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Please give some feedback on my brother's startup

4 points by mostly_harmless ↗ HN
My brother has just created a startup website.

http://www.collabrr.com/

The idea is that it is a site to collaborate ideas, and share content. It is kind of like a aggregate site where you can comment on topics in real time.

Please give any feedback or ideas that you have about it.

edit: "Scarface" is the actual creator. I am helping him with improvements and feedback right now.

on the signup page, an email is not required, that is just if you forget your password

24 comments

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edo
1. Visually too 'busy'. My eyes don't know where to go, and the interface is probably too complex.

2. "Interact with others" is an incredibly non-descriptive slogan, call it "Realtime Digg" instead. I don't 'get it' soon enough. Visitors should see what this is and why it is awesome for them, within 10 seconds.

3. Entices me to start chatting, but then dissapoints me by saying I need to login first. I suggest you remove the login requirement for chatting.

Looks like an interesting concept, just needs a little more polished execution.

Scarface
Thanks a lot edo, really great feedback. I am the creator of that site.

1. Any specific suggestions out of curiosity?

2. Realtime Digg is not really unique, if you have any other suggestions, lol I would love to hear them because it takes me forever to think of these things, and I really want to involve intelligent people like yourself in the building process.

3. If I remove the login requirement, don't you think it could get way too chaotic, and invite spammers to have their way with the site?

edo
1. Start with the minimum viable product and expand your idea from there. It is really hard to improve a product if you don't know where to start. Radically slim down your app to do and show only the bare neccessities, the core, the meat of your service. From there, you can always slowly start to expand the feature base as long as you remember that it will never be the extra features that get you your users, it is the core that matters.

I strongly suggest you to(at least temporarily) remove: Display of people online, all the sorting buttons, the red in yellow notification, the need to sign up or login, the amount of views per post. Next to each post, only show amount of viewers, don't discriminate between guests or users.

After you have done this, start working on color-schemes, and read online guides on typography to make the interface less confusing and complex. Make sure a visitor's eye is drawn towards important elements, and that less important elements are in the background more ( smaller, less bright typography/elements).

2. If realtime Digg is not unique, why create one? It doesn't matter if it's unique or not, as long as your users get what you are offering them. "Interact with Others" is a slogan that could apply to an alcoholics anonymous group or a dating website. What does your website do that is appealing to me, in a maximum of 5 words?

3. Your first and foremost concern right now is to get users, if the site gets too chaotic- at least it will be used. In the event that you start to get serious spamming issues, you are most likely successfull already and you will have plenty of time to fix the problem. Don't think that far ahead.

Cheers, -Edo

Scarface
Edo, you have provided really great feedback for me and I appreciate it more than you know. I am going to work hard to get this going and build on all these suggestions. Will you be checking this post in the future, (tommorow or the day after for example) so I can check back in with you when I have made the changes? Your feedback is highly useful for me, since this is the first site I have ever made.
lhorie
How is this better than Slashdot/Reddit/Digg/whatever if it has less users and I have to wait until someone is actually online and willing to chat about a particular topic, instead of just posting a comment and checking back later like I'd do in one of the sites I mentioned?

Also, how does it deal with spam/abuse/hate speech, etc?

And if it's a start-up, how is going to make money? (I assume ads, so where will it be getting users from?)

Scarface
Currently it has less users, but building a site takes time. You can post a comment and check back later if you please. The point is that if you want, you can interact in real time within topics. You can also bump other people's topics to talk about them. This allows those users to check back later and review other people's interactions in their topics.

As for spam and hate speech, their is a standard report topics icon, and obviously it is the job of the admin to monitor activity. Additionally you can prevent people from commenting in your topics by 'banishing them'. This feature can be accessed by reviewing another user's page by clicking on the other username.

I will eventually add ads but I would like to receive feedback first to help fix issues and build site content before I can even get approved for an ad service.

27182818284
* Not every website is a startup. I don't really see anything startupesque about the site.

* I can't figure out why I would use this rather than Reddit, Hacker News, Digg, or one of the various StackOverflow sites.

* "You cannot collabrr at this time" Just call it posting already.

* Links on one page are the same color as non-links on a different page.

* I find the interface in general to be clunky

* I'm not sure what you mean by "drag" content during post creation. It didn't work for me in Google Chrome at all.

Scarface
To me, I believe that with some time, and work to improve the site based on user feedback, and with some more users, the site will begin to become useful and a unique experience for users. I will change the collabrr thing to posting lol and fix the links issue. There is a slight glitch in the drag-drop in chrome, which I will fix. I do agree about the interface, and I will address that. Really appreciate the feedback 27182818284.
pedalpete
I agree with edo that it is very busy and difficult to read. Way too much going on.

However, I think my biggest issue is in the diverse or lack of focus of the site.

Sharing content, and collaborating on ideas is two different things. There are TONS of ways to share content. Digg, Facebook, Twitter, HN, etc. Where does this fit into the picture?

Note that when PG created HN, he didn't just make a space to share any content, it had a focus. Is there a niche collabrr should be targetting?

then there is the 'collaborate ideas', again very broad, which is good for some things, but to collaborate on ideas I think requires some domain knowledge of those ideas. Is there any site today where people collaborate on any random idea.

