

Show HN: I just launched a new blogging platform - awicklander
http://blog.brytter.com

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eggbrain
I'm going to give you honest feedback here.

Your main problem is also what you are trying to sell - your simplicity. The
site looks bad -- as in, it looks like the Rails 15 minute blog tutorial with
a few extra things. This _isnt_ simplicity - this is bare-bones. Simplicity is
easy to use, easy to understand, and beautiful to look at. After I signed up I
was immediately thrown into writing a blog post. What? What is this? Am I
supposed to write a post? Is it private? Who can see it? You've thrown me into
the water when I don't know how to swim, because you assume the life preserver
is getting in my way.

I don't have a tumblr, but I tried them out today. I was up an running faster
than your site - and they don't charge money! They didn't ask for my first or
last name, all they asked for was email, password, URL -- all on one page as
well.

Finally, the fact that your site is so bare-bones, but yet charges money, will
cause problems. What's to stop me from building a site very similar to this in
a weekend and charging $5/month? Or nothing? I feel it will be extremely hard
to have a good business plan with "we have less features".

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citricsquid
There is a huge difference between _simple_ and lacking in features, yours
falls into the latter category. Something like Tumblr (although full of
features) is "simple" because at its core is the ability to do everything you
_need_ for a blog to do in a few clicks, _but_ if you need to do more
complicated things you can, that makes tumblr simple.

Yours is literally 2 features, creation of blogs and making posts. I don't see
where the market for your platform is, if I want this why don't I just use
HTML files on shared hosting? Same features + a custom domain, lower cost.

~~~
pinchyfingers
Tumblr also shares Brytter's feature of providing a consistent experience for
readers. While you can visit an individual blog which will have it's own theme
and unique elements, most Tumblr users are reading in the dashboard, do
designing your theme is not a huge deal.

Tumblr and Posterous are so good, not to mention Wordpress — I really wouldn't
want to get into the blogging market at the moment.

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stevenbrianhall
I have some positive and negative feedback:

"Yes, it's true, most other blogging platforms are free. We charge money for
ours because we want writers, not advertisers, to be our customers."

First off, I think this is great. If I were a more serious writer, I think I'd
enjoy being on a platform, knowing that other people in the network were also
serious writers. The idea of having a blog I'm committed to enough to pay a
bit for is appealing to me. I think there might be a market there.

However, what people are saying is correct - the product is overly simple.
Before you charge for something, people are going to need to see the advantage
over starting a Wordpress blog like everybody else. If the design was elegant
and the community (as mentioned above) were proven, I could see asking
$9/month.

Apart from that, congrats for having launched. Take the feedback (of all
kinds) in stride, listen carefully to what people are saying, and iterate like
crazy.

~~~
papalalu
a paid platform for writers makes sense, but there definitely needs to be some
connection between members.

or at least a feed.

------
ers35
I signed up and chose "www.brytter.com" for my blog subdomain as a joke.
Brytter may have given me the ability to edit "blog.brytter.com" See
<http://i.imgur.com/efXdt.png>

I have logged out of my account since I do not want to cause any harm. Please
fix.

~~~
Katelyn
You aren't authorized to [save] any changes you make. I hit that page, too,
but when I tried to save changes, it threw this at me: 'You are not authorized
to access this page.' <http://i.imgur.com/nbMLF.png>

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zalew
$9 per month for a blog?? are you serious? try at least to convince us with
some decent themes screenshots, or something

btw signup page shot <http://i.imgur.com/kJyus.png> on ff10

and flashblock covers up some button on your blog
<http://i.imgur.com/xUaiz.png>

~~~
RandallBrown
"Yes, it's true, most other blogging platforms are free. We charge money for
ours because we want writers, not advertisers, to be our customers."

~~~
kolev
The reality is that advertisers have a lot more money than writers...
unfortunately.

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ISeemToBeAVerb
My 100% honest opinion... there isn't enough value at present to warrant a
paid plan.

Your platform looks nice, but I think the business model that drives it will
need to be rethought.

One of the issues here is that the problem you're attempting to address has
already been solved.

The technology barrier to self-publishing is already low enough. No disrespect
to non-technical people, but if you can't figure out how to set up a Tumblr
blog, then there are larger issues at hand.

In other words, you can keep lowering the barrier to self-publishing, but
eventually you're not left with much of an actual business. I think
criticsquid's reply said it well; there's a huge difference between simplicity
and lacking in features.

I think one direction you might look into is selling yourself as a
discriminating/curated blog platform, much like The Deck did with their
curated Ad Network for the creative industry.

At any rate, you need to add some value here. At present, I just can't
(personally) see any reason why I'd choose your platform over the other
options.

------
Katelyn
$9/mo? I get Netflix for less than that

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faramarz
Work with a designer to give it the elegance that it needs and I believe
you're on to something here. What you describe in the opening paragraph
resonates true to almost everyone who has tried blogging only to give up after
a few weeks. (I pay 7.99/mnth to host my MovaleType blog that has stale
content from years ago..)

You did a great job convincing me I need something to fix it.

Increase the quality of the design by attention to detail (the colour is
great.. find the right reading font, line-height, buttons, fields styles etc)
and make the experience *elegant"and I think that's when you'll see adoption.

------
AwesomeTogether
I'd rather spend my $9 per month on a subscription to the NY Times and use a
free blogging platform with more features.

------
unicornporn
<http://pen.io>

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vineet
I blog. I don't have much fun while doing it. So, I could possibly be a good
customer.

But... I don't get how you are better. You have only stating that you are
better. I would also like to see examples of your strength (I know you pointed
that your blog is running on the platform, but I don't see anything useful on
your blog about how you are better).

Try looking at <http://www.smugmug.com/> They have a similar philosophy to you
guys (in the photos space).

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detay
"please be a free member for a month, for a blogging system that features
you're not gonna see until you use it."

I think that's asking too much for a blogging system where it has free and
wastly used alternatives. You guys need to put up a video and/or a
presentation, some visual candy so that people would know what they are about
to get.

the example in the main page does not show anything that is being backed up by
a blogging system. it's just text and a hyperlink.

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halayli
You got to be kidding.

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Jayasimhan
How to differentiate:

1\. Make it easy for one small class of people.

2\. Convert people who dont blog than people who have a blog already.

