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Ask HN: Review my startup, http://UpOut.com

85 points by martinshen ↗ HN
My room mate and I started on this website in mid February whenever we weren’t working on client stuff and/or school. For the past two weeks, we’ve really put our best effort to release a second/better version. It’s called UpOut and it’s a city guide built by users. We make it super easy to post awesome stuff pulling maps and pictures for you.

As an avid HN reader, I’d love to get some feedback! Please take a look at http://www.UpOut.com or to learn more http://www.UpOut.com/about

I’ll also be on Convore for as long as I can.

EDIT: Please try out the logged in portion. Either create your own acct (super easy) or use username:teststeve pass:testing999 We specifically want to see if the form is easy enough to use and that the profile editor is also easy.

95 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] thread
bemmu
http://UpOut.com
zyfo
Downvoted by mistake. Sorry.
suking
Serious question - how do you downvote? Do you mean flag?
warwick
Some features of HN are karma limited. You need to have several hundred points to down vote.
[deleted]
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ianl
Interesting idea, do you have a mobile application? This seems perfect for the mobile market.

I can imagine sitting in a pub after a meal with friends wondering whats next and perhaps using an application similar to this one.

dmelville1
Ditto. A simple mobile interface (ala Groupon's mobile app) would make this very useful.
martinshen
A mobile application is under development (aka starting tomorrow). The best we have right now is a map view.
white_devil
OK, and how do you make money with this?
martinshen
We'll build in the typical deal site affiliate stuff, do sponsored listings (make them float to the top) and let people sell experiences a la vayable.com or skyara.com.
Gvillin
They could go along the same path as Foursquare and get as many users as possible and worry about monetization later. Although I think ianl is right, adding an intuitive mobile app with a killer UI is essential for your success/adoption. I would be down to use an app that had the activity list of TripAdvisor (with more unique user provided up to date options) integrated with the geo/social characteristics of Foursquare. I feel like you can’t underestimate people’s narcissism. If I am doing cool stuff all the time it would be great for people to be able to recognize it and make me, or someone cool (sticking with the Foursquare reference) "mayor" of awesome stuff to do. You could also look at the whole coupon based concept once you go mobile. Something like: "Awesomeness going on at location x come within the next hour and get ½ off amazingness!" I will keep an eye out for an app.
RoadRunner_23
???? Sorry. We aren't compatible with IE yet. ????
martinshen
Sorry... minimum viable product. We didn't have the time to do IE compatibility. We will probably work on this in a few days.
bkaid
Odd you would completely block all IE users (not just IE6) instead of letting them see a site that may have some issues but still mostly works.
there
you make that sound like ie6 is the only browser that ever had compatibility issues.
mindotus
Looking good, hope it takes off!!
drivebyacct2
Your page is too wide. At least with the scribbled text on the left hand side that distracted me.
Papirola
yelp clone?
martinshen
We're trying to focus more on "What's fun to do?" (aka a city guide). We hope to integrate Yelp and other review sites as part of the tabs where comments are (if they'll let us). We're more trying to compete with TimeOut and other city guides.
allanscu
I like it. The only problem is getting people to submit content. You may want to focus on one tech savvy city, troll Craiglist for events, go to REI to get events, go to StubHub for events, etc.
martinshen
This is an issue we're trying to address. We figured we need about 5% of our users to post stuff. We've also made it absurdly easy to post where we get the images, tags and maps for you. Try it!
volandovengo
Great idea + execution. I'm always looking for a simple answer for what there is to do. I have been surprised that the net really hasn't answered the question in a simple manner :)>
volandovengo
Small nits: - clicking on nyc pops up a pop up that it isn't easy to get rid of - I would suggest defaulting all views to today, rather than forcing a person to based upon date on the left hand side

Large nit: I see in your about page: "Deal/coupon aggregation and maps. Integration with Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Gowalla.Local Questions/Answers. Mobile application." - I would suggest to do one thing and do it well. I think just answering the question what is going on in town is a tough one to answer but answering it will make you a useful service. Trying to do everything at this stage will probably mean you don't do any of them that well...

martinshen
Thanks... I appreciate the advice. QandA is a big thing for us because (if you register) you can see a question at the top of your profile page that asks "What's awesome to do in NYC?". In the upcoming weeks, we'll pose questions ourselves/directly to users in that space like "What's your fave sushi place?". Eventually, other users can ask questions too.

