Thinking about building an app

[L&HH]

Not to kill dreams but Instagram isn't going to buy your idea. There's no way for you to reach them to "sell" them an idea. There's no way to reach any tech company to do this unless you have close contact with the owners themselves and even that probably wouldn't do it. You'd have to gain user traction to prove that it's something consumers want. But since your product relies strictly on Instagram, you give them all the leverage to just copy your app once you prove that traction and them just disallowing your app. Why would Instagram even need to buy it? It's not like they have any competition that they'd want you to prevent implementing your app on. At worst they'd let you just keep running your app knowing the end user must engage with Instagram.

 

[D.C Young]

Program the addon yourself or find someone who can.

come up with a catchy name.

Set up an eye pleasing website to download the addon

share the program with reddit, the coli, etc.

If the idea takes off, it takes off.

sooner or later, you'll get a cease and desist from instagram.

a year or two later, they'll debo your idea and implement it themselves.

If you're lucky, you might get an unpaid internship offer from a tech company.

After that, you'll be back on the coli bytching about getting fukked.

You'll get 17 daps on the thread and some funny Jordan cry gifs as consolation.

lol but forreal though

are you saying that I can actually create the addon or the widget and have instagram users implement it on their page

themselves without necessarily getting the permission from Instagram?

because I'm not really interested in building a instagram like app and competing with them

because dethroning them is damn near impossible.

I'm more interested in using the Instagram platform to implement my idea

whether that's through pitching my idea to Instagram or some other way

 

[Data-Hawk]

Instagram/Facebook have teams of people who come up with ideas. If you though of it, somebody there probably already has.

Ideas are worthless, it's the implementation that counts.

 

[FSP]

right, that's exactly why I was thinking

I was thinking that I was going to have to develop this idea myself before I even approached them

but why can I not just walk up to them and introduce my idea

(under the right circumstances, such as a signed NDA or something)

That's what you're going to have to do.

If you just came at them like that, they will most likely laugh you out of the room

You'll have to build it and show them that it works, even then, you'll need leverage that they don't already have or else they're going to choke you out of your users by building their own version.

Also, you have to think about your app functions relationship to instagram.

What I mean by that is, if your app functions by using Instagram's API, realize that they can freely cut you off from it, for any reason whenever they so choose to. They can do whatever they want with their data, and if you want to play that game they can decide to not give you the data that powers your app

Twitter does this all the time. Google 'twitter token limit' to see what I'm trying to say.

They basically have all the cards.

 

[Matt504]

"the envelope is still closed?"

 

[D.C Young]

Not to kill dreams but Instagram isn't going to buy your idea. There's no way for you to reach them to "sell" them an idea. There's no way to reach any tech company to do this unless you have close contact with the owners themselves and even that probably wouldn't do it. You'd have to gain user traction to prove that it's something consumers want. But since your product relies strictly on Instagram, you give them all the leverage to just copy your app once you prove that traction and them just disallowing your app. Why would Instagram even need to buy it? It's not like they have any competition that they'd want you to prevent implementing your app on. At worst they'd let you just keep running your app knowing the end user must engage with Instagram.

yeah that's one of the reasons why I wanted to see whether there's something proprietary about my idea

but in order to even find out, I probably need some money for that, for like a patent search and shyt like that

 

[Charlie Hustle]

Write the idea on a piece of paper then put it in and envelope and send it to yourself. When you receive it, don't open it.

Now you can freely talk about the idea since you have record of the idea from the post office stamp on the unopened envelope. All of the CEOs and corporate execs use this method before going into a business sales pitch.

The poor mans copyright.

This has been used in the music biz for a long time

 

[D.C Young]

That's what you're going to have to do.

If you just came at them like that, they will most likely laugh you out of the room

You'll have to build it and show them that it works, even then, you'll need leverage that they don't already have or else they're going to choke you out of your users by building their own version.

Also, you have to think about your app functions relationship to instagram.

What I mean by that is, if your app functions by using Instagram's API, realize that they can freely cut you off from it, for any reason whenever they so choose to. They can do whatever they want with their data, and if you want to play that game they can decide to not give you the data that powers your app

Twitter does this all the time. Google 'twitter token limit' to see what I'm trying to say.

They basically have all the cards.

yeah somebody else mentioned that too...

my idea is probably a long shot, but I think its worth researching though

 

[FSP]

yeah somebody else mentioned that too...

my idea is probably a long shot, but I think its worth researching though

YES! Please do tons of research before building something like that. You are very likely wasting your time.

I'm an app developer, and I'm gonna tell you right now cuz I don't want to see you toiling away for months at something that will likely fail in less than 24 hours (it happens all the time), if you are planning on building something that lets you profit from their data, they will 100% cut you off. The app business economy is extremely cutthroat. They don't want you to win.

Now if you're just trying to make a couple of bands in the short term and don't care what happens then by all means. But they will find out and they will cut you off. Even if you did start a communication channel with them in honest intention. You most likely will have to come up with something that doesn't piggyback off of some other company's data or users.

 

[Voice of Reason]

Write the idea on a piece of paper then put it in and envelope and send it to yourself. When you receive it, don't open it.

Now you can freely talk about the idea since you have record of the idea from the post office stamp on the unopened envelope. All of the CEOs and corporate execs use this method before going into a business sales pitch.

Actually sounds like a novel idea

 

[L&HH]

yeah that's one of the reasons why I wanted to see whether there's something proprietary about my idea

but in order to even find out, I probably need some money for that, for like a patent search and shyt like that

I personally think for a person in your position the whole software patent, nda thing is a waste of time. A patent isn't going to stop them from taking your idea. You have no money to defend it. Here's a breakdown of how much it costs to defend a patent: How much is that patent lawsuit going to cost you?

You're going to spend 3-4 years to get that patent and then waiting on them to infringe on it then another 5 years in out of court suing them? Total costs in the millions of dollars?

Instagram just verbatim copied snapchats stories feature.

 

[Voice of Reason]

Damn y'all are extremely negative

 

[FSP]

Damn y'all are extremely negative

Nah, you just don't know how the app business works. They're not trying to see you succeed that easy breh. It's cold.

 

[D.C Young]

Damn y'all are extremely negative

I feel you but I see where they are coming from

the technology industry is very dirty from what I understand....

its almost like a copy cat culture

and allot of times you can't even play ball with them unless you got resources to begin with

 

[Voice of Reason]

Nah, you just don't know how the app business works. They're not trying to see you succeed that easy breh. It's cold.

I've looked into it myself and I understand its competitive but so is any other field with a high upside. OP's idea might be a long shot but that doesn't mean he should just give-up before he gets started.