~~~
AznHisoka
I agree with #1. Perhaps the better strategy is to create a blogging platform
for 1 niche. Such as blogs for teachers, or blogs for weight loss.

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DanBC
Writers get paid to write; they don't pay to get published. Why would they pay
you to publish when they could use any other free platform?

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tadhgk
I don't think the world needs another super-simple blog tool. Posterous, for
example, does everything you've said here.

What would be interesting is a blog platform that can do more to make the
reading experience more pleasurable, like really nice fontography and so on.

------
itmag
Speaking of new blogging platforms, there hasn't been a lot of discussion on
HN about SETT. Why not?

~~~
Geee
It seems to be just <http://sett.com>. There seems to be some interesting
ideas. I just wonder why there isn't example blog even for the company itself.

~~~
apsurd
Agreed, it's interesting but I have no way to gauge it. There's no obvious
publication date so for all I know it's 5 years old (and not very popular). In
contrast, if it was just launched I would be much more willing to try it out
_in spite of_ there been no clear examples of successful communities.

This may very well be revolutionary but my time is limited. Google searches
for "sett blog" return nothing. #sett on twitter is more nothingness. It's
ironic: I am not heavily engaged in social media at all, but turns I need
social proof in situations like these.

------
mrschwabe
Nice job. Don't sweat the flack about your pricing model. I think it's got
potential. You'll just have to work hard and find who your market is. And test
different price levels along the way. Goodluck.

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NameNickHN
If you force the user to only have one page layout, please offer one that
provides the best readability. Black font on grey background is not the best
choice for that.

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jmboling
One man's great design is another man's piece of shit, so ignore design
feedback -- social software lives and dies by three words... community,
community, community.

------
apgwoz
I absolutely love the ability to view any post across the site on the
subdomain I chose. That's a great "feature" that I think you should fix.

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sidcool
Wish you good luck. I find the platform decent. Shall give it a try.

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beggi
Brytter looks nice but check out www.calepin.co if you're looking for really
awesome blogging (via Markdown and Dropbox).

------
StavrosK
Any sample blogs we can look at?

~~~
awicklander
The announcement is on the platform :) <http://blog.brytter.com> is on
Brytter.

~~~
xemoka
Yes, but since there is no other posts on that blog we have no idea what a
content populated version would look like. Nor is there a list of blogs on
brytter.com

How does the history page look with multiple posts? What does the post
creation tool look like? Possibility of LiveFyre or Discus?

Should I have to sign up to find out what the features of your new blogging
platform are, aside from simplicity? You want our money and support, sell it
to us.

------
OoTheNigerian
How are you better than posterous with their simplest theme? It is cool to
charge, but not for something that takes no effort to do. And if it is
important, you can have the most basic wordpress installation (self or company
hosted option) for far less the price and far more the confidence in the
platform.

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zyfo
1\. Signed up, tried to create a blog called "test" - nothing happens.

2\. Trying again - nothing.

3\. Probably occupied already I think and try with "testing" - some red-letter
angry error.

4\. Changing URL to Brytter.com, clicking on "my blogs" - barely visible in
the top right corner despite being logged in - getting prompted with a "which
blog would you like to do write on" _dropdown_.

5\. No "test" nor "testing" there - and no way to create a new blog.

I think you just forgot the V and the P in MVP.

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arguesalot
On topic: this will probably not roll as-is. How about a $1/month fee (or even
$1/year would be enough i think)? How about pay-to-read posts?

Off topic, since a blog is the "hello world" of web development for quite a
few years now: how many of you have created blogging-related web apps? I 'll
start with <http://instablogg.com>

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jbeatty
Source?

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dmoney
If it's called Brytter, are the posts called Breets?

