

Show HN: I'm releasing. 6months, 1dev. Looking for beta users - bcambel
http://www.followords.com

======
vladd
I think part of the confusion is due to the fact that you try to cover too
many bases: in the tour the first thing is statistics, which implies that it's
aimed at content _publishers/writers_ that want to track metrics across social
media, but then you speak about finding great content, which implies that it's
more like a Google Reader kind of thing (aimed at _readers_ ).

I think you should clarify if it's for producers, readers or both. And if it's
for both, simplify. Pick one, or maybe have separate pitches (like
BuySellAds.com has for advertisers and publishers). Readers are interested in
ranking and finding great content (what HN does), writers are interested maybe
in stats, spreading their content publishing equally over time and across
multiple social platforms.

You probably want to stick with the readers pitch since there are specialized
tools for writers that have already significant features which are doing all
of the above. For the readers pitch, don't promote too much "statistics", no
content consumer wants to deal with statistics, they just want ranking that
magically works. If you still want to mention the word, the best you can do is
a pitch which tells people they don't have to deal with it ("magic ranking
based on insightful analytic statistics that work for you transparently in the
background").

~~~
bcambel
I think, that's a valid point. The reason we show social share to give you a
sense how important the content is based on other user's perspective. But that
is only a data. If a website does not put Facebook Like button, that does not
mean the content is not important.

We're not for content publishers in that sense. We have the data to show, but
I don't think that's our core business. ( A case to pivot right? )

~~~
vladd
Facebook only shows the number of likes next to its content.

Google doesn't have any kind of "like" number displayed in its search results
(except the ordering of the results in itself).

Either way, I wouldn't call any of it "statistics". If you have ranking
metrics (social share, etc) which you can put together in a single number, you
can display it, Facebook-like, next to the content, but use "ranking" rather
than "statistics" in the pitch.

~~~
bcambel
We have discussed this quite a long time (5+ months) What we realized that,
showing a single number is lean, but what's that number? Based on what ?

Rank vs Stats, guess Rank sounds better. Thanks vladd

------
ma2rten
_First of all for those who are confused what it does: it's basically an RSS
reader. EDIT: Maybe not actually._

I am also from Amsterdam and I am glad to see a startup from here. I feel like
I should give my feedback: Other people have already mentioned that the
landing page is a bit confusing. Too many things at once. I think the main
thing is that making a good landing page takes a lot of time and effort plus
iterations. There is also a lot of helpful material on Hacker News about this.
Here is a good article about copywriting that might be useful for you:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992500> .

I have a comments on a few minor details:

1\. I am not sensitive to swearing or anything, but I think you could have
chosen a better title. To me I sounds a bit negative, like "F*uck, I'm
releasing. I'm done with this, I hate this project.". It would be better if it
was positive "Yeeesss, I am releasing" or even better if it would make me
curious as the reader what the project does, instead of focusing on yourself.

2\. You need a logo. Don't be cheap about this. You spend 6 month of your
time, so you can also spend couple 100 euros on a logo.

3\. Vanilla Bootstrap is getting a bit old (to the HN crowd, not necessarily
to normal people), I think you should at least change some colors.

4\. Notifications and "Access your content on any device" tabs look broken
because they don't have any content.

5\. I think the visual flow of the landing page can be improved. The first
thing I look at is the screenshot, and then I get confused because I try to
understand what it does.

6\. The login button looks misaligned.

7\. Make the link to the tour more obvious.

8\. Say that it is mobile compatible on your homepage, not just in the tour.
Maybe even make an app out of it with PhoneGap if possible. (Mobile developers
will murder me for this one)

9\. "Using Social Statistics to find important", "Listen Twitter, Facebook,
Blogs." are not proper sentences. It was not clear immediately to me what you
were trying to say.

10\. It was not clear immediately to me what Social Statistics are. I was
first assuming it's something about your personal friends. You don't really
explain that. I think if you look at the screenshot it's clear, though.

I am sorry I can't comment on the product itself. I don't use an RSS reader
(the internet is enough distraction as it is already), so I can't compare and
can't really say anything about it without using the product. I hope other
people will comment on it.

I also have some questions for you:

1\. Why did you incorporate in the Netherlands? I thought everyone
incorporates as a British Limited these days. Also why did you incorporate as
a BV and not VOF?

2\. You have an office in Science Park Matrix ?! Are you already a profitable
business?

3\. Do you go to any start-up meetups in Amsterdam or anything like that?

