

Ask HN: Review our site, ListBite (social classifieds) - soc
http://www.listbite.com

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djm
Question: How did you select the list of locations to use in the UK version of
your site? I would have thought that you would do it based on population size
but there are some rather small places in the list - eg Bath & Swindon.

Bug: When clicking the logo to return to the home page from one of the UK
regional urls the site returns to the .com instead of .co.uk page and shows
the US locations.

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halo
Why would someone want to use your site over the better established sites that
do the same thing (Craigslist in the US, Gumtree in the UK)?

~~~
soc
good question. We are trying to be more of a social classifieds site where for
example users can chat online with the seller or private message them. Sellers
can also upload a profile so buyers may feel more comfortable with them.

Also, we are aggregating other sites such as cars.com on the us site and other
local classifieds data, so it's easier to find stuff in one place.

But definitely that where the challenge lies.

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mapleoin
sorry, I can't get past the frontpage due to the schematic design

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joshsharp
Not to offend, but that logo is simply terrible. It looks... cheap.

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tyohn
I think you should narrow your focus. Didn't craigslist start out with just
one area? Why do you call it social classifieds? Is there a social network
tied in somehow?

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soc
True, I've had some interest from some regional car dealers so definitely
going narrower is an option. To really use the social features you have to be
logged in and have a profile in mylistbite, but still want to expand the
social network part. Also, trying to include it in facebook as an app which
hopefully will give some traction.

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soc
Thx, For the UK site we picked locations based on area and population, but
definitely can refine it some.

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Angostura
If I'm buying a game, do I really care whether they are in London or Essex?
No, I don't - the game is going in the post anyway.

The UK list is a bit grim at the moment, mainly because you are mixing cities
and counties into the same list. That comes across as strange, almost as if
you are making a category error. Have you though of sticking to counties, or
using sythentic regions (The South East, The Northwest, the Midlands etc).

~~~
soc
True for things like games you may not care, but for furniture, cars, and
personals you probably do care. I think we will probably just show a map in
the future and you can pick which region/town you in from there.

~~~
Angostura
If I were you I might think instead about asking the user for his/her
postcode. Then the user can decide to rank hits by proximity if they want, or
by other criteria.

I want the closest piano stool. I live in East London; some parts of Essex are
closer to me than some parts of London.

~~~
soc
yea, good idea. We were planning on including the postal code in the post flow
so once we have that people could browse based on proximity.

~~~
Angostura
I don't want to push the point in an irritating way, but I think you should
think about amending the post flow....

Currently you have people selecting a region and THEN selecting what they
want. It would be better to have people select what they want and THEN select
how important the proximity is.

That solves (i) The arbitrary city/region issue and (ii) Lets you advertise on
the home page the scope of what people can shop for, rather than advertising
all the cities in a country.

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wmeredith
I won't use it because I'm in Kansas City. Also, it looks like a parked
domain.

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rw
What's the point?

