

Show HN: My first web app - tanay46
http://www.twecommend.me

======
BasDirks
Whenever I see the word "personalized" my hear skips a beat and a bit of vomit
travels up my esophagus to annoy my sense of taste. But...

The suggestions are quite accurate, especially for Songs & Movies. In fact
some of the recommendations contained some of my all time favorites, so kudos.

What's really important for you to nail now is the follow-up action: I want to
be linked to resources that allow me to explore the recommendations, perhaps
the media in question, perhaps more information on the artist or art.

Being able to reward myself for using your service with the enjoyment of an
experience that confirms the accuracy of your recommendations.. would
certainly make me come back for more!

I'm aware that everyone (at least your users that read HN) would be able to
find the recommended media through a number of means (BT, p2p, Spotify,
iTunes, etc), you should take advantage of the experience the user has when
they are served such excellent recommendations, preferably by referring them
to a service (which has the stamp of approval of your average user) which
allows them to purchase/peruse the recommended media (or at least preview
them).

Misc. ideas:

\- Make #logo text (although I realize you'll probably won't have to rely on
SEO for users), and even better, make it an anchor linking to the initial
page.

\- Put your text input on the same line as your "Go" button, and perhaps think
of better copy for "Go".

\- Give connect_widget_4e10ba13e07753d42974425 a bigger width to accomodate
non-English texts

\- Make sure your #how p DOESN'T break at twitter\n username, because right
now, it does for me.

\- Try not to use <font>, if only to comply with standards.

I hope my feedback is useful for you, good luck!

~~~
tanay46
Thanks for the advice. I am planning on integrating youtube/itunes for the
songs,movies,comedians as relevant.

Can you explain what you mean by the #how breaking at twitter\n username? Do
you mean when you enter a newline in the username bar?

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vijaydev
Feedback:

When showing the list of recommendations, keep the form with the inputs on
top, so that I can change my option right there and see the next set. Going
back (honestly I had to search for that link) and choosing again is tedious.

Also, for some reason, the twitter user name was gone and I've to type it
every time. But I guess that could be my browser, not sure. (Linux 11.04,
Chrome)

~~~
tanay46
Thanks. Yea I guess it makes sense to leave the form in so one can easily get
recommendations for the next thing. I'll incorporate this in.

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tanay46
Wow thanks a lot for the feedback guys. Yes, it uses hunch. I could be wrong
but hunch didn't have a way an unregistered user could just enter the twitter
username and get the recommendations. Also, it was my first attempt at using
apis and it was meant as a learning experience more than anything.

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neilk
Does this actually work, or are the songs and movies just drawn from a list of
songs and movies that most people think are great? I have a co-worker who's a
hard rock / metalhead and his recommendations are indistinguishable from mine.

~~~
apgwoz
looks like its using the hunch.com api

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uast23
Interesting!

Haven't been using anything like hunch till now, so asking here. How does it
work? Is is just parsing my tweets and recommending stuffs based on keywords?
Where does the recommendation data come from?

EDIT: One more thing. It's pretty quick compared to some other services which
try to read the tweets and do something with that. Is it really fetching and
processing all the tweets before recommending?

EDIT: Ok, the above question was kinda dumb. Since it uses hunch, so it does
not need to get the tweets any way. But, would be interesting to know how
hunch does that, because considering that twecommend sends the request to
hunch and hunch responds after doing all the processing, it is still quick.

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captain_mars
Very neat concept. I found the recommendations quite accurate for me.

I second others in saying that you should try to integrate Amazon and iTunes
affiliate links in there, to try and make some money. You deserve it.

Some suggestions:

* The text is a bit weird / difficult to read on my machine. (a 14" Windows 7 laptop, with resolution 1366x768, and running Mozilla Firefox 5.0). See screenshot here: <http://imgur.com/5w6Ai>

* Also, it would be nice if you could make the "Go Back" link a little more prominent.

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FreeWorld
Interesting. I tried it and it gave lists of magazines I read and tv shows I
watch, probably because I have the word "prog" which is short for "program" in
my twitter username.

Feedback: I have the same opinion as vijaydev, you should keep the form input
on the top, it would be more convenient. Also, it's a bit slow, took me
sometimes more than 20 seconds to load the recommendations. And possible bug:
When you press on GO multiple times the loading image appears several times on
the page.

Nice job, for a first application.

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WrkInProgress
I'm not a prolific enough Twitter user, so I didn't expect the recommendations
to be right for my name (they weren't close).

I tried using the names of some friends who do tweet/follow/are followed a lot
but the site doesn't seem to be working at this time.

It's a neat concept/idea. Would love to hear a little bit of the background
behind it.

~~~
fedd
> I didn't expect the recommendations to be right for my name (they weren't
> close).

how do you know? it's recommendations, not your current preferences. if you
listen to break-bit-hard-core-metal-funk, it may recommend you some
Tchaikovsky

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njall
It works well, and it astonished me with some movies, apparently it chooses
the recommendations according to the people we follow on twitter (cf. Hunch).

Also, you should make it so that when you hit "Back" it keeps the username in
the search field, it's a bit annoying to type it again.

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localhost3000
Doesn't hunch already do this for me?

~~~
prabodh
I think the site is getting data from Hunch itself...In the footer it shows
powered by Hunch

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idrinkmusic
What a couple said: make the songs go somewhere I can listen to that song you
are suggesting. If possible, within the same page so I don't have to come back
to the app and play the next you. Kudos for you!

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cabalamat
It worked very accurately for me. One suggestion - could you have the
recommendations linked to their Wikipedia articles? this would save me from
having to type them in.

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johnnyjustice
I love these Show HN's: This is fantastic, please put a flattr button up! And
also include some links to Amazon! It was pretty accurate to my interests too!

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vishaldpatel
This is awesome. Why? Because it strokes my ego monumentally with a great list
of songs. Put this on Reddit. It will get reddited!

~~~
ulvund
I'm not sure enough people on reddit are on twitter for this to be a big hit

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jh3
It did good on everything but the songs for me. It would be nice if the
username was still filled in when you hit back.

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ivoid
Nice! I suggest improving the "GO" button.

~~~
silleknarf
I would suggest the same, maybe type your username into the text box and have
a button for each category, you have plenty of screen real-estate anyway.

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czzarr
hi, I want to create a webapp as well but I dont know much about them, could
you explain what technology stack you used and how you did things like
deployment ?

great stuff !

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Nemmie
It's down :)

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geuis
Aha! Take Me On by Aha! is an old favorite song and music video. Your
recommendation engine got this, so this is a +1 in my book.

You should look into linking available songs into the iTunes and Amazon music
stores. Make some affiliate money for your project.

