
Ask HN: Review My (first) Startup: jummpp.in - howard_yeh
http://jummpp.in<p>Dear All,<p>This is my ugly baby that I love very much. I know you guys can inspire me to make it better.<p>It's a way to discover things to do with your friends.<p>You make suggestions of what you might want to do. "I want to see a movie", but you don't have to specify when, where, or even which movie. Different from a traditional event invitation system, it's designed to handle more uncertainty. Because first, you want to find out if there's interest in a suggestion. If there is, you work out the details to make a suggestion actually happen.<p>It's like reddit for events. It aggregates interest among your friends, to see what everyone would want to do, without anyone having to call up everyone.<p>I'd personally use it for long tail ideas like "going to the flea market", which I am not sure if ANYONE might be interested. I'd just toss it out there, and see if it sticks.<p>It's a way to discover your friends. You might realize that a friend is also interested in art house films, but you didn't know, because you never thought of to ask.<p>jummpp.in<p>My page is jummpp.in/hayeah<p>p.s. It uses facebook connect. The app doesn't post to your wall unless you explicitly share something. It only grabs your email and name to create an account.
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pedalpete
Your baby is not ugly!

The site I'm currently working on and discussions I've had with friends, a few
have asked me to build exactly what you've got.

Others didn't want me to abandon the original idea, so I'm sticking to my
guns, figuring somebody would nail the space you're going after (plancast is
trying, but haven't seemed to capture the ad-hoc-iness that you've got).

I like your nice clean design and the simplicity of adding events, though I
didn't get any sort of pop-up to post to my facebook page, so I can't really
inform my friends about it (I used one of my old fb test accounts).

I see you linked in to your cirque list, which I think is really great, to get
intros to other people who are looking to do similar things.

I'm going to be in Vancouver in the next week (I'm from Whistler) let me know
if you want to meet-up for coffee and I can tell you about the suggestions
I've had from my friends and my thoughts related to your project.

I can be reached at pete / hearwhere.com

~~~
howard_yeh
cool! ya i'd be very interested to hear your experience. i'll drop you an
e-mail.

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exline
I'm not big fan of using Facebook login. I would think that it raises a
barrier of entry for users, either because they don't have a facebook account
or because they don't know what side affects your app will have. You don't
explain what the advantages of using Facebook, or what integration there is
with facebook. How will it affect the users's facebook account. You said in
your post that it does not post to your wall, but you don't say that on the
site that I can see.

Also the footer links are not links. You can't click on them. If I just say
this page, I would not sign up because it doesn't look real yet with just a
single page.

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howard_yeh
yes. lesson learned. offer options other than facebook login.

the footer is a potemkin village ;)

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jamesgolick
So, I think my biggest problem with this app is the UI. The layout is okay,
but there are lots of places where the spacing is really far off.

Especially the enormous yellow bar on the front page. The type is way too big
for the box, and the facebook connect icon is way too big. It needs to be
displayed in its natural size - or an appropriately sized one needs to be
found.

In general, little issues like that plague the UI and make it feel unpolished.
Fixing them will go a long way towards making the app feel like something I'd
want to use.

~~~
howard_yeh
the enormous yellow bar is large and loud... in hope to focus attention on the
facebook connect. But ya, I'll have to spend some time taking a closer look to
fix the little issues

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chunkyslink
I cant use it. I don't have a FB account so pretty useless to me.

Looks like a fun idea though.

~~~
howard_yeh
do you think twitter integration might work for you?

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chunkyslink
I think I would like to try it first and if I like it, then associate it to
one of my accounts.

~~~
Aaronontheweb
howard,

I agree with the above comment - I think you'd probably have more luck getting
people to sign up for your service if they could try or at least browse parts
of it without needing to associate an account with it first.

That way they can get a feel for what it does, what its value is, and why / if
they might want to use it without having any cost.

Every user is going to associate some "cost" with the time it takes to
associate their account with your service or the potential risks of
associating with your service, and giving them a little taste of what your
service might do first is a good way to help them overcome their initial
objection to the perceived cost.

~~~
howard_yeh
ya. i was thinking in terms of clicks. one click, and you have an account. I
didn't expect the idea of using facebook itself a big mental wall. But the
immediate plan is

1) make a screen cast 2) link to my own account as an example page 3) some
sort of alternate login

~~~
Aaronontheweb
These are all great ideas.

I'd love to do a more detailed walkthrough through your service later tonight
and try to give you some pointers. I'm going to be relocating to a new city
for work (LA) and your service would actually be very helpful for me.

You can DM me on Twitter (@Aaronontheweb) with an email address I can send you
some more detailed user experience feedback if you're interested.

~~~
howard_yeh
thanks so much! i'll do that

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lloyddobbler
Seems like a cool idea.

However, I'd recommend doing some more brainstorming on the name (provided
this is the brand you've settled on, and not just the dev site).

I know all too well that it's tough to find a good domain these days...but I
think you can do better. I find that the average user's mind will have a hard
time following ONE changed spelling convention. And you have two (the double-m
& the double-p.)

Jummp.in? Cool. Jumpp.in? Sure. Jummpp.in? A little too cumbersome to explain
to my friends when we're hanging out (& have any chance of them remembering
it).

