▲ 1 points

Ask HN: Should I pursue this startup that depends on decisions of "big players"

by bozho·14y ago·3 comments·view on hn ↗

I have this project of mine (http://welshare.com) that aggregates major social networks and provides a unified interface to them, so that power users can manage their accounts easily.

However, I depend on decisions by facebook, twitter and Google, and that can break my idea completely. For example:

- twitter recently announced that they don't like other vendors writing clients for twitter (http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2011/03/twitter-tells-third-party-devs-to-stop-making-twitter-client-apps.ars).

- facebook had a bug (allegedly fixed now) that penalized stories posted via the API and they didn't appear on other people home streams.

- Google+ are reluctant to provide an API (only a tiny portion so far)

Twitter decides that I can't have anything, other than "retweet" for retweeting messages (screwing my unification), facebook may retain the penalty for 3rd parties, thus making mine disadvantaged, and Google may never release a complete G+ API.

So my questions is: is it worth it to pursue this project?

3 comments

Depends how useful it is to you and others. Coincidentally I was just pondering doing the exact same thing today so I can tell you it would be useful for others. Mine was to be billed as a tool for web designers and social media people to give to their clients as an easy way for them to keep up with their accounts and as a selling point for the people setting it up. I don't mind if you run with that idea either as I probably won't execute very soon.

There are a bunch of companies beholden to Facebook and Twitter for similar reasons as you and the ones who are successful are able to enhance the experience in some way that the company providing the API isn't willing to get into. Zynga is good example. The problem is that if you're not big enough then they don't give a shit. If you have a sizable portion of their users and are providing something that keeps people using their platform then you're good. Check out Buffer. Buffer let's you spread out Tweets over time and I'm pretty sure it posts to Facebook too. Somehow they've managed to avoid the pitfalls. But you're saying the Twitter API won't let Tweets come from your app? That's weird because that's exactly what Buffer does and I haven't seen them have any problem. I haven't looked into it but maybe you can go about asking for an exception. You really have to make a great case though.

But to finally give a straight answer I'd say that if it's important enough to you then you should definitely deal with the uncertainty. Find a model that gives you a kind of partner status rather than a leach status in their eyes. Brizzly, Buffer, and Zynga somehow navigated the territory so I think you could too.

Thanks for the points. I'll continue improving and trying to popularize the service.

Maybe it's too late and you're not checking back but I did find out you can request that your app be white listed by Twitter using their process and they'll let you go over any http request limits and other API limits. I'll try to get in touch with you by email to let you know.