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Ask HN: An app which allows you to follow a Facebook page without liking it in fb

8 points by black_blood ↗ HN
Hi.

Did you ever not like a facebook page just because you were worried that your friends will know about your interest? I believe we need to give users an option to `follow` a page without letting his/her friends know that he/she follows/likes a certain page.

I made an app which allows you to follow facebook pages without actually liking those pages in facebook. This app will allow you to `follow` various facebook pages and this app will have a `wall` where you will have a PICTURES FEED of the facebook pages that you are following. Will you be interested in trying out this app?

Please let me know. Thanks for your time.

6 comments

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Phithagoras
If it meets the guidelines, this could make a good Show HN. Good luck. https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
black_blood
As the app is a hybrid app, ready for its release only on Android platform, I am uncertain on how many will actually try it out when posted in Show HN. What do you think?
brudgers
A couple of thoughts:

This indicates a dependency (on mobile devices) that is not inherent in the problem domain (following a page on Facebook). The dependency on mobile devices impedes the critical business function of receiving feedback from potential users. The app prototype could just as easily be a web page.

Overall, the app has a dependency on Facebook's API's and terms of service. Facebook can change theses arbitrarily or decide the app violates their intent.

Good luck.

black_blood
2nd dependency, Facebook deciding that the app violates their intent, I never thought it. If Facebook in fact does that, I don't think I can do anything about it.

1st dependency, dependency on mobile devices, yeah, I regret starting with the mobile app. Though this is a hybrid app, considering the time that I can spend on this and my pace, I might take nearly a month to make a web app. And now, I am not sure if I should go ahead and release the Android version, or work on the web app and release web app first. Any suggestions?

brudgers
If it's ready for release on Android then nothing is lost by releasing it now. In fact it might bring the dependency on Facebook into play faster and it's good to get to 'No' quickly. [1]

As a general observation, many successful apps have a website in addition to a presence in the app stores. So it makes sense to assume you'll be building a web page anyway. For an app like yours, it's probably easier to test and iterate core logic on a webpage than in a mobile device.

Whether it makes sense to build a web page at this point requires looking at the risk of the second dependency versus the cost of building a page and that's a business decision for your business.

[1]: http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/26/get-to-no-as-fast-as-you-c...