I had a good time at FOWA London and have come back with increased motivation and some new ideas.
Whilst sw0p is nearly finished from a functionality point of view it is only in a wire frame state and not something we’d want to release as a beta. The UI needs to be *tight* and we don’t want to rush it so after some thinking I’ve decided that we’ll lauch sooner than expected a v0.5 but as Facebook only for now. This will give us the double benefits of stress-testing the backend but also being able to get people using it earlier than we’d hoped.
It has also become clear to me that whilst we’re not pimping for investment we do need a business plan as if it becomes as successful as we hope then the infrastructure and ongoing development costs won’t be cheap, so it is going to have to pay its way. We won’t be charging any subscription or upgrade costs so we’ll have to rely on advertising.
We’ll try and get the Facebook app done within weeks not months and then release it for the beta-testers to take a look.