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Faces — Create a people directory for your community 👫
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@mijustin Yep, beta testing a Slack integration right now. I do remember someone asking for a Discourse member directory on Twitter a few months ago. Was that you haha? I'll have a look and see what's possible.
Hi all 👋
Excited to launch Faces today. More than 4 years in the making. Kind of.
All the way back in 2013 I created a site to showcase creatives and makers from my local community in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Ever since people asked me to create a similar site for their community. I was working on a lot of different products already and figured some other company would step in and create a service for this kind of stuff.
Few years later, late 2016, there still wasn't a simple service to create a visual overview of the people in a community. I did some quick Twitter research and it turned out more people were interested in such a page and even willing to pay.
So I created a few pages at $200 a pop (for the first year) for a handful of customers. Initially I literally just copied the codebase and did a find & replace for their community name, logo, etc. Later I replaced those with 'environment variables' so the codebase could be the same for each community, although there was still no way for customers to update those variables themselves and setting up a new page required me to spin up a new Heroku instance.
About 2-3 weeks ago I finally started working on a true multi-tenancy version of Faces. That means every community page is hosted on the same server using the same codebase. Basically it means that people can now create and manage their own page, without requiring my involvement. A true SaaS.
Anyway. That's where we are today. I'm excited to see what you'll do with it and let me know if you have any questions or feedback. 🙌
P.S.
Thanks to @espreedevora for pushing me to help her make a page for the LA startup community ( https://community.wearelatech.com ). Seeing her grow that community inspired me to turn it into a service other people could use as well.
Also shout out to @levelsio @flowen_nl @andreyazimov @oskarth for their continued support and feedback in our secret chat group. Thanks to @rpish for keeping BetaList up-and-running while I was off working on Faces. Shout out to all the beta testers and early customers @leonpals @itsakeller @mindaugaslt and countless other people 😍
@marckohlbrugge Great launch story - good to hear how you got to this point with Faces. How did you find people on Twitter who'd be interested in this? Search, or just through your followers?
@ramykhuffash Thanks Ramy. I found them just through my followers, by tweeting about the idea. Key element is that I followed up by asking for payment. It's kinda risky asking your friends/peers for feedback as they tend to be overly positive, but if they are willing to pay for your prototype that's a very good indicator there's real demand.
@marckohlbrugge I love this story. Letting demand dictate build and only going all in when it's clear people will pay for the solution.
Having watched the build on Twitter, I love the care and attention Marc puts into the little details. Super neat app 👌
@marckohlbrugge Awesomesauce! Congratulations on launching the SaaS! We have been talking about this a few times. I think it's a great way for communities to show off their members.
I'm actually part of the Startup Foundation group, and personally I have not 'got anything' from it just yet. So I guess, even as a really active member in many communities, I still have my doubts for the benefits of the user... From my experience in (online and offline) communities, the strength really lies in the 1 on 1 / face to face interactions. Being part of something bigger than yourself is great, but I found every time again that discovery and serendipity is way more important than lists or search.... (you talk about discovery, but basically it's filtering and search).
I know it's just a cool thing to ship, and I salut you for that, but I'm wondering what's next to 'showing off', how do engage the 1on1 exchanges? :)
@marckohlbrugge Looks great...any possibility to see a payment integration and auto invitation. See a lot of slack communities with payment fee and tools like slackpass....build that for Faces and I think you have a super nice feature imho!
Absolutely love Faces and excited to use it for the Women in Tech community too! My favorite thing about it is you can essentially create a LinkedIn for any community without all the social networky stuff. We have Facebook and Twitter etc etc so no one wants another social network to log into making Faces the perfect solution to organize a community. What we want is to connect with one another on a more meaningful level and often times IRL so this is the most fast fluid way to do that.
Excited to see the launch!!! (Honored to be featured in the screenshots :) ) Great work Marc!! #longla
@kyleellicott Thanks Kyle. We don't know each other, but I've seen your face countless of times now when developing the product haha. WeAreLATech's page is one of the most active ones so I tend to use it as an example :)
@jameswahba The goal is to make a product that provides at least $29/mo in value, but ideally way more. Rather aim high then set a low price point.
Is there anything we do to increase the value so it becomes worth the $29/mo for you?
Great tool! Are you considering other pricing options? e.g. a lifetime fee?
@jonbstrong I'll introduce different tiers over the coming months based on the needs of different customers. I'm not sure about a lifetime fee yet. The goal is to continue developing and supporting the product and a lifetime fee doesn't align well with that.
The simplicity of the community foundation is very clever. Adding a straight up price point is also an interesting move. Well done.
@iamchrislaurent Could you please elaborate on "Interesting move"? You mean it's good to create a sort of inaccessible access to the product so more desirable and closer community, ...just super curious on that :) Cheers buddy
Wow I love this tool! There's a huge need for this as most community tools prioritize conversations but don't actually introduce you to people. The layout here is lovely. My request would be for a simple slack integration and a "slack an intro" button. Not relevant for every community, but would be an awesome way to get the conversation started for those communities who do have slack groups.
@francium Thanks Francesca.
I'm actually working on a Slack integration right now. One of the largest Slack communities is already using it: https://members.startup.foundation
The way it works is you connect to your Slack account and we automatically import all your members. By using Slack's custom profile fields you have your Slack members update their profile right from within Slack and everything is automatically synced with your Faces page.
