dvel - Make better decisions with friends

@skylifee7 very good question. dvel is streamlined for decision making. I used to ask people using Whatsapp, it takes longer, because the asked person needs to type text. The main problem I had using Whatsapp is, that you have a lot of distraction like comments and alternative suggestions. We wanted to create a product that offers the fastest possible feedback, if you get the question right, it should be easy for the person you ask and dvel provides the first feedback within seconds. Let me know if you have any questions.

@peterbuch That answer looked promising 👍 But, if I want to ask for a right decision to my friends, they must download the app ? Am I right ? I don't think they will be willing to download it, easily.. Maybe we can send shortened URLs with little web-application(decision making) on it.. And that web-application may ask for&promote downloading the app such as " Hey John! Thanks for helping your friend's food decision 🍕 If you want to ask for immediate answers for your complicated decisions, join us Today! bit.ly/xdvelapppx " 🐧

@skylifee7 that's a good point. Your friends don't need the app. Just create a dvel and share a web link to our webvoting via whatsapp. That's already implemented. Your friends can than vote even if they don't have the app. You can even set a dvel to private before you post it and than share the link to Whatsapp if you want that only your friends in a Whatsapp group can vote for it. Having a short link would be awesome, that's a great input. @phips28 let's do it.

@peterbuch Wow, cool! I wish both of you a good luck about your product's future 😎

@skylifee7 thanks so much, have a great day and I'm looking forward to more feedback. cheers from Vienna

@luca I would say so far most dvels fall into these 3 categories: what to wear ? : http://www.letsdvel.com/dvels/7e... what to eat ? : http://www.letsdvel.com/dvels/6a... what to buy ? : http://www.letsdvel.com/dvels/58... It's impossible to anticipate which additional formats/usecases we will see. Even just looking at the 5k dvels so far it looks like there will be countless and very diverse usecases. I also see a strong usecase in logo or other visual a/b testing in real-time. One thing I find fascinating is seeing users prompt others for cheering for them for making the right decision (not smoking, getting up, studying, going for a run) Can't wait to see what dvels you come up with.

@3x14159265 We're planning some Guerilla Marketing efforts. One example is stickers placed in changing rooms of clothing stores (#whattobuy? ). Another one will be stickers in gym locker rooms prompting go back for another circle or go home. (#whattodo ?) In addition to that we're focusing on unconventional (can't say yet) formats on upcoming Social Platforms including @appmeerkat, @bemeapp, @YikYakApp etc. I'll write about it on Medium (https://medium.com/@peterbuch ) as soon as the campaigns go live.

Quite an interesting idea. In addition it might be interesting to allow people to add why they would go for a certain choice. Ever thought about doing that @peterpuch ?

@valscholz brilliant idea, thanks for the input, will discuss this internally. I'm pretty sure we'll add asking for experts advise to our product roadmap.

hey @valscholz, we developed an algorithm that orders dvels based on your voting behavior and some other parameters. We refine this algorithm constantly and so you should always get the best fitting content.

@sjsolares thanks Sigmund, great point. We recorded a "how to pronounce" for you: https://youtu.be/zOq9d7lEKUM

@peterbuch If you need to make a video to teach users how to pronounce your name, it's probably a really bad name. If you had dvel.com I could understand, but having an almost unpronounceable name will only hurt you in the long run. I'm guessing it means something in some language, but it probably has no meaning in all (!) others. My advice is to change it before it gets big - the more you'll wait the harder it'll get. But hey I'm just a simple man.

@danr_4 thanks for your feedback. dvel stands for duel with a 'v'. The 'v' in our logo is a mathematical sign for 'or'. That's the idea behind. Makes sense?

@peterbuch Yep. great concept, but it's still very hard to pronounce. If i tell someone "hey have you heard of dvel?" I'm pretty certain there's no way in hell he'll find you - "what did you say? dwell? vell? dell?" it's extremely hard on the ears AND the mouth.

@danr_4 thanks for your input and your support. How would you name it? :)

@__tosh We are hosting our servers on Microsoft Azure (we are BizSpark Plus member) and Amazon AWS (we are AWS Activate member). Our API is written in NodeJS. We have a short-term cache in Redis and a long-term cache in MongoDB replica. We use MySQL to store all of our main data. Beside the core we use PHP for some small tasks like generating/processing images (e.g. Facebook share image). We are currently working on more loadbalancing stuff for our core servers. If you have further questions follow me on twitter @phips28

@mahringer_a good point, currently 5 votes within the first 30 seconds. To have a magical experience we're aiming for 5 qualified (friends) votes within 5 seconds.

@__tosh indeed, Lara, one of our early community members from France started to ask for motivation. One example: "stay at home or go for a run #whattodo ?" Most people voted for "go for a run" which motivated Lara to go for a run. More and more people follow her and I think that's what drives a community. Early adopters, who are super engaged and understand the platform better. I'm sure Lara will grow a huge follower base when dvel is growing.

@andreasklinger yes we have an FB Messenger Integration

@andreasklinger great question because it is part of our growth concept! In the current app we have 2 Messenger integrations. - sharing the link (to webvoting) to get the OG:Object via metatags (first row in the sharing sheet) - new native messenger integration, but this does not work if the recipient opens the Messenger in a browser, because Facebook only shows the shared image w/o a link, so its useless (second row in the sharing sheet) We are working on a sharing improvement.

@msch me and @fredstrasser started troutloud http://www.troutloud.com/ and http://www.tagvertising.com with the aim to reward users of Social Media for tagging brands on pictures, meaning native advertising in exchange of rewards. In addition to that I'm a speaker and Social Media marketer.

@msch i started freelancing as a web & app dev (2010). Last year (Feb 2014) I founded www.intracked.com with a college during college. It's an app & web portal for driving schools and students, to track their required kilometers (1000-3000) for the driving license. I sold the company and started dvel end of Feb 2015.

@amitgolans amazing, thanks man. Just received your e-mail and will come back to you tomorrow latest. Calling Amazon now ;-)

@oliverlukesch Brands have questions too and seeking for ways to engage their audience. Using dvel brands can involve their community in product decisions and make their followers part of the brands future. Our current focus is on giving users the best experience with dvel and grow a community of people who help each other making better decisions. We're convident to find a way to monetize without annoying our users, but we're not on focusing on this at all right now.

@emmanuelnataf thanks for the pointer Emmanuel, great minds think alike. Can you make an intro? Can someone add it as a similar app? /cc @bentossell

@aditya_shirole thanks for the kind words, appreciate it. Working on an Android version :) Let me know if you have any questions