Rusty's Blog

…flesh out a business idea in the age of social media?

I have an idea. I would like to make it available to friends to help me work out the problems with the idea. I know there are some. I wouldn’t mind having partners in implementing the program, as there are several areas I really don’t feel competent to take on myself today.

Ok, something simple. I own an Android G1 cell phone. I know several people who do as well. I also know several people with iPhones. And I’m sure that there are a few friends with the Palm Pre phone. Each of these phones has the ability to gather and post it’s location. An App could be built for each, to an open standard that says ‘Hey, I’m here.’ and the app could display other users of the app on a map of the area, centered on you, and you could chat with those users within the app, or see that they are driving and not available for chat. You might even discover that the person sitting across from you on the bus or train is another user of the app and strike up a conversation, completely outside of the app.

As noted, if you are driving, it’s probably not something you want to be running. But also there is that possibility of two people riding the bus, so just because you are in motion should not prevent you from being able to use the app.

Side note, the one thing I really dislike about the app Waze is that a huge dialog shows up telling you about things happening 700 miles away or more, and some idiot wanting to ‘Chat’ because they are on a computer at home or something. Give me a break. No notifications for events more than 100 miles away, and if I’m attempting to use the platform for navigation, I certainly don’t want to ‘chat’ with someone.

Back to the business idea. Let’s say we get the app built. Since this really is a social app, rather than a user safety app, or navigation aid, I’m thinking that the price should be something like $2.00, possibly with a free limited functionality trial version of the app. I don’t generally like nag ware, so the added functionality would have to be something like profile support where you could decide what info of you gets shared, or in the paid version you can share pictures, or even video, wthout having to link to a third party web page or service. Another option would be to build in twiter or facebook interoperability in the pay edition, not in the free.

The idea is to make the ‘free’ version functional. Just not feature rich. One concern would be to make sure that if you discover a significant flaw in the pay edition that also exists in the free edition, the update should happen for both at the same time.

Anyone want to work on this with me?