Notifo (YC W10) Is A Simple Mobile Notifications Platform For Anything

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/18/notifo/

by jazzychad • 16 years ago

93 66 16 years ago

chime• 16 years ago

Very clever. I don't get text msgs and would love to use a web-monitoring service use this to notify me if a server goes down.

jazzychad9• 16 years ago

I would love for CloudKick to integrate with Notifo :)

troyk• 16 years ago

+1 for new relic as well!

jackowayed4• 16 years ago

This looks really awesome. I like push notifications as an idea, but I'm not wild about Apple's implementation, especially since there's nowhere you can go to get a list of notifications you've gotten, so if you get one, then you get another before seeing the first one, it's just gone. (A few of Apple's decisions, like not putting a simple "Notifications" listing app, baffle me.)

One thing about the app/site: the workflow for getting started sucks. I have to go to your website, make an account, and then go to the app to put that info in. To add to the effect, the only signup link on the homepage is all the way at the bottom, and creating my account doesn't automatically log me in.

Plenty of apps give you the option to register an account right in the app, and yours should be one of them. Make the start as frictionless as possible.

jazzychad9• 16 years ago

Yes, agreed. The next version of the app will have registration possible in the app. Having the unpredictability of the app approval process meant I had to basically submit a minimum viable client as soon as I could to make sure it was in the app store at launch. This is super high priority.

jackowayed4• 16 years ago

Alright, that's reasonable. Yet another reason I might get a Nexus One soon (especially if I no longer have to worry about being push-less!).

How will the other mobile apps work? Will they just always be running and frequently checking for notifications? Can you do some sort of long-polling over cell networks that sometimes lose service? How will you make sure you don't kill people's battery life?

wallflower• 16 years ago

Great strategy to submit a minimal app first.

huhtenberg3• 16 years ago

How long did it take you to get the app approved for the AppStore listing? Just curious what the length of an average release cycle is like.

mgrouchy2• 16 years ago

Alternatively, not quite the same thing at all, but a local startup here in Ottawa has a service and Restful API for Sending Push Notifications. Its called AppNotify ( http://appnotify.com/ ).

davidu• 16 years ago

It's similar. And most have never heard of it. Perhaps some value of being YC vs. not-YC. TC coverage and all.

khangtoh• 16 years ago

Not that similar, I think appnotify falls under the class of APSN infrastructure service provider which brings to mind, UrbanAirship - http://urbanairship.com/ iLime - https://www.ilime.com/

mgrouchy2• 16 years ago

Yeah, I think thats fair to say. Also, being Canadian and not being in Toronto or Montreal, doesn't help much either, or it can seem that way sometimes(at least from experience with the startup I work for).

huhtenberg3• 16 years ago

Why the hell does it keep loading one script a second from xxx.olark.com? And then subsequently crashes the browser.

tlrobinson2• 16 years ago

It's Olark doing cross-domain polling via script tags.

Get a better browser.

franck• 16 years ago

Could you please give any details about how the iPhone app is actually receiving these notifications ?

jackowayed4• 16 years ago

It just uses push notifications. But each site you're getting notifications from doesn't have to make you install their app. You just have to have Notifo installed. You also can actually see a list of all of the notifications you've gotten.

jonhohle• 16 years ago

It seems pretty similar to Howl (http://howlapp.com, mine) or Prowl (which also offers an API). What's new here?

jbm2• 16 years ago

Was looking exactly for this for a web app that I'm working on. Going to give it a try and see how it goes :-)

vadbabab• 16 years ago

Check your HN account page, there's a new notifo field.

pg2• 16 years ago

Explained here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1203104

brezina• 16 years ago

Guys, this is an awesome service. I can see a lot of other startups building on this platform.

Did you guys build push.ly yourselves? If so, the smart thing here is building and marketing a great free little demo app is a great way to get your platform out in front of potential platform customers. Also, it will provide access to some end users, so you can see for yourself what other capabilities the end users are craving. smart stuff.

jazzychad9• 16 years ago

yes, built push.ly myself and also the march madness alerts and stock alerts bulit into the notifo site. i was thinking it would be nice to have promotional services to get users straight out of the gate.

gridspy• 16 years ago

Count Gridspy in. Might be some time until we get around to it though :)

pg2• 16 years ago

When I was integrating this into HN last night I was thinking: practically every web app is going to want this.

patio115• 16 years ago

A permission marketing channel in the pocket of your users? Yes, please. It is like lifecycle emails on steroids without the spammed-to-death problem. (Well, not yet anyhow.)

This solves a real, pressing need for many sites: maintaining user engagement after they're off your website. The number of people who register and never come back is depressing -- many of them might be enticed to come back, if you only had a way of getting in touch. That is pure profit for the company, since you've already spent whatever form of resources it took to acquire them as a signup in the first place.

jacquesm2• 16 years ago

> The number of people who register and never come back is depressing

I think that says something about the content as well as about the user.

> many of them might be enticed to come back, if you only had a way of getting in touch.

Or you might push them away even further.

I try to keep notifications down to an absolute minimum on my sites, and to give people genuine reasons to come back in the future.

My feeling is that you need to get a user to invest a bit of time in to your site on the first visit, that's the best predictor they'll be back, especially if you leave them 'wanting more'.

plinkplonk• 16 years ago

"This solves a real, pressing need for many sites: maintaining user engagement after they're off your website. The number of people who register and never come back is depressing -- many of them might be enticed to come back, if you only had a way of getting in touch. "

Ok I am probably missing something here, but if people won't give you their email (which is what I assume you meant by "if you only had a way of getting in touch.") why would they give you their notifio id (or whatever it takes to push notifications to their cell phone)? How is email not a "permission marketing channel" but notifo is? (genuine questions, not snark)

modsearch• 16 years ago

we love it so far.. great job Chad

jbm2• 16 years ago

Yeah; first thing I did today was put together a class for this in PHP.

http://www.tokyomuslim.com/2010/03/notifo-kicks-ass/

Definitely going to find a way to integrate this into my love hotel site.

jasonkester• 16 years ago

So what does it actually do? The techcrunch article used the term "push" a half dozen times, but never defined it. The screenshots made it look like it's just a twitter client.

