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

16 points by sark ↗ HN
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.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Also, if you can suggest an effective way of reaching wider audience/users I'll be very grateful :)

Thanks!

20 comments

[ 127 ms ] story [ 526 ms ] thread
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?
raghus
I think he means a Facebook app. That way you don't need to explicitly email your friends.

But I think there's currently a Facebook app that does something similar, can't recall its name...Questions or something.

shawndrost
If you make a facebook app, you can piggyback off their friend list (=address book) to make things easier for your users.
chollida1
> I'm not too worried about monetization right now.

You might want to be. As Joe Kraus said, if you don't put your business plan into beta when you put your site into beta then you haven't really gone into beta or launched yet.

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. :)

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.
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

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.
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.
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.

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.

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 :)