Show HN: launching photosite next week, please give us cruel feedback
We're launching http://getgush.com next week. We've been working on this for 6 months, and we'd LOVE to get your feedback before we launch. Please be cruel.
It's a photo site for ALL your photos: every single photo you've ever taken. We still have a long way to go, but trying to launch really early.
You can create an account (hacker news members only) here:
http://getgush.com/i/17p6
Cruel feedback > nice feedback > no feedback.
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26 comments
| 15 points
| on HN
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I've already signed up for Snapjoy, and a slue of other photo apps. I went to your page and couldn't figure out what your product actually was—what the value add was.
This was compounded by the fact that your "handwritten" font choice is impossible to read : "hackers pet invites faster" is what it looks like at the bottom.
Your "Sign In" button is below the fold—this is going to hurt user engagement and confuse users who come back. When I load up the page, fullscreen, on my MacBook Pro, I don't see a "Sign In" button at all. http://cl.ly/2j1S1n1V0Z1f3G0K2D3j
Finally, the "Free with no Limits" thing is scary—especially because, as I mentioned above, I don't know what your product is. The biggest issue and worry with services like these is that you put in all your photos, expecting them to be maintained forever, and then the service goes down in a week. Lots of similar worries were flagged when Snapjoy launched—it might be worthwhile to read their HN thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2861515
(Gush founder here)
That right there is why I won't go anywhere near your site. Sorry, but why would I invest my time and energy, and photos, and inviting friends etc if you've got no visible means of supporting yourself? There's a reason I pay good money to Smugmug.
That aside, I have no idea why I would want all my photos on the one site. Is this the "one ring to rule them all"? Do you expect me to point friends, family, clients etc to your site? Is there realtime sync'ing from my computer? I don't understand who this is aimed at and what pain you're solving.
I also find the name a little odd (Gush?!) and the url particularly so. "Gush", in the traditional sense, suggests flow, water, emotional outpouring (ok, good) but you might want to watch out for the colloquial definition: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gush The name also says nothing about photography, nothing about the app and the "get" is awkward (yes, I know other startups have used it but that only makes sense if I'm visiting the site to sign-up. Could you direct your grandmother to "Get Gush"?)
Sorry to be cruel -- I'm not being deliberately mean but you asked for criticism.
1. This confused me: "Choose a username: (use your real name)". My username is typically different from my real name. Thus, if I should use my real name, just make the field: "What is your name?" Perhaps add ability in settings to change the username/name.
2. Ability to upload photos from the web.
I think the concept is excellent.
In short, I think your project is cool but I don't think it is for me. As far as I can tell, you're trying to do a sort of dropbox-style thing, except with images. That's pretty cool (especially the unlimited free storage), but for me I am not really interested. I just don't see the purpose of putting things into the cloud, just because. I have a lot of local storage, and the local storage is faster, and (usually) larger, and not very expensive at all. Sure I run the risk of losing my pictures to a hardware failure, but I mean, oh well, guess I won't have my curated 4chan content anymore.
Overall I think this is pretty cool.
"Okay. The Gushbot will be gathering your Facebook photos while we prepare your invite."
I don't have many pictures on Facebook, more on trekearth and flickr. It would be good to bring support to old not so well maintained sites like trekearth. More value, at least for me.
You can easily skip that step though, no harm done.
Why would I share this to my entire social graph, risking my reputation, if I haven't vetted the product?
In the app, it seems to have lost my album structure.
On the upside, the app is FAST.
Now, where is the account delete function?
I think overall the concept is very sound, however the details need work and perhaps slowly on boarding the user by proving utility before (seemingly) forcing another step.