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vfbod

31 karma · joined April 16, 2014

Passionate about design and technology. Currently founder of Unioncy with a background in e-commerce and marketplaces.
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vfbod··on Unioncy – All your things in one place
Nikunj, thanks for sharing Unioncy. Would be great to hear what you think about it.
vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
I think there is huge potential to monetize in this space. I think the key is to maintain the integrity of our users. I don't want to give much detail in public to be honest. Happy to have a chat in person if you are really interested. If so, feel free to ping me @vfbod. Thanks!
vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
Thanks for joining in. They're certainly in the same space. I think that we focus on different things and provide different value. Itembase and Slice are very similar in terms of feature set with a focus on online shopping. Also, their business model is to sell/exchange your data as shown http://intelligence.slice.com/ and http://partners.itembase.com/

Unioncy on the other hand is all about your products and your ownership experience. In practical terms, one big difference is our data. We have gathered information around your products like user manuals and warranty details and provide this information for you instead of you having to enter/upload it manually. It follows, that we think that our user is different from Itembase and Slice. There are more differences and many directions that this can go so definitely room for more than one player in our view.

Regarding Gmail, I've already mentioned several times in this thread that this is our first solution and more ways of adding products will come. Thanks!

vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I take it that you have two main concerns in security and use of your data. Regarding security, I can't argue with the overall nature of the problem that you are pointing out. What I can say is that we take security very seriously and are being proactive about it by implementing measures such as SSL. To give some perspective, I think the service is very safe compared to many other online services that store personal data. We realise this is not enough for some and respect that, but we will keep improving.

Regarding your second concern about privacy. For the avoidance of doubt, the privacy policy says "We use your personal data, in anonymous form or by link to pseudonyms, when required, for the following purposes. In order to provide information and services required by you, such as customer service for example. To provide for an customised presentation of content, advertising and user experience. To provide news regarding the services of Unioncy and other administrative issues. In order to provide you with targeted marketing activities and advertising offers on The Unioncy website..."

This policy is vey much in line with Evernote and other leading personal data services. Similar to them we never want to compromise the user experience. Hope this helps!

vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
Thanks for weighing in. It would be interesting if you could elaborate your thoughts a bit.
vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
Thanks, great to hear a different opinion. It is expected that giving access to Gmail is a concern for some and not for others. Luckily, there are many ways you can build out this area. Agree that the space has a lot of potential, it's currently very broken!
vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
Looks interesting. We used to call them 'Product Cards' in an early prototype. Will have a look at this
vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
Thanks, you can manually add products through search (with images, title, brand, etc)

We don't prompt or recommend what to add at this point, but it's an interesting idea if you can do it well. I appreciate your feedback!

vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
thanks, that's helpful!
vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
sure, that makes sense. thanks
vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
Thanks, your feedback is really interesting and I would like to learn more. Can I ask you why do you do keep all of this information associated with your products?
vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
this is true, we will improve mobile as soon as we have more resource.
vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
thanks, that's good feedback. If you are interested, register your email on the waitlist at the bottom of the landing page and we'll let you know when other ways of signing up are available.
vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
Thanks for joining in. This is a fair point of course. We started with Gmail and Amazon for online purchases and would like to add support for more vendors.

For offline purchases, I agree that barcodes could be a good way to get them into the collection. There are many more ways that we would like to implement, we are just focusing and starting small.

vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
You can in fact add items manually using search inside the app. Although I get your point that you are not comfortable signing up and giving permissions.
vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
Thanks! Sure, I guess that's a good solution for people who know how to do it and are willing to spend the time.
vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
Thanks, that's great feedback. Google also just released a Gmail API with more fine grained scopes that we are looking at.
vfbod··on Show HN: Unioncy – Keep an automated record of your things
Thanks! We're starting out with Gmail, but we plan to add more ways of building your collection. Amazon doesn't share the data through its API unfortunately.