I kind of admire Mashable because one could argue that they have in fact done what every business hopes to do - start niche and then grow to serve a mainstream market/audience. There is however always a risk that in doing so you alienate the very audience you initially set-up to serve. But if as a business you are comfortable with that then that's ok.
I do feel however that because of its undeniable success on Twitter, Mashable tends to show a little bit of bias in favour of Twitter and sometimes against Twitter's biggest rival Facebook - just my opinion.
Thanks for the thoughtful post. Wow - that much huh? It really feels like a fairly basic app to me but I guess that shows how much I know. I did have someone build me a comparably complex app for me for $600 last year though - but no facebook integration with that one.
Yes, it had occurred to me that storage could be an issue with this one.
By the way, do you know any good resources for finding good but affordable copywriters?
Well, the idea comes to my mind that, if it could be done for $600 (or even $6000), then it's a side project that any developer, anywhere could do in a month of spare time if they had the idea. You can't patent/trademark an idea either so, if you can build it for cheap, someone can copy it for cheap as well.
Looking at your specs, I don't necessarily agree that you'll need $25k minimum. It seems pretty simple to me too; $1k-$3k for the right person seems right to me to get you your beta then another $1k for bug squashing and $x/mth for maintenance.
What I don't get is that (a) you aren't the developer, (b) you aren't wanting to write copy, and (c) it doesn't seem like something that needs a salesperson making calls, so what's your role? Rhetorical question really.
Yeah, $25k may seem high, and probably varies a lot on location. $25k is what I would recommend if someone was in the early stages of a business case.
$600 is really only a day or two's work for a professional developer. Depending on where you're at, you could spend double that just nutting out the exact requirements.
That said, as my first line was trying to allude to - it's horses for courses. You can go a lot cheaper, or a lot more expensive depending on what you're after.
If you have the right contacts, and you want something whipped up, $1-2k might be more than enough.
You're using one now. I'm in the midst of launching a site myself (outsourced as I'm in a situation much like yours) but I have 9 years worth of copywriting/marcom/biz dev background. Feel free to shoot me an email and I'd be happy to chat.
I hadn't considered that but you are right, Facebook's pages are kind of similar. A Twitter version would be better though because it will be more interactive and real time. And since it will revolve around messaging, it should be easier to monetise on an ongoing basis.
I too do not agree that ideas are worthless. About a year ago, I posted that I was amazed at the number of idea-bashing posts that I found in the blogosphere. I have taken the following excerpt from my post:
"... whilst an idea that is not executed is not worth anything in itself, it is worth something if it sparks other ideas that do get executed, whether by the originator or someone with whom the originator shares the idea.
Another point that these idea bashers make is that a well executed poor idea is worth more than a poorly executed brilliant idea. Whilst this may be true, I contend that a good execution of a poor idea is itself a good idea that was sparked by the poor one. In other words, to execute an idea you have to come up with an idea of how to execute the idea you are trying to execute. And the idea you want to execute is what sparks your brilliant execution idea.
So to my mind, ideas rule.So people, please stop the idea bashing. Ideas rock and are the seeds of innovation, change and progress."
Thanks Sheriff, I am aware of the wish list approach but it doesn't work for me. I don't want people to be restricted to what's on a recipient's wish list.
Thanks. Yes, the problem you are highlighting did occur to me after I posted my question. I note though that Amazon has kind of a social network feature where you can add friends and family and set privacy options on that basis. I guess receiving random gifts from people or having them add items to one's wish list would need to be limited to such 'friends'.
Not being a hacker and not having enough money just yet to hire one for my startup. So I spend a lot of time looking for and trying out shortcuts that tend not to amount to much.
I am in the U.K - Milton Keynes, which is less than an hour from London. I dabble but I am no hacker by any means. I do however design software for a living and I am looking for a hacker co-founder for a startup. So if anyone is interested, do get in touch - initially by reply here and we'll take it from there.
I do feel however that because of its undeniable success on Twitter, Mashable tends to show a little bit of bias in favour of Twitter and sometimes against Twitter's biggest rival Facebook - just my opinion.