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Ask YC: what to develop first, Facebook App or Website?

6 points by Tichy ↗ HN
Thinking about my current project, I just realized that it doesn't do anything I couldn't do with facebook - I assume anything a social network can do, a facebook app can do. So I wonder if I should create the facebook app first, and only later create a standalone website for my service?

And I just realized that there is no way to compete with Facebook, at least not without adding my own "Facebook Apps" feature: no matter how many features I conceive for my SN, I will never be able to add features as fast as the plethora of Facebook Apps creators out there. My only hope is that, just like me, not everybody wants to be on facebook.

7 comments

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Leon
Sounds like you've already made a decision.

Why compete with Facebook head on when you can use their market share as an advantage?

Tichy
Ego, pride... ;-) I am not actually a facebook user myself, I don't even like it very much.

Another concern is monetarization - even if I have more users on facebook, would I be able to earn similar amounts of money per user as with my own website?

I also wanted to get out of the dependency on big corporations. So far most things I did were dependent on somebody controlling the market. With mobile games, there was the dependency on the mobile phone carriers and established games vendors, for example. Overall I was unhappy with that situation.

I haven't made the decision yet, because I only thought about the facebook aspect today.

Leon
Zuckerburg has been pretty big on promoting favor towards facebook app's, so it's probably not as bad as cell phone development (I had a friend in the mobile games market, they just aren't as friendly as they should be).

Even if you don't get the same monetization, you're going to be able to get a lot more users by building into the biggest existing social network than having them switch/use a new one.

Even if you made 1/10th the amount of money, if you can get 10 times the users then you're still good.

madmotive
I've been very tempted to take the Facebook App first approach on a number of projects. Like you say, it focuses you on what the core value of your application is without being distracted by the social networking fluff around the outside.

If what you create proves to be really compelling, you should be able to convert a good portion of your Facebook users over to a stand alone version of your app at a later date.

Obviously this only really works if enough people in your target market fit into the typical Facebook demographic.

paulhart
For the startup I'm working on, we're going to put together a small app to take advantage of Facebook for advertising purposes - basically an optional thing to put in your profile to say "hey, I'm using this service, this is what's happening for me, come check it out."

That's part of the marketing plan though, rather than the development plan, so it's a way off still.

MaysonL
Use the Facebook app to draw users to your website(where there are features not in the app, or more useably than in the app).
atlacatl
The first thing that you should know and accept is that there are probably 10 other people working on the same application you have in mind or are working on.

Second, if you go the facebook route, the first app of its kind will likely be more successful--that incumbency thing. If it's a compeling app, hurry app and deploy it.

Finally, if you decide to create the website first, then your target market has to be well defined, i.e., you have a niche solution to a specific problem for a specific group of people. If it's too broad, creating the website first will not likely generate enough traction, unless you can create enough volume.