

Show HN: I made this: ShoutFast - jamesgagan
http://shoutfast.com
This is our entry in the "spontaneous event creation" ring. I'd love to hear what HN readers think!
======
jorangreef
To the developers, are you using this with your own friends? Make it more of a
hack for your own use (like your own CB radio or something) and see what
happens. At the moment, the copy on the front page does not seem "real"
enough, like it's written for your friends. It seems more like "strategy copy"
or something you'd tell a VC. A penny for every "easiest way", "discover",
"location", "around you".

In the interest of reducing sign up friction:

1\. There's no need for a "Repeat Password" field. If a user types the wrong
password, they can always use a "Change Password" link later.

2\. Asking for an "Email Address" would be better than asking for a
"Username". You kill two birds with one stone. Most people can remember their
email address(es) but I know I don't remember the different usernames I use.
Allow users to add multiple email addresses and sign in with any of these.

3\. Ideally, you could make it that a user only needs to give you their email
address to sign up.

4\. Is "Sign Up" really the best copy to use on the first button you want a
prospective user to click? What's the information scent there? What's the
promise of value? What's the end result of signing up? Be more creative.

5\. Things like COPPA, privacy policy etc. can go somewhere else.

Finally, what's your intention with ShoutFast? What's your motivation? Why are
you doing this? Get your motivation right and the methods will follow. Don't
worry about getting the methods right or cargo-culting. Just worry that you
have the right motivation. Spend your time thinking about motivation and
everything else will fall into place.

Well done on launching!

~~~
premchai21
> 2\. Asking for an "Email Address" would be better than asking for a
> "Username". You kill two birds with one stone. Most people can remember
> their email address(es) but I know I don't remember the different usernames
> I use. Allow users to add multiple email addresses and sign in with any of
> these.

As a counterpoint, I regularly use different Sneakemail addresses on different
sites to be able to categorize my mail by origin and provide for limited
sending capabilities. These are random-like (in order, among other things, to
not be trivial to link to each other) and perfectly machine-readable, but
they're difficult to use as usernames. So the trend of “email address as the
_only_ acceptable identifier for login” makes things more awkward for me.
(This obviously doesn't apply if you allow associating a short name as well.)

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joshwa
Seriously? YALBSN? (Yet Another Location-Based Social Network)

The social-network chicken-egg problem (SNCEP?) is even harder when it's
location-based... not only do you need to convince people to sign up, but they
have to be clustered location-wise to give them any functionality at all.

Without major marketing/promotional campaign and a really good hook, a new
social network will never get off the ground.

"See who wants to... do.. stuff..." is not a suffiently compelling value
proposition.

~~~
chegra
1\. Alot people wants something like this.(Big market)

2\. If he succeeds the space is easy to defend, since it was hard to succeed
in the first place.

3\. Since, when as a community HN shy away from hard problems?

Right now, you are suppose to be giving advice on how to make this work. He
came here for clever hacks and minds, don't disappoint.

~~~
joshwa
_A lot people wants something like this.(Big market)_

Do they? I know a lot of _startups_ want to tackle this space, but I haven't
seen much in the way of _demand_ from anyone besides startup people.

For OP to succeed he needs a more compelling hook (e.g. foursquare had the
gaming aspect) and a solid PR strategy for solving SNCEP.

Some questions that might suggest strategies:

* What is going to make me open the app right now? And again and again?

* What will make me think that I'll actually see any offers near me right now?

* How can I convince folks around me to sign up and use the app? What usecase might we have in common? (and how does your app make that easier/solve that problem?)

* How do I know the person making the offer isn't creepy?

* How can I make sure the offers I see are relevant to me?

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premchai21
I have little to say about the main functionality at the moment, but I'm
afraid my first visual impression of that stylized “o” in the logo is somewhat
squick-worthy! Perhaps a bit of reworking might be in order?

~~~
jamesgagan
lol- It's a compass rose, meant to emphasize the location based aspect of the
service...are you saying it reminds you a bit of the brown eye?

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mattdeboard
I dunno, I guess services like this have kind of jumped the shark for me
personally. Google+ ties much of this up in a nice little bow, for how I want
to consume this data.

~~~
jamesgagan
I'm still waiting for my google+ invite, so I don't have a point of reference
:(

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gschwarzer
Your terms of service seem to be for a different site. It states:
"shoutfast.com provides users with a search engine service to locate mp3 files
and metadata from external web sites throughout the internet."

Would be great to let users know what each field is for in the signup form.
They're all blank in Firefox.

Other than that I think it's a cool idea. Good luck!

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lowglow
You know what would be cool? I used to love getting on Def Con voice bridges
when I was a kid. I think it would be neat to see anonymous location based
voice chats. That way I can talk with people in my area instantly. This also
suffers from the CE problem though. C'est la vie.

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hobonumber1
It's a good idea! :) One of the problems that I foresee is the critical mass
problem. Is the app as useful if you're the only one using it, as it would be
if it had 100,000 members?

Good work though!

~~~
jamesgagan
Critical mass is definitely a problem, that's why we have seeded it with
meetup data so it doesn't look like a ghost town for new users. The plan is to
go after university students once fall semester starts. We think a great use
case is to broadcast to your dorm "who wants to go for a drink"!

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codabrink
I'm in IE8 (Not my computer) trying to sign up, and it doesn't tell me what to
put in the 3 fields: <http://i.imgur.com/293Rp.png>

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rmason
Field names on your signup form aren't visible in Internet Explorer.

It might be useful to indicate on a map where the locations are listed when
you do a quick browse.

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jamesgagan
Would love to hear what HN people think about this. We are trying to find a
way to make mini events or on the fly get togethers easier.

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dpe82
Too much serif!

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ahmetalpbalkan
""Whoops! Something bad happened. Something went wrong on our side of things.
We'll check it out and try to avoid this in the future.""

tried to sign in twitter, changed username, all others default (empty), chosen
default picture, submitted form. http 500 #fail.

~~~
jamesgagan
hmm that's no good - we'll check the logs - thanks for the heads up!

