I wouldn’t be embarrassed if no one uses it. There is a certain amount of luck involved anything that blow up big. Not everyone gets lucky every time, regardless of the idea, quality of the app, etc.
I also wouldn’t view it as wasting time. I’m sure you’re still going to learn a lot in the process. To “waste” as little time as possible, I’d boil the app down to the core, what makes it different, and distill that down and release it. All the other features around that which the other guys already have, can come later to round it out if it takes off.
Back in 2011 there was an app called Oink [0] that was kind of like Yelp, but for individual items. It looks like it shutdown 4 month later [1]. A lot has changed in the last decade, but I also like your idea (if I’m understanding it right), a bit better. If you’re surfacing existing reviews based on the dish, I think that gives you the ability to have actual content on day 1. Having to wait for enough new reviews on a per dish basis, like Oink was doing, would take a while and I think it would be hard to hit critical mass, so having that seed data from other sources sounds great.
I also wouldn’t view it as wasting time. I’m sure you’re still going to learn a lot in the process. To “waste” as little time as possible, I’d boil the app down to the core, what makes it different, and distill that down and release it. All the other features around that which the other guys already have, can come later to round it out if it takes off.
Back in 2011 there was an app called Oink [0] that was kind of like Yelp, but for individual items. It looks like it shutdown 4 month later [1]. A lot has changed in the last decade, but I also like your idea (if I’m understanding it right), a bit better. If you’re surfacing existing reviews based on the dish, I think that gives you the ability to have actual content on day 1. Having to wait for enough new reviews on a per dish basis, like Oink was doing, would take a while and I think it would be hard to hit critical mass, so having that seed data from other sources sounds great.
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2011/11/03/kevin-rose-oink-app-store/
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2012/03/14/kevin-roses-oink-shuts-dow...