Ask HN: Review my startup - tripstamp.com

[teddiekgb]

TripStamp allows users to create a digital scrapbook of their travels, past and present. Any feedback on the concept, design or functionality is welcome.

http://www.tripstamp.com

[ced83fra]

I love your landing page. It's a cool idea to show the product with a cool high quality easy-to-understand animation.

On the last image, don't hesitate to add a big CTA, or a an arrow appearing toward the facebook button. The viewer's eyes on the right side (where all the images are :) ), and when it stops, you have to show him in a big way !!!

Also, Login with facebook doesn't tell about the product. Maybe have a button saying : Start your scrapbook now ! (and below, the facebook logo)

Say with who they can share : with their parents ? Or friends ? If you say to people they can show how amazing their trip are with their very close relative, they would be happier.

Is there a reason why there is nobody on the pictures ? What about showing some cool, funny pictures with people in special places ?

When we check people's trip : can we add a comment on their overall trip ? What about giving some badges, ranks, points to encourage people ? Maybe people could vote up trips or photos ; give them a grade for each level ? (check http://www.quora.com/User-Acquisition/How-has-Turntable-fm-g...) As you know, facebook may lose speed in the future, so I suppose you are working on a way to import instagram pictures or else.

Don't hesitate to 'show some love' in your privacy page, if it's actually something you want to emphase on. Like saying, on the top of the list, that you would like to keep people's privacy, respect it, etc, that's why you don't do this or that.

Tldr, it's cool stuff you are working on ! Focus on things that would really set that apart from facebook, instagram and others. Work a little bit on your landing page ( add a bigger and clearer call to action button (not 'login to facebook', but 'Start your trip (login to facebook)' on the button) ). Add some social incentive and gamification to increase your user engagement.

[larrywright]

I think it's a neat idea, but when I saw the name "TripStamp", I immediately thought of "tramp stamp", which isn't really a great association.

[7Figures2Commas]

That's a feature, not a bug. It's always wise to be positioned for the pivot.

[rgbrgb]

I thought LSD.

[evanb]

One thing that makes me nervous about these kinds of "store your memories here" sites is that, to be frank, the site may disappear with all of my memories.

I would love to use this, but then host the resulting content myself. Maybe you could offer exporting a trip for a fee?

[ams6110]

Exporting a bunch of photos that presumably you uploaded yourself? Don't you already have them?

What I think of is the classic comedy sketch scenario of being invited to a friends house to view a slideshow or home movies of their last trip.

People like to share this stuff... that's obvious. What seems harder to admit is that nobody else cares.

[napoleond]

Depends on the trip. I went on a long bicycle tour a couple years ago, and had over 100 people regularly visiting the blog I'd set up for the trip. It wasn't set up for publicity, I just set it up to share with friends and family (and most of the visitors were friends and family, just further extended than I'd expected). I met several people riding to raise money for charities; they had even more followers on shitty little Wordpress blogs. I know of people that volunteer in remote locations who also have a similar following, and I have friends who perform in ultra-endurance athletic events (think 3-day trail races and the like) who also publish race updates to a more-than-50-person following every time they go. So I think you're right that nobody cares about someone's most recent all-inclusive resort vacation, but I think there are many people who are interested in living vicariously through the adventures of others (possibly moreso if the "others" are somehow known to them) if the adventures really are unique.

During and since that trip, I have often thought about building something to make sharing those kind of experiences easier. I think TripStamp hits some of those points, but one major problem that would be difficult for TripStamp to solve in its current incarnation is that of being able to make updates while offline, and have them sync whenever internet is available. (I'd often write blog posts in my tent at night and then upload them from whatever public WiFi I could find the next day, and I think that would apply even more to people travelling in remote locations where a lot of this "exciting" travel happens.)

[riffraff]

I'm with grandparent on this, the point of exporting would be to export the result of the scrapbook composition, layout, etc

On the "who cares" side: it's actually an improvement to be able to say on $socialnetwork "here's my trip, take a look at it" rather than having to sit your friend through a one hour show off :)

[evanb]

If it were just a photo album I would be totally with you. I already just store my photo "albums" in a folder on my hard drive, and upload a few here and there.

However, there's the mapping and the layout, as riffraff points out. There's not really a quick and easy way for me to create this kind of integrated thing myself.

[teddiekgb]

allowing the user the host the resulting content themselves is not something we had thought about. We have however discussed the possibility of allowing bloggers and the like to 'embed' a trip into their own web page. thanks for your input and we will think about how we can implement your idea.

