

We are Treehouse, and this is why we exist - chrysb
http://blog.gotreehouse.com/introducing-treehouse

======
jazzychad
Hi Chrys,

I have tried Treehouse for a bit on my phone, and here are some thoughts:

It appears that there is no way (currently) to share photos with subsets of
friends, is that right? Since that is the case, I don't quite see how this is
different than sharing on Facebook or Twitter. I was getting spammed with
friend requests through Treehouse, and it just appears to be an ego-boost game
of "how many people can I share my photos with". If I have pics I want to
share with my family and not the rest of my Treehouse friends, there is no way
to do that. Treehouse may want to be the next coffee table, but I want my
coffee table to look like a Venn diagram, please.

Also, I signed out of the app, but I keep receiving push-notifications about
activity happening. Is there a way to unregister my device token without
uninstalling the app and waiting for the APNS feedback cleanup to happen? I
don't want to uninstall the app because I am actually taking notes on the UI
of the app (it is quite good).

EDIT: fixed spelling

~~~
chrysb
Thanks, Chad. We have a lot of features that we are dying to add, and are
working on as we speak. This is just the first, the very first, implementation
of our vision. Stay tuned, we're eager to launch several game-changing
features in the next few months.

The features scheduled for launch address all of the things you just
mentioned, and more.

------
cracell
I really hate when sharing products have no web interface. Do that many people
have that many friends with iPhones?

~~~
PStamatiou
Feature parity on mobile apps + web apps should be at least some sort of
priority IMO.

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KirinDave
The people who are serious about photography tend to prefer to take their
pictures on DSLRs and not on camera phones. Sure, everyone takes photos on a
phone, I'm no exeption. But the photos I'm excited about sharing are seldom
shot from my phone.

Does treehouse help with this use case?

~~~
chrysb
Treehouse is focused strictly on photos taken with mobile phones.

~~~
zmmmmm
Strictly phones that happen to be iPhones? It is a bit confusing that you use
"phone" as a generic term all throughout and then only link to an iPhone app
at the end without any context.

~~~
chrysb
We'd love to launch on every platform at once, but given that we're a startup,
we are going to start with one platform. Coming soon to others!

------
passthesalt
Just wanted to let you know that me and my friends use treehouse quite a bit.
We've found it to be a really easy way to share photos with close friends,
precisely because of the reasons you wrote about in the article.

Because there isn't any way to restrict the photo viewing to a specific group
of friends, I've found that I only add/tell really close friends about it. As
a result the quality and quantity of photo sharing goes way up in my network
on Treehouse. Compare and contrast this to Facebook where I don't put up
pictures at all, and any photo that tags me is zealously filtered to present
the best image.

On a side note, some of my friends have complained that the app keeps crashing
on iOS4. Anyway good job with Treehouse!

~~~
chrysb
That's great to hear!

P.S. A new update hit the store yesterday that resolved our original buggy
iOS4 release.

------
fookyong
Perhaps I'm not part of the target demographic for this, but I don't really
grok it.

It seems like (a very well executed) yet-another-photo-sharing app, with an
extra layer of marketing fluff.

I see the founders are in the thread so maybe they can clarify - what's the
main difference between this and say, just using Tweetie to share pics? Do you
really think there's a need to make a distinction between say "all twitter
followers" and "my real friends"? If I take a picture of something
funny/cute/awesome, don't I just want to share it with as many people as
possible?

~~~
fookyong
aaaaaaand the app posted to my Facebook without telling me.

not cool.

The call to action was "Find Friends", not "Let everyone know that I installed
this app". I thought we were past sneaky tricks like this :/

~~~
chrysb
We've gotten a lot of good feedback about this and we're changing the way that
works. Sorry for any troubles!

------
klodolph
I was really hoping it was a reference to Tad Williams's "Otherland". I'm
disappointed. (EDIT: because the title was so ambiguous. It would be nice to
have titles that described their content somewhat.)

~~~
sorbus
That was what I was thinking too. Either a hacker-space with some special
purpose, or a distributed online hackerspace, probably with some integration
of video-chat, IRC, and git repositories.

~~~
klodolph
Hm. I have the sudden urge to construct such a distributed online hackerspace.

------
Tichy
A huge amount of text for a photo sharing app. What does it do?

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meterplech
I think that you might want to say picture or media message instead of mms.
While most people on HN, and many techie users will know this-they are also
the type to have the knowhow and time to set up their facebook privacy
settings just right.

~~~
chrysb
Facebook privacy settings don't make up for the lack of direct delivery to
your friends. It's about always being in touch with the people you actually
care about, not unlike text messaging or picture messaging.

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mattfitz
I was really hoping for a clear explanation of what treehouse is. What I got
was info on how awesome and important photos are and the feeling that I need
to install software and explore to get clarity on the app.

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TGJ
Looks like a good idea. You should consolidate your bold points to the top of
the page and leave the fluff for everyone else. Not everyone wants to read
your vision. They just want the program.

------
dgabriel
Good for you. Alas, we have abandoned mobile phones for the sake of frugality.

