In response to GraffitiGeo Techcrunch article ... | Hacker News Reader

In response to GraffitiGeo Techcrunch article ...

geograffiti.com

24 pointsoGLOWo11 comments

TC Article he is responding too: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/13/yc-funded-graffitigeo-f...

Here's the app: http://www.graffitigeo.com/

It's basically (it seems) a text version of this existing service: http://www.geograffiti.com/

I think the claim of "rip off" does have some validity :P

There are a lot of services that do some variant of geotagging. We've even funded one before (Flagr, in 2006). This is one of those domains where winning is a matter of getting the details right; the general idea has been around forever.

I'm guessing what the OP is responding to is the similarity between the names. But that was not intentional.

I'm the author of Graffitio: http://appsto.re/graffitio

I applied to YC and was flown out for an interview in November 2008. I was told that while it was a promising area, YC is reluctant to fund single founders. Fair enough.

A few weeks later, I responded to a technical plea for help from one of GraffitiGeo's founders in this thread a few weeks after that: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=413929

When we got in touch, we had a long and frank discussion about Graffitio and the space in general. I told him about the challenges I was facing, and some of my plans for the future. He brought up the idea that we team up, and I said I probably wasn't interested, but I'd let him know.

Then I got the email. He offered me 1.5% of their company for all of my source code, the name, and my 40,000+ users at the time. He went on to use threatening language such as "Graffitio is going to get stomped out of the picture" and "Your financial alternatives are bleak." I chose to pass on the offer.

The first version of GraffitiGeo that came out in the App Store was an _exact_ clone of my app, Graffitio, down to the terminology such as Graffiti and Walls. They started to differentiate themselves with later versions. Some of those differences were novel, but others were features that I'd mentioned to him in our conversation. To be fair, they could have arisen independently.

Graffitio is over a year old now. It was in the App Store on day 1. I should probably be more annoyed than I am, but honestly, I have a lot of reservations about this space now after being here for over a year. Dealing with the App Store is another headache. I haven't been able to get an update through in months. Anyway, the first round of geotagging apps have fallen flat IMO. Turning them into a "game" like Foursquare and GraffitiGeo isn't going to change the fact that they deliver relatively little utility.

There might be a magic combination out there that makes it work, but I don't think GraffitiGeo or Graffitio in their current state is it. I wish them luck in finding it. If anything, they've lit a fire under my ass to spend more time on Graffitio.

Very interesting.

I'd like to commend you–if your accounts of what transpired are true, I think you've handled it in a mature and respectable manner. A lot of people would be very bitter about this and resort to whining or threats of litigation.

That being said, there's 2 sides to every story. HN deserves to hear from the GG founders. Possibly from PG as well.

hey guys,

i had spoken with anoop early on (i started graffitigeo.com with a few of my college friends). i'll do a detailed response shortly, but anoop and i spoke on the phone today and we've both agreed that there were no ill intentions. what i had meant was that Graffitio as a product would be "stomped out" by other competitive applications who would focus on this space fulltime, as anoop was taking a job in new york full time. i was mostly interested in taking graffitio and improving upon it. at either rate, both anoop and i don't hold any hard feelings against each other and understand that this space is pretty competitive. the idea of "graffiti" and "walls" isn't entirely unique either, as i know of other companies exploring the space.

Agreed. Indeed the response of fine, you want to compete? let me go open up my IDE and we'll begin is definitely the mark of a real hacker.

aranganath strikes me as a reasonable and mature person. But none of the parties involved owe you or HN anything. The issue is between them. If they choose to air their dirty laundry, so be it. But it's not an obligation.

Independent of the issues you bring, I'd like to point out that one of the first things people think of when we make a digital mark on a physical location is "graffiti" or "tagging" or "writing on a wall". They are each used by lots of apps, essentially all meaning the same thing.

Also, making a statement about market position and alternatives isn't a "threat". It's positioning in a negotiation. A threat would be "we have a reasonable claim to your trademark" or something like that.

Wow! I wish you all the best.

did Apple give you a reason for the rejections, or did they just not write back? making noise on blogs about this kind of thing has helped others in this situation.

Oh, yeh. That was all I was saying: I'd be suspicious and frustrated too if a new and very similar service appeared using my sites reversed name. It's a valid frustration even if it is innocent.

And did they not check? tut tut website 101 there! :P

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