In my last post I questioned the value of a Facebook application. Later in the evening it was announced that TripAdvisor acquired Craig Ulliott’s application for a whopping $3 million! This is a cost of $1.30 per user. This is pretty phenomenal. Apparently there is still a lot of money to be earned in developing popular Facebook applications. Is this just more hype to pile on top of the existing massive amount of hype? Great times in Facebook land!

This is the largest acquisition of a Facebook application to date. For those wondering how long is this is going to last, I think we have a long way to go. As other social networks open up their platforms we are going to see one gold rush after another. Both MySpace and LinkedIn are supposed to be opening up their platforms by early next year. There are also rumors of other social networks (that will currently go unnamed) rushing to open up their platforms as well.

If web portals were the start of the first web gold rush, I think this is the start of the second. Congratulations to Craig Ulliott on a huge sale.