

I built a 'Crush Notifier' 3 years ago. No one cared. - mkrecny
http://apps.facebook.com/strikeamatch/

======
acangiano
Coding is necessary but not sufficient. You may have the most stunning Crush
Notifier implementation out there, but what have you done in terms of
marketing? I suspect not too much. In the case of "crush notifier", the
developer is surfing a wave he himself created through the huge splash that
"breakup notifier" made.

~~~
mkrecny
You're right. I was a student at the time and had no idea how to begin
marketing. Nor enough time. In addition, the FB notifications API was
deprecated shortly after I release it - so it didn't work for much longer than
a month. It still made a chunk of change whilst in operation though.

~~~
wdewind
So by "no one cared" you mean "a significant enough number of people noticed
that I made money"

why the long face?

~~~
mkrecny
Fair point : )

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flyosity
Well, to be fair, the original idea wasn't a "crush notifier" it was something
more interesting and useful, a breakup notifier. That's what was banned. I'm
sure there are a dozen other crush notifiers out there.

~~~
WalterGR
_I'm sure there are a dozen other crush notifiers out there._

And there has been for at least ten years.

Back then you entered your email address... and the email addresses of
everyone you had a crush on. Of course, if any of those latter ones weren't
the original crush, they would get email saying someone had a crush on them.
And so on. The original "viral".

Here's one of the messages I received.

Subject: Somebody has a crush on you

Date: 3 May 2001 16:42:01 -0000

From: CrushMaster@redacted.com

To: wrader@redacted.edu

Guess what... you've got a secret admirer! Want to find out who it is? Just
click to
<[http://www.redacted.com/index.php3?email=wrader@redacted.edu...](http://www.redacted.com/index.php3?email=wrader@redacted.edu>);

Email address: wrader@redacted.edu

Invitation code: 5nmwa

Make sure you enter in this information exactly as shown above.

See you soon!

Sincerely,

/The Crush Master/

------
iisbum
Frankly, I for one and probably many other people still don't care about it,
or about Crush Notifier.

------
vicngtor
Look I built a crush notifier too (www.adore.ly). I made a few attempts to
even market on HN but I didn't get to front page. You forgot luck is a huge
factor in entrepreneurship.

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mtrn
Timing is everything (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwL0G9wK8j4#t=52s>).

~~~
paul9290
As well a few days beforehand facebook had a media blitz about adding a new
relationship status (domestic partnerships) into the mix.

------
jhrobert
"Timing is everything"

It's related to "critical mass" People do things differently now then they did
3 years ago. What didn't work then may work now. You felt you had a great
idea? It didn't work?

Try again, things have changed.

------
superfamicom
Dating on Facebook is creepy in general.

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klagan
it's all about the marketing and who you know.....

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stretchwithme
Maybe you can use a browser plugin to implement your own Breakup Notifier and
use the current buzz to get some traction. How hard can it be to automate
looking at that info?

------
methodin
The jealousy of success is always a constant.

------
mathgladiator
marketing, marketing, marketing!

------
TheSOB88
Well, A. everyone's thought of that app, and

B. you didn't just create a wildly successful app that got banned for
basically no reason.

~~~
jayzee
I don't know why people keep saying it got banned for _no_ reason. I can think
of a very good reason, mind you, I don't think it is a _fair_ reason...

Basically facebook makes money of eye-balls. A lot of people may be checking
profiles of there stalkerish-intent on a regular basis to see if they are
still in a relationship. More stalking, more eyeballs. Dan basically took that
away from fb. With Break-up Notifier people did not have to log-on anymore.
They would be informed automatically when the objects of their affection
changed that relationship status. That is a whole different beast. You have
just attacked fb's main monetization strategy. Expect swift retribution.

Now on the other hand if you develop a wildly successful game which gets
people to log-on again and again to water their plants, expect fb's full
support.

That is the reason why break-up notifier got banned.

~~~
ignifero
I am pretty sure there's a better reason it got banned. Facebook does not
allow storing user's data externally. You can cache them but they must be up
to date:

\-- <http://developers.facebook.com/policy/> \-- You may cache data you
receive through use of the Facebook API in order to improve your application’s
user experience, but you should try to keep the data up to date. \--

Plus, applications that rise to millions within days usually employ spam
tactics. I 'm curious what's the motivation behind all this blog attention,
though

~~~
2arrs2ells
This is 100% correct.

(And the reason I never promoted my facebook app "unfriendly" - which notified
you when someone dropped you as a friend)

------
ignifero
There are thousands of apps that went from zero to millions through the years
that facebook's platform has existed. Mostly it was through spam, but some
were good at manipulating the crowds (snowballs, yawn). That's how zynga grew
to be what it is. Why the sudden attention now? I guess this is it: lack of
anything interesting in technology lately.

------
Charuru
I still don't care.

