Ask HN: Where can I find people to review a web service?

[vivekjishtu]

I have spent more than 1500 hours over the last 3 years in developing a website and browser add-ons. Tried posting it to a few startup blogs but they simply posted the text given to them.

* Is there a better way to promote?

* Where can I find people to review them?

[jbr]

Some things I've learned in the last month of promoting my app:

HN gave me a wide variety of feedback, some of it really excellent. Try posting a "Ask HN: Please review my startup vivekjishtu.com" or whatever.

Launchly is awesome but doesn't have a lot of eyes yet. Do post there, though, you'll get some great feedback.

Usefultools gave me a tiny little bit of a review, but mostly just regurgitated my copy. They yielded a good bit of traffic, though.

My best review thus far was from a random blogger who had reviewed a competitor. I sent him a personal email saying "Hi, I'm impressed with your candor and feedback, would you please review my site? Here's a promotional premium account."

Also, hang around Launchly or HN for a while (I see you just signed up for HN) and give other people feedback. Both have reputation systems. You might even have luck giving other people serious feedback and tacking onto the bottom "if you have a moment to spare, could you give me some feedback on three-year-project.com"

However, in terms of long-term recurring members, I can't say any of those paths have yielded much. This might be more a reflection of my service than the nature of the promotional channels, however.

[bdmac97]

Hey thanks for mentioning launchly jbr. That was very kind of you. Completely agree with everything you said too.

It took quite a bit of work for me to make all the necessary changes to get that reputation system in place last week and I really hope it has the positive effect that I think it will. Hopefully the amount of feedback will start creeping up.

Also note that registered users can provide additional profile details now on launchly such as a bio and link to a website. This is another possible way to promote your own startup by giving quality feedback to other startups. If people view your profile (either from your feedback or the leaderboard) they may just click through to your site/service!

[vivekjishtu]

Thanks for the information, will post it on Launchly and Usefultoos. Posting the links directly on HN seemed a bit spamming and wanted to stay away from it.

[vivekjishtu]

The website is http://fefoo.com/

Add-on for Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12886

Ways to add it to other browsers http://fefoo.com/add2browser

[JimmyL]

Some initial feedback:

- When I look at your site, I don't know what it does. As a result, I'll just go back to Google. I gather there are some special commands (which I see from clicking through the manage link, but when I do my first look and search, I don't know what any of them are. I would have a summarized version of :ls on your front page

- On that note, ls is a geek term. People here will recognize it, but "normal" people won't. Maybe replace with something more friendly like :commands

- I'm still not sure what makes your service different and special - why is it better than things like Yubnub? I'm not even 100% sure what I can do with it: maybe have some examples on the front page, with the command and what it will do for me. I know you're going for a Google-esque aesthetic, but they have huge recognition and do one thing only. You have no recognition, and do many things - hence tell me how to do some of them so that I get hooked.

- What the hell are all these icons up top in the search results? I've never seen most of them, and don't know what clicking them will do.

- Some of your Back behaviour is busted. Click on the first link on http://fefoo.com/help/commands.html about how big the earth is, and when the results have loaded, click your Back button. Why is the result window white?

- Your documentation is intimidating. There's much too much of it being thrown at me at once and with little organization, and the writing is somewhat awkward. You need someone who's a good writer to redo and edit most of your copy, and you need to do some thinking about ways to reduce the mental load on someone reading it for the first time.

- What's your monetization strategy?

[vivekjishtu]

Thanks, this is exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for.

- Will probably add an overlay for first time user.

- Have changed it to :help

- The main reason why I started with fefoo was to make sure that I don't have to remember search engines. There are at least 5 different source code search engines, but I doubt any one knows any other engines except Google Code Search. With fefoo you only need to figure out that you are searching for source code and you have 5 different source code search engines to choose from. Same goes for the 40 other search categories there. If a music site like Seeqpod closes down you still have 10 other music search engines to choose from.

- With the toolbar its easy to search on multiple search engines. You don't have to type the search query again and again. But I guess that needs to be specified in the overlay the first time a user searches for anything.

- The back button should work on Firefox, Chrome, Opera and IE but I would need to test it again.

- I fully agree about the part about the documentation.

- As for monetization I made the application for my own use and there is hardly any cost for me to run it. It might look like a server side application but the whole thing is made in JavaScript and once you visit the website it gets cached on the browser and works from there. This not only increases the speed but also gives you access to all the 200+ search engines. Even if you set it as the homepage it will not take more than the about:blank page to load. It acts like an extension for your browser.

[bdmac97]

If you are looking for feedback on your site and exposure to an audience of other developers, designers, and entrepreneurs then I'd highly suggest my own startup service, launchly (http://www.launchly.com). Check it out! There is a free, basic launch plan that simply requires a bit of community involvement on your part.

[mahmud]

Vivek gee, just post it here and you will get the feedback you need.

P.S. If website owners are just posting the text you provide them, what's the problem? :-P

[vivekjishtu]

The problem with my text is that it almost sounds like an infomercial :P

Since am not very good with words, the service ends up looking like a cheap copy of Yubnub and Ubiquity.

[known]

Have you tried http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_per_action