

Show HN: WebMenu, a platform to discover new web apps - rooshdi
https://webmenu.org/apps/webmenu

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olegp
Looks great! We're doing almost exactly the same thing at
[https://starthq.com](https://starthq.com)

Some initial observations:

\- you have a much better UI for the directory

\- we have more data on the apps, which we pull in automatically via API
integrations

\- our launcher has a few more features, including new tab replacement
extensions for most browsers

\- you seem to be targeting consumers, while we're focusing on business users

\- you're further along with the app admin & app promotion side of things,
we're just getting that going and aren't planning on having that as our main
source of revenue

Can we collaborate somehow?

For example, we already have an RSS feed of all the new apps being added to
our directory. You could use that to populate yours.

I would be happy to share all our app data with you via a REST API as well if
we got something in return, such as a small link in the footer.

You can reach me here in comments, via Twitter (handle in profile) or by
signing up and using the feedback form.

~~~
rooshdi
You have an awesome service as well, and I would definitely enjoy possibly
collaborating. Right now, I'm focused on featuring smaller Saas and consumer
applications that need help presenting their service to new users in an easily
understandable format. I really want this service to provide users with high
quality information about applications through descriptions, screenshots, and
reviews. I would love to talk a bit more privately. You may email me at
contact(at)webmenu.org if you want to get in touch or get featured.

~~~
olegp
Great! Mail sent.

------
rooshdi
Hello all, As a bootstrapper myself, I've noticed getting exposure for new web
services is hard. The major media outlets usually don't care and focus on
gossip more than products. I've built a simple platform to help connect web
applications with the users looking for them. I hope I can help you find new
users and get reviews. Any feedback to improve the service is appreciated.

~~~
monsterix
This is a beautiful undertaking. Webmenu looks nice and clean, good job!

Since it's about helping upstarts and new web-apps you might wanna consider
presenting more details about the apps you take up. Like information about
what the app does, friction you felt, coolness etc. Just throwing in the
logo/icon and the name of the app will not cut it.

In effect a critique which could either be your own or sourced via the
community you intend to build will make this offering more compelling.

Most definitely you might want to keep away from presenting logos of Linkedin,
Google Docs or even Trello i.e. of big, rising or successful companies. It
starts looking like a hypocrisy if you do that, but obviously monetization is
one concern in this spot.

Overall, it would be great to have a new web-app review destination which
focuses solely on the product/founders and is zero on gossip.

~~~
rooshdi
Thank you for the feedback. I definitely want to focus more on independent web
applications and smaller startups or bootstraps, although users are allowed to
upload and add popular web apps they are fans of as well. I'm going to try my
best to evolve the service based on the community and see where it goes. I may
have to provide personal reviews for each application to help users get more
information to draw from.

------
bobfunk
Just added BitBalloon
([https://webmenu.org/apps/bitballoon](https://webmenu.org/apps/bitballoon)),
some comments on the process:

Really would be nice if I didn't have to manually crop & resize the
screenshots before uploading. Just resizing and cropping them centered would
have done a fine job in my case. Though you would probably want to disallow
images that are too small so you don't get scaling artifacts.

When you get a validation error for a screenshot, the form forgets the URL, so
you have to retype that every time.

Would also be nice with a tagging widget when entering tags. Currently there's
no indication of existing tags.

Apart from that everything looks great! Good luck!

~~~
rooshdi
Yea, I'm going to have to optimize the uploading process a bit. Thanks for the
feedback. Your page looks very nice and will be featured soon!

------
wasd
I think this is a great idea Rooshdi and I wish you the best of luck. I think
creating a market place is hard because you need both buyers and sellers. As
far as I can tell, you found 12 apps of each type and listed them here. I can
see the clear value for sellers. What do you think the value is for buyers?

~~~
rooshdi
I think there's value in providing a quick, clean overview and recommendation
of applications to potential buyers before they pursue further. WebMenu could
potentially be sort of like a mall, where buyers walkthrough and get a glimpse
of what apps are selling through their window screens, so to speak, before
they enter the store.

------
octatone2
A lot of your assets are not retina compatible. Specifically your logo image:
[https://d2avfbmbvwlo8q.cloudfront.net/assets/logo-
fd9cab1e82...](https://d2avfbmbvwlo8q.cloudfront.net/assets/logo-
fd9cab1e82fce8107efa7a596a4c8fb3.png)

~~~
rooshdi
Yep, I definitely need to optimize a few of my assets. Hard to tell on my non-
retina display, but I hope to optimize eventually.

------
Globz
Very nice, hopefully this platform will get more attention!

~~~
rooshdi
I hope so! I really want to help developers get the attention their apps
deserve!

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will_work4tears
I love these types of services! I dont yet have my own but love discovering
them. I guess i'm your target audience?

~~~
rooshdi
Yep! I enjoy them too! Never know what surprise you'll find around the corner.
Should be a fun.

------
vanwilder77
awesome service!

Nicely done! Love the UI, its so clean and intuitive.

Looking forward to publish my apps there.

~~~
rooshdi
Awesome! Would love to feature yours too:

[https://webmenu.org/promote](https://webmenu.org/promote)

