
My YC submitted company - Thoughts or suggestions  - ryanspahn
http://www.sleep.fm
======
dfranke
I disagree with the comments saying that the purpose is unclear -- I
understood immediately -- but this just seems like begging for being the butt
of practical jokes. I don't want to wake up to getting rickrolled, and I don't
want to _not_ get woken up because somebody chose John Cage's 4:33 as my alarm
message.

~~~
ryanspahn
LoL - RickRolled... yes you can have a lot of fun with it, but you can
regulate your Social Alarm Clock, impeding the practical jokes.

I only allow few people to send me alarm messages, like my g/f who is away at
school and some of my family members who are sure not to RickRoll me.

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ajkates
Well, without signing up, I don't really get it. Maybe you'd care to explain
it to us in a few lines? A few things of note though:

1) Breaks the back button on my browser. That's a no no

2) The splash image takes way too long to load.

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aaroneous
Since you asked for thoughts + suggestions, here are mine:

I totally agree on all three points of the parent to this post (wtf is it,
don't break my back button, and why is the bg so beastly).

The only keys that could give me some context don't really make any sense:
"sleep and wake up social network" - huh? alarm messages - what? Vertical and
horizontal scroll bars on my maxed-out browser window - why? No chair at the
computer desk - oh noes! where am I gonna sit? "Sleep with us... and let your
friends wake you!" - This sorta reminds me of this one time in college...

I'm curious to know what your site does, but not curious enough to sign up to
find out. But if I did want to sign up, why do you need my website? Which
website? My business website? Personal website? Blog? Flickr? The chamber of
commerce for my city of residence? (Same goes for "name" is this my real name,
first name, last name, or a user/nick name?)

Why does the input look right justified? That feels awkward.

The thick black border around the brown box changes its thickness on the
bottom left side.

You've got a lot of work to do to get your front page together. I will be
interested to see how you progress, and to learn what your site/company is
about.

~~~
ryanspahn
Thanks I appreciate your comments and suggestions :)

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rms
OK, I really don't understand the point. Can you explain to me several
different user cases for your site? How many people out there do you think
will want to use your sleep.fm?

Why does an alarm clock have to be a social networking site? This seems to be
a rather utilitarian thing that works perfectly fine via the multiple alarm
clocks I already own. All of my friends would use a service like this to mess
with me, if I gave them privileges to wake me up. I wouldn't be able to resist
the temptation to abuse it if the roles were reversed.

~~~
ryanspahn
Sleep.FM is introducing a new form of communication that further enhances our
always connected digital society. The always connected generation enjoys IM,
Voip, Email, Social Networking, Twitter, text messaging, chat rooms,
lifecasting and now they can start off their mornings providing each other
with personal greetings, pertinent information or having fun with one another
through alarm clock messaging.

Yes, this definitely can be used for practical jokes(which some may enjoy and
others not, but either way it's something both parties will talk about).
Practical jokes aside, we have used Sleep.FM' Social Alarm Clock to send...

\- Happy Birthday alarm messages \- Messages detailing an important meeting
has moved to an earlier time \- My colleague's cousin in Iraq being awakened
by his kids alarm messages \- My friends(newlyweds) who have different sleep
schedules waking each other up

The Social Alarm Clock has been wrapped around a modern concept(a social
network), one that allows users to regulate who sends them alarm messages, as
well as upload alarm message to their Sleep.FM friends. As a social network
there more ways to monetize users, as if you look at lone applications like
Skype and Twitter they are challenged in this regards!

~~~
rms
I'm sorry, and I really hope I'm not the first person to tell you this, but I
just don't think this is a very good idea. I just can't see why anyone would
ever want to use a Social Alarm Clock. I don't like waking up anyways, being
Social isn't going to make it better. If there is one time when I am fine
having absolutely no social interaction, it is in the 10 seconds a day when I
wake up. I don't want to do any of the things your site allows me to do. It
doesn't seem like very many other people here want to either.

I think there are some ways you could adapt this to be more viable but in its
current form it just really isn't going to work. If you want to go forward
with this idea, I would recommend widget'izing it, this is one function that
would be more useful integrated into an existing social network.

Also, I don't think very many people have a computer sitting next to them to
use as an alarm clock.

~~~
iamwil
I think there's something there, but probably not in its current form, as rms
says. I think it's probably misleading to call it an alarm clock, since people
associate it with waking up. Yeah, unless you're hot, I don't want you waking
me up. Reminders might be a better metaphor.

I have a friend who doesn't keep track of anything, and relies on his
girlfriend to tell him when to do what. Whether this is a good way to go about
a relationship is debatable, I can see how you'd set alarms for people to do
something because it's important to you, rather than the person executing it.
Say like, "pick up groceries at 5pm", but send it at 5pm so he has no excuse
not to remember.

Happy birthdays wishes. "hey how did the date go?" messages right after your
friend's date. "how did that pitch go?" messages after your colleague got
devoured by VC's. What's in common is that you sent the message at the time
you remembered, and they received it at a time when it's relevant to them,
while you might be out golfing at the time. You can seem thoughtful at the
moment it's relevant to the receiver of the alarm message, and when it's
convenient to you.

Or you can send messages to your future self (say 5 years later), so you'd get
messages from your past self saying, "this is what I want to do by the time
I'm your age. Have you done them yet?" Or you send friends messages later on
saying "I was really mad that you ate my ice cream last sat, but I was too shy
to say anything at the time."

I think it's probably worth exploring what you can do with asynchronous
messages that don't get delivered immediately, cuz that's essentially what it
is. Limiting it to just messages you can send for waking is limiting, but
perhaps not as easy to sell to people otherwise.

While widgetizing it is one way to go, I think this best fits on a mobile app
of some sort. Mobile devices are seen as personal extensions of self. This
sort of thing falls under that category.

