sw007

Agree 100%. The OP has probably written this because of the 14 year old who developed an app (was on HN earlier). I found it so inspiring. Developing anything, especially apps, I imagine is not easy - I applaud anyone who can do it but the fact the person did it at such a young age was so impressive and made me think 'wow, if a 14 year old can do this then so can I, I should learn'.

If these types of posts piss you off so much, just ignore it. Half the time it is as though some on HN think they are forced to read every post. You're not. If you know something is going to piss you off, ignore it and read something else - there are plenty of articles to choose from.

Always amazes me how HN is full of incredibly intelligent people yet some are so spectacularly void of common sense. Only on HN would the discussion turn to whether or not the kid would be annoyed at an email that's forwarded without someone asking him. Course he wouldn't - they are all lauding him. His email has achieved exactly what it set out to do - it's got him a gig at an investment bank.

If it's uninteresting, why come to this post and comment?

Awesome! Thanks so much, it's really appreciated.

Thanks. I would edit the title but I now can't seem to for some reason. Sorry for the confusion...

Yes it was overground as you can't literally run underground (on the tracks) as you'd kill yourself on the wires.

Therefore, I ran from station to station - worked out the routes before each run and ran with my iPhone and Google Maps and ran to each station on each Underground line. The distance is greatly lengthened because I couldn't run on the tracks but I still visited every station - some as many as 6 times as they appear on 6 different lines.

I had a picture outside of every single one and then went on my way to the next station. I ran over moterways, over footbridges, canals, fields, commuter packed pavements, marsh land, cobbled streets and got lost an awful lot.

Let me help you out..

The charity's website is www.hhho.co.uk - here you can find out all about Harry's campaign.

The charity JustGiving link is www.justgiving.com/steven-whyley

There was never a dedicated twitter account set up (there should have been), I did it all through my personal Twitter account.

I need to get some pictures uploaded to the blog - I didn't get round to it. I just had them on my Twitter and Facebook.

But I have made a video - hopefully this should give you an idea of what it was all about - http://youtu.be/a_mb6pXyrfA

Thanks for your kind comments...

So it is a giftlist creator - but done in a neat way (I think). We make money by using skimlinks and turning links into affiliate links. It's a way of finding neat gift ideas and also bookmarking gifts on the web and saving them to a giftlist.

I think if we had users we could make money - from the affiliate links. But it is not clear to me how I attract users to the site, how I get the site out there..

Sure sorry, I didn't want to spam HN but here it is - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4864978 - the site is called http://www.ultimategiftlists.com and it is a cool way to create a giftlist, but is now also, in my opinion, a real neat way to find gift ideas for people.

We've acted on a lot of the feedback given to us:

- An About Page - More Categories - A better way of saving the list - Make the giftmark more prominent - A blog (although not yet published) - Resizing of images and a general change to the layout.

cheers

Great blog. Exactly how I feel. My question is how do I get traffic? I feel quite lost - we got covered by Mashable and other places and like you didn't get an amazing number of signups - a good number but nothing major. Now I am at a bit of a loss as to how to get people to the site - probably a stupid admission but it feels like the million dollar question to me at the moment.

We struggled deciding whether to go to the Prezi page or straight to the homepage. We opted for the Prezi because we thought it was a bit different and gave us a chance to tell our story in a neat way. But I think you are probably right, it doesn't look as professional as it could so we should probably reroute straight to our homepage. Thanks.

That figure is based on those who are 15-24 who want to work but can't. I.E. Who don't have the luxury of going to school or college. Who at the age of 15 have no alternative but to go to work but who can't because there simply aren't enough jobs. That stat is from the UN statistics for Global Unemployment.

That's brilliant, thanks so much. I will send something over soon. Thanks again.

Thanks. And yes agreed - we need to articulate how we will provide decent advice. We'll look to add that. And take your point about the image.

We originally got covered by Mashable before the 11K Club purpose was known. Once we unveiled what it was no one would cover us. I've tried to contact some bloggers but no one seems interested. I then thought about trying to do something different - that's why I created this, I'd hoped it would grab their attention. But still, nothing.

Got any tips on how to get someone to blog about you?

We're really passionate about our product. We're not after making money (we can't make money), but we want to really try and help people but we can only help people if we can get people to the site and get the young people applying..

It's very frustrating!

