The Programming Strategy

I find myself having the same problem with my own work. I feel like it's not at a point where I feel good about promoting it. I too would rather talk about a product I can stand behind. In addition, I fear that if I introduce it to users too early, they'll take one look at it and won't come back until many months later. There's only so many times new users will look at something in the beginning.<p>However, on the flip side, the fear is also that I'm building it away from what users would want without feedback. "Release Early and Release Often", right? <p>So I'm torn between promoting it to get feedback but "wasting" some early adopters, versus keep working on it based on what I think should go in there, and saving it until it's at a point where early adopters would have a better chance of sticking around.<p>What's the right balance?

I found that quote interesting too, so after reading your post I took a look at your app. I wasn't able to figure out what it does in the 60 seconds I usually allot to these things. I had trouble finding the "About Newsconomy" link (hidden at the bottom), and once I did it didn't make sense to me. I'm not a baseball person so that metaphor didn't draw me in. You might consider adding a more prominent "Start Here" link or some such thing that would provide examples of cool things your app can do. Good luck.

I just went there. <p>The first thing I thought was "These just look like stories but what's up with these lambdas and what's the deal with the Buy link?". Sadly after a minute or so I got no answer and my interest waned. You definitely need an "About" or a "What is this?" page. <p>One simple thing you should do is eliminate the "dead end" transitions (e.g. I press Submit and I get to a "you must login first" dead end page). If I can't submit, make the link inactive or at least take me straight to the login page.<p>Another thing you could do is add some descriptive tooltips so if I mouse over a link like "Buy" I'll see something more informative than "Address: <a href="https://newsconomy.com/buy/208" rel="nofollow">https://newsconomy.com/buy/208</a>".

Hey, thanks very much. I see that I need to make it much clearer what it is. Also, here's a list of items that give more info: <a href="http://newsconomy.com/tag/newsconomy" rel="nofollow">http://newsconomy.com/tag/newsconomy</a>