Anybody care to explain why I would want to use this?

paul9290• 16 years ago

If you use Boxcar ... that is an iPhone push notification app that when you receive an email or a comment left on your Facebook a pop up notification appears similar to what you see when you get a text message. This app allows for any 3rd party(publisher) to integrate this into their service so users can choose to get pop up notifications on their device from their favorite services(updates, news, discounts, etc).

Nice!!!

padmanabhan01• 16 years ago

Touching 'create account' doesn't do anything. bug?

I initially had notifications off and turned it on later. for whoever's info.

notmyname• 16 years ago

just set up an account on the website, then downloaded the iphone app. It doesn't seem to integrate too well with 1Password. I generated a password for the website, but the phone app wouldn't accept it until I made it simpler. The website and phone app should have the same password requirements.

Qz• 16 years ago

Is there already something for generalized push to regular computers as opposed to phones? Forgive my ignorance.

phr• 16 years ago

Nice. Just registered. Various glitches on the website where you fill out a form (received via https), hit submit, and get the API error page saying https required.

jazzychad9• 16 years ago

yes... fixing that now.

by• 16 years ago

and a minor typo 'Notfio' on the FAQ page.

icco• 16 years ago

I am curious about the answer to Jeff Lindsay's comment. Why do we need another app in this space when there is a powerful free open-source framework for doing this (http://notify.io)?

jazzychad9• 16 years ago

Jeff contacted me after I launched. We are in the middle of a conversation about this, but we both had to go to dinner (he with a group, and I hadn't eaten all day).

His concerns are valid, but we are both wanting to finish our discussion (it is/was quite open).

However, the canonical answer to "why do we need another X in this space" is "why did google need to be another search engine?" It may be that we are fulfilling different demands, and we both agree that competition is better for everyone involved.

patio115• 16 years ago

Notifo has a shipping product which does notifications on a phone. notify.io has describes telephone clients as something which may possible be available eventually.

Existing is a fairly useful feature.

jazzychad9• 16 years ago

in addition, notify.io has iphone support through Prowl (a non-free app, which I have used for a long time), but notifo has a native iphone client with tight integration for notifo's own infrastructure.

abi• 16 years ago

I started notify.io with Jeff and you're misunderstanding what notify.io is. We have clients not just for the iPhone, but also for the Mac, Windows, Ubuntu and Android. You should check it out before describing it as "telephone clients".

tlrobinson2• 16 years ago

What's stopping someone malicious from entering my username in a random account on a random site? I see I can block it, but what if I actually want to use the site with my real account?

Seems like you should use a random token, or something slightly more secure.

Alternatively, make it even easier for users by using the email address they used to sign up for the service, like Gravatar for notifications. The user usually has to verify the email address anyway.

edit: ah, I see that it asks for confirmation

shafqat• 16 years ago

Is this free for publishers? How long will it be free?

Twilio has a super simple API to push SMSes out to users, but it costs money. No one seems to have mentioned them in this comment thread, but what are your thoughts on the competition? Do you see them as competition?

maxklein2• 16 years ago

The idea is great, but the iPhone client is pretty poor, no offense intended. I had to restart it after every step, and when you initially install it, it's very use unfriendly. It says "create notifo account", but does not tell you how or where to create this account.

It's a great idea with a real need, but it's a bit poorly implemented.

jazzychad9• 16 years ago

I agree completely (I wrote the app). The next version will be much more user friendly in the install/signup stage. Timing the app approval/launch was the issue that prevented it at initial release.

maxklein2• 16 years ago

There is like a big list of minor annoyances. For example I get multiple notifications, but when I start the app there is nothing shown in the notification center till you pull the top down and release it. That's a bit counter-intuitive. If I were you I'd get someone on odesk for $30 an hour to rework the client while you focus on marketing your business and developing the backend.

ErrantX2• 16 years ago

Hmm, anyone else actually installed this?

The concept is great but I am assuming the app is just "get it in the appstore quick". It's a little frustrating to use because:

a) it "loads" almost every screen (for a few seconds)

b) the push notifications dont go into the app automatically, they have to be loaded again when it opens. Which on 3G is a bit slow... :D

But cool concept anyway!

jazzychad9• 16 years ago

regarding b: this is how all push notification apps work currently. Notifications can't talk to the apps on the phone when they arrive, so they must be reloaded from the server when the app opens.

Maybe if there are background apps in the future this will be solved more cleanly.

ErrantX2• 16 years ago

bah, that's annoying then - I hope Apple "fixes" it at some point.

Im quite enjoying it as an app actually - I generally dont have many apps on my iPhone (because I never use them..) but this might be a keeper :D

s3graham• 16 years ago

Aha, I tried to do this a couple years ago when I registered a domain name I liked (pipinghot.info) and the tried to come up with an app to go with it. :)

I tried to do too much of the scraping work myself which got me into a mess. If you can get people to offer data rather than try to pull it yourself you might have better luck.

RSS, Alerts, etc. stuff handles a lot in tech, do you expect to try to get more casual things like live sports data, current events, etc?

Notifo (YC W10) Is A Simple Mobile Notifications Platform For Anything

Related Stories