From Zero to 450,000 users in three weeks

How do you go from being a freelance Web developer to the owner and creator of a hot new “killer app” with 450,000 users? In the old days, you did it the hard way: by building a cool tool for the Windows platform then releasing it on the Web — possibly following in the footsteps of WinAmp creator Justin Frankel, distributing it as freeware to build up a user base. Today — things are much easier, especially now that social networks like Facebook provide a ready population of millions of users and development APIs that you can plug your stuff into.

For evidence of that, consider the experience of Craig Ulliott, a UK-borne Web developer who’s lives in Philadelphia, PA with his wife. Ulliott keeps himself busy as a freelance Web developer, building shopping cart apps and other programs for a variety of customers. But Ulliott, an avid traveler, had a great idea that he’d been itching to do: a social networking Web site for travelers that would let people plug in countries that they’d visited, where they’d lived, and where they wanted to visit, then share that with others.

But the idea itself wasn’t quite cool enough to justify its own network, Ulliott said. “You can’t really build a site around that, because there are so many other sites out there.” That’s where Facebook came to Ulliott’s rescue: providing the platform on which Ulliott’s cool mapping product could sit, and a means of spreading word of mouth about the new tool, just as word of mouth about products like Napster and WinAmp spread on message boards back in the Web 1.0 days.

“You get instant exposure to all these people,” he said.

Working in his free time, Ulliott coded up his application, dubbed “Where I’ve been” in a few days, then released it on Facebooks’ app platform – one of the first applications released. From there, the sky was the limit.

“Within a few hours, it started growing and growing. I was just hitting the refresh button over and over again and watching the number go up.”

To date, Ulliott’s application has 450,000 users. He credits the popularity of his app with being early to the Facebook platform, and with his app’s simple design. Users mouse over different countries or, within the U.S. and Canada, different states, then click once, twice or three times to indicate that they’ve been to that place, that they’d like to visit there, or that they’ve lived there.

Where I’ve been’s easy integration into Facebook’s UI also helped.

“You can just install it and it runs, you don’t need to register for some other service. It also fits on a (Facebook) profile. Some of the other apps don’t look like they belong,” he told InfoWorld.

Once you’ve saved you map, you can view it and those of your friends through your Facebook homepage. (Click here for a picture of Craig’s Where I’ve been map kicking my Where I’ve been map’s butt.)

Now that Craig is the proud owner of a killer Facebook app, he’s getting a lot of attention.

“I’ve had an unprecedented amount of correspondence. I’ve had people offering to buy and and invest and advertise.”

Those offers include VC firms and other recognizeable names, though Ulliott isn’t saying much till he and his lawyer sift through the offers and decide what they want to do with WIB.

In the meantime, he’s also dealing with the headaches of going from 0 to 450,000 in a few days. Blue Eye Corp. in Chicago, one of Ulliott’s regular customers, has offered support, as did a hosting company in Texas, which was kind enough to offer to host the WIB application to keep up with user demand.

He’s also staring at a mound of feature requests, especially for denizens of countries, such as Australia, that feel slighted that Ulliott’s app doesn’t render their country with as much detail as the US, UK and Canada get. “I’ve had so much exposure. More than 1,000 people have written on the message board, and another 200 or 300 have sent e-mails. It’s like free market research. You put it out there and people tell you what they think of it and what they want.”

Ulliott also has good things to say about Facebook and its hands off approach to the app dev community.

“It’s such a cool, young crowd,” he said. “They’re not trying to take ownership of your apps.”

For now, Ulliott isn’t speculating about what WIB is worth. For one thing, he still has to hunker down on some client engagements that have been put on the backburner by WIB’s runaway success. Then he’s got to pound out some much needed feature enhancements. Becoming the first “Facebook (application) millionaire,” it seems, will have to wait…at least for a few days.