

 Rate my weekend project, Thursday Flowers: a thoughtfulness service - adamfblahblah
http://www.thursdayflowers.com

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rabidonrails
It's probably too early but, when you have the users, you should put up a
dashboard with how many people are using the service. You could have something
like "2436 People Are More Romantic," that would 'prove' legitimacy and verify
the your premise of the site.

"Sign up and we'll send you ideas every few weeks at random intervals," sounds
like "when we come up with an idea we'll send it out," it doesn't make me
believe that you're committing to the site which makes me skeptical of
entering my email.

Just my .02. Otherwise, I'm a fan of the idea.

~~~
adamfblahblah
The counter is in the plan but is currently an embarrassingly low number (79
and counting!).

Re: random intervals, we'll try to find a better way to express what happens,
and as someone else suggested will show an example of what the email will look
like.

I think we'll also add a random suggestion to the front page.

~~~
Sakes
Instead of:

 _Sign up and we'll send you ideas every few weeks at random intervals._

\---------

How about:

Sign up and we'll keep your romance spontaneous by randomly sending you ideas
every few weeks.

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ses
This is just an opinion, but if you need reminding to be thoughtful, you've
already lost a lot of the essence of what thoughtfulness is all about.

Being given suggestions about how to be thoughtful further removes the
'thought' from the so called 'thoughtful' act. Though I haven't signed up, in
technical terms I'm sure its a fair achievement for a weekend project, however
I really think it misses the mark in an area where there could be much larger
scale opportunity.

For example: you're limiting this service to romantic thoughtfulness,
completely ignoring being thoughtful to people with whom your intended users
might have a non-romantic relationship.

There are quite a few reminder / notification type projects popping up lately
and I have to wonder how long-lived they will be even for avid users. I can't
help but think its eventually going to feel like spam (even if your email
content is fantastically insightful and useful).

With that said kudos for an interesting idea that you've made a reality.

~~~
adamfblahblah
Isn't it a thoughtful act to sign up for this service? :)

We're not ignoring non-romantic thoughtfulness in the sense that we don't know
about them and the potential in those users, but rather ignore them in order
to get something out the door and gauge interest.

We too worry about showing up like spam. Our current algorithm is to send a
mail no sooner than 7 days but no later than 21 days after the last
notification, which hopefully isn't too often. We're looking at adding user
accounts to let people customize this timeframe and the suggestions.

Thanks for the feedback!

------
jakewalker
Are you really making enough from the ads on the bottom of the page to let it
clutter up your design?

If you continued to develop this so your special offers would allow me to do
whatever it is (send flowers, etc.) with one click or one reply e-mail, that'd
be great.

~~~
adamfblahblah
I'm so on the fence with the ads. I agree they clutter up the design. We've
made the big $0.04 on the ads so far... I'd much rather send well formed and
target recommendations with the suggestions.

tl;dr - we'll probably kill them, but thought it would be cool to buy a beer
with the proceeds.

~~~
rlpb
I'd have thought you could make more from affiliate links on your
recommendations.

~~~
gigantor
<http://affiliateprogram.1800flowers.com/>

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DanI-S
You should add a random, monthly-ish gift autodelivery service and call it
'Flowers and Forget'.

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splish
A bit of a blackbox from a user's perspective about what it will be they would
be receiving beyond "it will be an email" and "it will have an idea".

From the stance of someone who may have just entered their email, before doing
so it would be helpful to see an example of what it is we're getting ourselves
into.

The pitch is too easily misconstrued to "every few weeks we'll ask you to buy
something from one of our advertisers, so please sign up".

Perhaps a friendly use case/sample would be helpful here.

~~~
adamfblahblah
That's a great idea, and easy to show on an example page. Added it to the TODO
- thanks!

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ssebro
Please, by god, kill the ads at the bottom of your sign up page. It makes me
highly skeptical of your service, since you seem to be interested in making a
quick buck.

~~~
adamfblahblah
Okay, killed the ads. I hated them as well.

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dr_
It seems like a decent idea if that's what you really intend to do with it.

I'd get rid of the ads at the bottom though, kind of cheapen the look of the
site.

~~~
splish
Fwiw, I didn't even know there were ads on the site with adblock on.

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jmalter
Actually had a similar idea a few years back and did a bunch of research. Two
big things came up: 1) The tension is making guys look good without "taking
the thought out of thoughtfulness." 2) How many new and unique suggestions are
you really going to be able to give? After ten or so, they start to get stale
or obvious.

Btw, re the counter you can fake the number just to see if it works/test
something.

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splish
Not sure of the implentation details, but hopefully you're sending out
different ideas to some degree per week/user. Depending on the ultimate
success of the site, some might notice the use of some external force in
'suddenly thoughtful significant other'

"Bob gave you flowers last wednesday? and a card on Monday? Frank did the
EXACT same thing!" (etc.)

~~~
adamfblahblah
Every user gets a random idea from a a database of ideas; there's maybe 40
ideas in the DB for each combination of genders. We have some logic that
prevents you from getting the same suggestion twice in a row, and in a branch
we've yet to merge we've added a link to the emails that lets the user get a
new suggestion.

We've got Big Plans(tm) to add user accounts that will let users than
customize their own suggestion list.

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FeministHacker
You're missing an option:

I'm a [person] who wants to create thoughtful moments for my [Significant
Other].

Not hard to add, and there are lots of good reasons to include non-gendered
options.

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asif
I wonder if I'd get in trouble if my girlfriend caught me using this...

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aheilbut
It passes the jwz test...

~~~
jonpaul
What is the JWZ test?

~~~
there
<http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html>

_"How will this software get my users laid"_

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smbwrs
Wonderful idea. I signed up.

Nth-ing the suggestion on tweaking the ads. They're definitely jarring.
Perhaps try to pick up some sponsorships? 1800Flowers, etc.

~~~
adamfblahblah
The ads are dead. We'll probably look for sponsorship if running the sites
ends up costing anything. It is on google app engine, so everything is free
right now.

