Ask HN: Please review my webapp (Streetread)

http://www.streetread.com

by mstefff • 18 years ago

36 96 18 years ago

Hey,

My latest web application went public today and I'd love to hear some input from everyone. The site is called Streetread. I've been dubbing it 'Google Reader meets Wall Street'. Streetread is a single-page ajax-driven interface that simplifies the process of gathering the large amount of news and data that flood Wall Street every day. The site aggregates the latest headlines from over 20 of the leading financial sites as well as from all of the stocks you choose to follow. The interface makes sifting through the content extremely easy and the articles are even presented within the same page. Basic stock charts/quotes display with the stocks you follow, etc. Please check it out and let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Mike

mstefff25• 18 years ago

Hey,

Thanks,

Mike

khangtoh• 18 years ago

Error loading news. Please try again or contact support.

Ubuntu 8.04, FF 2.0.0.14

j2d26• 18 years ago

Most people in my firm (used to be one of the top wall st firms until, say, around march :) swear by bloomberg. So do the guys who bought us. You'll definitely need some sort of login system that allows chatting and a LOT more information if you wanna get these people off their bloomberg terms.

mthg• 18 years ago

Hello to you there @ Bear Stearns. I'm a Bloomberg core infrastructure engineer, and I can second that. I can type in a symbol and type in a functional mnemonic, hit enter and see a news aggregate pertaining to a certain security, along with just about everything else you want to know about the security and/or the company underlying it. And of course Bloomberg messaging is a premier form of OTC trading. I understand this is most likely targeting the armchair investor (aka clueless speculator) although they should probably go to Vegas instead if they think they're going to make consistent returns picking stocks with their meager information.

astine• 18 years ago

I'd really like it if it showed more stocks. It feels rather limited at the moment.

webwright• 18 years ago

Horizontal scrolling? Really? Seems like a JavaScript guitar solo to me.

If I want news about a symbol, I should be able to type it in.

A vertical list of news sources would be MUCH more scannable.

LPTS• 18 years ago

"javascript Guitar Solo"

Nice phrase. I really like it. Also, apt.

j2d26• 18 years ago

I'm willing to share this site with people I work with and can even get it to the people on our trading desk if you give me a way of getting feedback to you. BUT, don't be surprised if people look at it for five seconds and don't care. Finance people are some of the most impatient people I've EVER met and if your design isn't appealing, they'll ignore it. I'd focus on making the information people want jump out at them as much as possible. You're filling up a lot of space at the top. Try putting some of that at the bottom. Actually, modeling your site after similar designs found in MSNBC during the day would be a GREAT step in the right direction. They're presenting info, via TV, in an already accepted format. If you could improve on that, you'd be in a good position. </ramble>

My email address is in my contact info.

mstefff25• 18 years ago

Thank you - that is very insightful. You can reach me at mike@streetread.com

auston2• 18 years ago

I say it's semi-useful. But very easy to use.

1 thing though... I don't like what happens when I try to scroll up on news stories for a stock.

mstefff25• 18 years ago

Are you referring to how the list loops to the end? You're supposed to be scrolling down but I see how that could get confusing. I was worried some users would scroll in the wrong direction.

auston2• 18 years ago

Yep.

slater• 18 years ago

Why do I have to be logged in to edit the list of stocks?

mstefff25• 18 years ago

If you were to change the stocks without being logged in, once you navigate away from the site, the symbols would be lost, and I felt users might be annoyed by that. Registering literally takes seconds too.

Stabback2• 18 years ago

Yes, but that is seconds users do not want to take. I'd advice letting them edit it, but have a small notification at the top letting them know that it will be lost without an account. Cookies are unreliable but they may help.

crescendo• 18 years ago

You can temporarily store the user's list in a cookie if they're not logged in.

sc• 18 years ago

Overall a nice, simple interface.

