

TwtApps For Sale; $500K Gets You 11-App Suite - vijayr
http://www.readwriteweb.com/readwritestart/2009/09/twtapps-for-sale-500k-gets-you.php

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moe
_values Twtapps at $500,000, based on his estimation of how much it would take
for anyone to develop as many apps with as much traction_

Sorry, but $500k is a joke, those apps are trivial.

If I had that kind of money to drop on such a thing I'd much rather spend $50k
on copying the apps (doable by one developer in under 6 months) and the
remainder on marketing or _more_ apps.

Moreover, if he thinks his little toybox is worth half a million, then why on
earth doesn't he just monetize it himself...

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petercooper
It doesn't matter if $500k is a joke or even a real figure that they hope to
achieve. By using $500k as an anchor, $100k doesn't seem like such a crazy
prize yet.. it is for what's being offered. It's a common persuasion/sales
technique. Make a reallllly crazy offer and then the merely "slightly crazy"
offers can actually seem erroneously realistic. (No, this doesn't work for
everything ;-))

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moe
You mean like this: <http://is.gd/2SEvr> ? (thanks jacquesm)

I'm not so sure about that strategy, and even $100k is a joke for a bunch of
semi-polished twitter apps without any monetization perspective beyond shotgun
advertising.

I could see this stuff going somewhere in the $10k ballpark - but still have
no idea why anyone would want to buy that bag of mediocrity, except perhaps
for eliminating a potential would-be competitor.

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javery
Most twitter apps are getting maybe a $1/rpm, and that's if you can sell the
space. CPM rates are below .25/cpm for the stuff listed on BuySellAds.

I tried to make a run at Twitter advertising (<http://thebranchnetwork.net/>)
and found that most advertisers have little interest in general twitter
advertising. Most marketers are beginning to realize that the best way to use
twitter is to participate in the conversation.

500k seems very high for this, 50k would be more reasonable. Unfortunately for
software developers everywhere you can't put a value on development time since
its just a sunk cost.

~~~
diN0bot
> "...most advertisers have little interest in general twitter advertising.
> Most marketers are beginning to realize that the best way to use twitter is
> to participate in the conversation."

Anecdotal eveidence bears this out for me, too, which I think is awesome. We
don't need more advertisements; we need more authenticity.

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vijayr
I hope he gets a sale, but 500k seems a little too much. He hasn't monetized
his apps, and there doesn't seem to be a clear cut way to monetize such apps.

~~~
ashishk
Two comparables to consider:

I know this is a tech. startup, but for 500k I could theoretically buy a brick
and mortar business that makes me 50-100k per year. Given the risk of
monetizing twtApps, I would probably opt to do that.

Also, SGN was buying up small fb app companies for 1-1.5MM about 1.5 years
ago. Each was seeing 200-500k in revenues. And probably most of that was
profit.

Using this comparable, to justify the 500k valuation, twtApps would need to be
seeing 66 - 166k in revenues.

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jacquesm
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=802865>

~~~
ashishk
Yeah, I was half tempted to say "Dupe", but since I posted the original, felt
like it would be a toolish thing to do.

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pmikal
Twollow also put itself for sale this week on Sitepoint, but then quickly took
itself off the market. Twollow was claiming 8k of monthly revenue and was
asking much less than TwtApps.

