Social network for creativity launched by A.R. Rahman and Shekhar Kapur | Hacker News Reader

Social network for creativity launched by A.R. Rahman and Shekhar Kapur

qyuki.com

40 pointsmanishsp22 comments

I was expecting something more unique/inspirational from something that involved A.R Rahman, who makes amazing music, and from watching about a minute of the (long and rambling) 5 minute intro video on their site.

It's basically just a Pinterest clone that doesn't even autoload additional content when you reach the bottom of the page (you have to click a "Load more content" button for some reason). I don't see any reason why anyone would want to join this. There's some kind of rating system called, weirdly, an "Emobar" that is basically a series of colors that reflect people's rating of your post.

Also, I had to watch the intro video to figure out how to even pronounce that domain name (I was thinking "Qu-you-kee" or maybe even "Quickie" but the founder says it differently in the video).

Qyuki is hindi for "because" (usually spelled Kyunki and pronounced "Q"-"key").

The site is obviously a pinterest clone for India. However, I don't think the startup aspires to be anything more than that. There are lots of clone startups in India, a lot of them are successful and even gets acquired by the startup they are cloning (Groupon for example acquired SoSasta).

Having said that, the purpose of the site is actually a bit different. Its less about sharing things you find and more about sharing your own creations. A photo you took, a song you sang, a picture you drew. I think that's a really nice concept.

> Qyuki is hindi for "because" (usually spelled Kyunki and pronounced "Q"-"key")

A minor correction. The exact Hindi word for "because" is Qyunki (notice the 'n'). 'Qyun' => why. "ki" => that.

Qyuki's homepage takes more than 5 minutes to load. It has a size of more than 12MB. There was a 3 MB uncompressed image right on the Homepage. Whoever made this website really needs some optimization lessons

PS : I lost interest after 5 minutes, It might take longer and also have a bigger size

here is a pingdom analysis http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/q215oLm5R/qyuki.com

Seriously, they are actually using CSS to resize images rather then creating small sized thumbnails. The biggest Response object i got was 7.8 MB uncompressed image which was css resized to 24x24 pixels ,(So basically i am downloading a 3282 x 3282 image which is 7.8 mb , when i should be downloading a 24 x 24 px image which should be around 1.7 KB.

And it is not optimized for mobile. I am really surprised - India in country of mobiles!

One thing, this will be an interesting case study if content can win over usability, particularly in my country (India). It can become a celebrity site.

Funded by cisco, and Rs. 27cr/$5million. (http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-02-15/news...)

Just goes on to strengthen the belief that Indians do not focus enough on usability.

There are thousands upon thousands of websites and web apps designed by people from the US, or any other country for that matter, that have horrible design, usability, and buggy code. Poor usability is unfortunately the norm, not the exception and the origin of the website isn't a factor.

We don't always realize it simply because we tend to see and use a very small subset of sites that happens to be nicely designed.

One example does not warrant a generalization like this. I'm assuming you see a lot of Indians neglecting usability- do you mind providing me with some other examples? Counter examples include: Naveen from Foursquare, Sachin Agarwal of Posterous.

I'm talking about startups born and brought up and marketed in India. Except a handful like Redbus, Flipkart and Cleartrip, most others are not impressive.

Even sites like Redbus/FK were not great when they went live for the first time. Over time they whipped up better usability.

Can you provide examples of "startups born and brought up and marketed in India" that have terrible usability?

Most of the news sites (like TOI, CNNIBN etc), most of the ecommerce sites(like saholic, defunct letsbuy, infibeam, homeshop18 etc).

And those examples are fairly successful enterprises despite having bad usability. Most other startups with bad usability would have obviously shutdown and unavailable to quote here.

Like @linvin commented somewhere here, Qyuki will be an interesting case study to see if content wins over usability.

I don't get it. The copy is confusing to me. I'm not knocking on the startup, but I want to understand what it is about and get their focus. I just don't. Will anyone from qyuki please explain it like I were five years old? Thank you.

PS. Also, how do you pronounce the name/web address?

I just watched the intro video by the co-founders (one being Academy award winner A R Rahman - slumdog millionaire fame). Looks like a social network for 'creative content' where people can upload their creation (songs/videos/poems/short stories/photography/graphic designing)for others to consume.

So it's a social network for those too busy creating their own stuff to watch anything?

In the same way HN is a site for people too busy building their startups, or Dribbble is a site for designers too busy designing...

This doesn't feel authentic or attractive for the creative community.

Ideally Qyuki should have built tools that helps creativity and the presence of celebs to inspire, I have seen hardly anyone who gets inspired by celebrities.

And the site looks dull. I believe any social networking sites should have bright background color like FB and G+.

I had higher expectation , as A.R.R was involved in this. looks like their site needs a UI remake .

Before you start knocking it too much, check out the inspirations tab.

I love that idea, a community that's inspiring each other to create and share.

Admittedly the overall implementation needs work. But it looks pretty good and the point of it seems to be to be to inspire and encourage people to create rather than share others work.

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