Deal aggregation can get us some affiliate revenues to help pay for food and we've almost completed it. Integration with the social networks is just to help increase user sign ups and shouldn't be too difficult (at least for FB).

karl11
I found the small nit above myself very quickly. Clicked "New York City" and couldn't exit out of the popup that asked to be notified of a new city.
layzphil
Nice domain.

I don't instantly get that it is user-powered, although that is clear on the /about page.

Perhaps consider using social sign-in rather than standard account creation.

martinshen
That's exactly what's next. We figured that most users would just want to browse than post but we provide a small call to action for every user at the bottom of the page to sign up (or learn more). Please try posting something... we tried to make it easy to post incorporating the Flickr and Gmaps APIs
mtw
I love this!

How do you get the listed places? had a similar idea once (for a different market though) but we couldn't find a way to get them. Or you've got a person phoning all local businesses?

As for feedback:

* your urls are not SEO friendly

* so when I find an experience, where do I go from there? I think you should have a hard look at monetization. One easy way is to just let people click a big orange button "I am interested!" and then you can sell that qualified lead to the business. Lots of $$$ to be made there and you also get satisfied users.

mindotus
Definitely agree on the SEO friendly URLs, but I'm sure they'll implement that soon! :)
martinshen
That's funny because it's kind of the purpose of the orange like button below. We played around with a lot of different words for that... would "I'm interested" be a lot better.

As far as turning that into a qualified lead... we plan to do this soon especially when we enable sponsored listings.

mtw
in a facebook world, "like" is just approbation (click and forget) whereas "I am interested" means more such as you're going to find a way for me to book a first appointement or class
zmmz
"I'm interested" sounds a lot better than "Like this" to me. Like this suggests either: facebook, or that you would like to see more results like this.
JonLim
Cool! You guys don't have Toronto yet, but your signup form for other cities doesn't seem to be working.

Let me know when it works, or when you have Toronto! :)

martinshen
Thanks. As a Toronto born kid.. it was my #1 choice but we settled on NYC
JonLim
Traitor!

Kidding. What's this written in?

Also, not sure if you noticed, but the signup for city form is broken. Not sure why.

matdwyer
Martin, if you do end up launching for Toronto and want some launch stuff I'd be more than happy to throw a bunch in. I've got a pretty good database of stuff to do in the area already written down from planning events/outings
dpcan
This is great, I want to get in there and add my small town (it's raining and snowing here, so I can't really do it now) but when it gets nicer, I'm all over it.

Where's your FEEDBACK button???? I would like to send in some typos I found in your tutorial images.

martinshen
The feedback button is to the right side (on nearly every page other than About which we'll add). We use UserVoice for Feedback
aaronblohowiak
Why UserVoice instead of GetSatisfaction or Ideaffect?
martinshen
UV is cheaper than Get Satisfaction and is nicer than Ideaffect.

EDIT: Just checked GetSatisfaction again... that's not necessarily true.

joshuarudd
Interesting side-note: UserVoice just rolled out per-admin pricing on all plans, so premium features that were $589/month now start at $95/admin (lower plans start from free to $5/admin).

http://uservoice.com/plans

dpcan
Thanks, I see it now on the left side, but it blends right in with the background. Was it there on the homepage the whole time? I'm using FF4.
zsouthboy
Signing up to be notified of "my city" doesn't seem to work in Opera 11 or Chrome latest on Windows.
martinshen
Thanks for letting us know. We're fixing this as we speak.
sawyer
Lovely site, the UI is very easy on the eyes and I love the filter style.

