Ask HN: Would my idea be worth developing?

6 points by JohnQUnknown 12 years ago | 11 comments

For the longest time I have been wanting to develop an idea of mine which basically consists in a system that works as a "message broker" or "message proxy" that would take a message from a source and redistribute it to any number of other messagig systems (SMS, twitter, etc.) The main implementation that I had in mind was to distribute offers, discounts and publicity to subscribers in any way they chose.

The issue is that I have no idea if this has been done before or if there is a similar system out there, I also don't know if this would be profitable and in case of developing it what would be the best technology to use, I'm thinking of using either Ruby or Python or even node.js as I want it to have a RESTful API for easy integration with other systems.

What do you guys think?

akg_67 12 years ago |

that would take a message from a source and redistribute it to any number of other messagig systems (SMS, twitter, etc.)

This part of your idea is great. But I think by thinking of it as a distribution method for offers/discount/publicity is just meh...

Think of application of this idea in areas such as pinging someone on different channels or someone getting a choice of what media they want to receive alert on about something important (not just another crappy promotional offer).

If you are a system administrator, you most probably know there are much more important alerts/messages people willing to send/receive than a 10% discount coupon or PR shrill.

JohnQUnknown 12 years ago | |

You're right. I thought of PR stuff primarily because that's the need that I have to cover for the project I am working on, but the idea can be implemented in any number of aplications, not just promotional stuff...

ergoproxy 12 years ago |

If you sent a Wuphf (pronounced "woof") to someone, the message went to the recipients' home phone, cell phone, email, fax, pager, Facebook, twitter, and AIM.

The original WUPHF.com beta page is archived at: https://web.archive.org/web/20101122015439/http://www.wuphf....

And WUPH.com's business plan is archived at: https://web.archive.org/web/20101122022512/http://www.wuphf....

On the one hand, WUPH.com was a satire of Silicon Valley in a comedy sketch on an episode of "The Office" called "The Whistleblower" that aired in May 2010. So HootSuite, IFTTT, &c, &c, are all great examples of life imitating art (anti-mimesis).

On the other hand, the WUPH.com beta site mentioned above actually worked, at least for a while, until NBC shut it down. There are a couple of write-ups about this on Forbes:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2010/11/19/the-offi...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2010/11/19/the-next...

PaulHoule 12 years ago |

I feel the need for speed. Time is money in clouds and users like it fast too. Fast makes dev fast to so it is a win all around. You can do a lot of flops in the time it takes to turn base 10 to a float, so I have no time for json or xml in the fast path.

acpk 12 years ago |

If I may ask, what is your speciality and what everyday pains would this fix for you? Others may disagree with me, but I prefer ideas where you are trying to find a solution to a problem that you have on a regular basis.

JohnQUnknown 12 years ago | |

I'm a Systems Administrator, but have done development before, mostly fixing and patching stuff on the different projects I've worked on. Part of why I thought of doing this is because there is another project that I am working on that needs to implement something similar, but I thought that maybe I could do a service instead of a module in that project. The aim of that project is to deliver publicity (promotions, discount codes, etc.) to customers from different providers of their choice, this will be limited to a certain area, so basically it attacks a local need since we don't have a widespread service like that yet.

foxylad 12 years ago |

One issue would be that your messages would be constrained to the lowest common denominator. Twitter means messages can only be 140 characters, and SMS precludes attaching images or links.

As for language/platform, I'd recommend python on Appengine. Easy to develop and it'll scale as far as you want. You can always migrate to a purpose built system when you've proved the concept.

calcsam 12 years ago |

See IFTTT, Zapier, etc. They are doing what you're doing; maybe you can build on top?

JohnQUnknown 12 years ago | |

I thought about using one of such services, but I think they're way too general(ist?) for me, what I want to do is basically have a way to either send a message, login to a panel and submit a message from there or schedule a message that will be distributed among several "subscribers" via different methods, like a newsletter system but using a method selected by the end-user (SMS, email, twitter, etc.)

But you might be right, I could probably do something similar on top of IFTTT, Zapier or Yahoo! Pipelines...

sharemywin 12 years ago |

check out buffer and hootsuite

JohnQUnknown 12 years ago | |

Yeah, I guess what I'm looking for is something more similar to this... Thanks!