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Show HN: Review my project - profilepin.com

9 points by rradu ↗ HN
http://profilepin.com

I made this site during my free time over the past few weeks.

I don’t consider myself a designer or a programmer, but I wanted to make something simple like this for fun, and now I figure I might as well have some fun promoting it too. The idea is basically a rehash of Google Profiles, except with a slightly different pitch.

So let me know what you think. A couple of specific questions I have: Does this actually work as a minimum viable product? Is that feedback tab on the side an effective way to collect feedback from regular users?

17 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 55.7 ms ] thread
rradu
clickable: http://profilepin.com
cont4gious
I see the biggest problem being SEO. How can you guarantee top placement (as your example shows) in search results?
rradu
Encouraging people to link to their profile would help, I suppose. For names that aren't as common as "John Smith", then I don't foresee it being that hard to get indexed and shown on the first page. If Google can find some article written ages ago that mentions my name, I'm sure it would have no trouble listing my profile. I could be totally wrong though. Experimentation will tell.
photon_off
Two hours ago, I asked HN for feedback on a site I spent months working on. It got 2 responses. I hope you see better results than me.

As per the idea, I can see the appeal, but I'd like to see a demo or some more screenshots before signing up. I hate signing up.

Edit: I found the sample profile. It's OK, but relatively unimpressive.

rradu
Thanks for the feedback!

And good call on the screenshots. Here are screenshots of the logged-in view and profile (zoomed out so they fit) - http://i55.tinypic.com/qrc0ep.png

I realize there's not much to the site, but I'm more curious to see if the pitch on the site is good enough to get people to sign up.

aeden
photon_off, I went and looked for submissions from you and the last one appears to have been 7 days ago. Am I missing something?
chrisbroadfoot
(ot)

Sounds like you should wait more than two hours.

Also, sounds like maybe it's better to ask for advice earlier. Not to say that you wasted months (I haven't really looked at your site yet), but I think you waited too long to get advice/opinion.

aeden
The market is fairly saturated with sites like this, not only from the big players like Google and Facebook, but also from a lot of niche players like flavors.me, hi.im and even a product that I worked on called chi.mp.

Given that there are a lot of players I'm trying to figure out what your differentiator is. With favors.me it's all about making a beautiful profile, with chi.mp it's about getting your own second level .mp domain, for hi.im it's the fact that they made it for RailsRumble. So what is your differentiator?

Regarding the feedback tab on the side, it's ok and it's fairly common, so I think you're ok there. If you really want to get feedback though you're going to have to be more proactive - most people only use the feedback tab if something is broken and they need/want you to fix it.

rradu
I suppose the differentiator is that it's a place where you can promote yourself, however vague that sounds. I should add more tools that narrow down this process.

I also plan to make the contact forms embeddable, so that anyone can have a contact form on their site--that may be a good selling point

ronnier
And another, which is the most exciting to me: http://about.me
aeden
About.me is another example of an entity that is differentiating, specifically by focusing on the analytics side of your personal brand.

FWIW, I'm not sure if any of these companies are actually going to find a way to profitability.

SHOwnsYou
Interesting idea, but I'm not sure what your revenue model is...?

You might want to consider changing the wording on the site. It makes it seem like your landing pages will remove facebook/linkedin/twitter from the search engine results ("instead they will see your ProfilePin page").

Finally, I would SEO the hell out the John Q Sample page (or pick an easier name that you can SEO). I search John Q Sample and your page is no where to be found. Does not speak well to your credibility.

rradu
John Q Sample is a common generic name, maybe I should pick something more unique.

No revenue model yet, just doing this for fun. Maybe I can sell yourname.com domains through an affiliate program.

Terretta
The Privacy Policy is terrible.

"Before or at the time of collecting personal information, we will identify the purposes for which information is being collected."

I'm glad you've identified your purposes. Will you tell us about them?

"We will collect and use of personal information solely with the objective of fulfilling those purposes specified by us and for other compatible purposes, unless we obtain the consent of the individual concerned or as required by law."

Since we don't know your purposes, we also don't know what your compatible purposes are. If your purpose is identity theft, fraud is a compatible purpose.

"We will only retain personal information as long as necessary for the fulfillment of those purposes."

Still meaningless, since you haven't told us the purpose.

"We will collect personal information by lawful and fair means and, where appropriate, with the knowledge or consent of the individual concerned."

So you only let users know "where appropriate" that info has been collected. What about all the other info you collect that it's not appropriate for us to have knowledge of?

"Personal data should be relevant to the purposes for which it is to be used, and, to the extent necessary for those purposes, should be accurate, complete, and up-to-date."

Well, sure, if you're going to commit identity theft and fraud, we users should be required to keep you up-to-date on our particulars. Helps you out a lot.

"We will protect personal information by reasonable security safeguards against loss or theft, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification."

So the reasonable security measures only apply to loss or theft? Why not to the rest of those things?

"We will make readily available to customers information about our policies and practices relating to the management of personal information."

Where? When? How?

rradu
I got it off a generic privacy policy generator. Guess that's why it's so vague.

Thanks for pointing that out! I'll get it replaced.