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Comment by charliepark | Hacker News Reader

I wish you all the best, but I'm skeptical that this could become a viable business. Is this a problem that people struggle with enough that they'd pay for a service to help them with it?

What would differentiate Splitterbug from, say, BillMonk? Or just an e-mail? What are you planning on for revenue? One-off App Store purchases, or something more?

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We're both very big Billmonk fans, but unfortunately the application hasn't seen very much improvement since it was acquired a few years ago. Splitterbug helps you solve the same problem using some very cool tech that Billmonk didn't have access to (native iPhone apps/Android/Facebook graph/etc).

Our primary focus right now is building an app solves the problem of splitting bills and tracking debts. We've got a few ideas about monetization, but if we can't build a useful app first, that discussion is moot.

What's the very cool tech? Why does an app like this require particularly new or innovative technology?

Thanks for answering on it. I wasn't ever a big Billmonk user, but I can see your point about opportunity being present when acquired apps stagnate.

Again, good luck with it. I look forward to seeing where you take it.

Using mobile devices to facilitate a shared buying experience with friends is huge. This app is a first step into this wide open and potentially massively profitable space.

Discounting the future of the business from a landing page describing its very first private beta is not only mean-spirited but also shortsighted.

While I almost agree with your first paragraph, the second made my eyebrows raise (and that's why I downvoted). "mean-spirited" and "shortsighted" are very strong words for a valid question - the grand-parent was quite polite, so no need to be defensive.

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