The scrolling, vertical, ticker-like lists tripped me up for a second, though. I thought the left-hand arrow, pointing to the left, would scroll the list in left, that it would kind of pull the list in that direction like a ticker.

mstefff25• 18 years ago

Thank you. Yes, I understand. With all of the scrolling buttons I was sort of torn between which direction to go. It seemed that both made sense and I really couldn't know what users would expect.

swombat3• 18 years ago

The wrap-around scrolling made it unusable for me, but I'm assuming that will be fixed somehow. Looks great, and I'm going to forward it to some of my friends once the wrap-around is working.

mstefff25• 18 years ago

There isn't anything wrong with the wrap-around. If you're at the top of the list you shouldn't scroll up, you should be scrolling down towards the bottom.

noodle2• 18 years ago

allow people to vote up some of the news stories, and have the main page display the popular stories.

mstefff25• 18 years ago

I considered having this as a feature but didn't for two reasons. Since this is geared towards the investment community, I felt most serious investors don't care about community and what others think, and last, what's popular to some may not even be relevant to others in this industry.

noodle2• 18 years ago

good point. but the main page looks barren, to me. SOMEthing needs to go there, imo.

sebg2• 18 years ago

I would love to see feedback that you have gotten from serious investors. I for one always check out "most emailed / most clicked on" stories in reuters, bloomberg, nytimes, wall street journal, etc... If other investors are reading it and I haven't then it makes me think that I'm missing out on something.

ig12• 18 years ago

I've yet to meet a serious investor who didn't care about the consensus view. Groupthink impacts the prices of stock as much as fundamentals.

JimEngland2• 18 years ago

Solid idea, but the one problem I noticed right away is that the site does not currently load news. "Error loading news. Please try again or contact support." Here are two other issues I think you should look at:

UI issue: When I click on a stock, I get the stock quote and information on the right side just fine. However, it does not say anywhere the name of the company. I think that putting the company name above the stock quote on the right frame would be useful.

External links: When linking to an external site (such as Google Finance) "Open in a new Window" does not work for me. Also, the bookmarks link is a bit confusing; it shows a few icons (like del.icio.us) and one could think that clicking on a part of that bookmarks icon would be linking to that particular service. Finally, the top bar (the Streetread part) seems to blend into the external page at times; maybe use part of the dark blue header in the design of the external top bar?

Overall, I think that this is a great service so far, good work!

mstefff25• 18 years ago

What browser/os are you using?

JimEngland2• 18 years ago

Firefox 2 and Windows XP. I am behind a decently strict company firewall as well.

czstrong• 18 years ago

Incompatible Browser.

I'm at a large Nation-wide law firm and stuck on IE6. I imagine there are Wall-Street corporationss that are also still using old browsers.

j2d26• 18 years ago

I'm at one. All IE6 here. I use firefox, but I'm an exception.

baha_man• 18 years ago

I tried it in Opera, got the 'unsupported browser' message, copied the URL and opened it in Firefox. When I got the same message again, it took me a second to realise that it was because the URL was now http://www.streetread.com/browser rather than http://www.streetread.com/.

Also, the name 'streetread' made me think it would be something like Google Maps rather than a stock quote site.

Looks very nice, though.

iron_ball2• 18 years ago

As a long-time Opera user, I can say that this incompatible browser landing page crap has got to go. Either bend over backwards to satisfy everyone, or gracefully degrade, or collapse entirely without a warning message -- but I'm using a perfectly competent browser and you're locking me out of your damn site. 0/10.

jfarmer• 18 years ago

While true for Opera, it's rather generous to call IE6 a "competent browser."

Stabback2• 18 years ago

Good concept, but could be implemented better. Definitely make the logo sizes at the top the same size. Don't stretch or anything, but leave grayspace between them. It just looks cluttered right now.

Center the instructions vertically as to not have so much empty space. Although it will still be the same amount, it will look like less.

How about multithreading? As in when you click on one it becomes active, allowing you to have more than one news source active at a time. Weave the news entries by date and color code them (not everything, but maybe a color code a symbol at the start).

