
Facebook's effect on Uloop. - kyro

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kyro
With the introduction of Facebook's new marketplace, they seemed to have
ventured into a territory that Uloop has tried to claim. Uloop ads can be seen
plastered allover Facebook and has been gaining much traction lately with
their success at various campuses.

Two of my friends were asked to leave school and work for Uloop for a year
based on the fact that they would be receiving more VC money in about a month
or so. Now I am wondering whether they will be granted such funding with
Facebook's newest development.

What do you guys think? Will Uloop, a company that's been utilizing Facebook's
popularity to gain traction and users, be crushed by the very company that has
probably been Uloop's most important venue of advertising?

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danw
I think that facebook, like google, has become another company that startups
should steer clear of.

Just like Google dominates the information gathering space, Facebook is now
becoming a one stop shop for social/communication tools. Why use twitter when
all your friends use facebook status? O'r why use a dating site when all your
peers are on the book? You can see that most students don't use flickr or
zooomr because they have facebook photos already. I've noticed that since all
my friends have become heavy facebook users that we no longer use IM at all
and that SMS usage is dropping. We instead just send facebook messages, wall
posts or share links/youtube clips using fbook shares.

On the up side facebook + api = universal buddy list. You wont have to worry
about importing all your friends to the latest cool social app because
everyone is already on facebook.

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staunch
This method certainly did wonders for Microsoft and should work fine for
Facebook. MySpace is mostly doing it as well.

1) Build a platform.

2) Encourage others to develop on your platform.

3) Copy/Crush/Buy the most popular applications yourself.

4) Profit.

Facebook's corporate slogan should be: "Do no evil -- Let others do it first
and just copy them if it's popular."

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Harj
my thoughts as an ex-competitor:
<http://mealticket.wordpress.com/2007/05/14/36/>

