

Google Buys Slide for $182 Million, Getting More Serious about Social Games - raghus
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/04/google-buys-slide-for-182-million-getting-more-serious-about-social-games/

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vibhavs
"If Slide cashes out for $1.5 billion, Levchin 'would regard it as abject
failure'," Slide investor David Weiden of Khosla Ventures told BusinessWeek in
2007.

source: [http://www.businessinsider.com/if-slide-cashes-out-
for-15-bi...](http://www.businessinsider.com/if-slide-cashes-out-
for-15-billion-levchin-would-regard-it-as-abject-failure-slide-investor-david-
weiden-of--2010-8)

edit: note that PayPal was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion.

~~~
coryl
Wow, talk about hype. That kind of quote is like bubble era speculation, just
feeding the frenzy. I always wondered why Slide was kept in such high regard
when all they made was slideshows and facebook apps. I mean, sure the guy has
a reputation, but what were they making that was so noteworthy and game
changing?

------
ed
$182 Million may sound like a lot, but remember that not too long ago this
company was raising capital at a valuation of $2 _billion_. I expect there
will be little cash, if any, left for employees after investor payouts.

~~~
dotBen
Do you have a source for the $2bn valuation. I've seen (+ personally remember)
a $0.5bn figure but can't source $2bn.

Thanks

~~~
raquo
That's from the same guy who says Facebook is worth $100b
<http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2008/01/vc-sees-2b-ipo/>

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betterlabs
Max is awesome and I love his attitude. But I just never ever understood
Slide. And why Google would buy Slide is equally difficult to understand, if
not more. Are they buying technology? Or users (on Facebook!)? Or revenues
(most likely not!)? Or Max and his team?

~~~
jgilliam
It's the same reason they partnered with Zynga. It's a backdoor way to get at
large chunks of Facebook profile data for ad targeting.

~~~
aspiringsensei
I hadn't considered this angle: are you able to flesh out the degree to which
they will be able to do this?

I'm non-technical, so it's not immediately clear to me:

* the potential increase in cashflow yields from improving ad targeting (what change will it make? isn't google pretty good at this already?) * How the data from Zynga & Slide will flow out of the facebook ecosystem and into the broader web (is your slide identity linked to your google search identity somehow?)

I'd appreciate any thoughts that occur to you. Still puzzling over the point
of a back-door into facebook user data and what that might bring. Could they
export that into a google profile? Would an understanding of what individuals
"like" and "dislike" in concert with knowledge of their social graph's likes
and dislikes lead to more targeted advertising?

I guess those are the questions that google bought the company to answer: 182m
is not that much in terms of earnings for them, and they might have been able
to pay in stock.

Thanks for getting my mind whirring.

~~~
jgilliam
You can get some small amount of information about a person via Facebook
publicly, but to really get at all the info, the user needs to authorize their
Facebook account to the app. Zynga and Slide have tens of millions of people
who've done this for their apps, if not more.

All Google has to do is put an ad on all the Zynga and Slide pages that passes
them the Facebook UID of the current user, and it could become part of their
ad targeting. Then they can get the actual Facebook data from Zynga and Slide.

Google wants everyone to give this info to them directly, that's what
Google.Me, Google Buzz, and all their different social experiments have been
about. But that hasn't been working out so well, so these deals are a cheap
way to make sure they can still get at the Facebook profile data.

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davcro
This does not make sense.

I am the developer of two Facebook apps, Friend Interview and Quiz Monster. I
would argue those two apps are more valuable than Slide's and there is no way
they are worth $182 million.

What is Google buying?

~~~
BenS
Google is buying distribution across many social networks in lots of
countries, and a team 100+ smart engineers and product designers.

~~~
davcro
Quiz Monster and Friend Interview have a bigger userbase both international
and in the US than Slide's apps. Granted I'm only looking at FB here, but IMO
that is the only social network that matters. I work solo and believe that my
apps could be run with just one educated rails developer. Isnt that a better
buy than a smaller app that needs 100 eningeers?

And I'm not some special case here. There are a handful of Indy fb devs with
bigger apps than mine.

This deal makes zero sense to me.

~~~
ahi
Buy some foosball tables and hire some engineers. You'll be rolling in it in
no time.

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pjhyett
I'll never understand why Max took his Paypal money and built an online widget
company. Hopefully he'll attempt something meaningful next time.

~~~
samratjp
Like his meaningful investing in WePay (which does seem meaningful)
-[http://www.businessinsider.com/max-levchin-is-pretty-
excited...](http://www.businessinsider.com/max-levchin-is-pretty-excited-
about-a-new-payments-startup-called-wepay-2010-4)

~~~
staunch
Or Yelp.

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aswanson
You can tell the suits have taken over at google, at least in acquisitions.
This makes no sense at all.

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mattmaroon
Slide? Really? They couldn't have picked a much worse company to buy there,
except RockYou. Slide got a bunch of users early by making Facebook apps that
gave it functionality MySpace had like ability to post videos and photos to
friends' walls. Those kinds of apps never monetized well, and all of that
stuff unsurprisingly ended up on Facebook's roadmap anyway.