If you implement the above, how about having categories? Sports, world and business, etc? The possibility for sports from the New York Times and International Business from Reuters would be a major feature.

Like I said, great idea. Some more work would make it amazing.

*edit: I like my scrollbar. I have come to expect my scrollbar from websites. Give me my scrollbar back, it acts as a visual clue to where I am and it allows for intuitive navigation. Don't force me to use your system.

avinashv• 18 years ago

Firefox 3 on an Intel Macbook running Leopard: the scrolling is completely broken. If I click on a stock, the new loaded data just scrolls wildly. Further scrolling using the scroll wheel seems to just send the page to various locations at random.

Seems like an interesting idea, but there's no way I'd use it in this state.

steveplace• 18 years ago

Pretty slick.

What advantages does this have over me hopping over to Yahoo Finance and plugging in a ticker?

Also, I get live news feeds in my trading platform for any security.

I know you've probably done competitive analysis, but here are some other sites that do pretty cool stuff too:

theflyonthewall.com (fastest news out there) stocktwits.com (twitter + stock mashup)

Good Luck.

chollida1• 18 years ago

- Scrolling is too slow, - Page loads are too slow

If your going to target the investment banking community, you'll find we want our information fast. You'll notice the old stock tickers had symbols whizzing bye, not slowly scrolling.

If I detect even the slightest lag I'll go somewhere else, probably an rss reader.

j2d26• 18 years ago

You're still much more up on tech than most people I work with. To them, if it's not in bloomberg it doesn't exist.

mercury• 18 years ago

I get "error reading data" from all news sites...

jjburka2• 18 years ago

Looks nice. The only thing I found is if you scroll up in the news list area it doesn't stop at today's news , it loops back to a couple days ago. Which is rather unintuitive.

mstefff25• 18 years ago

As I said earlier, if you're at the top, you shouldn't scroll up, you should scroll down.

axod4• 18 years ago

How do you know you're at the top? There's no scrollbar to tell you ;)

streety• 18 years ago

This reminds me of those adverts with a big red button and some uninformative text. Give someone a button and they're going to press it.

If the reaction they get isn't what they expected they may well hold it against you.

jme• 18 years ago

I second the scrolling problem. Once I scrolled down, trying to scroll back to the top was ridiculously impossible. I think that I might have reached the top, but then the list changed directions (?) and started scrolling on it's own. It feels like overkill to me. Just give me a scroll bar and hard stops at the top and bottom of the list.

swombat3• 18 years ago

Things you should never tell your users: "You shouldn't do this, you should do that."

If users are doing what they shouldn't do, it's your fault.

greatreorx• 18 years ago

"if you're at the top, you shouldn't scroll up,"

Why not? If I don't know I'm at the top, my only choice is to scroll up. You don't give any visual clues as to where I am vertically - it's impossible to tell if I'm at the most recent headline. If I want to go back to the very top, my only choice is to scroll up until I can't any more. Ideally if I'm already at the top and I scroll up and nothing happens, that tells me I'm at the very top of the window.

Assuming the user knows he's at the top and so then 'shouldn't scroll up' seems like a bad assumption.

jjburka2• 18 years ago

If thats the case I shouldn't be able to. I also might add a up button and a down button (like the left/right buttons you have on the top) so the user is aware the list scrolls. Similar to the Google Reader Widget for iGoogle.

axod4• 18 years ago

Scrolling is seriously broken. (ff3/OSX)

You display some articles, then I scrollwheel, and things go bezerk. I scrollwheel down and it jumps up and down like a kid with hyperactivity disorder. There's no scrollbar - I have no idea where I am in the list of stories. Trying to match up where I was with where I am now is pretty hard. You've put up/down/top/bottom buttons at the very top and called them "Navigate".

So you've reimplemented a scrollbar (Standard browser UI component), but very very badly.

