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Show HN: OwlEars – Raw feedback, straight from your customers' minds
Hello everyone

Years ago, I built a personal feedback platform called Sarahah that got famous but was eventually removed from stores. One unique aspect of Sarahah was its simple, plain message box.

Now, I'm using this concept to help businesses gather raw feedback (yes, just plain free text) from their customers. This approach contrasts with guided surveys that can often frame and limit responses. On the business side, we use AI to analyze this feedback and provide valuable insights and recommendations.

I would really appreciate hearing your thoughts Additionally, if you're interested in using this in your startup where we hear your feedback and tailor it to your needs, please let me know

This is super cool, but I think your landing page could really benefit from a screenshot of the tool in use...I honestly couldn't tell you what it did just from reading the page.

Also, to build a great landing page, communicate the "Why" as in why I want it as a customer, and less of "what" I'm getting ("AI Insights!", "Hassle Free!"). Tell me why this product will make my business or project better.

Also, typo on Settings -> Support:

"We are hear to support you" -> here

Possibly a deliberate pun. Owl ears, hear...?
lol, it's actually a typo, but your reply inspired a change to something like: We're all ears, tells how we can help you
this is great, thanks for the deliberate thoughts, I definitely need to change the homepage as suggested
"Unfortunately, it was later removed from the app stores."

Sure sign of a trustworthy middleware author

I also have no idea what sarahah was. But I used a search engine and read about it. It took about 30 seconds to understand why the author is using his app as a reference. It was wildly popular for a while but was used in a way that the mighty duopoly of Google and Apple disliked, so it got removed.
No platform should facilitate targeted anonymous messages; that’s one thing we’ve for sure learned about social media, in part thanks to Sarahah. It should be noted that the reason Google and Apple “disliked” it is that hundreds of thousands of their customers petitioned to have it removed. Those people were mostly parents whose kids were getting bullied anonymously.
anonymity brings many challenges indeed. with regards to the petition and what's commonly shared in conventional media, we have proved to Apple that it's based on a falsified case that our filtration system doesn't allow, the removal's story is rather complicated and not justified and many other anonymous apps were allowed, what we were told after clarifying this to Apple was: "executives requested the removal". Anyhow, this is no history and we surely learned many lessons from sarahah an interesting fact is that sarahah's original idea was inspired by my boss's request for feedback, and the early version of owlears was just that (anonymous feedback in the workplace) Thank you
> No platform should facilitate targeted anonymous messages;

Isn't this basically all social media? Or just the internet in general? It's pretty trivial to do on any platform I can think of.

Most social media requires some identifying details to make it difficult to cyberbully someone without recourse. Sarahah did not. A lot of young people suffered because of Sarahah
Is it really difficult though? You need a phone number but that's about it which in US doesn't even require presenting an ID right?
Thanks for the explanation; i had never heard of it before this thread.
that is very helpful, perhaps I didn't take into consideration that many people digitally active today don't know about it. thanks for sharing this
It was a knock-off/copy of apps that pivoted or shut down in previous years(circa 2015) for the same reasons. They simply failed to take the lessons learned from apps like Secret, Yik Yak, and Whisper about facilitating wanton anonymous post on the interwebs
can you please tell me more what trustworthy middleware author mean? (I didn't get it, sorry)
Am I right to think that OwlEars is supposed to summarize a user's typed comment?

Anyway, here's a datapoint - I added this user comment.

"Spindeliver dropped my food on the road several times,as I watched the delivery cyclist ride wobbling down our street. I think he was drunk, and my food was pulled out of a puddle in front of my eyes, and handed to me. I declined to tip the rider and he became belligerent. I shall not use Spindeliver again."

OwlEars gave it a 55% positive score, which seems a bit optimistic.

I think the 55% is the overall result, not the rating of a single submission.
Ah, ok. I didn't realise that.
Sentiment analysis is the worst
why is that?
IMO bc the accuracy isn’t good enough for the use cases.
alright thanks a lot
Thank you so much, I received super helpful feedback!

Please see a sample box here: https://owlears.com/o/df8e1b0a and a demo analysis: https://owlears.com/obdemo

Many thanks

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  • butz
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Why is close button on the left side? And it is not even aligned properly. Oh, and it's a <span> element. And "Send" button is a <div>. Please, take some time and improve accessibility. Your future users won't notice, but that is the point.
thanks for the feedback
Is this a feedback widget on the frontend and an AI summarizer on the backend? If not, then I have no idea what it is. If so, then consider being clearer about (a) what the tool specifically does, (b) what uses cases it specifically addresses.
I'm so grateful for the feedback sonofhans, I added a comment with a link to sample feedback box and analysis. startups/companies can share the box as a link, widget or QR code, the backend is just raw feedback with a button that analyzes with A.I. and provides recommendations I surely need to cover the points you mentioned. Thanks a million
Alright everyone, Thanks again for the super helpful feedback. I've indeed updated the website to offer a free plan and have made major changes to the copy. Please feel free to share feedback anytime.
  • eterm
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<form> <textarea /> </form> is a product now?
  • gruez
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a HTML form: :-\

a HTML form, with AI: :-o

lol, actually the AI part came later but probably backfired
well, if we can get the job down with a simple form, why not? The goal here is to simplify giving feedback, and no to frame responses with surveys Thanks a lot
AI generated landing page and product name. I've seen "OwlEars" enough when trying to ask for a cool product name.
lol, it's actually not an AI generating landing page
  • asdev
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AI generated landing pages are quite obvious
it's not AI generated, I did get some help with the copy indeed can you please share what led you to think it's AI generated?
The homepage doesn't tell us or show us what it is, so... can't really give feedback on it.
I've shared a comment with links to a sample, there is clearly a problem with the homepage. Thank you so much for your feedback
You're welcome!
thanks again everyone, your feedback was so valuable https://www.owlears.com
Took me the longest time that this had nothing to do with EEG sensors or neural implants. It's just more AI. Meh.
oh, I actually feared this would be considered another AI tool AI is not the core of the platform but rather a feature, I definitely failed to clarify this, or perhaps I focused on it so much in the last few days

Can you please share what led you to think it's an EEG thing?

Thank you

It says it gets data from people's minds. How else is something like that supposed to work? But in fact it gets it from keyboard input or whatever, rather than what it claims.
Its literally just an input box/form, and a summarizer. I was at expecting something that had hidden mics everywhere and recorded everything people said about your business. Or maybe a Slack bot that was in every single public Slack channel and listened to everything people convo that mentioned your business.

Yes, privacy violating, but thats what i was expecting based on the tagline. I mean u gotta live up to your claims!

very well, I already changed this and I'm working on more changes you can see the part you talked about already updated https://owlears.com

many thanks!