Is Your Product Too Engaging? | Hacker News Reader

Is Your Product Too Engaging?

ryanhoover.me

31 pointsovechtrick16 comments

coughhackernewscough

Not exactly the same, the there's a reason that noprocrast is there.

Wow, I've seen noprocrast dozens of times but never thought to use it. Now that I've looked into it, it's actually a fantastic model (maxvisit and minaway). Not hard to comprehend, but if anybody's curious:

http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html#07nov07

I wonder if there are any chrome extensions that share a similar model.. I use 'stayfocusd' right now, but it's nowhere near as effective.

I use this - it's not a chrome extension, but an OS X application that blocks sites for all browsers: http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol/

Oh this is fantastic. Almost exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks!

I just started using noprocrast, and it's awesome.

If you haven't used it, start!

That's why we limited introductions to one per day on At The Pool and quickly scaled to 100+ countries...

http://atthepool.com

Ahh, good example, Alex. I've used your product before. Coffee Meets Bagel uses a similar one-per-day approach. Smart.

We're thinking about doing that with CoffeeMe. Did you have unlimited introductions initially?

Interesting that this is "Tinder for startup professionals" because the co-founder of Tinder said they're interested in applying their idea to professionals in the future (not just dating).

The co-founder of treatings.co has been blogging on PandoDaily every week about doing the same idea. I guess a bunch of people are going after this space, and I wouldn't be surprised if LinkedIn has a more noticeable feature like this in the future.

The problem isn't that your product is too engaging. The problem is it's not good enough for your users. In your example, you don't have enough users in your app to make it more useful. The solution isn't to make it less engaging - it's to add more users. To make it more useful.

Not quite. The biggest issue is connecting too many people at once. Assuming the goal is to meet people in person for coffee (and one could argue that meeting via email is just as or more valuable), making numerous connections floods the user with "commitments" to meet. Most people are too busy to meet several people (e.g. 5) within a 1-2 week time frame. The product needs to address this flood.

the double buy-in approach is interesting, and being applied to a lot of different use cases - hr/employment, by Angel list, hooking up, via Bang With Friends (now called Down) and of course Tinder, and also dating via OkCupid locals... it's especially effective if the subject of connection is not something you wish to socially broadcast, due to stigma or fear of rejection (jobs/dates/hooking-up/etc.). There's a lot of untapped use cases where applying double buy-in would be effective, like finding a roommate. Or, perhaps situationally it could be effective and reduce the fear of rejection or awkwardness associated with striking up a conversation at a bar or at a convention, etc.

What examples can you think of outside of gaming or dating that face this challenge?

turntable.fm

You think so? It doesn't have a content problem (there's infinite music).

I posited that Turntable.fm failed for other reasons: http://ryanhoover.me/post/45420658844/what-killed-turntable-...

Hmm.. products that have a limited number of consumable things. Maybe earlier reddit, when there wasn't many links, you could exhaust everything on there.

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