My only complaint is with content really; it seems like a large percentage of the activities are already just business listings (mostly restaurants). How do you intend to weed out the hundreds of simple business listings that will crop up and make the site look like the Yellow Pages?

martinshen
The main idea is that things should get sorted by tags. So for example #random http://upout.com/at?v=g&st=t&s=Random has more things to do rather than just restaurants. You can consequently follow #random or users who post your type of events and you'll get a stream of those related ones.
sawyer
Great, I can see that working; thanks for the reply!
bdclimber14
I tried to submit my city, but it didn't do anything. I checked for JS errors, but surprisingly there were none.
bdclimber14
This is more of a question, but how do you know which state a city that a user submits is for? I guess you don't really care about the limited city submissions for small cities as much as the metro areas, e.g. Phoenix vs. Tempe.
martinshen
We just added the city picker last night and honestly could have put more effort into it (like making it work). We're fixing it now and will probably make it more functional.
bdclimber14
No problem, working correctly is overrated :)
martinshen
We're pushing city request now so that it works.
MatthewB
Speaking about the UI/UX only...great job. The site is very slick and easy enough to use. There's some cleaning up you have to do but mostly it works very well.
martinshen
Thanks. Any specifics as far as clean up?
playhard
This is awesome!! Killer idea!! Going to be big! concentrate on what you good at! Enabling people to discover (things to do). Less on social aspects!..
martinshen
We want to be more city guide than ANOTHER FACEBOOK. That being said.. I want people to be able to send each other their top things to do in a city. As in if you were coming to NYC, go to UpOut.com/ini (ini is my username) to get my stuff to do.
sage
On the signup screen, I typed in my email address, then reflexively hit 'tab' before looking at the next field. That cleared the field and I didn't know what field I was in. I had to tab out and back in to figure out it was the password field.

Otherwise, it looks pretty cool, and I'm looking forward to having a Chicago version.

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martinshen
Thanks. We'll be doing more cities as soon as NYC is done right.
start123
Its 11 pm here and the Homepage asks me to Get up, Go out!
wcchandler
I've been working on a similar project in my spare time. I have a different mentality to it, but similar concept. I wish you the best of luck, while secretly hoping for your demise. Muahahaha! But seriously, good job!
martinshen
Thanks! There are a lot (like a lot) of people in this space.. It still hasn't been conquered yet!
amackera
Get the hipsters on your side and you're all set.

I'm serious.

cabalamat
As well as listing events, I suggest you allow people to collaboratively write articles about things to do with the city in question, Wikipedia-style.
martinshen
This is a good idea but has issues as people have huge variance in opinions about different places.. We're trying to find an elegant solution to duplicates.
vellum
Your UI looks good. I would change those black icons at the top, though. It's not immediately apparent that the marker icon = map view.
martinshen
Thanks. I'm debating between words or tooltips. What do you suggest?
paraschopra
Great work! Though I have couple of suggestions from SEO perspective.

* Please, please, please change your URL from http://upout.com/a/YRlIYk to http://upout.com/new-york/candle-vegan-food (you can't imagine how important URLs are)

* Please include the city name in page title. So, your title "Candle Vegan Food | UpOut" becomes "Candle Vegan Food in New York"

* Add related activities tab and list activities there to build strong interlinking between various pages

* Give a small widget on the page so people can embed these activities on their blogs/websites so you get backlinks from there

Rest looks awesome! Good luck.

martinshen
Thanks so much for the advice, this is really helpful. We are planning on SEOing our website sometime soon. We originally did the random short YR1YK for short URLs but we're realizing now how useless that is. Users can currently change the URLs too themselves!
guynamedloren
Wow, this looks great! I love the concept, as well as the design/UI/layout. I didn't login, but I can tell that you put lots of thought into every inch of the user interface. The entire site is pleasant to use and easy to navigate. Best of luck with this!
martinshen
Thanks! If you logged in, you'd see our killer form that doesn't even make you upload an image (we pull them from Flickr)
shii
Really cool. Is this in Django?
martinshen
No, this site does not use any frameworks. We only use jQuery I suppose...
plainspace
Only use jQuery? Would love to hear more about the tech stack.