Up and down keys don't scroll properly either. If I hold down a key, it should keep repeating. Pressing a key should scroll the amount I am used to. You seem to be scrolling by a lot, on keyup - not what people expect.

Sorry, but I just hate it when people reinvent something that already exists, is standard, and works. Especially when their implementation is completely unusable.

Why not just use a scrollbar like people expect?

Also when I click on an article to read it, I expect to click [back], to go back, instead of clicking on [return to the reader]. Once again, ignoring standard browser usability.

Also if you try to open an article link in a new window, or copy it to send to a friend etc, it breaks, and you land at the homepage (I assume you're using onclick etc). Another usability flaw.

mstefff25• 18 years ago

I could perhaps restore the scrollbar and keep the buttons if they are desired. I've barely had any issues with the scrolling, with the exception of Opera.

mstefff25• 18 years ago

New window link fixed. Worked fine earlier. Strange.

axod4• 18 years ago

Well, it opens it in both now... also you cannot copy the link :/

sebg2• 18 years ago

Incompatible Browser. As someone who is in your target audience (I work for a well-known Wall Street Firm), this seems to miss the point.

Also, it seems to me that you are going against Reuters, Bloomberg, finance.google, and finance.yahoo. What is your value added there?

Good Luck!

maxklein2• 18 years ago

It's brilliant, exactly what I need. Excellent for hobby stock traders. I don't want to sign up for an account though, I just want to be able to edit that top bar. Till you implement that, I won't sign up.

mstefff25• 18 years ago

You would really rather input all your symbols every time you visit the site? Instead of filling out a 4 field simple form?

maxklein2• 18 years ago

No, I want to see Visa. I have no interest at all in any other stock. So I want to edit it and view the news on that, and I would expect the site to remember this for the next time. When I am more invested in the site and I plan to use it regularly, then I will make an account. But right now I'll put it on my toolbar and just lurk for a while, as I want to use it to see news on a single stock.

tstegart• 18 years ago

It does a nice job of laying out information, so I give top points for information design. The scrolling is a killer though. sounds like you really love the idea you came up with, but unfortunately, its very annoying and very confusing. It was like that Star Trek episode where they keep repeating the same day over and over again. You need to give the user some indication they have reached the end, whether its the top or the bottom. I'm sure the code looks great, but its bad user design on that point.

mstefff25• 18 years ago

Ok, the weird article scrolling is being removed momentarily. Thank you for the feedback.

mstefff25• 18 years ago

now if only ie7 didn't butcher overflowed divs..

mstefff25• 18 years ago

Someone wanna lend a css hand? Why is ie7 running the div off horizontally on every other content load?

http://www.streetread.com/bad.png

dmix• 18 years ago

Well designed, works very smoothly for me on FF3+Leopard. I love how quickly it switches back to the reader.

First two things that stood out to me: 1) I would like to be able to input a stock symbol on my own with out signing up, that would show how its valuable to me personally without jumping through hoops. 2) Search, I'd like to be able to search the multiple sources if possible. I'm guessing your just aggregating feeds, but it would be a quality feature.

s3graham• 18 years ago

I thought the ticker symbols were associated with the logos above them at first. I think you need to edit the layout a bit or improve whitespace somehow.

Scrolling broke in a strange way when I moved up. Also, there must be a scrollbar.

dustineichler• 18 years ago

Really good job mstefff, the feedback seems good too. Don't rest on your success...

elai• 18 years ago

This seems like a part of google finance's news view (except with more news). What I liked about google finance is how it pegged news articles with exact times on the market. Yours might have more articles, but I don't see how it's that much better than something more integrated.

cjc2• 18 years ago

mstefff, I think this is a great idea, but I have to agree with the majority of commenters that the implementation is poorly executed in three main ways:

1) the scrolling simply does not work as expected

2) you unnecessarily reinvented the scroll bar (axod elaborates very well on this)

