

Ask YC: Can you provide Feedback on my customizable homepage start-up? - markm
http://www.clutterme.com/?r=0109
We're always looking for new input.  Even criticisms are appreciated.
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tyohn
It's cool! I like the site. I like the idea. What group of people do you think
will use it? I was thinking thinking this would be great for "unsophisticated"
users. When I worked as the webmaster for a large school division in Virgina -
I always got ask to help employees "create" things on their computers. It was
kind of like putting a picture of your kids on your desk or desktop screen
saver. When other people visited your office/cube they always ask about your
kids. And the social aspect of your idea might fit in too. If you're
interested in testing out the "unsophisticated" users angle let me know - I
don't work at the school anymore but I still have inroads to to other similar
environments.

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suboptimal
It sounds like you've identified someone's "pain." Have you further explored
that idea? [A lot of startups begin with a story like yours!]

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tyohn
Good point but I'm playing with another concept at the moment. When I can I
just like to lend a hand to other startups - I was thinking the people I know
might like the ClutterMe site.

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aneesh
Very cool technology.

Unfortunately, the page looks ugly because I suck at design, and you're making
me do the design. So it ends up looking really tacky.

Perhaps this "click anywhere and type/edit" technology can be used to annotate
webpages (or even iPaper PDFs). I know I'd use it for those purposes if I
could.

~~~
lux
Annotation is an interesting idea. I've seen other ideas to annotate web pages
out there, but never one that really caught on to my knowledge (maybe because
they required a browser plug-in to see or create the annotations), and they
also allowed you to annotate anyone's site with or without their permission.

What if as an option you allowed other sites to install an "annotate my site"
script you provided, which acts as a lead-in to direct people back to your
site with a link or with a "find other pages like this" type of thing? You
could even provide a cross-reference between annotated sites this way, and
provide a centralized site sort of like a directory of these sites...

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alex_c
What aneesh and yourself are saying is coming eerily close to discussions
we've been having recently... thanks for the feedback guys, very much
appreciated!

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kyro
I've visited your site several times before, and every time I visit I just
don't see many people using it. I appreciate the freedom your service offers,
but I think even for a customized homepage there is value in structure and
organization. As much as Myspace pages vary with annoying background gifs and
videos, there is still an underlying framework that adds unity to the site. I
think the fact that it's too open might hurt you in the end. On Facebook you
have your pics, your wall, your feed, etc., so there are expected components
to each page that unite users. Placing anything anywhere on a page would give
users a lack of focus and expend energy to use your service because they'd
have to forge the connections among their and their friends' pages.

I think your click and type anywhere technology, which is very cool, could be
applied to other fields as a feature, but I don't think it'd work best as a
social network.

Best of luck.

~~~
markm
It's comments like this that help us iterate.

We're almost back full time on our web app and it was frustrationg trying to
find our niche. It looks as though we are going to open up ClutterMe to
external sites.

We're thinking two levels of service, the first being something along the
lines of an iFrame and the second level is allowing users to create accounts
from within their site.

If you want to be included in the conversation and/or want this software on
your site, send us a ping, or just keep track of the blog for updates.
(blog.clutterme.com)

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shawndrost
Good work! A few notes:

Use a colored header and a footer. There are two important reasons to do this:
1) it keeps the non-editable content seperate from the editable content, which
makes your site's function clearer. 2) it maintains the webpage metaphor that
people have grown accustomed to. My reaction to your site for the first half-
second was "wtf?", which I mainly attribute to the fact that the page design
gave no indication of where I should look to understand it.

Use directional arrows instead of a paw for the "move" icon. The paw looks
friendly, but it makes no sense ;)

Demonstrate the fonts in the drop-down font menu. Ditto for sizes.

Don't allow the "People on ClutterMe" section to load more than one person
with the same photo.

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trekker7
Very cool, dude... I don't know much about the web design industry, etc., but
maybe you can get multiple revenue streams going by using this technology for
a variety of applications. Maybe Web-based photo annotation? Web-base
architectural diagram creation? Just a thought... seemed like cool tech that
could be used for a lot of different things.

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dnaquin
Not exactly the most user friendly interface. I kept trying to type anywhere
into the google search box. :P

Not bad. However, I agree with aneesh. Probably better used for annotation.

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mixmax
Wow...

Very simple, but really nice. It needs some work on usability and design
though. If you get that rigth it's a winner. There are some great
possibilities in sharing pages too.

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cstejerean
while at PyCon I was talking to John Draper (Captain Crunch) and he brought up
some idea (although I don't remember the specifics) that made me think of your
site. I tried to remember the URL so I can show him your site but I couldn't
remember it.

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rokhayakebe
I like the "links" this can save me a tremendous amount of time.

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alaskamiller
I remember this from 8 months ago but forgot the name. It's good to see you
guys have kept at it.