~~~
howard_yeh
ya. but then with jumpp.in or jummp.in, it's hard to remember which of m or p
is doubled

~~~
chc
That's a better problem than having the whole domain name be hard to remember.
I guarantee you a lot of people will look at this site and go, "Holy cow, that
name is total nonsense," because the two doubled letters in a row make it no
longer resemble the word "jump" so much as a cat walking on a keyboard.
Personally, my skim-reading more closely associates it with the word "app"
than "jump," which makes me want to read it as "jumapp."

My personal recommendation: For maximum readability, consider something like
"letsjump.in". If you're attached to a quirkily spelled "jump in", "jumpp.in"
is fairly readable.

~~~
howard_yeh
i registered for both. so i now have

jummp.in letsjump.in jummpp.in

and incidentally, but completely unrelated,

hummpp.me ;)

which would should be the canonical? I am think letsjump.in? then in the
future i can maybe buy jump.in, without having to rebrand

~~~
lloyddobbler
Nice. :)

Incidentally, I agree with all of the above commentary. Unfortunately, it's
the sad reality of trying to start up an online service/product/whatnot today.

For the canonical, I like letsjump.in or gojump.in - and it's never too early
to try and snag jump.in (the owner might be willing to part with it for less
than you think). Good luck!

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howard_yeh
clickable <http://jummpp.in>

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ykro
For me it seems like an app that would work with small groups of friends (like
people from the same college) maybe you can consider using OpenID integration
for everyone that doesn't use Facebook. IMHO there's a lot of API integration
that you can do, like Google Calendar or even YouTube or Flickr for a fancy
description of the event. And in the future consider going mobile, anyway,
great idea.

~~~
howard_yeh
to be honest, i am a surprised that facebook connect is the biggest issue. I
guess we techies are more cautious and cynical about facebook. I wonder how i
can test against a less tech oriented crowd.

But ya, more API integration.

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JangoSteve
I think it sounds like a really cool idea and I would almost certainly use it
if my friends were using it. That being said, I'm not going to associate my
Facebook account with this app unless I'm a little more sure I'll actually use
it. For me to make that decision, I need to see some examples.

In other words, consider linking to your profile (or a throw-away example
profile) on the front page.

~~~
howard_yeh
that's a good idea. do you think a screencast would help to convince you?
that's one of the things i haven't got around in doing.

~~~
JangoSteve
Sure, a screencast definitely wouldn't hurt.

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jarin
It's a pretty neat idea, I just created an event to see who wants to go see
Inception.

I'd add optional time/date and location fields for events that actually do
have a set time and location. Looks like it might be Rails-based, so you can
use the Chronic gem for easy natural-language time parsing (sort of like
Plancast does).

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burriko
Great idea, and this is definitely something i could see myself using.

I'm wondering though, what's the big advantage over me just posting on
Facebook 'anyone want to see inception tonight?'? Does it just help me to
manage the responses?

~~~
howard_yeh
thanks! glad you like it. jummpp.in is somewhere between facebook events and
facebook statuses. Right now it has a little extra features over facebook
statuses (hashtag, so you can quickly find all the #lunch events, for
example).

as I develop the app more, I'd build more features to help solidify a
suggestion. For example, multiple choices of dates, so people can vote on
which date works the best.

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hm2k
<http://www.thinkgeek.com/books/humor/8e6c/images/2070/>

~~~
howard_yeh
hahaha, that's awesome. 12 different flavors of maybes

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jdouma
From what I've seen of it, it looks like a great idea. I can't wait 'til you
have a mobile / non-FB interface. I hope it catches on.

~~~
ljf
agreed - mobile (cut down) version would be great - other ways of logging in
that FB - AND even more FB integration (don't want the site to become one MORE
place to visit) - maybe tie-in with twitter too?

Like the design but could have a few more colours to feel more social for the
non hacker/geek squad like us here :)

Decent name and url - I just bought a shorter URL which might be a better fit,
but guess you want to stick with what you got :)

Also - add a simpler feedback form to the site - I couldn't be bothered to add
my details / search for similar questions etc.

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Reedge
I suggest,make logo smaller, add video above the fold. Explain in images what
you so, since you make me read a lot.

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howard_yeh
thanks everyone for taking the time to comment. I think the main lessons are:

1) provide independent login 2) explain better what facebook connect is used
for 3) provide more information upfront what the service is like, some people
can decide if they want it. 4) an example page

i am glad i got early feedback :) thank you all so much

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Super_Jambo
after using facebook connect to log in I clicked 'find friends' (either in the
to do list or up top) and it appears to log me out and take me to the front
page...

~~~
howard_yeh
eeek. really! does it do that all the time? but can you log back in? so sorry
for that :(

~~~
Super_Jambo
'fraid so. Seems to do it every time. I can log back in.

The link it is giving me to 'find friends' is:
<http://jummpp.in/users/45/find_friends>

~~~
howard_yeh
that is weird. i am not getting any exception raised. let me try to track it
down.

~~~
Super_Jambo
This bug is still happening for me btw.

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PhrosTT
i'd ignore everybody hating on the facebook login. this group is a little
niche. it was probably a good decision for the first pass.

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mkramlich
neat idea, ugly name. but idea more important!

