Interviewing Fabio Lalli, creator of the Yeplike! application

Our posts often talk about the apps universe, trying to figure out the development of a market in huge growth. Today we want to look into an interesting case history, a start-up that satisfy a really curious need: putting a “like” and a “dislike” in real life! It’s something that we all have been thinking about at least once, isn’t it?

If we think about Facebook, there are several groups and pages that ask for a “dislike button”. And the social network is making the “like” action more and more relevant. Then we have the Diesel Island example, with an application that allow us to say “I don’t like it”. Well, there’s definitely the need for something like that out there.

Today, with the Yeplike application everything is even easeier: we just need to download the app and start taking pictures with our phone, decide wether we like it or not and upload it. Sweet idea, right? And we are particularly happy to talk about it because it’s 100% an Italian idea, created by Fabio Lalli, a digital culture and technology expert, that we interviewed.

- First of all a special thanks, since you are answering our questions from the StartUp weekend in Turin! Well, Fabio, you have a really cool resume: how was the Indigeni Digitali idea born, and how’s it going?

Hi all. First of all, thanks for the interview. How was Indigeni Digitali born? A few years ago, together with a small group of friends, we started meeting after work to talk about our projects and technology in general. It was a group of geeks, always meeting in front of a good galss of wine. From these meet-ups the idea started to become real, and we kicked off on February 2010. Together with David and Giuliano, the group began to grow, and then we designed our logo: it’s the typical “native” character, with four feathers on his head. They are our four core values: passion for digital, the will to talk, the ability to listen and the will to share opinions. We started meeting with a regular frequency, always experimenting different formats: from some happy hour events to nights dedicated to coding and brainstorming.

- Do you have previous experiences in the world of apps?

Yes, we created other apps before. I want to point out that I don’t do this on my own: I always work with Annalisa Puracchio (@alisoba), Cristiano Severini (@crino77), David Funaro (@ingdavidino) and Giuliano Iacobelli (@giuliano84). In the past we worked on Baby 2.0 an app that allows to parents to manage all the “data” of a baby, from doctors to diapers, and especially enables the user to create a sort of diary, that can be shared on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. We also created ibiqi, a multi-device platform to share contents, and many other apps.

- Tell us about Yeplike! How did you come up with the idea?

Yeplike was born during a day of high fever! I wasn’t able to sleep, I was watching TV and thought that I would have put a Dislike to that TV show… So i started wondering that it would be cool to be able to put a like or a dislike to every object in real life, through photo sharing on Social Media. It’s  just an easy and a bit stupid idea.. but I started designing it, at 4am! Someone calls me “Compulsive Startupper”, because of this: I think about something, and I start working on it. So I wrote a few emails, and we started working on this amities project: a website, some API, and iPhone app. All in 72 hours. Of course being so fast doesn’t allow us to do everything perfectly, but we are still working to improve it. So, now it’s on the appstore!

- I wouldn’t say a stupid idea.. it’s genius! Tell us how the integration between social networks work.

Yeplike! basically uses social networks to spread pictures. You snap a pic, you put the thumb down or up, you share it on Facebook. We’ll be ready to share on Twitter and Foursquare soon.

- Did you do any competitors analysis?

Well, not really. I just wanted to create something fast, right away. It was a real “fast execution” experiment. Then we figure out ther are a couple of apps that do something slightly similar, but our one is way better!

- A marketing question: just mobile or other platforms?

RIght now we have a simple idea: let the users judge quickly and easily, sharing their thoughts with the world. The development will continue: on one side the mobile and social part, on the other the website, where the user will be enabled to do more complicated and complete operations.

- How did you ignite the viral fire?

We started with a post on my blog, in which I describe the app, and with some buzz generated by me and some friends. This simple process started a huge word of mouth, inside and outside Italy. From my past experience, I got some tips on how to promote a project:

• Create curiosity a few days before the launch.
• Write about it on blogs, and ask for reviews.
• Create a group of users to give previews.
• Using Social Media to promote it and generate buzz
• Listening to the Web, taking in consideration every single feedback, answering to every question.

- Yesterday Yeplike! made it to te front page of Wired Italy, congratulations! But I’ve seen there has been a good response from abroad: Europe or Worldwide?

It’s something we experienced also with Baby 2.0, which is now growing in Japan, China and USA. This helped us a lot and we tried to follow the same path. We decided to use the English languagem right from the beginning, then we leveraged on some contacts with bloggers and foreigner review websites, then we posted our app in technical forums all around the world. But also the users word-of-mouth helped us a lot.

- Was it a surprise?

Well, every good result is a surprise. Considering the number of apps on the market, we were a bit shocked when we saw people shooting pics from the other side of the world!

- What are the next features you will add?

First of all in the next versions we will allow users to add messages to the pics, putting ashtags, sharing pics on Twitter and Foursquare. Then we are working on personal galleries, and you will be able to see likes and dislikes on the map. Then social stuff, a lot of social stuff. We decided to use this approach: we develop small parts and rapidly update the app store, we listen to users and work to fix and improve step by step. We’re also designing the app for Windows Phone and Android, but we are open to every suggestion since our APIs are public.

- What kind of results did you get, and what kind of diffusion you predict?

As for now the biggest result is having been able to come up with a project in 72 hours, even if quite simple. Every day we get new users, still not skyrocketing but growing fast. With the new features we’re expecting bigger numbers, we’ll be ready to rock this summer!

- That’s cool! are you working on other projects?

Well, the right question would be “how many projects?” and the answer would be “a lot.” Our group is becoming really strong, and the Indigeni Digitali network is growing, so a lot of people are asking us to work on star-ups. Ok, thanks for the interview, and shoot some pics on YepLike!

- We’ll do it for sure! Thanks and keep up the good work.

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Interview and translation by Guido Ghedin

Take a look at the original post here!