

The "I Have 250,000 Users, Now What?" guy just sold his Facebook app for $3 million - toffer
http://www.insidefacebook.com/2007/08/16/biggest-facebook-app-acquisition-yet-tripadvisor-acquires-where-ive-been-for-reported-3-million/

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bilbo0s
This young man aggregated a very valuable demographic in one place. Over 2
Million prime "hosteling" candidates, and travelers all accessible through his
user list. As to the question of whether this is real, I am uncertain. It
would be understandable however if it were.

What many entrepreneurs realize too late is that acquiring a lot of
heterogeneous users quickly is of little value. Acquiring HOMOGENEOUS users is
of great value. When all of a sites users are homogeneous, ie travelers, or
runners, or 30 year old single women, the number of methods of monetizing them
are legion. Monetization of an audience of less than 5 million is more
difficult where there is no commonality.

This young man chose the simplest monetization method, sell the names.

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eposts
Here is some juicy stuff - Tripadvisor says the report is not true:
<http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9761584-7.html>

~~~
toffer
News.com now has a statement from Craig Ulliot confirming that the report is
not true: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43676>

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pg
I'm dubious about this. There's no source. The Mashable and Techcrunch
articles about this simply derive from this one. And yet Inside Facebook isn't
claiming an exclusive, despite apparently having one.

It may be true, but there are a lot of fishy signs.

~~~
ph0rque
According to the app developer's website
(<http://www.bigsight.org/craigulliott>):

"Craig Ulliott is a freelance web developer and the guy behind the "Where I've
Been" Facebook application that has reached more than 2.3 million users in its
first two months since launch. Craig recently sold the application and user
base to TripAdvisor for $3mm, which marks the first major sale of a Facebook
application since the company opened up their API and development platform."

~~~
pg
Is that his site?

~~~
ph0rque
hmmm, I guess I didn't really do my homework: it looks like bigsight.org is a
people directory, and Craig's entry is open to public editing
(<http://www.bigsight.org/directory/501/edit>).

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zach
Wow, and this is one of those ideas at least two different people have
suggested to me in conversations. I guess it was just waiting for the right
platform. And no, none of them are mentioned in this article.

That's a good argument for keeping ideas like this in a journal or outliner or
something so you can review them when a new-platform gold rush like this comes
around.

And, as anomalous as this deal seems, I have to say it: it's also more support
for the "get popular first and worry about profitability later" school of
thought.

~~~
zach
Or maybe this deal is so anomalous because it's fictitious. I guess I was
being too naive.

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acgourley
That's uh... well I'm happy for him.

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run4yourlives
Note to self: avoid management team of trip advisor at all costs.

~~~
ashu
<evil> Or _maybe_ somebody who's investing in facebook is also somehow
involved with the acquisition. get one of the apps an exit => facebook's value
shoots through the roof again. </evil>

~~~
run4yourlives
Either way, I'm safe if I avoid them altogether.

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acgourley
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30042> for reference

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aston
My gut tells me TripAdvisor can't expect to make back that money on the users
themselves over the next few years. If they shift the app to include
advertising to achieve that level of revenue, it's going to lose out to
whatever copy cat is still ad-free.

~~~
mariorz
why? they wouldn't have to put ads on user profiles just put them on canvas
pages in an unobtrusive way, you can potentially target them A LOT better than
google does no?

~~~
aston
And who would click them? There's no such thing, btw, as an unobtrusive ad.

~~~
mariorz
so you don't believe advertising works on the web?

