I woke up on Feb 9, 2011, to see a lot of users on Owe.to. Ok, a lot is not really a lot, more like a few hundreds, but it was more than the usual, considering I hadn't announced it anywhere and only showed it to few friends.
Looking at the access logs, I stumbled upon a few requests coming in from the online version of The Times of India's Mumbai Mirror. Turns out that someone at Mumbai Mirror came across Owe.to and featured it on Page 24 (the sci-tech section).
The reason I hadn't announced it yet was because I was still wrapping up the finishing touches on it (lots of small things to do). This forced launch had me scrambling to finish off stuff, but it was also kind of liberating and exciting. Plus I now have a nice pitch for Owe.to thanks to the description in the paper:
Fed up of friends who borrow money and then conveniently forget? A website to send friendly automated email payment reminders to them.
Other places Owe.to has been spoted so far:
- Jared Spool bookmarked my now dated post about Owe.to's design principles alongside Dieter Rams: ten principles for good design, Facebook Design Principles and LukeW's Developing Design Principles: http://www.delicious.com/jmspool/designprinciples
- Stephen Anderson said "(Owe.to is a) Great example (of a conversational form), thought through in detail"
- Owe.to was featured on a Dutch website in an article about conversational forms: http://www.webanalisten.nl/verbeteren/praktijk-cases/%E2%80%9Cverhaal-formulieren%E2%80%9D-ruim-25-meer-conversie.html
8 comments:
Wow. That is fantastic news. All the very best. I am going to have to use it today I guess for a crappy friend who borrowed money only to never return it.
@vikramadhiman Looking forward to some feedback from you :)
hi Sandeep,
The verification link goes to the spambox in gmail, can you please chck it .
Hey, have some inputs...
E.g. you will want to add a dropdown that lets people select the currency and the date it was spent, which can later be looked at by the people involved in case they plan to calculate the value on that specific date
also, a copy of every email sent to the friend should also be sent to the sender... with a link that allows him/her to update to owe.to when the payment has been made (this will give you insights about how effective your reminders are)
also, some people might want to leave info in the reminder about their bank name, account no, etc to ensure that the friend can immediately transfer some money online - you should maybe allow for that...
will share more ideas when they come up... you can thank me on your website if you use any of these ;)
have been waiting for such an app since a long time... will use it soon enough
@satish Thanks for taking the time to report it. I'll look into it.
@kamal Thanks for the inputs. My responses are inline:
> E.g. you will want to add a dropdown that lets people select the currency and the date it was spent, which can later be looked at by the people involved in case they plan to calculate the value on that specific date
I skipped the dropdown for currency to keep things simple. Can you give me some more context about the need to "calculate the value on that specific date"?
> also, a copy of every email sent to the friend should also be sent to the sender... with a link that allows him/her to update to owe.to when the payment has been made (this will give you insights about how effective your reminders are)
Owe.to already sends an email to the sender and all emails that go out have an option to stop the reminder.
> also, some people might want to leave info in the reminder about their bank name, account no, etc to ensure that the friend can immediately transfer some money online - you should maybe allow for that...
A lot of people are already doing this by leaving it in the context field (What, Where, When).
> will share more ideas when they come up... you can thank me on your website if you use any of these ;)
Keep them coming and I'll surely mention your name if I use them.
> have been waiting for such an app since a long time... will use it soon enough
Glad it solves a problem for you.
The site is brilliant. Very innovative. Good job.
Hello Sandeep,
This is really a brilliant work you started. Looking for major innovative products from you.
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