RFC: Rejected YC concept built as an integrated Facebook app

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=239903829

by jward • 19 years ago

2 4 19 years ago

jward2• 19 years ago

First off I apologize because you need to be on Facebook to use this.

Our YC app was rejected and my founder stayed at his job and I decided to go on ahead and see if I could make our idea work. The gist of what we submitted to YC was a platform where you could review anything like books, movies, cars, whatever. You could take these reviews and embed them into myspace, your blog, or just directly build off your profile on the site. The business model was to find affiliates, like amazon for books, and build revenues from there. I'd hazard a guess and say the business model was what sunk us more than anything else. Great for a lifestyle business but not really for growing something huge.

When Facebook announced that it was opening its platform up to integrated webapps I jumped on the chance. Building on top of Facebook limits my long term growth potential but gives the platform provides a lot. I really believe in what Facebook is doing here. In the future all apps will be social and building a community is really hard. Facebook solves this problem for you. There are downsides but I think in my case it is a win. If this really takes off it will take some work, but not be impossible, to spin it out into the original idea and have the facebook aspect just be a widget.

I've been working on it for a little over a week solid. There's a lot missing from what I'd like to have as a finished product, but I got the core done and decided I should put it out there and iterate on feedback. It's written in Django and uses python bindings for both the facebook and amazon APIs. I'd appreciate any advice or feedback, especially from this crowd. You can message me on facebook or email me directly at: jay at wardtek dot ca

There's more I'd like to write on this whole bit but I'll have to write a blog post later. Right now I'm just dead tired. I look forward to some interesting / useful feedback :)

natrius• 19 years ago

The link doesn't work. Did you change your API settings to make the app public?

jward2• 19 years ago

Well crap ;) That'll teach me for writing stuff when I'm too tired to double check. I have no idea where I got that URL from....

http://apps.facebook.com/apps/application.php?api_key=3724b1a0743578308ce28e934c600377

ced• 19 years ago

Startups should probably wait until they are successful before saying "And YC rejected us". Saying it early doesn't really mean anything.

RFC: Rejected YC concept built as an integrated Facebook app

Related Stories