Apply HN: Booleans.io
BACKGROUND Last weekend I posted Booleans.io here, much to the amusement of the Internet.
As it turns out, a good number of people saw a legitimate use for this service. I had a CS student reach out wanting to use it for a class project. Others found it useful for prototyping feature flags without setting up a database. And some wanted to connect it to IFTTT's maker channel. One person just wanted to know: "How can I pay for this?"
For some it was just a cool/fun API to play around with. There are now open source client libraries written in Ruby, Python and Typescript.
One of the most requested features was the ability to create private booleans that only you can read/write, and custom labels.
So I spent last week hacking on it and just launched those features yesterday. You can signup here to check it out: https://booleans.io/signup
CONCEPT I look at booleans kind of like the ones and zeros of binary code. They're the most fundamental building blocks that can be used to carry out more complex actions.
A simple true or false (on/off, yes/no) value could be used to trigger a variety of events - IoT, home automation, software builds or anything else imaginable.
Soon I'll be rolling out webhooks, making it even easier to respond to events.
MONETIZATION This service lends itself well to the freemium model. Paid subscribers could have a higher cap on booleans, a higher API rate limit and analytics/data-vis tools.
ROADMAP Eventually I think it would be cool if users could "subscribe" to other users' booleans in kind of a marketplace fashion. Companies could also publish booleans relevant to whatever industry they're in, and consumers could then subscribe to get updates. I realize there's some overlap with IFTTT but I think they can happily co-exist.
THE END Thank you for all the great comments/discussions from last week and I welcome any feedback or questions.
- Alan