

 Review my startup, Listnerd.com - stormen
http://www.listnerd.com/?hackernews

======
ctide
Speaking as someone who has built this product before, I think you'll run into
the same outcome that my product, Well, Bagcheck, Listly, Listgeeks, and
others end up at:

It doesn't actually provide any value.

It sounds really harsh, but unfortunately, that's the reality. People show up,
make a few lists because it sounds fun, but you don't give anything back to
them. You don't end up getting information that isn't already more readily
available (and more useful) in other forms. There's this notion that people
will carefully curate lists of things they care about, and it's true that they
do, but only for a few days. There's no incentive to come back and maintain
them because they aren't getting anything back out of it.

You can certainly say that I'm cynical and/or jaded from having built this and
seen it first hand, but I think there's a reason why none of these sites ever
stick. I don't believe it's due to them being built by bad engineers, or being
implemented in a way that doesn't work, it's just that it's a feature and not
a product.

~~~
blhack
The thing you're missing from that list is thingist, which is my "lists" app.

Yes, it does provide value. Thingist has become my, and the few other people
that have run into it's:

Photo sharing site

Bookmarking site

Music playlist site

Shopping list

Link aggregator

Blogging platform

Etc.

I've been keeping "songs I like" for almost two years, and it has replaced
grooveshark or spotify for me.

So yes, lists do provide value.

<http://thingist.com>

(sadly I haven't worked on thingist much in the last few months. Depression is
a bitch like that)

~~~
ctide
I would argue that thingist is actually a micro-blogging platform that has
renamed tags to lists. :)

Mine (<http://lists.io>) turned into a useful app for me as well, but I had to
deviate pretty far from our initial idea (which was nearly identical to this)
for that to happen.

~~~
blhack
I think we actually talked to each other a while ago :)

------
tomasien
You're using

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" >

Which means mobile devices will not zoom out to display the screen as it
appears on a desktop, which is what you do when you're using a responsive
design. But you aren't using a responsive design, so on a phone it appears
only showing 320px of the page, rendering it unviewable and unusable.

Take that out OR implement a responsive design.

Sorry not to give feedback about the idea, I don't really have any, but fix
that. It'll help ya out, especially while this is on HN.

~~~
stormen
Thanks for the input! We're hard at work with a mobile version (should have
went mobile first...), but it's on its way - 2-3 weeks shy of a release. We're
doing a responsive theme, but right now, everything just sucks. Sorry :(

~~~
tomasien
Yes, so you need to take that meta tag out of the header. Then it will look
find, just really small, on a phone.

------
Centigonal
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but why would anyone ever use your site?

It's well designed and does a lot of the marketing, web-design-y stuff right,
but I can't see any reason why I'd be motivated to start using your service.

~~~
narrator
It really feels like the product first anti-pattern. The first thing you
should think about if you want to create a serious business is "Who is my
market? What am I selling? Why would they want to buy it?". You don't have to
have a boring answer to those questions, you just need an answer.

~~~
stormen
We're selling user-generated and user-curated content to everybody with a
passion. We're Pinterest for lists.

------
sontek
I'm posting this first, will give a review of the product as a 2nd comment:

1\. The dropdowns for registering birthdate are very unusable since I can't
type in them. Trying to search for the year I was born by scrolling is hard.
Can you use a standard HTML dropdown?

2\. After registering I got redirected to: <http://www.listnerd.com/error/404>

but I had filled out a title to a list I wanted to create, I thought it would
create that list once I was registered.

3\. When I clicked "Create List" from the 404 page, it redirected me to the
login page. I just registered so I assumed I would be logged in.

4\. After I tried to login I get redirected to:
<http://www.listnerd.com/?login=nserror>

but since its a modal dialog I can barely read the error which shows up below
it.

So it seems you may not have the non-social login/register side stuff
completed but for obvious reasons I don't connect my networks to random sites
:)

------
sixQuarks
Here's the problem with crowdsourced lists:

100 Greatest presidents: #1 is Richard Nixon
<http://www.listnerd.com/list/top-presidents-of-the-usa>

You don't get serious lists. There's always trolls, or people that are
uninformed adding their 2-cents.

~~~
stormen
Hmm.. I don't agree with you. There's always going to be trollers, but look at
reddit; they managed to crowdsource links. If you can crowdsource links (with
all the hazzle of Indian SEO-spammers, bloggers wanting traffic and
corporations wanting to push their products), lists should be do-able too. But
I acknowledge there's a real challenge there, for sure. Thank you for your
input :)

------
n_coats
I thought it was rad! I found value in some lists as well. I think you've got
a lot of potential and hell, if you're about the experience and helping people
discover, then keep rolling with it!

I must warn you though, I've been down a similar road relating to intention,
all the while thinking in the back of my mind that I can somehow flip the
switch and create monetary value. It didn't work like that.

