
Ask HN: We aren't getting users to create stories on our content platform – why? - siddharthram
We are building a product TYMLINE (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tymline.co&#x2F;) 
It&#x27;s a timeline based story blogging platform. Here, people create timelines to narrate stories of any kind like relationship, career, travel, hobbies etc as timelines which can be discovered basing on users interest.<p>We got about 10k visits with around 250 sign ups but only 10 new people have created timelines organically. Others either read a story or check the platform and drop off.<p>Sample timeline: 
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tymline.co&#x2F;SiddharthRam&#x2F;siliconvalley?ref=hn<p>Where are we going wrong in the product?<p>Any suggestions or feedback to improve the product would be helpful for us to iterate further.<p>TIA
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montrose
By default, products fail to appeal to users, in the same sense that, by
default, ten-digit integers are not perfect squares.

Is this something you and your friends eagerly want and constantly use? I.e.
that you and your friends would use _if you weren 't working on this startup,_
and had merely come across it as potential users? If so, you should be able to
get users from among your friends and their friends. And if not, it's a made-
up idea
([http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html))
that you can't expect to fix by tweaking it.

My guess is it's the latter. This sounds like a made-up idea to me.

~~~
siddharthram
Thanks Montrose,

We built this product as an experiment to document experiences in a much
easier way than writing a blogpost.People who are not interested in blogging
could tell a cohesive story by stitching a set of posts which are easier to
understand.

We are trying to experiment this and see if it could be used as a
microblogging tool for experiences and stories as an alternative to writing a
blogpost.

We will surely reflect on your feedback but if you have anything that we could
look to pivot can be helpful for us to consider from here on.

thanks again

~~~
quickthrower2
It seems so similar to blogging to me, I find it hard to see the difference,
personally.

~~~
siddharthram
The difference is here the posts are structured into threads to make it easier
to convey a story than writing a blogpost.

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pseingatl
They're not timelines. They are merely chronological narratives divided by
paragraphs in outline fashion. The tool can't be used to create a real
timeline either. The timeline is a gimmick; what do you offer the narratives
that Medium doesn't?

~~~
siddharthram
Thanks for the feedback.

I didn't get the point when you say the tool cannot be used to create a real
timeline ? Could you elaborate on what you expected ?

In medium, one has to construct the narrative which is not an easy task for
everyone to do especially for people who cannot articulate well. Timelines
have proven to be a form of narrative since ages and we wanted this tool to be
given for people to construct a narrative of any life story they wish to say.

If you think it could have been done in a better way, I would love to hear
your thoughts on what you expect over a medium in order to construct
narratives easily?

It would help us in shaping the product. Thanks again

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lovelearning
It's an interesting concept - an entire timeline can focus on a single theme,
unlike Twitter or FB feed.

I can see myself using this as a travel log to share with friends, _if_ I go
on an interesting journey (which sadly I haven't done in a long time).

Using it for documenting progress in a hobby is also interesting. I have never
done it before, so can't say I'll start now, but still it's a mildly
attractive idea.

I don't see myself using this to document my career. Firstly because I don't
think there's anything special about mine to document it publicly. Secondly,
because it's already documented in personal journals - warts and all - and
lessons learned which I don't particularly care to share with anybody.
Thirdly, I don't have any great photos or anything to make my career timeline
look interesting to other people.

I can't think of any reason why anybody would document their relationships
publicly. Do people actually do that?

