Ask HN: Review my startup, wompt.com

Looks great, it also has an HN feel to it. I'm also in the process of building on a chat app as a fun project.

Good clean look, like the ability to instantly view without signing in, though I can see good and bad from that as well. First its a low barrier of entry to observe, but that could deter others from as openly engaging, and also was slightly confusing to need to sign in when it appear to already be live.

Also, is there a need to require a signed in user, or could you allow anonymous users as well? It seems like that would really improve engagement. Finally, is any ability for users to moderate/administer certain chats, it wasn't immediately clear that there was?

Feedback: It wasn't exactly clear that I was entering a topic or channel to chat about on the front page, rather then my nickname.

Since I can't use the app without signing in, you need to place the sign in links more prominently. When I click on a chat room, it says "Anonymous: Sign in to send messages". Please make that a link so that I can click and sign in right away, not look for the sign in links on my own.

It sounds trivial, but little annoyances like these will keep people from trying the app.

You also need to seed the chatrooms with some users and conversation. I don't see anyone in any room.

I'm confused by trying to join a channel without seeing a clear list of what channels currently exist and how many people are in them (two things which you can do in IRC and most chat apps). So I can enter any word in the box and "Join Channel" and just hang out in there by myself? That made me think, this is a good use case for private chat where you could tell your friends "join me in 'secret' channel" and they could do so, without being listed on the site. That would be cool. However, since I was just taking a look at it by myself I couldn't test that. Does the landing page look different if you are signed in? I'd like to see an About page on there to get a better idea of who is running this site before I give over google/facebook login.

Pros: I love the name and the simplicity.

I went to the page and was confused. I may not be as chat savvy as some but I didn't know what I was meant to enter in that box on the front page.

Then I assume we are chatting based on Twitter hashtags?

I know it seems trivial but stating that in a short sentence somewhere on the page would make all the difference.

I believe this will really help lower the barrier for entry.