

Ask HN: Continue building or move on? - noahlucas

I've spent the last few months working on the MVP of an idea and could use a bit of outside perspective on whether or not i should find a developer and continue moving forward or move on to other things.<p>http://showw.me/noah<p>The goal is to unify your online services in such a way that allows emphasis on content rather than the platform so you can engage in just photos, videos, articles, etc regardless of service.<p>1. activity feed across all services: everyone's activity all in one feed filtered by content type. (built)<p>2. public profile: your posts all in one page for family and friends to see what you're doing or even employers to see what your activities. (built)<p>The product roadmap could easily keep myself and one other person busy for another 6 months as various (really cool) key pieces of functionality are added in and the existing site gets optimized.<p>Feedback is hugely appreciated as i'm at a cross-roads and non-biased opinions will help me decide. If there are questions about concept, features, or revenue i'm happy to chat.<p>- @noah_lucas
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ColinWright
Clickable: <http://showw.me/noah>

Feedback:

I've visited your site, and I've read and re-read your description, and I have
no idea what this is, what problem it solves, or how I would use it.

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noahlucas
Thanks for your input, Colin. It's a social media aggregator much like
RebelMouse (your page) and Flipboard (your feeds). This also could be an
interesting opportunity for cross-platform engagement analytics, messaging,
and a new type of follow model for improved signal.

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ColinWright
I don't know either RebelMouse nor Flipboard, so that doesn't help. I'm also
not exactly sure what you mean by "cross-platform engagement analytics".

Is it possible to describe what problem it solves without the Ginger Factor?
Perhaps I'm just not of the "social media" generation, but I'm still not
really sure what it does

Does your intended audience?

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noahlucas
The target demographic is anyone active on multiple online services and the
usefulness of an app that unifies these services would be more efficient
because you could go to one place to consume information rather than many.
Considering this is for social media power users it might be lost in
translation if you are not actively engaged in social media or the common
practices with the goal of making themselves more accessible to people
interested in them. Much like About.me where a homepage is created by you and
you say who you are and what you're interested in, my profile allows you show
who you are through your actions, not just a short paragraph about what you
like.

An example of tracking engagement of your posts is like in Facebook when you
have a notification that you have 3 "likes" on your picture or on Twitter your
tweet got retweeted 5 times or favorited by people. These instances can be
tracked across all authenticated services a person creates content on and
right now my app connects facebook, twitter, foursquare, instagram, tumblr,
and linkedin so each social network has its specific type of engagement (a few
examples above).

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kevinrpope
So, Showw.me gives me a page that aggregates all my posts from various social
media networks? ie. all my Facebook status updates, my Tweets, my new
Instagram photos. And through that I'm able to get a bird's eye view of the
interaction/traction/engagement I'm seeing across platforms.

Is that right?

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noahlucas
Yes that's correct.

Showw.me mirrors the site structure of traditional social networks such that
individuals get a profile page along with a dashboard showing an activity feed
of people within their network. The distinguishing factor is that showw.me
pulls in content created on other networks that are connected rather than
creating original and then cross-posting to other networks.

One main goal of the network is to allow content authors (anyone that creates
a post) maximum visibility while retaining the benefits of using niche social
networking sites. In other words, i can use whatever service i want to post my
runs, photos or blog posts but i know it will always show up in my showw.me
profile.

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runT1ME
I think this is probably the wrong community to ask. I know a few social media
consultants who manage all sorts of facebook feeds, twitter, google+(just
kidding who uses that), along with other social networks and it might be
useful to them, but I can't really say.

Try asking people in that circle though, and you might have a lot better luck
getting honest feedback from people who would use the site.

For instance, I think it looks cool, but I don't really post to social
networks all the much and when I do I don't care about aggregate statistics...

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noahlucas
thanks for your input. i've started speaking with a few social media
professionals about this.

A different way to think of it is a meta-network perhaps - so it wouldn't be
just about aggregate stats concerning your posts but more like an overlying
network and profile that is fed by the person's existing accounts. An activity
feed of posts from people across all of your social graphs along with an
additional follow model to help lower the noise of posts you dont care about.

consider the chance to use niche networks without the identity fragmentation
that comes with it. an example is that i use Instagram to post photos but my
grandmother, who would love to see what i'm up to, doesn't have an Instagram
account or even know what it is so she is missing out on a major part of my
life. With showw.me i get to use (and change) as many services as i want but i
can still give out one page that i know will always display what i'm up to.

