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Ask HN: Please review my startup, Uplaude.com

4 points by frafdez ↗ HN
Hi All,

I’ve been reading HN for a while and think that you give the best feedback out there. We could really use your help.

Our site is just a couple of months old and it only has a minimal set of features. We can’t wait to add new features, but we ‘d like to get some feedback before diving in too deep. We have a lot of ideas we’d like to implement, but it’s only two of us right now, so picking what to focus on is our biggest priority.

http://www.uplaude.com

We think that everyone should have a place to show off their achievements and also be able to give other people awards for their achievements.

Here are some questions we have:

What do you think about the idea? Would you use it? What would you like to see that isn’t currently on the site? What would make you use the site on a regular basis?

..but any feedback would be great. To use the site, just signup for the beta and we will let you in right away.

If you don’t want to signup, you can login as…

User name: Tester Password: tester9999

…but the experience won’t be the same.

BTW: I’d love to see some of these achievements on our site: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1200959

Thanks for the help in advance,

Frank

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EDIT:

FYI: If you are using the Tester account, the Getting Started link will not be visible after adding the first award. Here's the link: http://www.uplaude.com/dashboard/getting_started

9 comments

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DanielStraight
I really don't get it.

Doesn't asking to be congratulated defeat the purpose?

And isn't it rather desperate?

jjoe
It has to be targeted at a much younger demographic where congratulating oneself doesn't carry such a negative impression.

Regards

BadCookie
Honestly, I wouldn't use it. A related idea that I might use is a goal tracker of sorts. Something that helps me visualize the steps I need to take each day/week/month/year to reach my major and minor goals in life, preferably keeping me motivated along the way. If you made it useful to me as an individual and started getting enough users, then maybe you could add a social component where people congratulate each other on their achievements. But I don't think starting with the social component is going to work.
frafdez
Thanks, I appreciate the feedback. Some people have asked to track future achievements, which are exactly what you suggested, goals.
pitchups
Interesting idea. One suggestion - the distinction between awards/uplaudes was not very clear when you first visit the site. Also, have you thought of making this into a Facebook app - rather than a standalone site, since the social/viral aspect of it is what is the key to adoption and usage. You can also post this idea/pitch on pitchups.com - a website we created for the express purpose of receiving feedback and votes from the community.
frafdez
Thanks for the feedback. The Facebook app idea is something we had thought about as something to add in the future, but you have a good point.
kshcho
I'm just throwing this out there, but is there a way to make it such that other people congratulate you? people already do this on facebook (e.g., weddings, babies, graduations, new jobs, etc.), so you might have some adoption issues, but turning it around would alleviate the awkwardness of tooting your own horn. people could then post other stuff to it (like pictures related to the milestone), which they might be more apprehensive to do (or is awkward / cumbersome to link to a wall post) on a site like Facebook.

i think the reason it works on facebook (and personal blogs, i guess) is it's more fluid - people do actually post some of their milestones there ("Just graduated from X school!", "Just climbed Mt. Y"), and people comment on those posts, but it's a little different to do it on a site that's primary purpose is to pat one's self on her back.

frafdez
The original idea was to have a place where people could give other people awards for their achievements, but the first set of people that used the site didn't want to engage in that way. That's really what I wanted to build. After a bit I realized that most people weren't congratulating other people but actually tweeting or updating their own wall with their own achievements. That's why the site switched its focus to more of a "bragging" site. It's weird that talking about real world achievements has a negative connotation, yet online gaming achievements are not. Thanks for the reply.