

Show HN: launching photosite next week, please give us cruel feedback - petervandijck

We're launching http://getgush.com next week. We've been working on this for 6 months, and we'd LOVE to get your feedback before we launch. Please be cruel.<p>It's a photo site for ALL your photos: every single photo you've ever taken. We still have a long way to go, but trying to launch really early.<p>You can create an account (hacker news members only) here:<p>http://getgush.com/i/17p6<p>Cruel feedback &#62; nice feedback &#62; no feedback.
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avree
I didn't sign up.

I've already signed up for Snapjoy, and a slue of other photo apps. I went to
your page and couldn't figure out what your product actually was—what the
value add was.

This was compounded by the fact that your "handwritten" font choice is
impossible to read : "hackers pet invites faster" is what it looks like at the
bottom.

Your "Sign In" button is below the fold—this is going to hurt user engagement
and confuse users who come back. When I load up the page, fullscreen, on my
MacBook Pro, I don't see a "Sign In" button at all.
<http://cl.ly/2j1S1n1V0Z1f3G0K2D3j>

Finally, the "Free with no Limits" thing is scary—especially because, as I
mentioned above, I don't know what your product is. The biggest issue and
worry with services like these is that you put in all your photos, expecting
them to be maintained forever, and then the service goes down in a week. Lots
of similar worries were flagged when Snapjoy launched—it might be worthwhile
to read their HN thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2861515>

~~~
petervandijck
Thanks for the feedback, we'll try to make stuff more clear on that page.
Clear writing is hard. Thanks for the pointer to Snapjoy discussion too :)

(Gush founder here)

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hopeless
"Free with no limits"

That right there is why I won't go anywhere near your site. Sorry, but why
would I invest my time and energy, and photos, and inviting friends etc if
you've got no visible means of supporting yourself? There's a reason I pay
good money to Smugmug.

That aside, I have no idea why I would want all my photos on the one site. Is
this the "one ring to rule them all"? Do you expect me to point friends,
family, clients etc to your site? Is there realtime sync'ing from my computer?
I don't understand who this is aimed at and what pain you're solving.

I also find the name a little odd (Gush?!) and the url particularly so.
"Gush", in the traditional sense, suggests flow, water, emotional outpouring
(ok, good) but you might want to watch out for the colloquial definition:
<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gush> The name also says
nothing about photography, nothing about the app and the "get" is awkward
(yes, I know other startups have used it but that only makes sense if I'm
visiting the site to sign-up. Could you direct your grandmother to "Get
Gush"?)

Sorry to be cruel -- I'm not being deliberately mean but you asked for
criticism.

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petervandijck
I can explain the free with no limits here. We put no limits on the amount of
photos that you can upload. We do put limits on the amount of pixels per photo
that we'll store. So we may not store your full-size photo (although we'll
store a pretty good version), and that lets us offer this for free (storage is
really cheap).

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mikexstudios
Two things:

1\. This confused me: "Choose a username: (use your real name)". My username
is typically different from my real name. Thus, if I should use my real name,
just make the field: "What is your name?" Perhaps add ability in settings to
change the username/name.

2\. Ability to upload photos from the web.

I think the concept is excellent.

~~~
petervandijck
Good points both, 1. I'll change for next week, 2. we'll put on the roadmap.
Thanks!!

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eqdw
I'm friend of one of your developers. I've had alpha access for like a month
or so. I've chatted him a bit about the project, but I'll give you some
feedback directly.

In short, I think your project is cool but I don't think it is for me. As far
as I can tell, you're trying to do a sort of dropbox-style thing, except with
images. That's pretty cool (especially the unlimited free storage), but for me
I am not really interested. I just don't see the purpose of putting things
into the cloud, just because. I have a lot of local storage, and the local
storage is faster, and (usually) larger, and not very expensive at all. Sure I
run the risk of losing my pictures to a hardware failure, but I mean, oh well,
guess I won't have my curated 4chan content anymore.

Overall I think this is pretty cool.

~~~
petervandijck
Hey, thanks for the feedback :) If it's not for you, that's fine, such is
life. I think it's more for people with pictures of their kids and stuff, they
tend to care more about not losing them and having them all in one place etc.
Thanks again for the comment!

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sjain
It went to Facebook for permission and pressed "Don't Allow", it returned me
back to your website with this message:

"Okay. The Gushbot will be gathering your Facebook photos while we prepare
your invite."

I don't have many pictures on Facebook, more on trekearth and flickr. It would
be good to bring support to old not so well maintained sites like trekearth.
More value, at least for me.

~~~
rneufeld
One of the devs here, Flickr is high up on our priority list - most of us have
used flickr pretty heavily and want this feature for ourselves.

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dholowiski
You want cruel? I hate private signup/invite sites. It's either ready or it's
not and if it's not I'm probably not coming back, ever, no matter what the
excuse.

~~~
petervandijck
That's one customer less then :) That's ok. I think there are arguments for
being in closed beta though. (founder here)

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bigohms
Scammy to ask me to link to FB, give you access to everything, then make me
"wait for an invite" or try to get 3 friends to advance my spot.

~~~
petervandijck
(founder here) We're not trying to be scammy, it's more so that when you do
finally log in, your photos will already be there. But yes, it's definitely
something we should work on.

You can easily skip that step though, no harm done.

~~~
bigohms
Also, after receiving an invite, I am urged to create an account and then
there is "One last step!"?!???! What's the step? Download a tiny program that
watches my computer and uploads photos that it finds. REALLY? Yes, I will be
skipping that step.

In the app, it seems to have lost my album structure.

On the upside, the app is FAST.

Now, where is the account delete function?

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linorosa
Hi, gush dev here. I'm curious, why did you so quickly discard the idea of
downloading the 'tiny program that watches your computer'? Does the way we
present it sound sketchy? Do you use dropbox? Thanks for the feedback :)

~~~
bigohms
Hi gush - Definitely the way things are written and presented can use a bit of
polishing and help adoption. I sent an email to your notifier along the same
lines. I do have a dropbox account and don't use it very much.

I think overall the concept is very sound, however the details need work and
perhaps slowly on boarding the user by proving utility before (seemingly)
forcing another step.

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petervandijck
Clicky <http://getgush.com/i/17p6>

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kanwisher
How can I show my photos to other friends? I don't see any public url