If you're not being true to yourself with your motives for the sake of
justifying where the project currently is, then take a step back and re-
evaluate what you need to do to achieve your real motives/desires with the
project. This is a personal suggestion stemming from my own experiences and is
not meant to be offensive in anyway. Good luck!

~~~
stormen
Thanks for the input - and the praise. To be honest, the value in our lists is
limited so far. Some are really good, but we need to keep improving both the
content and increase the number of votes on the lists to actually create
really good, unique content. That's our number one priority these days. Will
definitely remember what you said about not expecting monetary value any time
soon.

------
Diamons
Dude, absolutely love it. I've seen this a few times before but this one has
huge potential. The product looks social. All it really needs is randomness".

Not sure what the word is, but best I can describe it is randomness. Link
bait. Link cycle. Idk. Keep me going. I view one, okay. Don't make me hit back
and type something else in. Take what I've seen already, suggest alternative
content on the side, keep me clicking like YouTube does. Make me kill time
before I even know what's happening.

Do that and you really have an amazing product. I could see myself wasting
hours with stuff I'm interested in, just keep me going.

~~~
stormen
Thanks a lot :) That's an excellent suggestion! We'll try to implement it
asap. And kudos to you for seeing what we also (think we) see; which is a
market - and need - for user-generated, collaborative online lists :)

------
andreipop
I think it's really hard to review it without understanding the goals of the
project.

Are you trying to make money with it? Are you trying to grow it to 1M users?
Are you trying to build a feature for Pinterest to buy?

You're getting a lot of different opinions here. Some are saying its a
wonderful, social product with a lot of potential. Some are saying you aren't
solving a real problem, which gives your project a fairly short shelf life.

It just depends on the goal, what do you hope to achieve with it? I've always
had a hard time evaluating things without knowing this.

~~~
stormen
Good input :)

The goal is to build a number 1 traffic destination; a kind of Pinterest or
Youtube for lists. At its heart, Listnerd is a social discovery and
recommendation tool. We want to help people separate good products from bad.
That's our main goal. Everything else comes second. Money isn't the primary
goal - or even the secondary. It's just a tool to create the site we want.

------
arthulia
You've got some input sanitizing to do.

[http://www.listnerd.com/item/tse%3Cscript%3Ealert%283%29%3B%...](http://www.listnerd.com/item/tse%3Cscript%3Ealert%283%29%3B%3Cscript%3E)

~~~
stormen
Thanks a lot! We'll add this to the todo list in Basecamp asap!

------
bmmayer1
I'm hacking together something very similar to this right now, actually...have
you considered doing a Pinterest for lists? Instead of the user curation
component, doing more of a "make lists for me that are public on my wall"?
Like, "Countries I've been To," "Movies I Want to See," "2013 New Years'
Resolutions." Etc.

------
icedog
Your site needs a 'Pleases & Sparkles' button.

[http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155927/if-it-
pleases-a...](http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155927/if-it-pleases-and-
sparkles)

------
spicavigo
I like it.

Clicking on "Create New List", when I am not logged in, should ideally show
the overlay without taking me to a different page. At least thats what I
think.

~~~
stormen
Hmm... Noted! Will put it on the todo list. Thanks!

------
p_sherman
To be frank, this isn't a startup. This is a weekend project.

Also, the generic random background photos on the homepage just don't make
sense.

~~~
stormen
Hi. Listnerd is a bootstrapped startup. So far we've invested 100k into it.
Listnerd is a startup owned by our media company Omega Media, which has a
yearly revenue of roughly $1.2 million USD. So I'd say it's a startup. Thanks
for your input!

------
rwc
Did you come across Well in your research? <http://well.io/>

~~~
stigi
I'd like to throw another social list-agregation service in the pool:
<https://getamen.com>

~~~
stormen
Yeah, but it's not directly comparable. They let you rate stuff, but it's not
very granular. It's just "amens"; not up- and down-votes, or even a 0-10
scale, like we offer. It's quite one-dimensional.

------
stevekemp
It looks like you don't escape content of submissions, allowing XSS attacks to
be made.

~~~
stormen
Thank you, on it now! Do you have a specific page/input field in mind?

------
mikle
stormen, send me an email and I'll give you some original ideas to implement.
I'm starting to get depressed seeing a well designed, well coded (probably)
yet another list aggregator, music service, social whatever.

~~~
stormen
Thanks! Will do :)

------
mrviking
how is this different from <https://bagcheck.com/>?

~~~
stormen
As I also answered for Amen and Well.io, their site is quite one-dimensional -
as it only offers "likes" (upvotes). There's no granularity in the rating
scale. We offer up- and down-votes, in addition to a 0-10 scale. I think
that's quite important for a social list site, atleast if you want to be
serious about rating and ranking stuff.

~~~
mrviking
Why the downvote? The up/down or a 0-10 scale is a UX choice in the voting
mechanism, but I am not sure how that is a major differentiator.

Feedback: Since your intention is to recommend relevant items you might want
to optimize the referrer experience. It took a lot of clicks to go selecting a
list to accessing the relevant content. E.g it took me 3 clicks to find
<http://www.listnerd.com/item/savant-1>, and then I gave up on finding the
artists music or a link to it on that page. On bagcheck it takes 1 click to
access the relevant referral link.

