Ask HN: My free app has gone slighty viral – looking for ideas to monetize it

Re:Ask HN: My free app has gone slighty viral – looking for ... by downandout on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @02:27AM (#9644221)

I strongly disagree. Since he has access to the DOM of the FB mobile website (he can definitely load custom JavaScript into any page, which is all he needs), there is a ton of stuff he can do to monetize. For one, he can inject ads into FB timelines, which wouldn't piss off his users..Facebook itself does this and people are fine with it. He could pre-roll video ads on any videos that are played. These are just two of several possibilities. He can have monetization on every single page viewed through his app, integrated directly into the FB interface.

The trick would be getting access to offers targeted at these countries, but a major mobile ad network like MobPartner could easily give him some.

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Re:Ask HN: My free app has gone slighty viral – looking for ... by abannin on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @03:55AM (#9644504)

This is probably the quickest route to a cease and desist from FB. If you choose this path, you'll need to take a scorched earth strategy because you will not get a second chance. Lots of ways to inject ads into someone else's content, and all of them are against TOS.

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Re:Ask HN: My free app has gone slighty viral – looking for ... by downandout on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @05:04AM (#9644688)

It is incredibly unlikely that FB could actually litigate this - it falls under the same legal doctorine that protects ad blockers. Also, a few years ago there was a company called Sambreel that had a product called PageRage. They modified FB pages and inserted ads. Facebook never sued them. In fact, Sambreel actually sued Facebook [1] because the only thing that Facebook could do was pressure advertisers not to work with the company [2], and the company felt wronged. Their lawsuit against Facebook was dismissed, but Facebook was never able to do anything legally against them. One interesting quote from the lawsuit:

"...between July 2009 and October 2010, PageRage grew significantly, and was regularly garnering more than 1 million users per day, and generating more than $1 million in monthly revenues....by mid-July 2011, PageRage had grown to more than 4 million users per day"

In this case, however, there aren't 4M installs. We're talking about less than 300K installs. Facebook would probably not bother with such harsh tactics here.

[1] https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/114953759?access_key=key-1...

[2] http://adexchanger.com/online-advertising/sambreel-locked-ou...

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Re:Ask HN: My free app has gone slighty viral – looking for ... by kohanz on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @08:51AM (#9645479)

Regardless of whether they would have legal ground to stand on, it doesn't sound like the OP has the time or money to get into litigation with FB. If they were to send a cease and desist letter, not many people would dig their heels in and take things to the courts out of their own pocket.

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Re:Ask HN: My free app has gone slighty viral – looking for ... by scg on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @05:44AM (#9644800)

Injecting or substituting ads is shady.

You're degrading the experience with less targeted and lower quality ads at the expense of Facebook's brand and perceived quality of service. The end user assumes the crappy experience is from Facebook itself.

How's this different from malware that injects/substitutes ads?

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