[ericcartman]

http://cl.ly/image/0x331G1c2a2f

[jaxbot]

On the bright side, he/she's using bcrypt.

[goldenkey]

No salt.. It's sad that we now have to salute something like that after the Adpbe breach. Decent hashing and salting should be something standard, normal, not worthy of praise.

[Kequc]

Bcrypt eliminates the need for multiple columns and is very secure so this person is doing it right. Actually I get a little bit ancy when people still aren't using Bcrypt.

[rgbrenner]

the bcrypt format is $2a$<rounds>$<salt><hash>

the salt is 22 chars, the hash 31 chars.

[frakkingcylons]

Is he running it in debug mode?

[syerram2]

Great site, but I see a bigger opportunity that would require a small pivot after thinking more about the real problem behind the concept. Instead of solving the problem behind "sharing" or "creating" a scrapbook of your travels - one of the big holes/problems I see in the market is around booking trips together. I'm planning a trip to China in a few months with a few buddies - organizing the all the logistics, payment, bookings etc. - is a nightmare for 1 person - imagine if your talking about 3 or more people. There a number of trips planned every year for groups - weddings, bachelor parties etc.

[ams6110]

Seems hardly a "small" pivot (but not a bad idea, itself).

[antoinec]

On the second level of zoom, when clicking on the letters, I think it would make more sense to directly show the picture in full screen. At this point, I already know that this website is made for seeing picture so I'd like to see them asap, and having to click on a thumbnail seems more frustrating than needed.

[mikeg8]

I really like it so far, I actually had an idea that was very very similar concept but mine would have also included the ability to journal about your travels/destinations and journal entries would be tagged/associated with different albums, places etc.

By adding in journaling you provide users the ability to tell more of a story and remembering the story is one of the main reasons someone would use this service over FB or flickr. Like antoinec said, you should either do away with the small thumbnails in between the large photos or if you adopted the journaling concept, have a two options for that intermediate view, See Photos or See Journal entries (possibly with photos embedded). Best of luck!

[teddiekgb]

thank you, we had actually recently discussed the idea putting more emphasis on the description of each place for those users who r looking for more of a journal. if we go down that road the user would probably want to include more information about each stop such as transportation mode, amount of time spent etc... useful comments mike which we will take on board :)

[MichaelTieso]

I've been in the travel industry for awhile and have been seen a lot of similar trip planning, organizing, and documenting sites come and go pretty quickly. I'm not sure what you plan on implementing but right now this really isn't different than the others. Not that you have to implement something very unique but I think you have to try to find something that separates you from the others. You're going to have a hell of a time trying to convince people to use your site. By far the most popular way to share your travels is simply creating a Facebook album and uploading all the pictures. For many, that's as simple as they want it.

Good luck!

[adamzerner]

I think the search bar should be on the right side because that's where people are used to it being.

I'm sorta iffy on what a digital scrapbook is. I think the above the fold part of the home page should illustrate the pain point and how you solve it.

I like the idea with the slideshow, but I think a video would be better, or at least a slide show where the user decides when it goes to the next slide.

I'm still not really sure what you do that makes making a scrapbook of travels notably easier than it already is.

[Hoozt]

Solving a problem: Nope. Doing something I'm already doing, better: Nope

Those are the two first things I think about, but maybe that's just me. I'm not a very social media type of person, also I'm living in Sweden, so I'm probably not part of your main audience here, but I don't see why I should spend my precious time on this, that's all I can say.

Oh, and good luck! :)

[joshstrange]

Link: http://www.tripstamp.com

[jliptzin]

Looks like a nice site, but not something I would use. Then again, I'm not the target audience. I would have said the same about Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat (I use those rarely, if ever).

[SandB0x]

The explanation text and login buttons flash up while loading (Nexus 7 2012 model) then disappear, leaving me with just a map and a green header with no text at all.

[larrywright]

I get the flashing while loading on OS X/Safari, but the page then loads properly.

[teddiekgb]

thank you, we will test further on that particular device

[zekenie]

Nice implementation. Looks slick. I want to know how it's different from a similar Facebook feature... But nice job.

[goldenkey]

Doesn't work on mobile and the year is 2013. Fail.

[ashazar]

I can see it on my iPad with no problem.

[goldenkey]

An iPad is not a phone.

[bizodo]

No mobile site?