Do I go to collabrr because I want to collaborate? Or do I go there to discover content? Maybe it's a messaging thing that I'm not getting. At HN, Digg, Reddit,etc. you discover and discuss. You don't collaborate.

So how is this site enabling people to collaborate?

Scarface
Great comment pedalpete. I will work on the interface and focus of the site. What I want to realize is a site where people can discover content, interact in a topic to share their ideas on the content, and read interactions in other topics and past topics they have created. This is why I included a 'bump' feature where empty topics can be bumped and are arranged under the 'bumping topics' heading so that, content you enjoy, you can promote so that others will come and talk about it. The site is meant to be broad but you are absolutely right that there needs to be a focus so that users can use the site more easily and have an idea of what to do. Looks like I have a lot of work to do lol.
[dead] stiggz
what a horrible barrier to entry: You cannot collabrr at this time because you are not logged in, or you have been muted. Either log in or find another topic to collabrr in until hosts change. Why would anyone bother signing in? Open posts to read only (at least) until there is some content worth protecting with a sign in page- you'll just annoy visitors otherwise.
woodall
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/collab13/public_html/statistics.php:17) in /home/collab13/public_html/statistics.php on line 301

Sanatize/Check that input better.

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/collab13/public_html/statistics.php:17) in /home/collab13/public_html/statistics.php on line 524

Warning: Division by zero in /home/collab13/public_html/statistics.php on line 1588

statistics.php needs to be relooked at.

Scarface
Thanks for the feed back woodall. What browser are you using, and what did you do to achieve those errors. I have accessed the page, and all the tabs logged in and out in chrome, firefox and did not get those errors.
woodall
You can recreate this in any browser. It's because data/input is not being sanitized/checked properly.

I forgot where the errors came from, but the originated at: http://www.collabrr.com/statistics.php. Try this string: ?user='

Go back and check those files/lines and make sure there are no blank lines or ";" being left out. I can't really tell you much about the problem without seeing the code. Hope that helps!

Scarface
I noticed the error now woodall, thanks a lot for pointing that out, appreciate it.
photon_off
I'm about to get back to work so I'll make this brief.

My first impression is that it's a decent site design but there is too much information.

First, I suggest you omit the "users online" and "guests online" stats, as they are going to be low until the site gets a little bit popular. For awhile, it'll appear to be a ghost town and actually repel people from using it. It's a great feature, though! Just put it on the backburner and release it when the time is right. (Or, you can extend the meaning of "online" to mean a longer time span so that the number are higher)

The font is too squished together and it impedes readability. I suggest each topic have more height to it, and more space. Definitely needs some padding in the description and the font-width (or whatever it's called) needs to be higher.

The sorting options appear to be broken, and there's no way to get back to the original view besides hitting the logo button. Make "what's new" a link to the page.

When clicking into a post, I'm confused as to what it is is supposed to be going on. I clicked on some democracy thing, and it showed the same truncated comment, and then 4 comments below. What caught my eye was a big box saying that I can't "collabrr" (which I don't even know what that entails), and a thing on the right flashing "no host".

Very confusing as to what the site does in general. "Our long-term goal is to create a unique site in which users can interact in a variety of ways to seek information, present information, or just interact in a community of unique individuals." It might hurt to hear this, but that sentence is essentially meaningless to somebody who knows nothing about the site. You could describe any number of websites that way.

Hope that helped.

Scarface
Thanks a lot photon_off, it is hard to take criticism on something that you worked hard on, but it is necessary. It is better to get told your site needs improvement rather than be oblivious. Really appreciate your time. PS the sorting tabs are not broken, they just depend on having users online using the site, which like you said is confusing if your site is a ghost town lol. Thanks again.
photon_off
Believe me, I know how it feels. I think the most common thing you might hear is that people just "don't get it". You have to understand that people visiting your site have zero vision of what it is supposed to do, and how they can use it. They haven't spent x hours a day for the past y days with this idea stuck in their head, nor have they loaded the page 10,000+ times. The problem is, it's kind of hard to erase your current perspective and take a fresh look at something. Impossible, really.
Scarface
Yeah it really is, but a lot of people have given me some good feedback, so at least I have a place to start. Thanks for the reassurance photon, its good to hear from someone who has experience with the same process.
djb_hackernews
I like the idea but it is not a startup. Agree the font is too close together. Remove the user counts for now.

You've done the easy part, now comes the hard part.

Scarface
I really appreciate your time, thanks for the feedback.
coryl
1) Use line-height in your css to make the text farther apart.

2) Get rid of whatever isn't necessary on the homepage. Thats probably about half of the statistics you show (ie. guest viewers vs online viewers? Who cares about that?)

3) Nobody wants to use a service that doesn't offer anything new, solve a problem, or isn't targeted to a specific crowd. Figure out what you're building, for who, and why.

Good luck!

Scarface
Thanks coryl, great comment. Appreciate your time. I definitely will address those issues. The problem is the service is really for anybody. I think, based on your feedback and everyone else's, I just have to work to define the service more clearly through its presentation, interface, and marketing strategy (slogan and information on the site included). Thanks again!