

Hyperlocal social app – need feedback - yoapp
http://www.yo-app.com/
beta launched Yo!, would really be interested to have your views on whats not working right. Overall thoughts on Hyperlocal is also welcome.
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pfraze
I don't have an android, so I'm only speaking about my impressions from the
site and about the premise. For what they're worth, here are my thoughts:

Your premise of chatting to nearby people is going to have an adoption-cycle
problem. Not only do you need other users to have the app, but they have to be
using it within proximity. If you can't find a really good way to make
userbase size a non-issue, you will have a hard time getting any installs. If
you plan to use contacts-based messaging to drive the initial adoption, then
the hyperlocal feature probably isn't your primary feature anymore, so you
should reconsider focusing your marketing on it.

You also have a user-safety issue when giving away location data, but that can
be an opportunity to innovate in a differentiating way. Focusing on the trust
constraint may open up ideas on how users would interact - the key (if your
market is social) is to let people do something fun that they couldn't
previously do. Think about how trust factors into the interactions: for
instance, if you invert it so that the message only goes to friends that
aren't nearby, how might that change the experience?

Don't be discouraged, but do try to be really honest about the state of the
product. Also, get a few people (a few more, if you have already) to sit down
in front of the site with you next to them. It's currently somewhat difficult
to imagine what the experience would be like, and you want that to be clear
within the first fifteen seconds (or so) of opening the page. Most visitors,
when they get the first impulse to ditch, will follow that impulse.

Good luck!

