What Influence?

Inspiration

The creator economy is blowing up and a great way for Influencers and creators to monetize is by signing endorsement deals with brands.

Problem for brands:

There's no standardized way to share data which makes it hard to compare influencers. Today's method is tedious and error-prone (IG screenshots transcribed to spreadsheets). Further, some influencers may share selective or exaggerated info.

Problem for influencers:

Your insight data is your secret sauce. Screenshots can be forwarded and become outdated.

Solution:

• Influencers connect via API so we know all the data is verified
• Influencers create expiring and private links; so they can track if a link is shared and even prematurely disable them
• Brands have a uniform way of comparing Influencers and getting reliable, up-to-date info
• WhatInfluence gets this valuable treasure trove of data that it can use to do things like smart pricing, brand:influencer matching, ML-analytics feedback to influencers

What it does

• Influencers auth via IG API
• They create links with an expiration date and share with others
• Those links show the IG stats in a normalized way (e.g. all using the same engagement formula)
• Influencers can see # views and potentially turn off links

How we built it

• Typescript, Node.JS, React, Next.JS, Firebase

Challenges we ran into

• Instagram API is poorly documented and inconsistent
• Lots of hoops to jump through for permissioning
• Used technologies new to us (Next.JS, Vercel and Firebase)

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• It was a lot of code in a week!

What we learned

• How tough the IG influencer is

What's next for What Influence?

• Viral distribution

Built With

• next
• node.js
• vercel