~~~
idoh
You can't really compare the two. RockYou doesn't really focus on the widgets
as much as games / ad network these days (although truth be told you can't
really see it if you swing by rockyou.com or visit the crunchbase profile,
which is really out of date).

The ad network side of things is really strong and doing lots of interesting
things.

~~~
mattmaroon
I've run these ads on my apps, and purchased them. No ad network on Facebook
is making anything substantial.

They do have a couple games doing well lately.

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dotBen
If $182m is the true price it's a total firesale. They raised $78m at a $500m
valuation.

With costs, liquidation preferences, etc I wonder if the common shareholders
will see anything. Even BI is correct at $228m it's pretty slim pickings.

My guess is Google want Levchin to be GM of the new Google social network (he
has experience of social thru Slide and payments thru PayPal of course) and
this is really a talent acquisition as much as anything.

~~~
evgen
Isn't that toad from Microsoft who was previously heading up the Android
effort the guy slotted to take over Google Me? As cute as Slide is I really
don't see very much about it that screams "social"; its not much more social
that Google Docs and if Google has any intention of playing in the next big
game it has to do much, much better than this.

~~~
redorb
toad from microsoft?

Google Me? (its not named yet)

you make it sounds like your an insider and know these guys personally (if so
correct me) but it just seems inappropriate.

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prs
Given that Slide has received $78M in funding this exit does not look very
exciting to my eyes.

Nevertheless, congratulations to Max for yet another sold company.

~~~
leftnode
I saw that and wondered where $78 million goes in creating a games site. That
seems like a tremendous amount of money. Oh well, congrats I suppose.

~~~
ed
Most of it is ad spend, essentially insulating the company from challengers by
creating an artificial barrier to entry. It's now nearly impossible to compete
in the space unless you're very well funded or cater to a niche.

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mlinsey
I always thought that Levchin's PayPal experience would give Slide an
opportunity to dominate the micropayments space that is generating so much
revenue for competing social games companies. That thought wasn't very well
fleshed-out (what specific advantages would it have given Slide? Was handling
payments really a key pain point for Zynga et al?), but it still seems like a
big missed opportunity to me.

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Tycho
It's funny: on one hand Slide seems such a feeble business proposition
compared to the mighty PayPal, but on the other hand photo sharing has been
the very thing that's fuelled so much consumer activity over the last decade
(Facebook, MySpace, camera phones, memes...). What's the word on Slide's arch
rival, RockYou or whatever it's called - valued higher than Slide?

There was another idea that came out of the Maxcubator at the same time as
Slide, can't remember what it was (i read it in _The Facebook Story_ ) may
have involved Peter Theil, it seemed like the best idea but Levchin passed it
up for The Slide concept.

~~~
Mistone
rockyou is doing quite well- def bigger then Slide. They just signed a 5 yr
deal with facebook for using fb credits in all social games
<http://tcrn.ch/adWPTK>

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bemmu
I remember Max Levchin mentioning in an interview that Slide would be a
success to him if it sells for more than PayPal. I hope he is still happy with
this outcome, looking forward to seeing what he will do next.

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zandorg
Possibly a talent acquisition of Levchin. If he doesn't quit, it seems like a
good purchase.

~~~
donaldc
If that's the case, why not just pay him $100 million directly and cut out the
middlemen?

~~~
erikpukinskis
Because he wants to do another startup, and he owes his investors BIG TIME.

Those folks are taking a huge financial hit. He convinces Google to buy the
company as a _favor_ to _them_. If he just dumps the company and takes a huge
bonus from Google, he loses a lot of friends, and has a hell of a time getting
funding next time.

So he's going to do his time at Google. 5 years of startup purgatory. And when
he comes out, he'll have a few friends ready to put a couple million behind
his next venture.

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alanh
Does Slide utilize Zynga-style dirty tricks to psychologically manipulate
users to their detriment? If so, and if Google continues such products or
starts their own using such tricks, that’s evil in my book.

~~~
c1sc0
I don't get why you are being downvoted. I know game mechanics are hot right
now but you are making a valid point. If we're not careful we're going to turn
the whole internet in a giant skinner box.

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jscore
$182M for a bunch of widgets? Looks like Google is getting desperate here.

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aresant
Biz insider says sales price @ $228m

Not a huge percentage more but I wouldn't complain about another $46m :)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/google-just-bought-slide-
for-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-just-bought-slide-
for-182-million-watch-out-facebook-2010-8)

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jw84
What does Slide... do?

~~~
uuilly
As near as I can tell it makes 14 y/o girls happy. I can wrap my head around a
lot of small companies going big, but I never could find a way to rationalize
the hype behind slide.

~~~
seiji
I always thought it was another case of Founder-itis. Popular founder = press
= perceived popular product (almost no matter what it does) = good exit or a
pity exit.

