Ask HN: Review my startup - xuland.com

4 points by erichcervantez ↗ HN
http://www.xuland.com

I'm reposting this on HN because my last post went "dead"? Not sure what happened there...

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???

4 comments

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Whatever you do with it, you're going to have to grow it one town at a time. It'll start in your own, then the next town over, then the next town over, similar to how you described your goals. Unless the new people referred to the site see activity of other nearby people using the site, there's no social proof that it's worth their time to share anything, and there's no chance that something shared will pique their interest enough to give the site more than a passing look before leaving.
Thanks for the comment. Figuring out a way to build the site's traffic is interesting. To be honest, I've done nothing to acquire traffic other than a blog post (on my own blog) and submitting it here on HN...so very very few people are even aware of its existence. Still, the site averages roughly a 100 views a day from cities around the world. Getting people to POST something so far has been challenging.
update: the comment below gave me an idea to add Amber Alerts to Xuland as well ;)
I think the reason your other post went dead is that you've only been a member of the community for 1 day, and you have no posts outside this out plugging your startup.

People are happy to "Help their own", and assist a fellow site member, but get kinda discouraged when someone comes in, who isn't really a member of the site, and plugs their own stuff.

I'm not saying that's what you're doing, but it certainly gives off that impression.