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Ask HN: What's the best feature you've built that no one uses?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the best feature you've built that no one uses?

#2

Post by jaxn »

I built a tool called Statzen that I shutdown because it didn't get traction. It had a feature that would show you what topics/tags from your blog were getting read (via web and/or rss) and what sub-topics within that topic were getting read most.

I think I should have just released that one feature as an MVP.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best feature you've built that no one uses?

#3

Post by frossie »

Documentation.

Probable reason: some people would rather perform their own appendectomy than read a manual.

Seriously, I have often included features on strong user request (MUST! HAVE!) against my own better judgement, only to find that, surprise, they are not used. I don't necessarily regret it, there is a certain advantage to looking responsive regardless of the request.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best feature you've built that no one uses?

#4

Post by carbocation »

Ooh, I've got a couple. I'll just use one for an example though:

http://college.mychances.net/tools/college-choice-matrix.php

This tool is based on ~25,000 college applications and shows you the relative preference for each college. It's not based on direct matchups but instead based on an Elo point system, so that all colleges can be ranked along one dimension (essentially, revealed student preference).

It's rarely used because it's really hard to find on the site. It's also tough to figure out how to choose the schools that show up, instead of just looking at the defaults. It's also possible that college applicants care way less about this sort of thing than I, a processor and curator of their data, do.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best feature you've built that no one uses?

#5

Post by mbenjaminsmith »

I built an events search that aggregated data from several sources - upcoming, last.fm, etc. It didn't work out, mostly because even with multiple sources of events and a lot of data massaging, it was hard to get more than a page of results for any location / topic. At its best, it would just show a page of random results for a givne location, which was probably what it should have been in the first place (an aggregate calendar).

Re: Ask HN: What's the best feature you've built that no one uses?

#7

Post by d0m »

I've got a personal todo application that's aimed for lazy people. I've seriously tried a dozen of "smart todo", and no one were good for me. The one I built is special because it is so simple, flexible, and it does more than what a paper agenda can do.

I could publish it but I would need to modify lots of thing to make it intuitive for new users, write docs, and basically just to make it "public".

Re: Ask HN: What's the best feature you've built that no one uses?

#8

Post by idoh »

chaosmachine wrote: post #6

I guess it'd be this entire website (visual amazon search): http://bigbooksearch.com/ Reason for failure? Google doesn't index search results...

That site has a ton of potential. I'm sure with some tweaks here and there it could really take off.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best feature you've built that no one uses?

#9

Post by carbocation »

d0m wrote: post #7

I've got a personal todo application that's aimed for lazy people. I've seriously tried a dozen of "smart todo", and no one were good for me. The one I built is special because it is so simple, flexible, and it does more than what a paper agenda can do. I could publish it but I would need to modify lots of thing to make it intuitive for new users, write docs, and basically just to make it "public".

> I could publish it but I would need to modify lots of thing to make it intuitive for new users, write docs, and basically just to make it "public".

None of those sound like prerequisites for publishing something. Is the functionality there, and is the tool modestly resistant to things like SQL injection? If so, why not put a link out there (like, say, in this thread)?

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