
VC Funding Drying Up For Facebook Apps - dbreunig
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/vc-funding-drying-up-for-facebook-apps-don-t-blame-facebook
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nuclear_eclipse
I'm still clueless as to how anyone ever thought they'd be able to make any
money writing annoying apps for a free platform targeted at kids and young
adults with no money...

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lpgauth
You would be surprised how many page views some of these apps get. Many of the
apps were specially designed to promote page views and force the user to
change page to do simple tasks. Anyways, I think the article is about right
and that the buzz of the launch is long gone.. Unless you build something kick
ass I don't think you can reach to top of the food chain anymore.

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nuclear_eclipse
My apologies for being a brickhead, but how do page views turn into money for
a Facebook app author?

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tptacek
There was VC funding for Facebook apps?

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rms
<http://www.rockyou.com>

<http://www.slide.com>

<http://www.seriousbusiness.com/>

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lux
In my mind, a facebook app would be part of a wider strategy, such as
integrating your external service into facebook to drive additional use of the
core service. It didn't seem like many facebook apps on their own made that
much sense, especially for VCs. I mean, they basically allow you to spread
your ads across a small portion of facebook's site. As a business model for a
couple dudes, fine, but as a model to throw millions of bucks on, not so sure
there. Unless VCs were hoping facebook would acquire them, which it doesn't
need to to benefit from them, so why would it?

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sanj
The deeper realization may be that simply plugging holes in Facebook's
existing functionality is a short term place to be.

But I think that there's probably more sustainability in bringing things to
Facebook that they won't themselves.

