[lessnonymous]

Lovely idea. There's too much snark in the world. Any project aimed at making the world a better place is awesome.

Here's some immediate feedback that might (or might not!) help:

* One per week seems too long and people wont ever come back. More than one at a time seems too much. How about making it like Groupon etc and have an 'ask of the day' and then 'side asks' for things you'll never front-page, but are interesting?

* I'd love to see the Groupon idea stretched. Add an "I did this" button (or an "I'm doing this" that posts a follow up email asking if you've done it 24 hours later)

* Needs a button to 'share this ask on Facebook/Twitter/...'. Same after someone has 'done this'.

* I'd post a card if it looked like people were posting cards.

* As naff as it sounds, "Needs more gamification"

[OvidNaso]

Some of these suggestions appear not to coincide with the creator's 'slow web' philosophy, however.

http://theslowweb.com/

[lessnonymous]

They certainly don't. My suggestions were more in line with creating a successful site.

While I understand the philosophy of the 'slow web', I can't see it creating successful websites that depend (at some level) on return customers.

The other option for traction would be search engine traffic, and that isn't (likely) to happen with ask.io. (A third traffic option is direct referrals, but they'll be specific to a week: hey everyone, send my wife a card: ask.io! .. and thus wont create return traffic)

The slow web is better for disseminating unchanging information - like a dictionary or encyclopedia - that's needed on-demand.

I'd be interested in OP's thoughts on his Slow Web philosophy and creating traction with ask.io.

[chewxy]

Hi. Not OP, but I who wrote the initial content of The Slow Web here.

The Slow Web and traction are not opposed, in my opinion. You CAN have traction without choosing to annoy the crap outta your users. It comes from understanding what your users are (or the target market you want to chase).

If you want to make a Slow Web service, understand then that your users aren't/shouldn'tbe the kind that are interested in logging in everyday to check on updates. Your marketing to your users would need to be a longer term relationship thing. It would of course be easy to annoy the shit out of your customers, but it's in my opinion that all that does is longer term harm.

I stopped using Facebook, LinkedIn for that reason. Once the novelty wears off, you stop using anyway.