actually disagree at this point. Maybe when he has more traction and can be considered a larger and more well known app he can update it to sound more professional. But at the moment his copy makes it sound like this is an app he created because he wanted it and thought it was cool. It's like he's talking directly to the reader in a VERY casual way. Maybe too casual for long-term, but at the moment, I think it works.

I agree. The copy comes off as authentic and in a way is refreshing to see. It's just a dude who made an app and is having some fun with it. Good on him.

It's a pet project that he's giving away for free... I say let him have his fun. Do you think the aim is to inspire confidence in the user (or do you think it should be)? Remeber: he's not asking anyone to open their wallets; frankly I think fewer guarantees are better (see the "no guarantee this software will do anything" disclaimers on many FOSS projects). If people want more sober language and "professionalism," let them go pay for it- might be better that they look elsewhere. :)

Sort of disagree here. I was kind of cringing at the verbiage myself, but at the same time it was so frenetic and different from the dry, 'value-added' language that you see other sites barfing up, that I was kind of smiling at the same time.

Then you realize it's just a useful little niche tool, and he's giving it away for free.

After checking it out, I asked myself "Do I want to download this app more than if it was presented to me in a more dry, professional, predicable way?"

Yeah, actually.

I especially love how he concludes by broadcasting how the app is not perfect, while giving a little dev road map.

Well done imho.

I definitely agree that the copy is a bit too casual, and not only because of the vocabulary, but also because of the punctuation just like in "Holy smokes!!!!!". It is actually "incorrect" to use multiple question marks and/or exclamation points. It's like misspelling a word. I would recommend removing the extraneous punctuation and maybe change a tiny bit of wording ("pain in the ass" is a really ugly expression).

On the good side:

- GREAT idea

- Simple, clear and easy design

Keep on the good work!

It definitely is polarizing, but I can see people liking it. At first it kinda jarred me too...but the more I read it, it actually grew on me pretty quickly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com