Please review the alpha of our startup: LifeThunder.com
lifethunder.com
lifethunder.com
I also never sign up for a site without seeing what I'm signing up for, so I'm afraid I haven't checked out anything further than what I could see while logged out.
You're asking me to trust you with very sensitive information. I'm going to be very hesitant to do so with a site that looks like it was hacked together overnight.
As mentioned below as well having information about the security of your solution is vital.
As to the not being willing to sign up without seeing it, this is an issue that we've been struggling with. By the nature of the site, we need to have an identity attached to the information we store. If you have a good suggestion on how we could safely do a demo version without compromising people's security, there's an excellent chance that we'd do it.
That being said, what kind of security protocols do you employ to ensure that users' account details, usernames, emails, and passwords, etc. are safe from compromise? (e.g. some kind of PCI-type compliance?)
Also the FAQ seems really silly (is it save? Yes, bla bla) - You think scammers are incapable of writing "100% secure" on their scam pages?
Secondly, I would change the presentation of your "is it safe" FAQ. Yes, I am comfortable with Amazon or Gmail storing my information, putting it on the web. But why should I trust YOU? It may be abstractly safe, but what reassurance do I have that YOU won't rip me off?
And, finally, how will you do this? Are you writing adapters that call each of the relative services' API to update information? What about my local credit union without an API? Will you tell my grandma that I moved?
As a possible solution to the above, you might want to seriously consider tying in with something like PostalMethods' API (http://www.postalmethods.com/postal-api). There's an addt'l revenue source opportunity as well; have people enter the info of everyone they want notified, and you can send snail mail to those w/o an API.
My concern is whether you see this as a real "startup" or a side project that can bring in a few bucks. How are you intending to bring in revenues? Monthly/Annual fees? Ads? The problem I have with both of these models is that when I look back over the past year, only once would I need to use your service, when I left my job to start a company. Looking forward outside of an occasional title/profile or a rare move I'd use this very infrequently. Not enough by far to do a membership or drive significant ad revenues.
Thanks. :>
> [how do we plan to make money]
You're right that people won't need this every day, but even if you only need it once every 2-3 months, it's likely to be worth it--consider how much time is required to notify all your service providers of new information, then multiply that by your hourly rate. Needing it every 2-4 months is also not implausible: the individual changes (credit card expiration, email address, postal address, job title, etc) are infrequent, but when you stack them up they become relatively common.
Add in the fact that we provide a better interface than many of the services we are updating (e.g. PayPal and Yahoo, which disperse your information across multiple pages and show different versions of it in different places; e.g. some pages show title (Mr), some show suffix (Jr), some show middle name/initial, etc), and suddenly a modest fee starts to seem ok.
Our plan is to have a "one day" plan for very cheap--probably about $2--that is useful for a one-time use. When you're done, you can either have us delete all your data or archive it so that there is no charge until the next time you need it...but there will be a moderate charge to reactivate it. Alternatively, you can pay a small monthly or annual fee. In the long-term, we would prefer to negotiate contracts with the service providers and have them pay us to provide this service so it could be free to the users, but we will need a significant user base before we can make that happen.
The service is in alpha; the interface is still rough, and we are looking for suggestion on what the most important parts are to improve. NOTE: At the moment we only support PayPal, Yahoo, and LiveJournal.
Anyway, I like the idea but I am not sure I would trust anyone with all my personal information. Some people might. Security is key point here and it should be stressed out why people should trust you.