I just don't see how that comment can possibly be worthwhile. If you don't like it, if you think it is rubbish, then fair enough. But we have spent a lot of time building a product we are proud of, building a community of great people and have aims that we think are worthwhile. I am not asking you to sign up - if you hate it, you hate it - don't sign up, it's pretty simple. Whilst I am on my soapbox - go build a product that doesn't suck and then come back to us and then I may care what you have to say..

Thanks, and thanks for signing up. I appreciate it.

I can see how that may be confusing. And yes you are right - but we are hoping that as much as you want to get in, you will also want to join the club with your wife/husband/brother/sister/friend - a lot of clubs, no matter what they are, are more fun if the experience is shared (in my opinion).

thanks again..

Thanks for the constructive feedback...

Sorry about this - we'll take a look. Can I ask What browser you are using?

Thanks :) They were right I guess in that maybe we were not honest enough but at least our intentions have proved to be good. As I say, it was a good lesson. A sad night - we felt like the experiment was over a little bit - but ultimately it did us good.

I can share that with you (co-founder) - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4323459 - as I say, we wanted to create the illusion that we'd stumbled across it so that we got genuine sign up's. Alas, people found out who we were so we apoligised and held our hands up. Our intentions were always good and we felt it important to include that experience in our journey because we learnt a lot that day.

I hadn't heard of this story. Just looking at it now and will get back to you. At a first glance it seems we place more emphasis on bartering and exclusivity but looks like she's done a great thing. Thanks for sharing this - look forward to reading up on her project.

This was a Mashable article written before we revealed what we are/who we are - http://mashable.com/2012/09/20/website-exclusive-11k/ may give you a better idea behind why we used the word 'stunt' in our HN post. Once we got all the applications we wanted to create a community of helpful people - but we probably need to articulate better that's what we are/who we are.

Hi, co-founder here. Thanks for the feedback.

We take your points about the volume of text. But this isn't the marketing stunt - the stunt has already taken place. We got 13,300 people to sign up to a site that they knew nothing about. We admitted some of those people today. The idea of the site is a community of people who help each other. They initially help young people find employment and accumulate karma in doing so. They then use their karma to barter help for themselves from the clubs members.

It's a big experiment and won't be to everyones taste. I appreciate the 'journey' page is quite long and detailed but it'll give you an idea as to what we set out to do.

The tagline was from a member - it was his reason for wanting to join something he knew nothing about. But again, we take your point and we'll look to test it a little more.

Thanks for the feedback though, it is appreciated and we'll look to make things a little clearer for those visiting the site for the first time.

Slightly off topic but I bank with Natwest.com and I have gone to their homepage today and am AMAZED as to what I saw.

If you navigate to their homepage - in prime view you'll see a section that says:

"Great ideas come from great conversations"

Under this is feedback from customer - 90% of the feedback is incredibly negative. For example:

""Tell your customers the truth how bad a silver account is. Premium numbers to contact and register, cannot register mobiles for ..."

"Natwest is an embarassment, you have lost a customer for life".

This just sums up how out of touch banks are today with the internet. Don't advertise this sort of feedback! Especially on a homepage! What are they thinking?

Classic case of someone who just can't win whatever he does. People have been crying out for PayPal to change - he notices this, he emails the guy with a first class email but still gets criticised. Criticise him if he doesn't act, don't criticise the guy for being big enough to say 'hey, we have a problem, I want to fix it' - that should be applauded, even if it's come later than people would have liked - at least it has come.

Thanks for your response, I appreciate you looking into it. As I say I'm a huge HN fan but with the growth of the community there has been a sharp rise in people seeking to make a name for themselves and seeking to criticse rather than critique constructively.

Mindcrime hits the nail on the head. I don't want people telling me how awesome my project is - no where in my OP have I said that. My mum would be my toughest critic but she'd also be my fairest and explain to me what she liked but more importantly how something I'd done could be made better. That's what HN was to me - a place for amazing constructive feedback. Constructive feedback is something much different to criticism - which is where HN finds itself today imo.

11k is part of a social experiment to see if people will sign up to something they know nothing about just because it is exclusive. And thanks, appreciate it.

Thank you for so perfectly demonstrating my point..

Ironically I am a writer - I've written a sitcom and had it made and have had my fair share of 'this is awful' comments - I get people won't like my stuff, I don't have a problem with that. I am making the point that the old HN crowd would give constructive feedback rather than just rip in to you...