I plan on launching the Slack integration publicly in a few weeks, but if you want to get in on the private beta let me know! marc@getfaces.com
@francium @getfaces @marckohlbrugge This Slack perspective seems promising, as although many communities (not companies) are using Slack, it really lacks the profile features a loose-knit group of people really need.
@francium @getfaces @davidfrahm Yep. I think there's a big opportunity there. If you want I can notify you when it's available. Just need your email address :) (you can DM me on Twitter if you like: @marckohlbrugge)
I can envision so many uses for this!
Communities, of course, but also a directory for anything. Businesses could use it to help people learn about their peers or discover common interests. You could use it (with tags) as a way of helping people find the right person in their organization for help with something specific (i.e. excel master). As a community showcase, it could be used as a way to find freelancers or collaborators.
You could use it to showcase things instead of people: local bands, coffee shops, characters in a tv series (like the wire, for instance), collections of podcasts, etc. There's obviously other solutions for all of these, but one flexible solution that allows you to easily build a well-designed directory for anything opens a lot of possibilities.
@peterkringdon Thanks Peter! I agree there are many different use cases and I can't wait to see what people come up with!
While it looks quite cool, I have a feeling I'm missing a point here. You ask $29/month and what do you get for that?
- a one-page community directory
- a way for people to sign up for said directory, so they can be featured on that page
There's not much else to it, right? Or am I missing something?
If I'm not missing anything, that I think $29/month is rather steep. But that might just be me. Your story mentions having validated that people want to pay for this, so I might be an exception...
@daandebie Hi Daan, are you a developer by any chance?
The functionality is relatively straight forward and so is the underlying technology. What people pay for however, is the value it provides to their community. Being able to show off who's who, strengthen the connection between members, serving as social proof to potential new members, etc. That's what people ultimately pay for and I hope that's worth way more than $29/mo.
There are definitely people for who this is not worth the price tag and that's fine. But right now I'm focused on the customers for whom this type of product is really valuable so that's why I chose this price tag.
@marckohlbrugge Fair enough! I'm a developer myself indeed, and maybe that causes me to be biased with regard to the "worth" of the product. But you're right, ultimately it's about what people are willing to pay for it, regardless of how easy/hard it was to build :)
I hope you become super successful!
@daandebie @marckohlbrugge What feature covers the "social proof" you mentioned above?
Since stumbling across Omawho.com several years ago, I've wished for something cool like this but also questioned the true value enough that I never built it. Sounds like you found a way to connect the dots, so congrats and best of luck!
@marckohlbrugge I did find a competitor that looks to be doing pretty much the same thing, but is a lot cheaper: https://www.producthunt.com/post...
Not only is it $18/month, but it seems they allow you to create many communities (which they call "packs") for that money.
What does Faces do better?
@daandebie Ah yes. I know the makers of that product. They are cool people :)
I haven't tried YourPack apart from the public-facing demo, but the products do seem quite similar. There's some differences in design, customisation, and how much depth each member profile has.
I don't think one is necessarily better than the other. Really depends on your needs. My advice would be to try out both and see which one you like best.
This is really good. I'm already thinking about a bunch of cool ideas to work with this. There are a couple of bugs. I wrote them in the chat:)
@joseph_ayoub Thanks Joseph. The bug has been fixed. (Also replied through the chat)
The logo looks almost exactly like Ello's logo, with the word Faces written in the middle.
@aaroniclee Yep. Imagine my surprise when I saw Ello's logo ;). I designed mine over 4 years ago. It's somewhere in my Instagram feed if you're curious. I might change the logo at some point, since Ello is better known now. That said, it's not a priority at the moment.
@marckohlbrugge I think it works well for your brand, just a coincidence that the two logos are eerily similar.
Seems like a very cool idea. $29/mo is pretty steep though fora lot of uses. Thoughts on tiered subscriptions? I think there's lots of smaller interest /friends communities that would use this if it had a cheaper option.
@dplakon What would be a reasonable price point for you and how many profiles do you plan on adding? Right now the $29/mo plan is for up to 100 profiles.
@marckohlbrugge I think up to like 50 should be around $10/mo to hit a wide enough use case. I wouldn't expect to pay $30/mo til around 250 or so.
Also, it really depends on the use.
Honestly though, have you thought about making this integratabtle as a team page for companies? Those things are a nightmare to keep up to date and if you have a plug and play API that companies could plug their team pages into, that'd be very very useful and totally worth $30/mo. Slack is usually up to date with who currently is working at the company.
@dplakon @marckohlbrugge Thanks for reaching out. I think a $10 plan would be a pretty good deal for something like a slack channel. I'm not exactly sure how you're determining pricing, so I'm not sure how many users that should include.
nice..but ummm I think your logo is very similar to https://www.enjoy.com/
You might wanna check it out~
@jay_h_kim Thanks. There's a few companies with a similar logo. I guess great minds think alike :) (designed mine over 4 years ago)
Looks great! I'm quite active in the coworking scene where I think this could be very useful. Have sent you a message on LinkedIn!
@thalassavanbeek Thanks Thalassa. I don't check my LinkedIn inbox anymore because there's too much spam and impossible to keep track of it all. Would you mind sending me a DM on Twitter ( @marckohlbrugge ) or reach out on the chat at https://getfaces.com ? Bedankt :)
Hi @marckohlbrugge Are you considering using any type of face matching or facial recognition for verification?
@shaunpmoore No, but your technology looks intriguing. I'll keep it in mind for future reference.
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