

Ask HN: Review our startup, Seekier.com - A search sharing network - rooshdi

http://seekier.com<p>Hello HN,<p>We just launched a new search sharing service, named Seekier, which allows users to share their searches instantly with other friends and create discussions and knowledge bases around these shared searches. We hope that this becomes a gateway for users to help each other discover more through suggestions from those following them. We also hope this allows users to gain a greater glimpse into the personal interests of their friends. Our profile pages are located at seekier.com/roosh and seekier.com/michael. We welcome you to try out the site out for yourselves and would appreciate any sort of feedback. Thank you HN.
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photon_off
Here's my honest opinion; it might be a little discouraging, but don't worry,
I'm just some kid typing stuff on the internet.

First, let's discuss the aesthetics of the site. The site looks like a real
start-up website, and I immediately classify it as "something I should look
into" rather than "spam", "boring", etc. So, that's good.

I didn't like the "feed" of searches that is the primary focus of the page.
Since your summary didn't adequately explain to me what your service does
(well, technically it did, but I just didn't "get" it), this stream of
searches was rather confusing. They were all from several hours ago, by people
who I'm not the least bit interested in, had no comments, and everytime I
would think about clicking on anything it would abruptly move as the next
equally annoying search thing faded in. Also, it's buggy as hell. It looks
somewhat nice, but doesn't show off anything of value. Rather, it makes your
site look like a ghost town. Sign up for a ghost town? No thanks.

I would suggest to populate your site with some interesting content (even if
you have to fake making users to do it), and show me the most interesting
discussions. That would get me interested: "Wow! People are actually
discussing stuff that others are searching for!" Rather than "Uh, a stream of
mundane searches? All several hours old, in no apparent order, with no
comments... what's the point of this?"

Another thing I noticed is that I kept wanting to scroll up, thinking that the
color horizontal bar was cut off content. While this was just a minor
annoyance, it was still annoying. I also felt lost, and somewhat betrayed,
when what looked like the major navigation of the site was actually adwords.

Now, let's talk about the idea. I don't feel like you're creating something
that people want. I'm not the world's best Googler, but 99% of the time I
manage to find what I'm looking for. The other 1%, I'll try on other search
engines, or ask people on FB, whatever. I also use <http://www.moreofit.com>
(shameless plug) to search for things if I already have one good example of
what I'm looking for. So, your site is not likely to help me find things.

Now, are my search queries something I want as a point of conversation?
Generally, no. I could only imagine this being useful in some sort of SEO
forum where I'm interested in the rankings of the results... in which case I'd
just create a new thread in that forum.

I'm not convinced at all that "search queries" are a topic people want to talk
about. Even if it were the world's most amazing point of conversation, why
would I use your site to discuss my search queries rather than the thousands
of other already-established and populated commenting systems online? Why not
just post a status update on facebook, or twitter, or post on a forum I
frequent, or Reddit, HN, etc?

I just think to myself... of all the things that one would want to talk about
online, is "search query" really at all popular? And, if so, what
technological benefit does your site have that makes me want to talk about
"search queries" at your site, rather than on any other of 1000 forums? It's
such an absurd concept that in retrospect it's the reason why I didn't "get"
what your site did.

If you could show off some examples of interesting discussions centered around
search queries and put them on the frontpage, I might have a completely
different opinion, and maybe a "search query enthusiast" niche could be
cultivated.

~~~
rooshdi
Yea, we're currently lacking much users, but we're hoping that as we attract
more users, more insightful conversations and connections will be cultivated
around shared searches. Here's one quick example of a conversation cultivated
from a shared search: <http://seekier.com/roosh/seek/248>

------
Stevenup7002
Firstly, county should be country :). I like the idea, it's pretty nifty and I
can see it being useful, but I think your approach is wrong. When I go to
search for something, I just type it into my address bar and search, I never
go to google.com and then search for something, I haven't done that in about
three years :), so as you can probably tell, I don't really want to go through
seekier.com every time I want to search for something.

So here's how I would approach it. Why not make a browser extension that does
everything in the background, this way, I can use the service without having
to run over to the site every time I want to look for something, I'd probably
forget about doing it altogether after an hour :). If you decide to take this
approach though, make sure you put a big button somewhere that allows you to
to turn the service off if you decide you want to go and look for porn or
something ;).

Keep up the great work guys! Don't get discouraged if anybody tells you that
it's the most useless thing in the world, people said the exact same thing
about twitter, until they began using it and realized it's benefits.

~~~
kyrai
An extension is something we defiantly wanted to do from the beginning. That
was one issue we saw was either people not wanting to go to seekier or simply
when they search they don't go back to seekier. Thanks for the feedback!

------
ScottWhigham
Site looks pretty well done but it just doesn't seem like something I would
use. I have Facebook if I want to share searches with my friends and I can
just copy/paste my wikipedia/google/whatever URL there. I have HN, reddit,
Digg, etc if I want to do w/ people I don't know IRL but who have the same
interests as me.

~~~
rooshdi
With Seekier, the search terms are the center of the conversation and Seekier
is soley built around this focus. Thank you for the feedback.

------
luxative
I'd suggest you skip the Google Adsense for now; you could always reconsider
later. My first impression was "they want me to click on an ad" - that's their
model. And yes, to echo angumagu, I'd recommend a modification to the
thumbnail too. Good luck!

~~~
rooshdi
Yes, we definitely need to get rid of the adsense and update the thumbnail.
Thanks for the feedback!

------
angumagu
Completely tertiary to the primary feedback being requested, but: Your default
avatar (which appears to be a zoom-in of the logo) looks (to me) like a zoom-
in of a line drawing of a woman's cleavage, with one nipple showing.

edited: for punctuation

~~~
rooshdi
Ummm, yes, that's a possible viewpoint. We'll need to change the avatars.
Thanks for the feedback.

------
p01nd3xt3r
Your site is really well done but this seems like more of a feature than a
stand alone product. What is the most compelling reason a user would have to
use this and not an existing sharing service?

~~~
rooshdi
Seekier is built solely around seeing what people are searching in real-time.
When users instantly see what others are searching, they can create
discussions around these searches and help each other discover more. Thanks
for the feedback.

------
petermin
A typo on <http://seekier.com/account/signup>: "County" should be "Country."

~~~
rooshdi
Yep, thanks for catching that. We'll change that asap.

------
pers3us
Why isn't duckduckgo in the list!?

~~~
rooshdi
It's currently listed if you selected your country at United States. We'll
need to add it to more countries though. Where are you from?

