looking for reviews on our application

[MaksKogan]

Hello everyone,
me and my partner are developing an application for facebook, we'll be glad to know what you think off it...
In a nut shell:

As you browse through web pages in many cases you want to leave a message for your friends (from Facebook)... so they can read, when the access that same page.
More over, we allow to leave your notes-for-friends inside the content in a sort of "thought bubble", that is - you can paste next to a certain link:
"Guys, this link is hilarious :D",
or you might leave a message to you girlfriend next to a view photo saying
"Jane, let's go there next summer!".
So, every page you visit you can see what your friends are telling you about the info there (about links, photos, parts of text or simply tell a funny joke).

please,
let me know waht you think -
Would YOU use it?
why do you think it (might) won't work?
what does it lack to be better?
can is succeed business-wise???

and anything else you want to add is welcomed

Thanks,
Maks

[Justin McBride]

This sounds creative as well as a new take on traditional comments. Good luck!

[seanstevens]

Sounds like it has potential and I'm sure with so many people on facebook, some would give it a go.

[Fergal]

Hi Maks, the idea sounds great. How far are you along with developing the application? Will the comments be viewable by everyone or will they just be available to users' FaceBook friends? Will the comments just be on Facebook pages, or will they also appear on other sites?

You might find this thread on Google's Sidewiki (http://www.businessadviceforum.com/showthread.php?t=4434) interesting, as it discusses a Google application that allows visitors to comment on web pages they visit.


...Would YOU use it?

Yes, if it was user friendly. Although it is difficult to give a definitive answer until we can see the application and fully understand how it works.


why do you think it (might) won't work?
It could work because Facebook has a huge user base who are interested in anything that is innovative, user-friendly and that makes using the Internet and Facebook a more enjoyable experience. Plus FaceBook applications have a huge potential to spread virally as people share them with their friends. Your development should think seriously about anything you can do to make it easy for your application to spread virally.


what does it lack to be better?
Sorry but I'd really need to know more about the application to answer that. The question may not be so much about what it lacks but what it can do without. Applications that are very simple and easy to use are often more successful than more complex applications.


...can is succeed business-wise???
Yes it can succeed. But whether or not it does succeed depends on your business model and how effectively you implement it. How do you plan on earning revenue from the application?

[Moving thread to Online Business forum!]

[MaksKogan]

Hi Maks, the idea sounds great. How far are you along with developing the application? Will the comments be viewable by everyone or will they just be available to users' FaceBook friends? Will the comments just be on Facebook pages, or will they also appear on other sites?
Well, the idea is that the comments appear on popular news-sites, blogs, and basically every page that has traditional commenting system (at the bottom of the page) enabled...not on the facebook pages.
Who can see it - the idea is that upon leaving a comment you can choose which among your facebook friends will be able to view it.


You might find this thread on Google's Sidewiki (http://www.businessadviceforum.com/showthread.php?t=4434) interesting, as it discusses a Google application that allows visitors to comment on web pages they visit.

Yep, we know about google's new commenting tool. They are not the only ones with similar tools. But, we believe that comments in a "side bar" is not as appealing as with in the content itself, it's less comfortable and physically separates the object (we want to give an option to comment not only on text) from the comment.
what is more, no commenting tool is built to directly rely and be designated to use facebook's infrastructure and already well connected and known to all social graph.


Although it is difficult to give a definitive answer until we can see the application and fully understand how it works.
fair enough. The first prototype will be simple, allowing to comment only on hyper-links
in a web page. That is, say a user wants to view a certain news web site - "www.cnn.com" for example, which has many links to it's homepage to articles.
He might want to read only those that his friends he knows, found interesting. So,
He lunches the facebook app from his applications list, and he sees cnn.com, with all his
friends messages left there, through a browser-type window opened in the app for the site.
future options include - photos commenting, comment any text section on a page, and more..

the final direction we hope to reach is upon logging into facebook -
you will be able to see in the apps opening page - all (depends on your configuration)
the comments your friends made, what they liked, disliked, recommend, the most commented site of the day, etc.. thus, you are also in touch with what your friends have been up to lately.


Yes it can succeed. But whether or not it does succeed depends on your business model and how effectively you implement it. How do you plan on earning revenue from the application?
We thought of couple of directions, but some more thinking needs to be done,
after all the characteristic of the app are finished.
Advertising (without "polluting" the comments with ads, of course), and
premium accounts are the main ways we think of.

[Fergal]

Sounds great Maks. Your proposed application reminds of StumbelUpon in some ways. Does it have similarities or is it completely different?

[MaksKogan]

well, not quite.
The thing is like that -

basically, it's not a revolutionary idea - "web annotation tool". We simply think that,
combining 2 things:
1.annotations on the content, not some variation of annotation on the "side" of a page.
2. designated towards facebook and facebook only, relying on already given friends connections

hasn't quite been done yet, and might "catch" :)

what I wrote about gathering the data on a single page, with different statistics
(which is a bit similar to Digg) is one variation of a future features that might be done.

It's not quite like StumbleUpon, because you can annotate not only links.. but the main difference is the goal - we want to show your friends "touch" on the page you're reading (it's not social bookmarking like StumbleUpon).

Our main problem now - we want to get many people reviews, we appreciate yours a lot, of course, but want to have a vast survey :)
and it's not really working right now..

[Fergal]

...Our main problem now - we want to get many people reviews, we appreciate yours a lot, of course, but want to have a vast survey :)
and it's not really working right now..

You might consider using a tool like http://www.surveymonkey.com/ to set up a survey with specific questions. Also have you considered asking all your FaceBook friends for their opinion on the application and it's features? You could also ask them to ask their friends about it. You could even purchase an ad on FaceBook, with a link to your survey page. This type of approach might get you the feedback you need, because all those FB users are in your target market.

[jacbiloct09]

Hi,

Great effort ! good luck

[MaksKogan]

thanks for the replies guys !

SurveyMonkey is a pretty good idea..hmm..