lessons learned through writing a facebook app
a long time ago, when facebook opened its api, i wrote a Quran application for facebook [see my previous post, here]. however, it was a hack, wasn’t fully featured, it didn’t look great, and, most importantly, it wasn’t put on the facebook application directory. sometime later, someone launched a Quranic Verses application – it was much nicer, more feature rich, and, most importantly, it was in the application directory.
feeling a bit competitive, i spent most of my past weekend rewriting, adding viral features suggested by my friends, and polishing the app. after three days of hard work, i finally launched. its been one day now since i launched, and here’s what i learned:
- being first to market is a huge competitive edge – i started out with around 40 user, whereas the other app has about 24,000. regaining the lost share of users will be extremely difficult.
- on the same note as the above, it seems as though getting to the market first is more important in some ways than what you bring to the market. if your product is the only one out there, people will use it, even if it has problems. once they start using it, the chances that they leave yours and use another one are slim. even if a competitor comes out, you can just improve your app and keep the market share.
- features aren’t always what you think they are – some features that you think are critical and awesome won’t be used by anyone at all – other features that you think are useless will be used a lot. its actually pretty odd, the one feature that i thought would be the selling feature of my app has gotten no usage by anyone except me, and the one feature i left out is the only one anyone asked me about.
- connections are important – a person who knows how to spread a viral app can do it, and can work wonders for your app and users. a solid and passionate user base can help your app grow, but without it, nagging can only take you so far. also, your connections can give you really good ideas and valuable user feedback that’s hard to get otherwise.
- its amazing how much you can get done in such a short period of time when you have a burning desire and passion to get something done.
- from a technical stand point, certain things may seem daunting at first, but a solid will to succeed makes these technical hurdles surmountable.
- even if something didn’t turn out quite the way one expected, there’s always some benefit to be taken out of it – so take the benefit, learn from the negatives, and move on
so yeah… i guess that about covers it… i still have a hope that the unused feature will be used and i can start a wildfire of users adding the app, but at the same time, i am being realistic and sticking to point 7 above by writing this blog post and consciously thinking about these matters.
Hello,
First of all, Jazak Allah kol 7′air.. the application is great, I just have two points:
1- Could the font of the Arabic text be changed? Tahoma (I guess) is not suitable for Quran IMHO.
2- I don’t quite understand the tagging feature. What does it do? If I tag a friend, say Mohamed, with a verse.. what does Mohamed receive? Why would I want to tag him with a Quranic verse in the first place?
Moreover, how can a Quran app be “social” at all? I mean, what direction do you intend to take this app to?
Sorry for the question bombardment
Assalamu Alaikom.
facebook is being upgraded, so can’t log in and install it. but I will inshAllah
yo ahmed, i have more suggestions. remind me to tell them to you when we meet next.
salam
hosam
wa3laikum alsalam wa ra7matullah -
ahmed:
jazakAllah khair!
1. yes, i need to do that, insha’Allah on my list of things to do – i didn’t test it in windows very much but someone sent me a screenshot – insha’Allah i’ll try to do that (can you suggest a good font etc – i am not very good with design related things).
2. so for example, lets say that you know that muhammad is getting married – you can tag him with the verse from surat ar-room – “And among His Signs is this, that He created for you mates from among yourselves, that ye may dwell in tranquillity with them, and He has put love and mercy between your (hearts): verily in that are Signs for those who reflect.” – you can then add a comment that says, “may Allah put barakah in your marriage,” for example.
he will get an email (if he doesn’t have the app installed) saying that you tagged him with a verse, and to click to see it – when he follows the link, he’ll see a link to the ayah and the comment that you left.
so for example, during ramadan, you can tag people with the ramadan verses for example. the idea is to increase awareness of quran and to pass verses around.
recently, i tagged some of my friends with verses to encourage them to be patient, for example, or to tell them to keep up good work their doing, or to pray that Allah makes us friends in jannah, etc – sometimes, i just tag people who have their names in a particular ayah and tell them, “hey, do you realize your name is in this verse?”
i understand the concern about the potential problems with a social quran app if its abused, but if its used properly, it can be a great asset and can aid people in learning quran and sharing ayahs and stuff, wa Allahu a3lam.
kbaj: – yep, facebook was down for a bit yesterday – let me know what you think when you tried it out insha’Allah!
hosam – sounds awesome, insha’Allah we’ll talk!
jazakumAllah khair!
walsalam 3alaikum,
-ahmed
Thanks for your explanation, things are much clearer now. (you should put this explanation in the app’s tagging page
)
As for the font, mry_KacstQurn is a great quran font (http://mrykacstqurn.wikispaces.com/). I am not a web developer (actually not a programmer at all
), so I don’t know if you can have the Arabic Quran text displayed in this font without having it installed on the user’s computer. If that is not possible, I think Traditional Arabic is installed on most Windows computers and is more suitable than Tahoma.
Wassalamu Alaikom.
I like it.