Archive for the ‘Money’ Category
Facebook Micropayments Arrive
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008As I previously reported, Facebook is already working on their own payment system for application developers. The new system will most likely be launched during the first quarter of this year. In the meantime, it appears as though application developers now have a new system available for use. The Spare Change application enables your application users to make payments to your application via paypal.
Looking to build an auction in your app? Want to set up a pay-to-play system for your slick social game? Worry no more, as the Spare Change developers have come up with a system for you. Spare change has been highly active in the developer forums over the past few days and as a result they have close to 1,000 active daily users. None of my friends that have added the application have made any deposits though.
In the Spare Change presentation (embedded below), they claim that Super Poke is charging $5 a month to use the application but I don’t see that taking place. Would you ever pay to poke somebody? Perhaps people could begin betting on “poke wars.” One of the most entertaining pieces of the Spare Change presentation is the CSS styling that they will provide to embed a payment button on your site. The button that they display in the presentation is a light blue rectangle that is far from spectacular.
Regardless of style, the Spare Change developers appear to be taking their new system very seriously. It will be interesting to see if anybody adopts this. Do you see any reason for using this application when Facebook is preparing to launch their own payment system for developers?
Facebook VCs Have to Invest Somewhere, Right?
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007Yesterday, Eric Eldon broke the news about the Courses application developers receiving $500,000 in funding. The funding round was lead by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Peter Thiel was also the primary investor in Buddy Media during their $1.5 million round. There haven’t been many announcements about Facebook applications raising capital though over the past few months. It appears that the top applications that weren’t already VC funded have since received funding, have partnered with larger media partners or have chosen to stick it out.
Facebook applications are currently one of the most risky investments that VCs can make and that’s why we are seeing such a small percentage of venture capital portfolios being invested in this space. The Bay Partners’ AppFactory fund is only a few million and even Facebook’s fbFund is only $10 million. The money has been dedicated to the space so now funds are being forced to invest in applications even if they have less than 1,600 daily users (as the Courses application does).
I have spoken with a number of individuals that are investing in the space but none of them appear to be significant investments. The main problem is that none of the applications have successfully exited for a substantial sum. There have been acquisition rumors and a few smaller acquisitions in which developers were also acquired but nothing big so far. Do you think this space will heat up or will it continue to be a lot of buzz with no real substance? When will the acquisitions start to take place?
Make Money From Your Facebook Profile
Monday, September 10th, 2007
Want to make money from your Facebook profile? Lemonade.com has just launched their Facebook application and it allows users to sell their favorite things via their Facebook profile. Your “Lemonade Stand” as it’s called, allows you to place a flash application, similar to the one pictured on the left. Visitors to your profile can then browse through the items and purchase it if they are interested. Will this make you rich? Probably not.
I like to consider myself a relatively popular person on Facebook. Even still, my profile doesn’t get that much traffic (perhaps 10-15 visits a day). With that sort of traffic, even if you close 1% of visitors your commission on the sale isn’t going to amount to much. Conversely, getting paid a few bucks each month for spending time on Facebook isn’t bad either. If you’d like to try out making money with your Facebook profile than go grab the lemonade stand application.
Personal Lending Becomes Popular on Facebook
Friday, June 22nd, 2007
Duncan Riley of Techcrunch published an article a couple days ago about Lending Club surpassing the $100,000 mark in loans to Facebook users. This is pretty remarkable. The concept behind Lending Club is pretty simple. Users get better rates than their personal savings accounts by lending money to other users that have gone through a credit check. The benefit to borrowers is significantly lower rates than banks typically charge. It is a highly effective lending system and is poised for explosive growth. This is a significant amount of money that has already exhanged hands via Facebook and there is already over $200,000 in outstanding applications that have yet to be approved. This is big. If you want to get in on the personal lending action then go grab the Lending Club application.
Facebook Currency Arrives
Monday, June 18th, 2007
This is potentially huge. Aryeh Goldsmith, who keeps pumping out applications, has just built a new application which helps you manage your Facebook currency, or “Facebucks.” Currently, the only way to earn additional Facebucks is through inviting other friends to use the application. There is the potential for a currency exchange market similar to Second Life’s. While Second Life’s currency is used to purchase virtual items, I could see Facebook’s Facebucks (say that 3-times fast) being used to purchase real-world items. While this is in its infancy, there is a huge potential for a real Facebook marketplace (different then their existing marketplace which is classified ads), Facebook auctions, etc. If a small group of people started using Facebucks as actual currency, widespread adoption would be plausible. At the current time this is bordering on fantasy world but hey, it’s possible. If you want to be part of the Facebook financial revolution go grab the My Bucks application.
Where’s My Money?
Sunday, June 17th, 2007
Do you owe your friends money? Maybe someone owes you some money. If you need a way to make a payment to or receive a payment from a friend, PayMe offers you a simple solution. The application places a small text box on your profile that allows visitors to type in an amount and transfer money directly to you via PayPal. This is the first transaction based application that I have seen on Facebook. It is what will separate Facebook from the competition. The direct integration of e-commerce within the “social graph” is a big step forward. While this is only the beginning, it is a great start. So if you want to transfer money to your friends or want profile visitors to have an easy way to give you money, check out the PayMe application.
Get Paid to Shop With Cashback
Friday, June 15th, 2007
Want a quick and easy way to save money while shopping online? Cashback has created a Facebook application that will find you deals and pay you money if you shop through their affiliates. Amazon and iTunes are both partners to name a couple. Users can view all the deals from within Facebook. Once you find a deal you like, you click a link to the store and go buy the product of your desire. While you are not required to enter your personal information to get deals, you will need to provide personal information if you plan on getting a check in the mail. This is one of the first applications on Facebook that is strictly targeted at ecommerce and generating revenue. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Additionally, it will be interesting to see what type of saturation is necessary for business to generate any substantial amount of money. If you are interested in getting deals and want to give your friends the opportunity to share in the savings, go grab the CashBack application.
Make Money With Facebook
Tuesday, June 12th, 2007
Tom Scott has come up with a way to monetize both your Twitter and Facebook accounts. By joining Twitcash you can make money for each follower you have in twitter and each friend you have in Facebook on a per post basis. While I personally haven’t tried out the application, I’m quite confident that it works. This seems fairly similar to User/Submitter which pays on a per Digg basis. To be honest I would imagine that this would be banned relatively quickly by Facebook given that Facebook’s primary source of revenue currently is through user feeds. If someone else develops an application that interferes with their primary revenue source I would guess that it would be banned almost immediately. We’ll see if this one is still around tomorrow. If you want to test out this money making system, go grab Twitcash for your Facebook profile.
