

My startup: An aesthetically pleasing, innovative Social network; Thoughts? - Swupa
http://www.swupa.com/index.php

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maqr
I don't have a huge interest in social networking, but the landing page
doesn't give me any compelling reason to sign up or learn more (other than
knowing you're an HN'er).

I might not be the target demographic (somebody without a Facebook account),
but it's not immediately clear to me what your network does or why I should
want to use it.

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rickmb
Excuse me for sounding harsh, but I don't find this "aesthetically pleasing".

Quite the opposite, it looks very, very badly designed. The number of
different and seemingly totally randomly used fonts alone give me a headache.

~~~
rndmize
The design seems to be a modified version of King Size, which is a popular
theme on themeforest - [http://themeforest.net/item/king-size-fullscreen-
background-...](http://themeforest.net/item/king-size-fullscreen-background-
wordpress-theme/166299)

Its actually a good template (a friend of mine uses it for his photography)
but I don't think it adapts well for social networking.

~~~
jamesbritt
I'm guessing the idea of the theme is to show off the images created by the
site owner, so it's well-suited for a photographer's site, but the images
coming up on Swupa are borderline kitsch. A few I've seen are a breath away
from Thomas Kinkade.

Worse, they tell me nothing about the site or why I'd want to use it. The
effect is puzzlement.

I'm wondering what the research or testing process was that lead to this
design. Or are we now taking part in the research and testing?

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Swupaa
As far as marketing plans: I am working on that. So far it's off to an
interesting start!, we have 645 registered users currently and launched ~2 and
1/2 days ago. I am 19 years old & i've been working on this (myself) for the
past few months now; however I've been coding for about 5 years now. Sadly,
I've never been a marketing guru but I am actively working on getting Swupa
out there now as much as physically possible, I have a decent amount of funds
(all out of pocket) and have & will continue to cater hardware wise to the
sites growth much before it's actually needed. Trying to really do this right
:)

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Swupaa
Fantastic. Off to a great start here :( Must have mistyped my password when
creating the account because i can't login and tried about 100x. Proof its me
still: <http://www.swupa.com/admin/431/> \--- Privacy policy: Something I was
literally just thinking of. I will get that done now as I understand that is
crucial for a community like this. On a side note, all info is completely
optional by all means. Signing up only requires a Username & Password.. Just
like here :)

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leejw00t354
I really like the background images but the UI in general feels really
confusing to me. I click one button and something jumps up in the middle of my
screen, I click something else and the background starts changing. You've
obviously put a lot of work into the UI but I think you're at risk of
confusing people. What age range are you targeting? I don't think anyone over
20 is going to want to use a website quite as flashy as this.

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wallawe
Cool man. Great design. But as I'm sure you know, you are entering a very
tough market. You'll need more than superior aesthetics and good marketing. I
might suggest targeting a particular social niche rather than the general
population as a whole. Best of luck to you.

~~~
gbsi
I agreee, refreshing design! I'd focus as well on trying to develop a sharing
segment, similar to the newsfeed of the entire community, where people can
browse whats being shared. Also, just a thought, the awesome background in the
beginning could be switched to an image rotator of pics uploaded by users with
a public setting.. And a bottom part with most active public discussions or
shares.. Sort of whats trending in the community? It would help the users
visitings knowing why they should sign up, or at least me:) Did you do this
just for fun or is there a specific issue you want to solve? Suerte.

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Swupaa
Gracias! And very interesting ideas (thank you for them! I like way you
think.) -- I definitely need to make it more active mainly for new users since
it's still very small for a social network (675 users and counting... almost 3
days in though!) and it can seem a little quiet at first. Well, to be honest I
got inspired to make this when Facebook started with the changes... I don't
want to put in a cliche phrase about being the next big thing, but I just saw
a lot of my friends and the general public pissed off and hating Facebooks
changes, which led me to think you know what might as well really test my
skills and see what I can do. I attempted a social network before myself (this
is my second attempt) but that was about a year ago and It's stupid how much
I've learned since then.

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gbsi
hey, send me an email to yurij.gabassi at gmail, love to bounce a few more
ideas with you.

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dhaivatpandya
Hmmm... how are you going to market this? It needs to be marketed heavily in
order to successful in a heavily crowded market. What's your value proposition
aside from aesthetically pleasing? Btw, the design looks excellent :)

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reagan83
I agree about the design it is very clean. I also think you might have
something there with the reddit integration.

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Swupaa
Thanks :) And Xbox Connect is about to get a lot more awesome. The thing is
though, I don't want to make it too geeky. The Reddit Connect/Xbox Connect
features or benefits if you will, will only be prominently displayed if in
fact you are connected; I don't want to be showing a bunch of Reddit or Xbox
related stuff to people who don't give a crap about either; but I want to make
it even more awesome for those who do.

~~~
jvoorhis
You need to foster an enclave of early adopters before you become mainstream.
They tend to be geeks.

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egypturnash
Dayum, your signup sequence kicks ass. I especially like being immediately
logged out after a password change (it needed doing) so I can type the new one
in and say "yes" when the browser offers to remember it.

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koopajah
I'd rather have my browser know I change my password and save it for me. I
think some websites already manage this.

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egypturnash
Safari usually only picks up on it when you're actively signing in to a
website.

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bsenftner
Your landing page gives me zero reason to sign up, so I did not.

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DanBC
no privacy policy?

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gbaygon
there is a link in the bottom of the black ribbon, i canno't paste it here
because it uses some type of "lighbtox" to display.

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DanBC
Down-voters: the policy link was added after my comment.

The policy is excellent. Short, clear, understandable.

Why is the text for the word "privacy" such a dark grey (#262626) on the black
background?

