
According to Alexa, iLike has lost 70% of their Web site traffic since launching on Facebook - toffer
http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/facebook-ilike/
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nickb
They've traded their independence and have become a sharecropper. :( They're
now on Facebook's mercy. Facebook giveth; facebook taketh away?! Their
investors should be worried.

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danw
Makes sense. None of my nontechie friends realise that facebook apps exist
outside of facebook. For example they think Twitter is some kind of useless
clone of facebook status. I've yet to see a great facebook app that ads value
to facebook.

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keven
Would you exchange 4 million new users in one month for decline in Alexa
ranking? Hell yeah!

iLike traffic actually shares the same exponential growth since all contents
in their facebook app are served from their servers. Facebok does not host
your app.

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toffer
What's interesting is that all the hype surrounding the explosive viral growth
for Facebook apps such as iLike doesn't acknowledge a possible cost. Acquiring
4 million users isn't strictly additive, if it comes at the cost of
cannibalizing your existing Web site visitors.

At first, I thought that iLike would only be able to monetize their Facebook
users by driving them to their Web site. So, a big drop in Web site traffic
seemed disastrous.

However, I see now that iLike is showing ads on their "Music Challenge" page
within their Facebook app, so driving traffic doesn't seem necessary. (I'm
assuming iLike is collecting this advertising revenue. Please correct me if
I'm wrong.)

That's the real question then: How easy is it to monetize Facebook users? Is a
Facebook user (who never visits the iLike Web site) just as valuable to iLike
as a Web site user? If a Facebook user is less valuable, how many more
Facebook users than Web site users would iLike need to come out ahead?

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amichail
If you don't trust Facebook, then build a Facebook app with limited
functionality to promote your full-featured service outside Facebook.

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staunch
Aren't you then leaving room for a competitor to be more generous by letting
users stay inside Facebook?

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amichail
Why is that so important? Why does it matter if you sometimes need to leave
Facebook?

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staunch
I think given two otherwise similar services the one that's fully functional
inside Facebook will get more users.

~~~
amichail
Unless the other one already has a lot more users.

