

Ask HN: What do you think of my new site? - ngs
http://foosurvey.com/iwzjfhla

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psyklic
It required me to enter a name and email so I didn't bother voting.

~~~
zemaj
I can understand why you might want people to enter an email address (for
validation/more authentic results etc...) and if you're going to take that
approach you sell it to your audience - tell them what the benefits are.

Also say that the email address requires validation. I put in a fake address
and of-course my vote didn't get counted. If I knew up-front it was to be
validated I probably would have entered a correct one.

Having said all that I don't agree with email validation. It doesn't ensure
unique votes. Can you explain why you choose it?

~~~
ngs
I agree that email validation is flawed in terms of ensuring uniqueness, so
this is something I may drop and insist users create an account. One thing I
have considered in the mean time is allowing registered users to hide non-
signed in participants.

~~~
m_eiman
That'd be better. Make the default action when voting "vote as anonymous,
unless logged in", and upgrade that anonymous vote to a registered one if the
user decides to register after voting.

Also, having an account is not ensuring uniqueness either.

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sbt
I don't consider myself experienced enough to give anybody advice on startups,
but it seems to me that programmers should pick up non-CS skill-sets. That
way, two things may happen. \- Your startup won't be a clone of about 500
other startups. \- You will be solving real-world problems for sectors who
don't receive the attention of most programmers.

In other words, follow Octopart's lead.

I know this wasn't a review of your startup, I just don't think this survey
idea has any viability anymore.

~~~
ngs
I generally agree with you, however, from memory, I recall pg saying that
entering a crowded market isn't necessarily a move that should be avoided. I
think there's plenty of opportunities to beat established web sites by
providing better solutions.

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learnalist
Cant help feel the name was created by a programmer. Outside of the computer
world. Are there examples using "foo"?

The UI looks a little bit copied from elsewhere on the net.

I like the idea of being able to create a quick poll and let it loose. Not
sure if there is away to let it loose on the twitterspehre.

Am I correct in thinking you mine ( to a degree ) the realtime statements on
twitter to help populate your thoughts or to just sound cool.

A major positive, I like you are trying to make money from the get go. ( Even
if it is a little hidden = faq )

As always and most unlikely, would be curious to know if anyone has bitten and
has paid to use it. You could benefit from a demo, or a reasons why paying $1
is worth it for a poll. That kinda stuff.

~~~
iterationx
foobar / fubar is military slang

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PostOnce
_What does the world think? Survey your friends, colleagues, customers and
millions of Twitter users!_

Sounds like a sales pitch, not a slogan. It's also too long. Just a thought.

Simply 'What does the world think?' might be better.

~~~
ngs
Good point. The business model for this site is to help small businesses
survey their customers and employees which needs to be the focus for promo
material like tag lines, FAQ etc. The objective is to grow a paying user base
who survey people with little insentive to spoof their responses (like voting
multiple times), which negates some criticism like 'why would anyone provide
an email for a frivolous poll'.

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btn
It's a survey site... it seems to imply that I have to pay people to take my
surveys/will get paid to take surveys... but the site gives absolutely no
details on how this is supposed to work, or why I might want to do it (the FAQ
answers _what_ , not _how_ or _why_ ).

The word _Twitter_ also appears a lot, and I can't tell what connection this
has to it. Do you have permission to use Twitterific's logo like that? Or even
Apple's Mail logo?

~~~
ngs
I don't think we're using Twitterifics logo, but I'll check as that wouldn't
be right. Thanks for mentioning that.

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jtnak
It looked pretty terrible to me. Um, congratulations on making a polling web
site I guess??

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RK
_We're sorry, but something went wrong.

We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly._

~~~
ngs
Looking at the exception log, this appears to have happened was when you tried
to vote without providing an email address? I can't reproduce the error but
will investigate further.

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jeroen
I filled in 'test' for name and got the message: "Name already used with a
different email address!" and the results were shown.

Did I vote, or do I have to change the name and try again? What if it was my
real name that is already used?

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theycallmemorty
Does anyone else remember a company called PollGround from one of the first YC
rounds?

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Frazzydee
I selected the option "boring" yet the results still show 0 votes.

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shiranaihito
Joe Average might not be able to appreciate the "foo".

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zackattack
Love your banner/logo