I think you should focus this product on serving travel and hobbyist
communities, and market this to them.

~~~
siddharthram
Thanks for the feedback.

We had done a product hunt for valentines day and people have created
timelines as we provide a private timeline feature.

Your thoughts on travel and hobby resonate with us and have seen early users
using for that purpose. Could you try creating one timeline of your recent
travel or a hobby and share us your feedback on creation of timeline. That
would help us in improving the product further.

If you can share your email address or initiate a chat on the product we can
take the discussion off HN and could serve you better.

TIA

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stevenicr
your home page just says real big "sign up to..."

I would think most people are not interested in signing up for anything,
especially something they don't know what it is. (does anyone want more spam,
or trust some place they know nothing about)

I would put the sign up smaller and the home page show the best 3 -5 examples
of awesome uses for your timeline thing.

I looked at a few timelines, and all I could think to myself is, "tumblr" \-
with a slightly modified theme. Or wordpress, or blogger, or just about all
the other "post here on our portal" things out there.

Not sure why people would want to post on your thing, or the other things
actually.

If I was looking for a place to post my previous stuff, I would want to know
more about cost. Wordpress.com runs ads on the side and you can go premium to
remove them, get themes, etc. They have a strong track record for fighting for
their users against lawyers and stuff as well, and mostly not censoring.

The cost of each place is different. Given that the content is controlled by
others, we don't want to trust valuable content to other's land.

If you made it really easy to export everything automatically, and made it
really easy for a group / gathering of people to share to a common timeline, I
could see a group of people uploading candid wedding pics to a place they
could all share easily.

Otherwise I don't know why people would trust content here as opposed to other
more well known places. The others aren't perfect, but you can be sure that a
certain level of trust exists for most content posted.

Commercial Spam is always looking for new places to post, but the well funded
commercial stuff is already making stories on instagram and snapchat and
similar elsewhere. I think it'd be a long time before you had enough viewers
to catch their interest.

Just some random thoughts from here, I am likely not your target audience.

Airdrop party pics and share a url with new friends easily maybe, make them
private for a fee? You'd need to be easier than Flickr to upload and share.. I
dunno.

~~~
siddharthram
Thanks mate for the feedback.

Liked your airdrop party thingy. will think about it.

Do you think having multiple themed timelines tailored to specific use cases
and some premium features will get people to use it ? oh yes and making it
easy by getting some integrations on with fb/twitter/linkedin/ google photos
and so on.

~~~
stevenicr
"themed timelines" \- yes, each theme that party city pushes every couple of
months.. but also like the premium filters that snapchat offers on occasions
people like.

If I was married to your idea thing here... I would make it so anyone could
upload pics or text notes, vieos, etc to a url - and the cms would auto detect
via time uploaded, or time photo was taken and places - (exif data if avail) -
and have one click sort options.. one click - show all pics uploaded by time
uploaded.. show my exif data.. show my each different person's uploads..

in order to get people to really use it.. it needs to be faster and easier to
go to your site, grab a semi-secret url, upload and share.. than any other
portal.

Why not just use facebook? not all of the people at this party are on
facebook, nor do they neccesarily want to "become fbook friends just to share
a pic" \- plus to use fbook you need to sign in, or register, and share all
kinds of data.. meh

so have some people you find at a local shopping center see how fast they can
share a pic with people they just met.. is it faster to upload to flickr than
your site? Is it faster to share via imgur? Why? How can your thing be faster?

I think, no registration to start a timeline, just upload and get a url that
is easy to share via sms text msg, qr code, fbook invite..

only register if you want to save the timeline for more than 24 hours...

the on boarding process of riot.im is the best I've seen in ages.

your differential thing is faster to share, and more privacy in that you don't
need to become fbook connected...

offer one click zip-all to download/ backup for a fee.

offer to make the url password protected, and auto send that pw via sms text
to friends..

sponsored themes for wedding gold themes could be a semi easy sell to wedding
companies..

one tap screenshot your any timeline pics (maybe with glitter flowing
animation?) - with "davids bridal gowns" in the frame.. and easy save to drive
/ dropbox.. export to facebook... share via pinterst.. (individual items /
pics etc)

This could work.. I have been thinking of this kind of thing for a long time..
been looking to make something like this where any group of friends could have
their own "facebook" which is not facebook for $60 per year.. not each person,
just one person in the group could pony up the dough..

if the system auto-backed up stuff - and notified each person in the group
that the yearly dues were coming up and one person could pay it to keep
storage for another year, or any number of people in that group could split
the bill.. this could work.

random thoughts from thinking of making a similar project..

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mycentstoo
First, fix the landing page - you need to present value before you can expect
a conversion. This means making something that is interesting and
aesthetically pleasing.

Second, if this is a business idea, I'm not sure how you monetize this. Is it
ads from user visits? If so, you are going to need a ton of user visits.

Third, up the social media game. If you want visitors you need to make these
articles/timelines sharable and unique.

Fourth, I'm in agreement with others here when they say this is not a
timeline. Medium/Wordpress provide the same functionality. This can be
replicated in Wordpress/Medium just be including subtitles with dates in
between paragraphs.

