Looks interesting, but a couple of things that jump out at me. First, the drop down "About/Guidelines" section at the top is a little crazy. Personally I would go with a landing page that describes the app, let the person enter their username on the landing page, and then move to the search feature. If I had not been forced to read the about section drop down I would not know what it was at first glance.<p>Second gripe is that drop down area has a horizontal scroll bar on it and I have a 27" monitor. It makes it seem as if there is content if I scroll to the right, but there is nothing there.<p>Finally, I am going to assume the results are tags with the various usernames underneath the tags. Personally I would prefer to tag specific posts within HN and then be able to search that. If I am searching for a similar interest I want to be directed to the specific post(s) that relate to what I am searching for. I don't want to get a username and then have to sort through their posts to find one that may relate to what I am searching for.<p>Overall I like the idea of being able to tag keywords within HN.
It would help to see what it looks like with multiple users expressing partially overlapping interests.<p>I think perhaps 'interests' should be, initially, independent from the user(s) that expressed it. Maybe just indicate interests, and a count of many people have expressed them, then clicking on an interest could give you more about those users.<p>As I user, I would expect to register, and then either '+' the existing interests that I also have, or add new ones. The taxonomy of 'interests' is probably the hardest thing to get right.<p>You're re-inventing a lot of UI paradigms, like editing an interest by clicking into something which doesn't look like an input field, and then clicking away to save it. You won't need to explain as much how to use it if you stick to more typical CRUD patterns. I'm not a fan of showing each interest in a rounded rectangle, and I don't think it will scale very far...<p>To verify an account is owned by a given user, you could ask them to (temporarily) add a code into their 'about' field.<p>You might get more registrations if you didn't ask for an email address.
OP here. The biggest issue for my first iteration of this site was clarity - people just didn't understand what it was or how it worked. I thought I fixed that with this iteration but, after showing it to a few friends, apparently not. Any suggestions on how to improve? I'll keep tweaking until I get it right!<p>Note: You may encounter bugs, site is not totally "ready" yet.