~~~
bcambel
Thanks for the suggestions.

Yes, we have an office in Science Park. No we are not a profitable business.
We're not even a business yet. B.V. has advantages for our own reasons.

We're committed to this project. We have rented the place on 1st of January
2012 and started working on.

I was at Hackers and Founders in its first 5-6 meetups. But I missed the last
5-6 meetups

We're bootstrapped but does not mean we will always be.

~~~
ma2rten
I was just surprised about the office because I thought most startups at this
stage work from home or coffeshops (even though that would not be very
productive in Amsterdam [1]).

I have never been to any meetup, maybe I should go.

Anyway, good luck!

[1] see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_coffee_shop>

~~~
bcambel
I need a quiet space and no distractions otherwise I cannot code.(Coffeeshops
eliminated) I was at home for 6 months before we've started Followords. I am a
bit tired of it. It's nice to be at home once in a while, but not for a looong
time.

You should definitely check out <http://www.meetup.com/Hackers-and-Founders-
Amsterdam-NL/>

Thanks Maarten

------
damian2000
My 2c ... its not immediately apparent what it does ... I think you should
give a lot more significance to the "One Summary Email Every Day" tagline.

And there's a spelling mistake - its Achieve (or Archive?)

~~~
bcambel
Spelling mistakes fixed, thanks. What do you think we do ? Any ideas ?

~~~
kolya3
After a 10 second glance it looks like Google Alerts wrapped in a pretty UI.

~~~
bcambel
I changed the tag line into "Easiest way to find quality content". Does it
make more sense ?

~~~
mkl
_I changed the tag line into "Easiest way to find quality content". Does it
make more sense ?_

Not really. This is the tag line I saw, and all it did was confuse me. To be
proper English it needs "the" at the beginning, but it still wouldn't really
mean much. "Find", "quality", and "content" are very vague terms; what does it
actually do? How can it be easier than Google (for specifics) or Hacker News
(for broad news)?

The second tag line, "See the web the way you want it", is similarly
confusing. I already do see the web the way I want it.

Some other things I noticed: The tour's quickly fading screenshots make it
hard to follow, the "login" button on the tour page is different, the
"Notifications" slide seems empty, the "any device" slide's images didn't load
for me, and "Home" and "Tour" have horizontal scrollbars (my browser window is
about 1030px wide).

Hope this helps!

~~~
bcambel
Thanks for the feedback. We're focusing more on the product rather than the
website. We'll probably throw it away totally..

Tagline, oh boy that is one hell of a job.

------
cynusx
1\. Congratulations!

2\. I don't get how it works from staring at the homepage I don't get it after
the tour, the thing I am missing is...how does it benefit me

from what I understand after studying it (normal users don't do this) the
product pulls in facebook,twitter and feeds into one feed and displays social
popularity as well?

3\. you probably want a copywriter to check it up as you have cut-off
sentences and things that don't make any sense like "facebook, twitter and
linkedin are in your help"

4\. use usertesting.com or something similar

~~~
bcambel
Thanks cynusx. Yes I agree we need a copywriter to describe what we do.

------
sravfeyn
This is awesome, considering it is a single Dev's effort! Congrats.

But, there is a fundamental problem in these types of 'Save stories' websites.
While we browse internet, we discover many stories, pictures, videos. While we
like them and would want to read or watch latter we wouldn't actually re-
browse the articles from a saved location just because they were good to read
or watch. Mostly the need is, there is something useful in those articles(May
be how to do something or a quick reference). Websites attempting to save
stories should attempt to let user intelligently capture info from these
stories, and these stories should make up a minimal repository without
cluttering with all the had-good-time-while-reading articles.

~~~
bcambel
Having capture some part of the articles are very useful, but that is not our
target right now. There are lots of services which is doing that already. If
our users would like to have that feature; I would definitely implement that.

We let users to tag articles. That's it. "Very important","Read later" are
examples.

Thanks for your kind words.

------
bawllz
I signed up for beta based purely on looks. Anything that looks that pretty
must be worth at least 10 minutes to try it out.

However I just noticed: "Using Social Statistics to find important" doesn't
really make any sense. I think you mean "Use Social Statistics to find what's
important to you" or something to that effect...

I think you should take all those snippets, and make them as a fade-in-out bar
under the picture, with the signup button beside or under it. That or the
recently popular offset "feature list" (I don't know how else to describe it)