3) needing to sign up before typing in a ticker symbol is a major turn off

These are all easily fixable problems, but you are showing little interest in listening to user feedback. Here are three things you said:

"I've barely had any issues with the scrolling"

"if you're at the top, you shouldn't scroll up, you should scroll down"

"There isn't anything wrong with the wrap-around"

It is easy to become blind to the deficiencies of interfaces you create. Of course the wrap-around seems logical to you because you created it. However, and this is really important, almost every single HN commenter had a problem with it. If you want your app to become popular and maybe even profitable, you MUST listen closely to your users/customers. Even if you do not agree with our collective advice, it is detrimental to openly tell your potential users that they are wrong.

So in a nutshell, open up to this constructive criticism. Your site looks very nice and offers a hefty collection of important financial news. Beware, though, that if developers cannot figure out the interface, suits won't stand a chance.

mstefff25• 18 years ago

The scrolling is fixed. Please check it out and let me know.

cjc2• 18 years ago

much much better - exactly what people were looking for :]

alaskamiller• 18 years ago

This is pretty darn cool, you need to keep working on it. I would love for a search box to either search or quickly hit on the stocks I have in my list instead of relying on the side scroll buttons.

mstefff25• 18 years ago

The scrolling issue is fixed and I'm working on all of the wonderful comments you've suggested. Please check it out...

tzury• 18 years ago

nifty application --

ucdaz• 18 years ago

I would also add a voting feature. What did you use to write this? RoR?

mstefff25• 18 years ago

I mentioned the voting issue earlier:

"I considered having this as a feature but didn't for two reasons. Since this is geared towards the investment community, I felt most serious investors don't care about community and what others think, and last, what's popular to some may not even be relevant to others in this industry."

The site is built on Drupal and jQuery.

aston3• 18 years ago

Ahh! Broken back button! Really, really annoying.

mstefff25• 18 years ago

Broken back button?

aston3• 18 years ago

When I click to go to an outside article (say a company profile), it shows in something like an iframe, and the only way to return to the front page is to click the "Return to reader" link provided. My browser back button doesn't do anything.

ig12• 18 years ago

You'll stuggle.

You won't even touch the professional markets dominated by reuter/bloomberg/etc. They're playing a whole different ballgame.

Which means you'll have to go after the google/yahoo/ms finance market. Which might be possible, but you don't look to have any competitive advantage over those services at all. While on the other hand they have vast competitive advantages over you.

My gut feeling from your site and your comments is that you've gone into this project without a good understanding of the market (what's currently available, why people use it) and without a clear user in mind.

My personal opinion is that you should scrap it, chalk up the experience, and have another go, but this time concentrate on something you have domain knowledge of.

shiranaihito• 18 years ago

For Opera, you might want to consider showing a warning instead of completely blocking access.

uuilly• 18 years ago

There is a lot of talk in this thread about your target market. They're right, you'll never beat bloomberg. But... I come from a family of Wall St. people and I can attest to the fact that most "street" news is consumed by non-insiders. My dad is a financial advisor and essentially spends his day telling people that what they saw on CNN Moneyline (or whatever it's called) isn't true. So there are plenty of non-pros who you could target.

Personally I don't care about the market so I'm not the one to ask. But I thought your site did what it needed to do well... Godspeed.

terpua• 18 years ago

Quick comments:

1) Ability to add our own news/blog sources (good for you to expand news sources) 2) Remove username from registration (I realize it's only one field but it's one field less to fill in and don't see the point to it) 3) Make news sources font smaller and in different color. If hyperlinked, it will go to the actual collection of articles from that news source.

Simple stock news engine for hobby investors. Useful app.

ideamonk• 18 years ago

DESIGN - the transparent menu doesn't look CLEAR or nice when it overlays the logos of companies. Besides, the theme is about rounded corners so why is the dropdown of the menu rectangle, its positioning should be lowered by 3-5px and do something about the transparency.

Ask HN: Please review my webapp (Streetread)

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