Ask HN: I made an app that makes people happy, how do I let them know about it?

Tzigla.com is a collaborative drawing application. If you're old enough, you might remember the idea from tiles.ice.org. The first board just got finished (after about 2 months) and the participating artists seem absolutely thrilled about it.

However, it seems that the problem with making an app for non tech geeks is that they're not tech geeks. They don't spend their day hanging around on twitter/hn/reddit/etc looking for new shiny apps related to their interests and then bragging about their finds.

The few active users that we have (about 20, all form a pixel art forum) are pretty thrilled with tzigla but that's where it stops. Maybe one or two of them have brought another person to the site.

What should we do to reach the users who would enjoy using the Tzigla and crank out more awesome boards?

ps: a review of the app would also be highly appreciated

The concept is amazing, the execution is perfect and the first resulting picture is beautiful.

Well done!

Edit: The only places I can think that may contain your demographic are Dribble, Forrst and DeviantArt. There is also an advertise link at the bottom of DeviantArt

Hey, maybe you could convince her to share some of those forums.

I tried googling for dolls drawing forum without much success. Do you have a link?

StumbleUpon, reddit.com/Art.

Upload some of the best resulting pictures as examples of a novel kind of online collaboration in appropriate forums to pique curiosity. Do some themed collaborations around upcoming holidays/events/controversies. (Superbowl, Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, etc. – each output might carry further, and fit discussion in more places, for a few key days.)

Try to find fans/discussions of the precursor ('tiles') thing and mention Tzigla to them. Find discussions about collaborative art and make sure you're appropriately mentioned in context.

Make sure you have a Facebook fan page so any enthusiastic new users might inform larger networks that way. (EDIT: I see you've already done this.) You might even want to try some small Facebook ad experiments, targeted on people talking about 'art', 'painting', 'doodling', 'drawing', 'exquisite corpse', 'surrealism', etc., but otherwise as different from your existing users as possible (ages/regions/etc). At a very small price – maybe just dozens of dollars – that might find other totally new clusters of people as passionate as your founding userbase.

Good luck!

You go to the deviantart forums and let people know. The key is to go find where artists are hanging out, and tell them... don't broadcast where they can't hear, go tell them.

Tiles was great. One of my desktops for the longest time was this: http://www.slothy.com/118.jpg which is a tribute to Van Gogh drawn collaboratively.