~~~
bcambel
Thank you for spending your time. I really appreciate it. At the time when I
was writing those sentences, I realized it will be too long to fit into the
area, and left behind like that. We'll be rebuilding the website some time in
the future. Thanks for the suggestions

------
halayli
Nitpicks:

Some phrases end with a period and some don't:

Spend less time to find information

Archive and return back later.

The post title (blue-ish) on the right side is eating too much space for no
good reason. And it seems that the keywords are misaligned.

When listing the stories on the left, it might be helpful to also list the
first sentence from the story and make the title bold. Here's an example from
Mail.app <http://bit.ly/MoQuiZ>

It would be great if you can allow users to try the product without signing
in. A readonly demo user would suffice.

Good luck!

~~~
bcambel
Thanks halayli, periods fixed. You can use the product right now, send me an
email bahadir@followords.com

------
Void_
Did you just grab attention by saying "Fuck it" and removed it once you got to
the frontpage?

What's up, not so badass now? ;)

~~~
bcambel
I did not. I wrote F*ck it, somebody changed the title

~~~
Void_
Oh, sorry.

------
mihaifm
Spent around 1 min. figuring out what this is, before I closed the page.
Perhaps you should add more info in the About page.

~~~
bcambel
Marketing failed. Sorry! Story telling mode on:

You woke up in the morning, while having your coffee and let's say you care
about "conversion optimization". We show you content about conversion
optimization.

~~~
Maro
So it's a search engine replacement? Because normally I would google
[conversion optimization].

~~~
bcambel
Search is on our core, but we're not replacing search engine. We just deliver
results in a different way

------
lince
Just for your knowledge, "follo" in spanish means "I fuck". So your brand
sounds a bit like "I fuck words".

~~~
bcambel
Thanks lince for the heads up. I guess we'll create some contradiction in
Spanish :)

------
duaneb
The "Request Invite" thing on the side overlaps the center:
<http://i.imgur.com/NcFvX.jpg>

I'm on a smallish laptop screen, but it's a popular computer (13" Macbook
Pro).

~~~
bcambel
That's intentional for right now. We're also using the same screen size

------
mikeevans
Few things:

1\. Broken image link on the "Access on any device" part of the tour. 2\. I'm
not sure what 'are in your help' means, and it's the first part of the tour.

Looks cool though, I'll check it out and report back.

------
zensavona
You should probably spell 'Archive' correctly. (or am I missing some trendy
pun?)

~~~
bcambel
Thanks for the heads up

------
pjin
It's probably best to post this when people are headed to work in GMT or US
timezones, or in the afternoon before they leave.

~~~
bcambel
That's why I say f*ck it :) You're right.

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import
Some sections is broken in Tour pages, looks promising, congratulations!

Basarilar beyler.

~~~
bcambel
Thanks import

------
pdufour
I'm a bit confused on the concept.

~~~
bcambel
Google Alerts + Articles + Social Media + Social Stats = FolloWords

~~~
Maro
I looked at the site, read this, but I still don't get it. I think you should
have more a straightforward description instead of "Easiest way to find
quality content." Also remember that you're releasing this for HN right now,
so you can be less bullshity and more to the point than you think. Ie.
"Followords pulls in your social streams, summarizes and priritizes them for
you." Or something like that, I'm still not clear what it is.

~~~
cdalar
Actually we're aware that it's not clearly defined. Build on top of a nice
infrastructure, we're playing with the positioning of the product by having
more feedback. Trying to find a nice spot :)

------
forkrulassail
"cypherpunks"

0 results.

~~~
forkrulassail
Good concept, like the layout. :)

~~~
forkrulassail
The 'word' tree is cool.

One minor glitch - Google feeds the login 'Afrikaans' as my first language
which then makes the application default to 'Dutch' which is a completely
different animal.

~~~
bcambel
Go to your application settings ( Click your name => settings ) select the
languages. ( We have Dutch content, btw if you like )

Thanks

------
playhard
Nice app

