

Ask HN: Review my startup, http://conweets.com - ayushchd


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tptacek
First, lose the ornamental display font you've set all your copy in. I almost
gave up reading. Setting type in apps like this is a solved problem. Google
[font stack], pick a conservative one, and use it. If you want to play with
fonts, do it in your headers.

Second, you should know that this has been done before, most notably probably
by Bettween, which ultimately failed. Do people really have the problem of
tracking conversations on Twitter?

Note that Bettween had a pretty effective marketing tactic that you could
steal: finding really interesting conversations and promoting them, so that
their site functioned both as a sort of Twitter aggregator (key function of an
aggregator that you don't have: most interesting stuff bubbles to front page)
_and_ as a vector for sharing conversations in places like HN, which spread
the Bettween app around.

Your super-effective caching engine, described with words like "query" and
"request" and "server" and "cache", is not relevant to your users. Like, at
all. Try to develop an allergy to describing technology. If the benefit of
some technical feature you build is "speed", then just say your site is super-
fast. Don't waste time justifying it. Does that turn a whole paragraph into a
5 word sentence? GOOD. Users don't like reading your marketing copy.

~~~
foxhop
> Your super-effective caching engine, described with words like "query" and
> "request" and "server" and "cache", is not relevant to your users. Like, at
> all.

I agree totally. In my marketing copy on LinkPeek I attempted really hard to
stay away from the term API even though that is what the service is. Basically
you must describe the product like your real customers would describe it.

------
DrJ
The front page should really tell me something about your startup. I can not
figure out what you do until I click on about-us.

Please if you are going to have a home page, put something there other than
"connect with twitter". Explain to me what you do in a sentence or two. Not a
paragraph. This can be the difference between me (not clicking) and someone
else (clicking) who end up (not) using your service.

~~~
adunk
I very much second this. I also found it difficult to understand what
Contweets are doing - unfortunately reading the About page didn't make me much
wiser either. Without knowing what to expect, I'd guess that most people
wouldn't sign up.

I think a simple tagline would help a lot. Something like "Who tweets who?" or
"Look who's tweeting now".

One of the sentences from the About page would actually make a pretty good
headline: "a single conversation doesn't always tell the entire story".

------
shock3naw
This is not a startup, this is a tool. Maybe you can make a bit of side-income
from ads, but don't expect this to become a company on its own.

Problems:

\- Don't use buttons that look so 'bubbly'

\- Bad colour scheme

\- There are two different Facebook share buttons

\- The copy on the about page is terribly written

\- On the conversation page, I have to click 'track new conversation' to start
fresh; big problem when there aren't any results, I'm essentially stranded
with no 'obvious' action

\- If I track @blah and @bleh, don't put me there under 'You', it's totally
irrelevant to the conversation

~~~
ayushchd
Agreed, more of tool than a startup. Working on other suggestions. Thanks a
ton.

------
foxhop
Your purpose is not clearly stated, or I am an idiot for not understanding.

I would use the following:

<h1>conweets</h1>

<h2>Track twitter conversations.<h2>

<p> a short (3 sentences or less) story on how or why to use this service.
blah blah ect. If you are interested click the link below to continue: twitter
oath here. </p>

BTW how are you planning on monetizing this? Making money and becoming
sustainable is my first goal when building new startups.

~~~
ayushchd
I am sorry for terming at as a startup, I think its more of a tool. Although,
we are looking to increase its scope by adding more features like tracking all
the conversation of a single user.

I am working on making "what it does" more clear. Its certainly not stated
clearly. Thanks for the advice

If you have a plan or suggestion about other features, do let me know.

------
sadow
the ad placements really take away from the experience you're creating. build
a great product people come to use, then figure out how to incorporate
advertising.

extra thought: you have the luxury of any monetization approach you'd like --
don't feel trapped by typical display units.

~~~
ayushchd
We really don't have any other way of monetizing this right now and need to
cover up initial costs, hence the ads. We have tried to keep the ads to a
minimum apart from that one big banner ad.

~~~
sadow
Understandable, my advice is just to be mindful about the trade-offs between
the degradation of the user experience and short-term revenues.

------
rudiger
Clickable: <http://conweets.com>

~~~
ayushchd
Did you try it?

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rwasielewski
The nice feature would be when I choose one friend and then the app will show
me longest conversations with somebody.

~~~
ayushchd
Nice idea. Lets see if we can work out something interesting out of this :)

------
halayli
I have no clue what this does.

On the other hand, I don't think this is a startup.

~~~
ayushchd
Agreed. More of a tool than a startup.

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jcfrei
very neat, haven't seen it done this way before.

~~~
ayushchd
Thanks :)

~~~
jcfrei
what's the setup btw.? Ruby on rails, php?

~~~
ayushchd
PHP with MongoDB as the dbms

------
zalew
comic sans? srsly?

~~~
ayushchd
Hi, where did you see the use of comic sans?

~~~
zalew
that weird font on the frontpage tweets

~~~
ayushchd
It wasn't comic sans. It was Calibri. I changed it to Helvetica now.

