Ask HN: Does the demo video of my startup suck? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Does the demo video of my startup suck?

tagmask.com

2 pointspankratiev7 comments

I think the video does a fine job (music is a bit jarring, perhaps).

But I actually think the video is the least of your concerns. Right now, when I visit your site, I get no impression of what your site actually is -- a news aggregation site.

As it is, on the homepage all I see is "Tune your feed" and a lot of explanation copy. This all makes it look like an app or service.

Same thing on the video page -- after watching through the video, I had no firm grasp of what exactly you were offering because you never planted the simple fact at the outset that this is a news aggregation site.

Once I figured this out, it made a lot more sense. Advice: Before you do anything, make sure they realize what on earth your site is at its core -- a news aggregator. Then tell them why it's special.

Thanks for the feedback. However, I didn't understand about the homepage. Did you mean that all texts there just explain how to configure the feed? And contains no information what Tagmask really is? Initial headline was "Flexible place for programmers to share and discuss technical stuff" but I thought that the current headline is better.

Yes, that is what I mean. But I think this is less a text/copy problem than a design/layout problem. You should probably make the articles the front page, like Hacker News/Reddit/Digg. There's a reason that's the standard. Burying the articles section of a social news site just doesn't work.

You will have to be clever about how to make it clear that there is something different about how your news site works. A big "How It Works" link at the top, or embedding your explanation video in the corner next to articles might work.

The main feature of Hacker News/Reddit/Digg is that such site provides "front-page articles" which was upvoted by the community, so put it on the homepage makes sense.

Tagmask idea is to provide personalized feed for each user. So, that's why its structure much like Twitter/Quora, they also didn't display any posts on the homepage.

You were right! I am working on the live demo of Tagmask (it's based on posts list http://tagmask.com/posts) and will put it on the front page. Thank you very much!

the video was informative, but sound on background is a bit annoying. over all i like the idea :) good luck

Thanks for the comment! Actually, I am little bit confused about the music. Some people like it, some people say that it is really annoying. For now, I cannot make the right decision about it.

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