~~~
ryanspahn
Yes, we have a Windows Mobile prototype working and it will be finished soon.
iPhone in Feb. when they release their SDK.

We definitely are aware of of other uses of The Social Alarm and will be
detailing that in a presentation on Tuesday.

There are a ton of things to be done by meshing the alarm clock(or an audio
alert system if you prefer to classify it as such) with the Internet. We plan
on implementing a lot more to this concept!

Again, thank you everyone for your comments and honesty!

~~~
seren6ipity
"Audio Alert System" is impressive and it can be used to represent the various
ideas you want to integrate in your website.

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mattmaroon
No offense, but that is the worst idea I've ever seen in my entire life.
Nobody in the whole world would ever want to use that.

~~~
ryanspahn
Thanks for your input! Not everyone will enjoy this, but we hear both sides of
the fence.

Sleep.FM was a semi-finalist for TechCrunch40 and recently chosen out of 20
companies(they pick 6) to present to a crowd of 400 where Microsoft and
Facebook will be present.

~~~
mattmaroon
That's because people in The Valley have no concept of what the other 99.9% of
the population wants. They see a novel concept where most Americans will get
woken up once when they didn't want to and be nothing but annoyed.

Also your video at
[http://www.jumpcut.com/view?id=5DA53674478211DCAE95000423CF3...](http://www.jumpcut.com/view?id=5DA53674478211DCAE95000423CF382E)
should be the moment of zen on the daily show.

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rksprst
No offense...

The site looks horrible, graphics aren't pleasing. I don't like the background
picture, nor do I like anything else design wise. I simply won't use a website
that looks like that.

It requires plug-ins to be installed (and I don't trust your site enough to
have it install the plug-ins).

I think that idea is pretty bad. Instead, maybe have a facebook app that sends
wake-up reminders (with permission from the receiver) via SMS or something
similar.

How are you going to make money off this idea, I'm pretty sure no company is
going to want to buy you out.

Also, don't put a TM symbol in your logo unless you actually have a trademark
on that logo (which I highly doubt that you do).

What are those scrolling images on the front page? What has that got to do
with anything?

~~~
seren6ipity
:-) I liked the background picture since it is perfect night setup and goes
along with the utility - alarm clock.

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ryanspahn
Great thank you so much for your feedback. It's a big help!

Here is a full summary...

Sleep.FM - The Social Alarm Clock is an alarm clock social network, where upon
the alarm time passing on the site(mobile versions soon) you are awakened by
your alarm messages(audio files or voice-mail) received from your friends on
the network.

It is themed around the human conditions of resting and waking where user
environments are bedrooms. Users interact with one another by entering each
others bedrooms to leave one another gifts(with or without comments), emails
and or alarm messages.

 __The back button issue.. does that happen on the splash page or when you
click, "Already a member? Click here," which takes you to another page?

Thanks!

~~~
g00dn3ss
The back button problem is on the main splash page. It looks like you are
doing some kind of javascript redirection. So there are actually two entries
in history. When you go back one page in history, it jumps forward again.

Incidentally, there have been several related products in recent years.
Someone (maybe Sharper Image?) was selling an alarm clock that supported
downloadable alarm sounds. I don't remember exactly, but I think it worked
like those digital picture frames. That's not to say that you couldn't do it
better. But I think your biggest issue may be that most people don't sleep
next to their computer.

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falsestprophet
Well, this is awesome. I am throwing away my cell phone immediately.

But, keep an eye out for your completion: <http://www.zombo.com/> .

Good luck with your Series A.

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ajkates
Now that I think about it....this concept may be better suited as a facebook
application. I think the high-schoolers may have fun waking each other up for
school.

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iamwil
You should have a tour, so people can see what you have to offer without
signing up.

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imsteve
It's like!.. a cellphone.

~~~
falsestprophet
but this ads social networking features and a tag cloud: THE FUTURE IS NOW!

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utnick
Can you give a summary of what it does? I don't understand and don't feel like
signing up

Also, it hoses the back button on my browser, which is annoying

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Fuca
It is not a bad idea, here are my suggestions:

-Put a FAQ -Get a Designer to do the graphics, more white

Good Luck

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dyu
I had to scroll horizontally, and the text input boxes are not exactly in the
surrounding block.

I am using Safari 3.

~~~
ryanspahn
hi

thanks... it is not compatible for MAC yet.

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chadboyda
Breaks back button, very frustrating. I don't get it, needs at least a short
explanation on the front page.

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ryanspahn
We are in private beta now; been for a month or so...

Thanks for all feedback!

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brianmckenzie
How does it deal with different time zones?

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ryanspahn
The alarm clock time is set by the time on your computer.

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SwellJoe
Your site is slow.

