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Re:Show HN: Profile.io - Profiles for Developers by dustball on Friday March 11, 2011 @05:54PM (#2315248)
My take (dannyr and I built this) -- this is like an "about.me" but for developers. You add your GitHub account, add your programming languages, etc. And (my favorite) you add all the projects you are building -- for example when you add an Android app, it automatically links to the Android Market, pulls in the app icon, etc.

This is meant for developers to have a decent place to showcase their geek. (And the domain is cool, no?)

Thanks, love you all!

Brian and Danny @ SXSW

PS: This app was built on StartBus -- the entire site was made on a moving bus from SF->Austin :)

Re:Show HN: Profile.io - Profiles for Developers by kmfrk on Friday March 11, 2011 @06:34PM (#2315360)
How exactly is this different from flavors.me?

forrst.me also has more traction, and they are both formidable competitors, so I'd love some great selling points.

What would make your service very, very interesting is to focus entirely on creating a presentable mix of a personal homepage and a resumé - GitHub, Stack Overflow, Codelesson badges(!), and such. LinkedIn isn't that interesting in many regards, and it'd be great if you found the key to a good resumé and used that to build your foundation on.

forrst.me is more of a social web discoverability tool, while flavors.me creates easy-to-make web presences.

Re:Show HN: Profile.io - Profiles for Developers by m0nastic on Friday March 11, 2011 @07:38PM (#2315543)
That was my first impression as well, having recently set up a flavors.me page (which includes github, and visually looks identical to their site).

I'm all for competitors in the space though, so good luck to them.

Re:Show HN: Profile.io - Profiles for Developers by phlux on Friday March 11, 2011 @06:54PM (#2315434)
>...so I'd love some great selling points.

They built it while riding the bus, what more could one ask for?

Re:Show HN: Profile.io - Profiles for Developers by kmfrk on Friday March 11, 2011 @07:27PM (#2315526)
That makes it a good story, not a good service. :)
Re:Show HN: Profile.io - Profiles for Developers by dannyr on Friday March 11, 2011 @07:41PM (#2315553)
It's the niche.

Flavors.Me != Profile.io in the same way StackOverflow != Quora.

Re:Show HN: Profile.io - Profiles for Developers by kmfrk on Friday March 11, 2011 @07:55PM (#2315585)
I don't see the niche argument applying to a service that basically isn't a community; there is no in-service exchange between the users.

flavors.me has a better design and presumably offers more service hooks than profile.io.

Saying that profile.io is a niche product in the light of flavors.me just seems like PR-ish for "less appeal". :) If it's vertical, it can't be the same as a service with a wide appeal.

From what profile.io looks like to me now, it's just flavors.me with poorer design and less traction. You can try to beat flavors.me in design (good luck with that), or you can try defining your own project and set it apart from the competition.

Information on profile.io is very scant, so I know very little about the project. I'm outlining a gap I'd like to see someone figure out and fill. I hope the project wasn't inspired by AOL's acquisition of about.me, because people in the Valley still can't wrap their brain about that. :)

Re:Show HN: Profile.io - Profiles for Developers by dannyr on Friday March 11, 2011 @08:18PM (#2315624)
You are comparing a 3-day version of Profile.io to a 2+ year-old site. We have plans that would differentiate ourselves from the other services out there but we can't build all of them in a matter of days.

It is not entirely inspired by About.me but we got some inspiration from it mainly with the design.

If you look at my previous HN submissions, Profile.io is a byproduct of my previous project - Launchset. It's just a much simpler version.

Seriously though, why the negativity? As somebody who loves to build apps, I never judge other people's app in its initial version. All ideas/apps evolve.

Re:Show HN: Profile.io - Profiles for Developers by kmfrk on Friday March 11, 2011 @08:26PM (#2315642)
I have spent more than 30 minutes of my time giving you suggestions for your service and outlining challenges that lie ahead.

If the about.me and appeal remarks seemed hostile, it was because I didn't know that I was talking to one of the creators. (Like I've said before, HN need to highlight that somehow.)

If that's not positive, I honestly don't know what is. And to give you some honest advice (I know how you hate that, though), your attitude to feedback isn't going to help you succeed. Quite the contrary.

Helping people is a little like being a parent; to your children, you're a parent first, and a friend second. You may have to make some unpopular decisions, but they're in the best interest of the person.