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Ask HN: Feedback on my startup (iPhone related)
8 points by aren on Nov 24, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments
Hi HN -- Long time listener, first time caller. (Been busy coding!)

Would love the HN community's feedback on my new site, Apptizr. It's a recommendation engine for iPhone applications that's currently in private alpha.

It learns a bit about you, then suggests iPhone apps that it thinks you will like. You can fine-tune the recommendations by giving it thumbs-up and thumbs-down feedback on the suggestions it makes. By default, it will email you new suggestions every week.

If you have the time/interest, I'd love your feedback. www.apptizr.com/invite/vip, code 'HackerNews' (no quotes)

Thanks!



Clickable link: http://www.apptizr.com/invite/vip code 'HackerNews'


clean interface! I think one thing that might be nice is to do in-line taste matching.

I didn't bother to really answer the tastes section. When it says OPTIONAL for sign-up sheets, my motivation for filling them out drops to zero. This is a concern, because the user experience is directly proportional to how context appropriate it is to the user.

The site presented a list of games that didn't really interest me. As I was checking "not interested" down the apps, I quickly lost interest in the recommendations, thinking the engine was broken.

Perhaps when the user first comes on, you can offer the top apps from different genres. Depending on what the user clicks on, then you can hone in on what user's tastes are, instead of requiring the user to explicitly list them out.

Third or fourth click in, you might have some unobtrusive way to ask, "We notice you are enjoying PRODUCTIVITY APPS would you like to add that to your tastes?" The idea is to make the browsing and learning as seamless as possible. (I have http://likebetter.com in mind)


Thanks for the suggestions -- great ones! We do use the thumbs-up/thumbs-down suggestions for the second set of suggestions... so you shouldn't see games on the second page if you said you didn't like any of the first ones.

Similarly, if you start to like a genre you didn't spell out we try to learn from it and make that one of your interests, but it's behind-the-scenes. I like your suggestion of making it more obvious. Thank you for trying it out and for your suggestions.


Looks nice so far, but why do you need my name on initial signup?


We use it to give the recommendations and emails a personal feel (by addressing you by name). Sounds like it's off-putting to you when we ask for it?




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