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Comment by recursive | Hacker News Reader

After reading this, I still don't know what this is. Other than being like facebook, a notebook, twitter, blogs, a private journal, and Evernote, not that I've ever heard of Evernote before. How can something be like a facebook timeline and private at the same time?

Why is it so difficult for people to describe their new service? Alternatively, why am I so bad at understanding?

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>> Why is it so difficult for people to describe their new service? Alternatively, why am I so bad at understanding?

Because it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Bingo. That's one sentence that sums up the vast majority of tech startups nowadays.

Could also be a solution to a problem you don't have.

I like the idea of a detailed Facebook timeline that goes back many years. But I don't want to share, or give FB, enough information for it to be worthwhile. Also, I'm not I'll be on FB in 10 or 20 years.

This might be their biggest challenge: Convincing me that they'll be around in 20 years

Hi, we're sorry the description is confusing. It's similar to Facebook's Timeline in the sense that we list things chronologically, but it's completely private.

I think the easiest way to think of it is a mobile journal that not only lets you input things, but also automatically collects your social activities across the web for you. Does that help?

Serious, non snarky question - how are you different than Path, then?

A few different ways, I think Path is amazing for what it does, btw. A real inspiration for all of us. It seems to really promote you to share with your friends. We don't share at all. We also import your activities from other networks. You can post to it by email, view it on the web...please give it a try and let us know what you think.

Since most people are eager to share a lot of the content they create this can be seen like some sort of backup of your shared data with a built-in viewer. Which may sound like what Facebook is doing right now. But with the added bonus of storing all the other content not considered worthy of sharing in public for whatever reason. This is essentially what any other 'cloud' storage services want to achieve. The chronological timeline or whatever filters can be easily added to any service once it has the data. Phone/tablet vendors have the edge on this since they can implement this feature directly into their devices (e.g iCloud, Google Drive).

ok, how are you different from these guys http://dayoneapp.com/?

Then why not just say you list things chronologically? Why confuse your potential customers by making them work backward from Facebook's Timeline feature to simply listing things chronologically? If you have to attach to Facebook's success in order to sell your product, you probably have a long way to go. Try defining it in your own words.

Interesting you say this, as most people will tell you to define it in terms of products people already know and use. Most people would get "a Facebook timeline but private"

It's essentially a posterity engine

Too me, the Evernote comparison didn't make a lot of sense. But the FB timeline explanation did.

So it's basically: a private fb-timeline like journal filled with things from social networks and real life

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