The Quest for Webapp Publicity - Now What?
pedalpete: Hey mstefff, you've clearly done a good ob with the PR so far, getting yourself on Lifehacker and Webware - any tips on how you managed that? I've also always been curious as to what % increase sites see as a result of getting on Lifehacker, and how much of that traffic remains visitors a month later.My initial reaction to your site (this time around, I couldn't really make much sense of it before) is that it likely just isn't sticky enough. 
Though I agree that the 'communities' are way over done, you've included a sign-up to customize option, so you are gathering user details. 
Your site has the opportunity to serve users who have signed up, and those who have not. You don't have to be a social network to be a community, but I think you should be leveraging the 'community' that you have. 
For instance - when I come to your site now, it offers me the opportunity to sign-up, or to click on one of the above icons. 
Wouldn't your site be stickier if when I first come to the site it tells me what you suspect I am looking for? I'm not much of an investor, but your users should be, therefore I should be able to come to your site and be shown a few things that the community is currently finding interesting. Everybody benefits from that kind of stuff- new users and return visitors.As I see it now, i can get quotes and news from a number of sites. But if you were to aggregate into a popularity list somehow (it can be done!), or recent activity, etc. that might bring people back to your site more often. Doesn't have to be a social network, but even the news sites show you stuff they think you'd be interested in right off the bat. Right now I go to your site and i have to decide what I want to look at. You're probably loosing people right there.