~~~
siddharthram
This is an experiment to see if timelines can be used for telling stories much
easier than writing a blogpost.

The posts are sorted as per dates and creating threads is much easier here
than articulating on a medium.

The restriction on content size and picture based storytelling keeps this
quite different from MEDIUM. As we go further, notification system for posts
and embeddable features will differentiate from other platforms too.

------
SyneRyder
I don't see why I'd want to use this, instead of something like Twitter
Moments.

But perhaps more importantly, there is nothing on the front page of the site
to explain what the product is and encourage a signup. The Explore link is
tiny and I nearly missed it (that is probably closer to what your front page
should be like). And that catchphrase "Travel Your Memories" doesn't make
sense to me.

But on the signup form, what is a "PHUSER"? I don't even know how to complete
the signup form. Is that meant to say Username? (It should also be an Email
Address, not an "Email id".)

~~~
siddharthram
PHUSER is a pre filled invite code which we kept. It doesn't make sense and
confuses the users. Didn't think that through.

We are working on fixing the complete user flow and making it more user
friendly. Will consider your feedback for sure.

Twitter moments is not much customisable but being a platform we can come up
with numerous additions which will be personalised to the user.

Consider this to have all timelines of your stories at one place - sharable,
discoverable and editable at any point of time.

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nightfly
Your logo in your nav bar is way too small, it's practically unreadable. I
have no idea what I'd want/need an invite code and yet I'm being asked for one
if I want to sign up. There is nothing on the home page that lets me see
anything about how this product looks or behaves.

Pages seem kind of slow to load, it takes about 5 seconds to render each page
in the "explore timelines section". Each page is also really heavy at like
4.5MB, several times larger than an image gallery site I frequent. Probably
contributes to the slow load times.

Also, I don't really see any times on the timelines.

~~~
siddharthram
Thanks for feedback!

We will change the logo size. Agree on the landing page not explaining about
the product. Will work on it.

We have the servers located at India and we are probably guessing the slow
page load is because of this.

We are working on reducing the size of the page, which is something we have
overlooked.

If the above teething problems are solved, can I know if you feel the product
will be used by people gradually?

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anthony_franco
Out of 100 visitors, 90 will passively look. 9 will participate
(commenting/discussing). 1 will create (post).

These are very general numbers of course and really depends on the actual
service, but it’s a good rule of thumb to follow.

~~~
siddharthram
Aware about this. But if you could share some insights specific to this case
it would really help.

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sharmi
Hi, one of the key reasons users don't use a product even If they like it is
because it fades away from their memory. Only way, a social product will
survive is if it can be part of their daily routine. Also, the initial
friction to get going should be low.

Why not target segments that will derive greater value from your product like
couples abt to get married who may want to create invitations. Software teams
who would like visualize their release timelines etc.

------
eps
At the risk of stating the obvious - this is one really dorky name _and_ it's
on a .co domain. It looks and sounds dispensable, so it's understandable few
are willing to commit to using it.

~~~
siddharthram
Will consider this feedback. Thanks a lot :)

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tinymollusk
How did you acquire the visitors? Did they indicate interest with a search or
click to get to your site?

~~~
siddharthram
A click to get to our site through partner events of few brands as they used
our product for content marketing

Early users who created content and shared it on social media

Some initial content seeded by us garnered a lot of visits

~~~
tinymollusk
If you're interested, I just finished a conversion tool designed to help sites
get more signups. Won't know until we try, but I'm pretty sure I could
increase your signups by 30-50%.

I'm soft launching this week and willing to set you up for free so I can test
out my tech. My email is in my profile.

(same goes for any other HN reader who stumbles across this -- free
optimization service for anyone who reaches out and is a nice person.)

