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Show HN: Storylane - People sharing things that matter
- erenemre 14y agoRecommendation to the founders: Change the flow: 1. Story writing. As a guest, let me write my story right away. Give a few story ideas. 2. Sign up. Make it optional. Tell me I can share my story anonymously but if I want to keep it forever, allow me to sign up then.
- roam 14y agoFantastic! What the hell does it do? I'm not signing up without knowing a single thing about this service.
- evoxed 14y agoFrom the welcome email... Hi Ian, Welcome to Storylane, a place for great inspirational life stories. So that we can help you get started, here are some of things you can do on Storylane: Share stories Everyone has amazing life stories to tell, and so do you! Sometimes the only thing you need to get started is a good suggestion for some inspiration. Start sharing stories » Ask anyone to tell a great story Whether it's your friend or someone you look up to, everyone has amazing life stories. Storylane makes it easy for you to ask people to tell their stories. Find people and ask them for stories! Save the ones you love Storylane is full of great stories, and it's easy to discover those close to your heart. Show your love for great stories, save them for later and then get back to them in times of need. Find stories to love! ----- Once you're logged in, it looks sort of like a Kickstarter full of... blog entries. Some could be considered actual essays while others have pretty much posted lists, extended anecdotes, there's an iPhone 5 review, etc... The main feature I guess is that you can cycle through prompts from an array of categories to give you something to write about. Of course in the early stages they're pretty hit or miss, but I imagine there is potential if users ended up carving out their own niches– you might start to see more things like "How did you start programming? What do you think were the most important things that helped you grow?". Of course they're just prompts, and you should be able to write about anything you want.
- spking 14y agoI second this. They need to at least provide a sentence explaining what I can do with it.
- sejje 14y ago+1--I'd like to be able to see an example. I read the page twice trying to figure out what it is before I nixed it.
- mikeland86 14y agoHere's a sample user page http://www.storylane.com/gauss http://www.storylane.com/gauss
- iambot 14y agoWeird that most of the users who i browsed through, seem to not be actual users and are just syndicated from existing blogs. (with the owners permission ?!) Screenshot: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/9zSroi6QLrBk8JpuJXo6QkKTigM4rYdvDJAdY5Evkfo https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/9zSroi6QLrBk8JpuJXo6Qk... same as this user: http://www.storylane.com/scottbedford http://www.storylane.com/scottbedford a pity...
- atas 14y agoI also don't want to "sign up with Facebook".
- jongs 14y agoThere is an "old fashion sign up" right below..
- evoxed 14y ago1) Make that ol' fashioned signup link just a little more obvious... 2) Could the two welcome emails be combined (can't the activation link come as part of the second if the subject line makes it clear)? 3) I couldn't help but laugh when "What are your best memories of graduate school? Worst memories?" came up as a prompt under "Life". There's something amusing about this question being posed so innocently after "Did you have a pet?". Anyway I think the site is actually pretty fun, and I'm glad I signed up despite not being able to tell what it was just from the homepage (might want to change that). I was just about to go to bed and jot down a few things I wanted to write about the coming morning but after poking around I may just spend some more time poking around with some of the topics here.
- jongs 14y agoGlad to hear that you liked it! And I hear you on combining the welcome emails
- flexxaeon 14y agoWith no info at all it feels like a dare.
- jongs 14y agoStorylane is an effort to create a library of human experiences. technically it works like a publishing platform built socially from the ground up.
- flexxaeon 14y agoI like the sound of "A library of human experiences" - it grabs me more than "People sharing things that matter". Perhaps there is an example or demo you could make public, to give less adventurous visitors (like me) an idea of what it does? (edit: like the /gauss link I just noticed - now I like it) I'm all for stealth but IMO this is too stealth.
- pushtheenvelope 14y agoThanks for the feedback. We reasoned that the signed-in experience is a lot richer than what we could show signed-out on the landing page, but perhaps we should not take it to such an extreme :)
- evoxed 14y agoWell if by richer you mean know just what the hell it is, then yeah! :)
- jongs 14y agoPoint taken, and it seems to be a common thread. We need to think about how to do this better. The reason we care about registrations is because we look at it as a community not a marketplace for content.
