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Turning howl.com into my startup, need your thoughts

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insomnia

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Hey DNF,

My partner and I are about 3 weeks full time into our startup. We're both 22, fresh out of college and have always had web projects over the past few years. This time its more serious, we want to make a living out of our startup.

Its been a few weeks (including weekends) and we're ready to start getting people to critique, test, and feedback our project.

The site is http://www.howl.com. Its a link blogging service for people who like to share links but are too lazy to start blogging. You just paste the URL and we'll do the rest. We'd appreciate if you could give it a test run, try posting a few URLs, tell us what you think about the user experience and process, and idea as a whole. We can take the criticism

I know theres lots of smart ideas and opinions out there, we'd love to hear it. Thank you so much for your time.

PS. If you don't want to register, you can use (demo // asdfasdf) to login.

Also, if you'd like to see a link blog in action, check out mine: http://www.howl.com/newcory
 
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EM @MAJ.com

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Looks neat. good luck to your entrepreneurship.

Em
 

hugegrowth

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I don't get the idea behind the site, what is the purpose and how does it make someone's life more easy? Does it just aggregate your favorite blog posts? How do others see them?

If I'm missing the point of the site I guess others are too.
 

insomnia

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I don't get the idea behind the site, what is the purpose and how does it make someone's life more easy? Does it just aggregate your favorite blog posts? How do others see them?

If I'm missing the point of the site I guess others are too.

Hi, thanks for your thoughts. Basically, if you like to share things on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc., than Howl may interest you. Its basically a link blog, a collection of links you post. We made it super easy to post, just paste the URL and share. We'll grab the titles, description, content, and embed rich media available. In the future we'll be adding features like subscriptions, so you can get a feed of interesting links from people you follow. Give it a try and let me know if you're still confused. Thanks
 

TheLegendaryJP

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Im still lost but than again I dont use twitter or anything. So I go to you to paste a url of interest to me and then ... ????? Others can sign up to follow my links posted or you take my collection and send them out to my followers that already exist I am so confused.
 

hugegrowth

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After looking at it some more I do see some potential, anytime you read a blog post or see a webpage you like, you can add it to your howl and it creates a webpage listing of all your favorites. Then instead of sending each link to your friends, they can just check in on your howl page from time to time and see the things you've found that interest you on the web. Now the big question - how are you going to monetize it?? lol. Actually, it shouldn't be too hard because you can match ads to the post content. You can also create a trending sidebar to show which url's, websites or subject get entered the most.

The domain name you chose is also really good, short, easy to spell and appropriate to the subject matter. I can see the slogan - "If you like it - Howl it!"
 

barefoot

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Seems like Twitter but for links only, not text. Is that right?

The idea reminds me of the old days of the Web when there were "home pages" featuring long lists of "hot links".
 
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TheLegendaryJP

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Ok that was clearer, thanks. May work, may not, really comes down to interest, do I care what Mike liked today..maybe, maybe not.
 

INFORG

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I was a bit confused also. When I posted the link, it looked great, but then I was like "OK, what do I do now?" Maybe some additional text after the text link that explains that you have to sign up to actually post the link to your own unique URL.

Here is another idea for you:

How can users monetize their own page? If you could set that up, where I could put custom ad blocks and content in between articles and in the sidebar, it would be a quick and easy way to do some promotion.
 

insomnia

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Seems like Twitter but for links only, not text. Is that right?

The idea reminds me of the old days of the Web when there were "home pages" featuring long lists of "hot links".

Pretty much, Twitter would be great for sharing links if they weren't so limited to text only. People want thumbnails, embedded video, large images, etc.
 

hugegrowth

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Well, if you read five blog posts in a day that you really like, you can post them into howl and send people to your howl page. I can see this being on a par like twitter, facebook, digg, etc where if you see something you like, you add it to howl.

How many accounts are permitted per user?

If you have a press release or something on the launch I'll put it on my blog. Just PM me.
 

insomnia

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I was a bit confused also. When I posted the link, it looked great, but then I was like "OK, what do I do now?" Maybe some additional text after the text link that explains that you have to sign up to actually post the link to your own unique URL.

Here is another idea for you:

How can users monetize their own page? If you could set that up, where I could put custom ad blocks and content in between articles and in the sidebar, it would be a quick and easy way to do some promotion.

Thanks for the suggestions, we'll definitely look at implementing a "pitch" after they try the demo on the homepage.

As for monetizing their own pages, I'm not sure thats the direction we want to head down. Incentivizing people to post on their blogs can be good and bad, because it may get people to post and promote more, but the quality of what people share may diminish.
 

hugegrowth

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That's one of the cons about Twitter, you don't have any space for your own html to put adsense or banners of your own. Just one link and whatever you put in a tweet.

A good thing about twitter is you can make a unique homepage with photos, background colors, etc.
 

insomnia

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Well, if you read five blog posts in a day that you really like, you can post them into howl and send people to your howl page. I can see this being on a par like twitter, facebook, digg, etc where if you see something you like, you add it to howl.

How many accounts are permitted per user?

If you have a press release or something on the launch I'll put it on my blog. Just PM me.

Thanks, appreciated. I think 1 account per user for now, its not like we have a set of rules yet.

BTW guys, if you need to see a link blog to get a more visual sense, check out mine: http://www.howl.com/newcory
 
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hugegrowth

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I'm going to add some of my favorite youtube videos and clips to start off, I hate having to search through youtube every time for them.
 

south

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Still don't comprehend why anyone would follow anyone, whether twitter, facebook, or this.

But it looks like you spent some time on it, and people do use these services. Definitely easy to add links.
 

james2002

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Not a bad idea. good luck
 

silentg

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It's a neat idea. Goodluck.
 

JB Lions

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Hard to follow as well, how it is different from something like - http://friendfeed.com or all the other social, sharing, bookmark sites out there? If you read sites like mashable, there's always something like this but nobody is really bringing anything new to the table. Even giants like Google introducing Buzz http://www.google.com/buzz and some like it but it seems most think, just another sharing, social type service. Also reminds me a little of one of the more popular ones, Posterous - http://posterous.com/

From the looks of it, I don't really see anything new.

What is your USP? (unique selling point)
 
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insomnia

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Hard to follow as well, how it is different from something like - http://friendfeed.com or all the other social, sharing, bookmark sites out there? If you read sites like mashable, there's always something like this but nobody is really bringing anything new to the table. Even giants like Google introducing Buzz http://www.google.com/buzz and some like it but it seems most think, just another sharing, social type service. Also reminds me a little of one of the more popular ones, Posterous - http://posterous.com/

From the looks of it, I don't really see anything new.

What is your USP? (unique selling point)

Hi, you're pretty much right that we're similar to a lot of services: Tumblr, Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, Buzz, Twitter, Facebook. We don't promise to have features that are very different. But we are more focused and more relevant regarding sharing links in a few ways. For example, we grab the necessary content data like thumbnails, titles, descriptions, images, or embed videos/flash files directly into the post automatically. This makes posting a link easier/better. Friendfeed doesn't do that, Buzz does a bit.

Blogs are also public, commenting will be open to anyone. Buzz is a closed network in your gmail. Friendfeed is public though. Friendfeed focuses on getting you to setup your other services like Flickr to automatically post to the stream. We're more about posting things you find and like around the internet, so you can share them.

Also, I'd say we're more like Tumblr than posterous. Posterous is a bit more of a blogging system. Tumblr is closer to what we're trying to achieve.

I know as we put more features out and the site comes together better, it'll be easier to see how we're the place for discovering and sharing links and content.
 
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