

Ask HN: Feedback on my startup (iPhone related) - aren

Hi HN -- Long time listener, first time caller.  (Been busy coding!)<p>Would love the HN community's feedback on my new site, Apptizr.  It's a recommendation engine for iPhone applications that's currently in private alpha.<p>It learns a bit about you, then suggests iPhone apps that it thinks you will like.  You can fine-tune the recommendations by giving it thumbs-up and thumbs-down feedback on the suggestions it makes.  By default, it will email you new suggestions every week.<p>If you have the time/interest, I'd love your feedback.  www.apptizr.com/invite/vip, code 'HackerNews' (no quotes)<p>Thanks!
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aren
Clickable link: <http://www.apptizr.com/invite/vip> code 'HackerNews'

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jiggity
clean interface! I think one thing that might be nice is to do in-line taste
matching.

I didn't bother to really answer the tastes section. When it says OPTIONAL for
sign-up sheets, my motivation for filling them out drops to zero. This is a
concern, because the user experience is directly proportional to how context
appropriate it is to the user.

The site presented a list of games that didn't really interest me. As I was
checking "not interested" down the apps, I quickly lost interest in the
recommendations, thinking the engine was broken.

Perhaps when the user first comes on, you can offer the top apps from
different genres. Depending on what the user clicks on, then you can hone in
on what user's tastes are, instead of requiring the user to explicitly list
them out.

Third or fourth click in, you might have some unobtrusive way to ask, "We
notice you are enjoying PRODUCTIVITY APPS would you like to add that to your
tastes?" The idea is to make the browsing and learning as seamless as
possible. (I have <http://likebetter.com> in mind)

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aren
Thanks for the suggestions -- great ones! We do use the thumbs-up/thumbs-down
suggestions for the second set of suggestions... so you shouldn't see games on
the second page if you said you didn't like any of the first ones.

Similarly, if you start to like a genre you didn't spell out we try to learn
from it and make that one of your interests, but it's behind-the-scenes. I
like your suggestion of making it more obvious. Thank you for trying it out
and for your suggestions.

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aik
Looks nice so far, but why do you need my name on initial signup?

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aren
We use it to give the recommendations and emails a personal feel (by
addressing you by name). Sounds like it's off-putting to you when we ask for
it?

