We are Treehouse, and this is why we exist | Hacker News Reader

We are Treehouse, and this is why we exist

blog.gotreehouse.com

38 pointschrysb28 comments

Hi Chrys,

I have tried Treehouse for a bit on my phone, and here are some thoughts:

It appears that there is no way (currently) to share photos with subsets of friends, is that right? Since that is the case, I don't quite see how this is different than sharing on Facebook or Twitter. I was getting spammed with friend requests through Treehouse, and it just appears to be an ego-boost game of "how many people can I share my photos with". If I have pics I want to share with my family and not the rest of my Treehouse friends, there is no way to do that. Treehouse may want to be the next coffee table, but I want my coffee table to look like a Venn diagram, please.

Also, I signed out of the app, but I keep receiving push-notifications about activity happening. Is there a way to unregister my device token without uninstalling the app and waiting for the APNS feedback cleanup to happen? I don't want to uninstall the app because I am actually taking notes on the UI of the app (it is quite good).

EDIT: fixed spelling

Thanks, Chad. We have a lot of features that we are dying to add, and are working on as we speak. This is just the first, the very first, implementation of our vision. Stay tuned, we're eager to launch several game-changing features in the next few months.

The features scheduled for launch address all of the things you just mentioned, and more.

Have you tried Settings -> Notifications -> Treehouse to turn off push notifications? You probably can stay signed in but not receive push notifications.

I really hate when sharing products have no web interface. Do that many people have that many friends with iPhones?

Feature parity on mobile apps + web apps should be at least some sort of priority IMO.

We are working on it. :-)

At this point, it's just a matter of focus and time. But we'll get there sooner rather than later.

The people who are serious about photography tend to prefer to take their pictures on DSLRs and not on camera phones. Sure, everyone takes photos on a phone, I'm no exeption. But the photos I'm excited about sharing are seldom shot from my phone.

Does treehouse help with this use case?

Treehouse is focused strictly on photos taken with mobile phones.

Strictly phones that happen to be iPhones? It is a bit confusing that you use "phone" as a generic term all throughout and then only link to an iPhone app at the end without any context.

We'd love to launch on every platform at once, but given that we're a startup, we are going to start with one platform. Coming soon to others!

Too bad. You're missing out.

KirinDave, you are a jerk. Obviously this only works on iPhones. Take your elitist bullshit elsewhere.

I am a jerk, obviously.

But I'm saying, photo sharing is something that people who love to take photos does. The more you love to take photos, the more you'll want to share photos. And the more you love photos, the more likely you are to have a camera besides your phone.

It seems so natural to me I'm surprised it's controversial to you.

Just wanted to let you know that me and my friends use treehouse quite a bit. We've found it to be a really easy way to share photos with close friends, precisely because of the reasons you wrote about in the article.

Because there isn't any way to restrict the photo viewing to a specific group of friends, I've found that I only add/tell really close friends about it. As a result the quality and quantity of photo sharing goes way up in my network on Treehouse. Compare and contrast this to Facebook where I don't put up pictures at all, and any photo that tags me is zealously filtered to present the best image.

On a side note, some of my friends have complained that the app keeps crashing on iOS4. Anyway good job with Treehouse!

That's great to hear!

P.S. A new update hit the store yesterday that resolved our original buggy iOS4 release.

Perhaps I'm not part of the target demographic for this, but I don't really grok it.

It seems like (a very well executed) yet-another-photo-sharing app, with an extra layer of marketing fluff.

I see the founders are in the thread so maybe they can clarify - what's the main difference between this and say, just using Tweetie to share pics? Do you really think there's a need to make a distinction between say "all twitter followers" and "my real friends"? If I take a picture of something funny/cute/awesome, don't I just want to share it with as many people as possible?

aaaaaaand the app posted to my Facebook without telling me.

not cool.

The call to action was "Find Friends", not "Let everyone know that I installed this app". I thought we were past sneaky tricks like this :/

We've gotten a lot of good feedback about this and we're changing the way that works. Sorry for any troubles!

There's absolutely a distinction. There is a definite use case where you want to post your photo to the world and let everyone see it. But, you're missing all of the other moments in between. The transient moments that the rest of the world doesn't want to see, but your friends do, like a picture of your latte, or an inside joke. The types of photos that are time-sensitive, contextual, and personal. The types of photos that add value to you and your friends and family, but not to all of your followers' twitter streams.

Think of the photos that you send via MMS (if you do), and then apply that concept to all of your close friends. It's not only about show and tell, it's about communicating and staying in touch with the people that matter to you.

We're still working to find the right words to describe what we've uncovered. There's a certain point where people "get it" and understand the potential and value of Treehouse.

Thanks for asking!

I was really hoping it was a reference to Tad Williams's "Otherland". I'm disappointed. (EDIT: because the title was so ambiguous. It would be nice to have titles that described their content somewhat.)

That was what I was thinking too. Either a hacker-space with some special purpose, or a distributed online hackerspace, probably with some integration of video-chat, IRC, and git repositories.

Hm. I have the sudden urge to construct such a distributed online hackerspace.

A huge amount of text for a photo sharing app. What does it do?

I think that you might want to say picture or media message instead of mms. While most people on HN, and many techie users will know this-they are also the type to have the knowhow and time to set up their facebook privacy settings just right.

Facebook privacy settings don't make up for the lack of direct delivery to your friends. It's about always being in touch with the people you actually care about, not unlike text messaging or picture messaging.

I was really hoping for a clear explanation of what treehouse is. What I got was info on how awesome and important photos are and the feeling that I need to install software and explore to get clarity on the app.

Looks like a good idea. You should consolidate your bold points to the top of the page and leave the fluff for everyone else. Not everyone wants to read your vision. They just want the program.

Good for you. Alas, we have abandoned mobile phones for the sake of frugality.

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