

Ask YC: Feedback on my new project http://www.askurpals.com - sark

I have seen lots of good information getting exchanged (things like answers to common questions, reviews etc.) on internal mailing lists - especially on my "off-business-topic" office mailing list that eventually gets buried in individual mailboxes and lost. It's a shame, particularly because the information is of really good quality (no spam/trolls since it's on a closed trusted mailing list). http://www.askurpals.com is my attempt to harvest it for the use of wider audience.<p>Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Also, if you can suggest an effective way of reaching wider audience/users I'll be very grateful :)<p>Thanks!
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andresvi
“Get answers from people you know!” Is the first thing that sticks out from
your site ...What problem is this solving? Isn't this why we use e-mail for?
Those were questions I asked myself when I first looked at your site... After
reading on I got to the ACTUAL point of your site… what is: neatly organized
community knowledge base. So in my opinion you need to emphasize this part
more…or even change those two sentences. I am just afraid that lot of people
won’t read on if their first impression is same that I had…

All the best to you

Your idea isn’t bad at all.

a guy from Estonia.

~~~
shawndrost
"change those two sentences" -- I concur. I would change your pitch to
something like "build a knowledge base for your organization". Also, the name.

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shawndrost
How about allowing an email user interface? If I cc
q+myOrganizationName@askurpals.com it'll automatically save the email (and all
subsequent replies) to askurpals.com/org/myOrganizationName. That way I don't
have to change my routine, or get my coworkers to change their routine.

~~~
sark
I did think about providing the email interface. The only reason I ended up
not implementing it was because I was afraid people would not be comfortable
sharing their email ids with a new site. Plus, many people have auto email
signatures (especially for office email account) that are appended
automatically at the end of the email message. Sometimes these signatures
contain personally identifiable information like title, extension number etc.
I did not want this information accidentally disclosed on the site. I found
these auto email signatures very difficult to parse out reliably across
different formats and systems.

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tx
There have been a few projects here on news.yc that follow the same pattern
(in my opinion). And please take it as a constructive and healthy criticism.

I cannot really coin a proper name for this pattern, but I may call it "how is
it better than Google?" problem. Thing is: there are already thousands of
outlets where people ask questions on a regular basis: google groups, IRC,
emails, thousands of PhpBB boards and a small army of advertisement-heavy
outlets like expertexchange.com and "Yahoo Answers".

And google can search most of them _really well_.

Now, _what is it_ that differentiates your offering from that plethora of
options?

These are two questions everyone building "user-generated content site" should
be asking:

1\. What is the benefit for people asking vs google search?

2\. What is the benefit for people answering, i.e. submitting content?

If you look around, you'll notice that every successful "user-generated
content site" has fairly obvious answers to these two questions.

For instance: YC drives visitors to ask/answer because of it's obvious
vertical focus on software startups. Additionally it uses a popular karma-
points system with extra twist of minor but amusing features available only to
active contributors.

My $0.02

~~~
sark
Thanks for your feedback. To answer your questions,

1\. Benefit for the person asking the question: The person gets answer from
the people he knows. When I needed CPA to file my taxes this year I found
myself sending email to my office colleagues although there are many CPA
reviews available on web. May be it's just me but sometimes suggestions from
the people you know matter more than generic review site.

2\. Benefit for the people who answer: These are people who are friends with
the person asking the question. If they see email in their Inbox from a friend
asking a specific question I think at least few of them will help.

At least that's what I think :)

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shaunxcode
Maybe make another way of browsing on-going topics/articles other than by
searching. I tried a few keywords and couldn't get any results so I gave up.
If I had been able to click through a menu or what not to find "most active"
or by category I would have spent more time and had the opportunity to see
your product "in action".

~~~
sark
Thanks for the suggestion.

Yes, I definitely intend do give some sort of "Browse" navigation in future -
maybe with a tag cloud? It's currently not on the site because I have not much
content right now as I just launched it a few days ago. If I had top
categories they will all be empty :) I will put them on once I have some
sizable content.

Kinda chicken-and-egg problem :)

BTW you can see it (kinda) in action at <http://askurpals.com/topic/10>

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johnrob
Something visual could help. If you could have a sequential demo, that shows:

1) a question (posted in the form)

2) email that someone gets

3) a reply to the question (in the form)

4) a set of replies, all nicely aggregated.

This will save visitors from having to put it all together in their heads.

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nextmoveone
I honestly think your application could leverage facebooks userbase to gain
traction.

But then the problem of monetization becomes a lot larger.

If you dont want to do that, let me import my gmail contacts or yahoo contacts
and pick them, then have their email responses threaded. or dont make them log
in to answer, just let them click a link and enter the answer.

~~~
sark
Thanks for your suggestion. I'm not too worried about monetization right now.
Do you mean I should create some sort of Facebook widget to link to my site or
just try to get the word out on the facebook?

~~~
nextmoveone
I was suggesting you create a facebook application so that way you can get
users faster, cause then they only have to click instead of enter a form and
sign up for yet another internet application.

AND you could integrate with clickpass. :)

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rnesh
I love the simplicity of the design. It really directs my eyes to what is
important on the page. Keep up the good work.

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okeumeni
Great Idea!

I'm still struggling with the question: How is this different from just
sending an email to all my friends?

~~~
sark
Thanks for your feedback.

Other people on your email may also be interested in the answers you get - may
be now or in future. It happens all the time on the mailing list I use. People
request others to consolidated answers they has received for the questions
they asked in past. That's what gave me this idea. This way they get to see
them easily at one place without any extra effort of manually consolidating
every now and then. I hope overtime it will build into a community knowledge
base of common questions and answers.

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3KWA
have you looked at what <http://www.muchobene.com> does?

