Ask HN: Review my startup - xuland.com
Xuland has been a passion of mine for well over a year since I started working on it. I've blogged about it on eonflex.com, and it quickly became the 6th most visited blog story through Adobe Feeds (http://feeds.adobe.com) in the past year.
Since then I've recieved variable levels of traffic, nothing big. The blog was the only public announcement made. The number of new registrations is very low, even though you can login directly using your existing Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, or Google accounts.
As you can see, the site was completely developed in Flash (Flex, to be exact) and lends itself a Facebook feel. The was done on purpose to keep the learning curve as low as possible.
My official blurb about Xuland goes like this: "Xuland is a social network based on location, rather than a friend's list. Xuland allows you to share comments, photos and links with those around you. Follow those that interest you, or see who's following you!"
On load, the application should geolocate to your city or neighborhood (based on IP). You would then see comments posted in that area. YOu can change the map to any city in the world - a nice and unique feature I think. You can post a comment, or a photo, which you can modify slightly before upload (you can even remove red-eye).
I built the site because I felt it would be great if I could talk to folks in my own town, or the next town over, that I didn't necessarily know or who wasn't already on my Facebook friend's list. Yelp is similar, but your comments are always centered around some business or restaurant. I wanted something more...
There's still quite a bit of work to be done, but I receive very little feedback. Most of it has been positive, but these are friends and family. I'm very interested in what you, the hackers, think???
1 comment
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 18.3 ms ] threadOne mistake I think you're making is that you're building the site as though it already has lots of users. This only makes it feel empty. For example, you have many post categories, which you borrowed from craigslist because you don't yet know what categories you'll need because you don't have enough posts. At this point all this does is segregate users from each other, when the whole point of the site is to connect them! Lose the categories. The site needs to seem as busy as possible to attract users. Just show all the posts. If a city has no posts, show posts from surrounding cities. Worry about categories when there are too many posts to sort through.
Basically, keep it simple to start. There are so many parts to the site that I don't immediately know what I'm supposed to be doing. Don't worry about "sponsored posts", or "ads" or whatever else in a sidebar. Monetize later when you have users. For now you just have to focus on getting users.