There's no hard and fast rule to acceptable bounce rates but here's some context. I have several sites and have worked with many companies on site optimization and have seen higher than 49%. The bounce rate of my personal site is 31%. Strong well established startups I've worked with that get qualified traffic are in the low 30% range. My other misc. projects are in the 40% to low 50% range.
Yes, you can still improve your 49%. Shoot for the high 30-s. From briefly glancing at your homepage there's a lot of glaring things you could be doing better:
As a start...
-Have one clear call-to-action that resides in a easy to see button. Right now you have several that are encompassed in easy to miss text links. As a visitor I'm not sure what to do to get started.
-Use graphics that show what your company does. Right now there's way too much text - people don't read, you've got about 3 seconds to show them what you do, and graphics are a visually compelling way to communicate this.
-Your logo is hard to read, and the value prop in your tagline isn't differentiated enough. (90% of social networking services can describe themselves using the same line). Think about your site's individual value prop and communicate that.
-Work on layout. Your current design looks like a template that's 5 years old (sorry!). Get a designer (99 Designs) to make you something good. It's worth it. This page is begging for a redesign.
-Test and iterate. Use Google Site Optimizer (free) for a/b testing and/or UserTesting.com (cheap) to get more info on how real people react to your site.
Thanks for the insightful input Justin. Come say hello when you get here. As for interwebs, @tylerwillis said the capacity is now doubled so it shouldn't be a problem, but I'll be there in 20 to test.
Here’s more of a "challenge" than a problem I’d appreciate feedback on. Our team-of-two is creating an iPhone App for Kiva (no, there’s not one already). It’s obviously down to the wire on what functionality will make it in for the launch tonight. Knowing you guys are probably familiar with www.Kiva.com, any feedback on the functionality you’d most want is appreciated. More specifically, what's the one thing you'd want your Kiva App for iPhone to do?