Don’t Bet Your Fortune on Facebook Apps
Posted by Nick O'Neill on February 14th, 2008 6:33 PMI hate to be the pessimist but I’m seeing the repercussions of hype that started when the Facebook platform launched. When Facebook launched their platform last May there were overnight millionaires created. Those millionaires and the many magazine articles that followed have been the source of inspiration for thousands of individuals that are now betting that their Facebook application will be the source of wealth for them. Everyday hundreds of applications are launched by a group of individuals expecting to attract hundreds of thousands if not millions of users.
For those entrepreneurial individuals I’m here to tell you that the land grab is long gone and the gold mines have been thoroughly mined. Many of the recently successful applications obtained large user bases by forcing invites. Those days are now gone and by tomorrow the days of 40 daily notifications are gone for most applications. Say goodbye to spam applications. Your odds of having success with a Facebook application is slowly approaching equilibrium with websites.
I am not suggesting that Facebook applications are no longer an effective tool for exposure but simply put, simple applications (that I call “kick apps”) won’t fly any longer. Instead we are going to see the emergence of a new wave of applications that are more robust and primarily funded by larger companies that have the advertising budget to play in this space. The days of a single programmer making a quick application overnight and obtaining hundreds of thousands or millions of users is practically gone.
The likelihood of obtaining a sustainable user base is slightly higher then the odds of you coming up with the next Million-Dollar Homepage. Is this a bad thing? Definitely not. I think this is great. We will see less developers that see this as a get rich quick opportunity and instead decide to build out valuable applications. This includes robust games such as Attack! and functionally useful applications such as Visual Bookshelf.
So yes, if you are willing to make the investment, I am confident that you can build out applications that will attract a significant number of users. Conversely, if you are an individual developer that has the “next best idea” you may want to seriously consider your strategy and think about how much time you are willing to invest before you dive in. I hate to be the pessimist but I’m confident that the most lucrative gold mines have already been mined on Facebook and now it’s time to start using real business logic for building a strategy.
Do you think I’m off here? I’m still bullish on Facebook but it’s no longer the land grab that it once was.
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February 14th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
I agree with your bullishness on Facebook as a whole but the apps things is significantly diluted at this point. Quite frankly when the apps first came out it was HUGE. Everyone was spending hours a day on Facebook and every newspaper, podcast, and blog was praising Facebook. Even Microsoft bought in at a rate of 15 bil. But, now many of my friends have returned back to their original uses of Facebook, messaging, picture sharing and well, stocking.
Personally I think the apps aspect of Facebook is on its way down. It is to diluted and this maybe one situation where Facebook made the wrong decision to open up their platform completely. Keeping some control may have been the better move here. Only time will tell.
February 14th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
I agree with your bullishness on Facebook as a whole but the apps things is significantly diluted at this point. Quite frankly when the apps first came out it was HUGE. Everyone was spending hours a day on Facebook and every newspaper, podcast, and blog was praising Facebook. Even Microsoft bought in at a rate of 15 bil. But, now many of my friends have returned back to their original uses of Facebook, messaging, picture sharing and well, stocking.
Personally I think the apps aspect of Facebook is on its way down. It is to diluted and this maybe one situation where Facebook made the wrong decision to open up their platform completely. Keeping some control may have been the better move here. Only time will tell.
February 14th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Nick you are right!
Ohh I don't want you to be right - but you are right. Beside the fact that even if you have a ton of users - what are you going to do to monetize them? No seriously what are you going to do? You sell them down the river with ads or spam them you are done for - you will have backlash 2.0 that will make FB Beacon look like an email outage.
Facebook is growing up and your take that big players with some serious back ends to back into FB will be the next wave is right on the money. Tricky tricks are done - now the next step is to leverage the social graph with apps that matter.
Cheers - Eric
http://www.pickuppal.com
February 15th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Nick you are right!
Ohh I don’t want you to be right - but you are right. Beside the fact that even if you have a ton of users - what are you going to do to monetize them? No seriously what are you going to do? You sell them down the river with ads or spam them you are done for - you will have backlash 2.0 that will make FB Beacon look like an email outage.
Facebook is growing up and your take that big players with some serious back ends to back into FB will be the next wave is right on the money. Tricky tricks are done - now the next step is to leverage the social graph with apps that matter.
Cheers - Eric
http://www.pickuppal.com
February 15th, 2008 at 2:42 am
Absolutely. Still plenty of opportunity, but you will have to create a very good application, or have a large marketing budget.
This has obvious downsides, but there are some upsides too. For example, these changes will be an economic stimulant for the Facebook economy. Expect prices of ads to go up as inventory decreases and demand increases. This is good news to those developers who can capture and retain an audience.
February 15th, 2008 at 3:42 am
Absolutely. Still plenty of opportunity, but you will have to create a very good application, or have a large marketing budget.
This has obvious downsides, but there are some upsides too. For example, these changes will be an economic stimulant for the Facebook economy. Expect prices of ads to go up as inventory decreases and demand increases. This is good news to those developers who can capture and retain an audience.
February 15th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Nick — I agree with you in regards to Facebook. But there's still a playing field that's about to emerge on MySpace, bebo, Friendster, etc … and despite apps being easily transported to those platforms, I think single person app developers could emerge to do well on those platforms.
February 15th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Nick — I agree with you in regards to Facebook. But there’s still a playing field that’s about to emerge on MySpace, bebo, Friendster, etc … and despite apps being easily transported to those platforms, I think single person app developers could emerge to do well on those platforms.
February 15th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Owning a Facebook app is useless, its like building a business in someone elses backyard. If they decide to have a BBQ and kick you out, they will. They are slowly taking back all the realestate they promised developers for building all the great apps. Well, thats what the developers get…Barnum said it best, there's one born every minute. The only winners are those ad networks like adblade and social media. They are the only ones making money. They produce nothing and generate big money.
February 15th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Owning a Facebook app is useless, its like building a business in someone elses backyard. If they decide to have a BBQ and kick you out, they will. They are slowly taking back all the realestate they promised developers for building all the great apps. Well, thats what the developers get…Barnum said it best, there’s one born every minute. The only winners are those ad networks like adblade and social media. They are the only ones making money. They produce nothing and generate big money.
February 15th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
making apps is easy, so what is your competitive advantage? business 101.
February 15th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
making apps is easy, so what is your competitive advantage? business 101.