It is really unfortunate that 419 is the first topic to come up when a Nigerian developer surfaces... especially if this is discouraging developers who are trying to do something productive instead of scamming.
I'm not sure that the 419 reputation is even the biggest barrier to selling a service like this to the West. For example, an app for balance/budget tracking is unlikely to compete with complimentary services provided by most banks and financial institutions which not only offer similar services, but which automatically update based on card usage and therefore do not require any data entry. For free, without ads. Add the confidence problem that Brandon mentioned, and I have to agree that it would be very tough to do and require a lot of thought. Based on the description, and not knowing about how everything works in Lagos, I think this could become a great concept for developing and emerging economies in places like urban Africa and India. In many places (especially outside the biggest cities, but even in them) it can be much harder to get information on product availability and prices than it is in the West. You don't get Yellow Pages booklets distributed everywhere, for example, and Yelp's coverage is pretty bad ;) Also, most transactions are likely to be in cash rather than on credit cards or checking accounts, so there is not much reason to focus on downloading or scraping financial data. Many local businesses are not going to have an easy way to reach buyers. So in many ways the idea of using crowd-sourcing is very interesting and I would be concerned with how to build a user base willing to send information (given somewhat limited internet access and saturation of smartphones with data service) as well as how the service will actually make money. I think this means a lot of non-technical footwork and building business relationships, even if you get a great technical product which is widely accessible. Best of luck! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en.
