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Ask HN: Continue building or move on?

5 points by noahlucas ↗ HN
I've spent the last few months working on the MVP of an idea and could use a bit of outside perspective on whether or not i should find a developer and continue moving forward or move on to other things.

http://showw.me/noah

The goal is to unify your online services in such a way that allows emphasis on content rather than the platform so you can engage in just photos, videos, articles, etc regardless of service.

1. activity feed across all services: everyone's activity all in one feed filtered by content type. (built)

2. public profile: your posts all in one page for family and friends to see what you're doing or even employers to see what your activities. (built)

The product roadmap could easily keep myself and one other person busy for another 6 months as various (really cool) key pieces of functionality are added in and the existing site gets optimized.

Feedback is hugely appreciated as i'm at a cross-roads and non-biased opinions will help me decide. If there are questions about concept, features, or revenue i'm happy to chat.

- @noah_lucas

8 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 26.1 ms ] thread
ColinWright
Clickable: http://showw.me/noah

Feedback:

I've visited your site, and I've read and re-read your description, and I have no idea what this is, what problem it solves, or how I would use it.

noahlucas
Thanks for your input, Colin. It's a social media aggregator much like RebelMouse (your page) and Flipboard (your feeds). This also could be an interesting opportunity for cross-platform engagement analytics, messaging, and a new type of follow model for improved signal.
ColinWright
I don't know either RebelMouse nor Flipboard, so that doesn't help. I'm also not exactly sure what you mean by "cross-platform engagement analytics".

Is it possible to describe what problem it solves without the Ginger Factor? Perhaps I'm just not of the "social media" generation, but I'm still not really sure what it does

Does your intended audience?

noahlucas
The target demographic is anyone active on multiple online services and the usefulness of an app that unifies these services would be more efficient because you could go to one place to consume information rather than many. Considering this is for social media power users it might be lost in translation if you are not actively engaged in social media or the common practices with the goal of making themselves more accessible to people interested in them. Much like About.me where a homepage is created by you and you say who you are and what you're interested in, my profile allows you show who you are through your actions, not just a short paragraph about what you like.

An example of tracking engagement of your posts is like in Facebook when you have a notification that you have 3 "likes" on your picture or on Twitter your tweet got retweeted 5 times or favorited by people. These instances can be tracked across all authenticated services a person creates content on and right now my app connects facebook, twitter, foursquare, instagram, tumblr, and linkedin so each social network has its specific type of engagement (a few examples above).

kevinrpope
So, Showw.me gives me a page that aggregates all my posts from various social media networks? ie. all my Facebook status updates, my Tweets, my new Instagram photos. And through that I'm able to get a bird's eye view of the interaction/traction/engagement I'm seeing across platforms.

Is that right?

noahlucas
Yes that's correct.

Showw.me mirrors the site structure of traditional social networks such that individuals get a profile page along with a dashboard showing an activity feed of people within their network. The distinguishing factor is that showw.me pulls in content created on other networks that are connected rather than creating original and then cross-posting to other networks.

One main goal of the network is to allow content authors (anyone that creates a post) maximum visibility while retaining the benefits of using niche social networking sites. In other words, i can use whatever service i want to post my runs, photos or blog posts but i know it will always show up in my showw.me profile.

runT1ME
I think this is probably the wrong community to ask. I know a few social media consultants who manage all sorts of facebook feeds, twitter, google+(just kidding who uses that), along with other social networks and it might be useful to them, but I can't really say.

Try asking people in that circle though, and you might have a lot better luck getting honest feedback from people who would use the site.

For instance, I think it looks cool, but I don't really post to social networks all the much and when I do I don't care about aggregate statistics...

noahlucas
thanks for your input. i've started speaking with a few social media professionals about this.

A different way to think of it is a meta-network perhaps - so it wouldn't be just about aggregate stats concerning your posts but more like an overlying network and profile that is fed by the person's existing accounts. An activity feed of posts from people across all of your social graphs along with an additional follow model to help lower the noise of posts you dont care about.

consider the chance to use niche networks without the identity fragmentation that comes with it. an example is that i use Instagram to post photos but my grandmother, who would love to see what i'm up to, doesn't have an Instagram account or even know what it is so she is missing out on a major part of my life. With showw.me i get to use (and change) as many services as i want but i can still give out one page that i know will always display what i'm up to.