- intended 14y agoTake your time. Building a bad community, not setting precedent, training up people and solidifying a culture are pretty lethal to your stated goal. Once you are open to all, your constant battle will always be: 1) Not let the Signal to Noise ratio degenerate 2) Be able to split the Signal down into sub categories for people to process, as opposed to a torrent which then leads to arbitrary discarding of significant data.
- a9entroy 14y agoYour logo is similar to: http://codegram.com/ http://codegram.com/
- diggan 14y agoAnd also 8Tracks [1] if you say that a infinitive sign is similar to another infinitive sign. *[http://8tracks.com/ http://8tracks.com/]
- lukeholder 14y agolooks like a clone of http://www.remenis.com/ http://www.remenis.com/
- adamkiss 14y agoSimple WHOIS shows that storylane.com is online since 2003 (although this service probably wasn't there, but I am a user of storylane since about march 2012) and remenis.com was created on 18-Jun-12, so you've got that clone the other way around.
- lukeholder 14y agoI know the founder of remenis.com he explained to me the idea in Dec 2011. But good luck to everyone, I was never super impressed with the idea in the first place. Whats the difference between this and blogging socially on wordpress.com or blogger or tumblr?
- adamkiss 14y ago>> I know the founder of remenis.com he explained to me the idea in Dec 2011 That's good for him, but you can hardly clone something, that's an idea in someone's had, right? Thus it seems that - shocker - there was no cloning involved. >> Whats the difference between this and blogging socially on wordpress.com or blogger or tumblr? I bet that the authors can explain this better than I can (if they haven't yet in this post on HN)
- jongs 14y agoZorbo provides a good answer: Focus. Both in what the Tool does and also what it is used for; to wit, we created Storylane to build a library of human experiences and opinions. We created Storylane to focus on what matters. This is partly achieved by the tool itself and how it works, partly by the community and how is being collectively crafted. The key operative word here is actually "being" as in we have been doing this for a couple of weeks and the focus that I am describing is pretty much in the making
- syassami 14y agoOn your fb tag line you have padding that ruins your y's.
- jameshsi 14y agowhoa, this site is looking good! love the use of subtlepatterns and conservative use of gradients on the buttons. who designed this?
- pushtheenvelope 14y agothis talented person is to blame for the design: http://dribbble.com/mhrescak http://dribbble.com/mhrescak
- musHo_sk 14y agoSome of those stories are pretty intense Ex: Nick Slater (Palantir's designer in Palo Alto) http://www.storylane.com/nickslater http://www.storylane.com/nickslater
- blvr 14y agoAmazing design. But if I'm totally honest, it just looks like a blogging platform. I can't tell what's unique about it.
- ww520 14y agoHow do you compete with subreddit?
- frozenport 14y agoIt would be nice to see an OpenID login.
- antidoh 14y agoIt would have been nice to have seen OpenID succeed into no-brainer non-geek use. As it is, it's like an artisan pencil that's really useful and no one's heard of, made of renewable bamboo pulp and non-toxic "lead" that can be erased with the non-point end which is merely an extension of the bamboo, shredded at the factory into a small brush. (Hey, did I just invent something?)
- ergo14 14y agoThis sound like g+ - ppl sharing things that matter to me.
- icebraining 14y agoNice design and concept. I could see myself using this, no doubt. That said, I have some suggestions: - Let me remove stories I don't like. Bonus points if: -- I can drag them out to remove them (it was my first instinct, and I think it'd work well) -- The system learns from that, after some time. - Please, let the "bar" stay fixed. It's only distracting when I'm reading a story or enjoying a photo. - Let me read more of a story in-place, by expanding the "card" (downward?). Good work, and I'll be looking forward to what you build from here.
- jongs 14y agoThanks for the feedback. - Like the idea od removing what you don't like - I hear on fixing the bar. Again, thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts
- nashequilibrium 14y agoPlease, this is how you execute this idea......http://cowbird.com http://cowbird.com. I did not sign up because i have no idea what the product does and the alternate to Facebook login blends into the background and is hard to notice.