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Comment by duiker101 | Hacker News Reader

Ok, I am fine with the need of something better than ebay and craiglist but would someone explain me why does it have to be a mobile app? why? i think that this services need to reach the larger audice they can. Making it an app does not do that..it is limiting IMHO. Why I, android and PC owner, should be excluded? i understand you will (maybe?) make it available in future for other platform even porting it to android cuts out all those people who want to do things on the PC, which is the biggest part of the userbase I think.

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Because they need to do one thing and do it well. They don't have a 10000 person team to venture into "larger audiences", they do one specific thing or they die.

People don't wake up one day and think "oh hey, I'm in the market for a craigslist alternative, let's look for one". They need to be told that Yardsale exists, and it needs to find a place in their minds. The best way it can do that is to do one thing well.

As for why it's mobile specifically, look for why people do anything on their mobile phones.

Ok, as I said i am fine with alternative, and I understand that they are not a huge company and they wanted to make a good thing, but why a native app? This app will probably run only on the most recent iOS versions, so this also cuts a part of "old" iOS users. Instead a website, maybe optimized for mobile(there are tons of way to do this, nowadays it's not hard) would have been avaible to everyone. Therefore the can expand easier, mostly because everyone WANTS an alternative.

From the article i get that this way they try to encourage people to take photos. This is good. But it's not worth all the market you are cutting out, especially you are cutting out people who wants to buy, they have no reason to be forced to browse from the app. An alternative would be make the website available to everyone and suggest(not force) people to use the app just to make the advert. Maybe even by applying a little "tax" to those who use the website. This way i think you would have the same effect but a larger audience.

I think I have to agree with that. Doing one thing well is good and all, but for an app like this it might've been prudent to do the web site well first, and pending the success of that move onto devices.

Warning - Rant:

This strikes me as typical of two things that seem to be trending -

1). Build platform-specific (be that HTML5, Windows, or iOS or whatever) that cuts out otherwise interested users.

2). Make sure it's "social". That word right there is starting to turn me away from apps. I have enough "social".

I heavily agree with your rant.

Many apps are just brushing old ideas with new social, mobile or html5 coatings. Ignoring the fact that the idea is still the same.

First thought: "My girlfriend is going to love this!"

Next thought: "Don't have an iPhone. Oh well..."

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