

Facebook fbFund launches YC-style incubator - ALee
http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=223

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kwamenum86
"Every month more than 70% of those folks use Facebook apps."

Do not be fooled by this impressive statistic. They are actually counting
their "native" apps like Photos as Facebook apps. That means that if you
upload a photo you are included in that 70 percent. That is like saying that
anyone who used Safari on their iPhone used an iPhone app. By their definition
it may be accurate but it leads you to believe that FB apps are more
successful than they actually are. They are not dead but I would not say they
are _thriving_ either, at least not the vast majority of third party apps.
There is a lot of junk in the app directory because the barrier to entry is so
low.

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blader
I find it hard to believe that 30% of their user base never uses any of their
own apps: Photos, Notes, Posts, Groups, Events.

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trapper
You haven't spent much time watching a cross-section of society use computers
have you? :)

I remember the first time I had to tell someone about how to use a scrollbar.
A tab is almost nuclear physics from there.

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blader
The way Facebook counts users, you access an application and that counts as a
"usage."

30% of Facebook's active user base, in other words, have never clicked on a
photo? It doesn't make sense.

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kwamenum86
Well I am not a Facebook employee but whenever the company compiles statistics
for applications they include the native ones and make it apparent. They may
be calculating the number differently this time. I assume that they still
count native apps though.

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blader
" whenever the company compiles statistics for applications they include the
native ones and make it apparent. "

Do you have any references for this? I follow Facebook pretty closely and this
seems unusual.

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johnrob
The main challenge in building facebook apps is figuring out how to monetize a
user base that doesn't pay or click ads. It works for facebook itself because
they have an unholy amount of traffic. But your app won't.

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kapitti
There are outliers, Zynga for instance has people paying for fake poker chips.

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teej
Zynga isn't an outlier. Virtual Goods certainly isn't a new business model,
and they're definitely not the only ones doing it on Facebook.

Besides, from all the anecdotal data I have, successful apps using virtual
goods typically get 1/3 revenue from direct sales, 1/3 from CPA offers, and
1/3 from ad clicks.

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vaksel
what I'd like to know is whether or not they are looking for "viable"
businesses(those that'll be able to generate revenue) or "cool"
businesses(those that won't make money, but will have something that'll drive
more traffic to facebook)

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spaghetti
Your question makes me wonder: does facebook want more traffic? Lack of
traffic isn't the reason they're having trouble. The reason they're having
trouble is product/user mismatch. A really good idea will make them lots of
money with their current amount of traffic. Actually more traffic just means
more infrastructure costs (and probably more of the type of user that doesn't
generate any revenue with fb's current products).

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erlanger
Be a remora on a starving shark.

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khangtoh
Build and submit whatever you want other than an app that uses the Twitter
API.

