Gawker
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widgets
RockYou diving deeper into social games
Slide and RockYou, the two largest developers of Facebook apps, have long had a serious rivalry over the most frivolous Web software. But the two may be pulling apart. Slide, Max Levchin's SuperPoke machine, signaled yesterday that it's betting on online entertainment, partnering with Hollywood to bring mainstream content to its FunSpace apps. RockYou, meanwhile, seems to be turning into a gamemaker. "We want to be like the Electronic Arts of social networks, and build games for social networks," RockYou CEO Lance Tokuda, shown here, said today at the Startonomics conference in San Francisco, referring to the dominant maker of videogames. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Shadowlayer: How did they get $30M in VC, can anyone explain me? 1 Responses | Other threads
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developers, developers, developers
Facebook design tweak "marks end for applications"
A tweak to Facebook's new site redesign, which goes permanent today, removed a link to "recently used applications" from the site's menu. The change has third-party developers who make those applications up in arms: They say removing the link will make it harder for users to come back to their widgets. One developer wrote us to say, "If this sticks, today marks the end for third-party applications." The "Developer Feedback to Facebook" forum is full of similar complaints. More »
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Comment by Internetguy2008: Just try and find your groups. Seems Facebook is looking to kill off a lot of the "entertainment" functionality. 1 Responses | Other threads
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online advertising
How much money can Facebook apps actually make?
DeveloperAnalytics, a research firm which analyzes Facebook applications, put out an appealing bit of linkbait this morning that purports to show how much money popular applications could earn each month. It calculates the metric based on "hundreds of real CPM, and CPA/Virtual Goods revenue data points collected directly from developers and partners." That's CPM as in "cost per thousand" — the traditional way ads are sold, based on the number of people they reach — and CPA as in "cost per action," which is usually based on linking payment for an ad to its generation of sales, signups, or other results. Virtual goods? Those are the cheesy little icons you can send your friends on Facebook. Yes, some people pay money for them. More »
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Comment by Hello_Newman: Yes, become an underworld crime syndicate, who is gonna know, what harm could possibly come from doing that? It's right... more » | Other threads
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rumormonger
Facebook widgetmaker RockYou coming to New York
Sequoia-backed RockYou, the second-largest widgetmaker on Facebook, is considering plans to staff a New York office with 2-5 ad salespeople — copying a move made by archrival Slide two months ago. Funny, it normally doesn't take these two so long to imitate each other. It's a much-needed move: RockYou has a reputation for being slow to respond even when advertisers come knocking on its door. The startup has been content to coast on charging other appmakers for promotion, and we hear it's on track to take in $10 million in revenues this year. But at some point, the company will have to give up that business model — which strikes some as suspiciously pyramidal — for legit dollars from Madison Avenue. -
developers, developers, developers
Developers uselessly outraged over pirated iPhone apps
Turns out you don't need $999.99 to get the "I Am Rich" app for your iPhone after all. Gone from Apple's iTunes App Store, it's available free on Cracked Apps, blog linking to pirated, generic versions of Armin Heinrich's useless widget and other less useless apps too. Haklabs just put Hakstore, which does much the same thing. "As a developer myself," an angry tipster tells us, "I feel outraged and I think media should write about this to force Apple take some legal action." Seems that Apple already has, but as with the music and film industries, policing the piracy won't do much good. "Assholes," taunts the person behind CrackedApps, "Someone reported everyone of my links. Give it a few and I will update all the links :)"
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Comment by inkhead: There is a private torrent available (not on the usual sites) that has every single app the the appstore offers.... more » | Other threads
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Your Privacy is an Ilusion
Google doesn't care about widget users, security analyst says
SecTheory CEO Robert "RSnake" Hansen, a security consultant — and therefore a professional fearmongerer — for clients like Microsoft and eBay, says computer fraudsters can insert malicious JavaScript and HTML into Google Gadgets — widgets for Google's customized iGoogle homepage. Google doesn't screen the widgets for this code, he claims, and so users put themselves at risk of data theft and computer-killing worms. "Google cares more about tracking users than they do about consumer safety," Hansen told an audience at a convention yesterday. More » -
developers, developers, developers
Facebook to spend another $2 million trying to prove it's worth $15 billion
Facebook announced it will pay out $2 million to winners of its second fbFund developers' competition. 25 first-round winners will get $25,000 each, and five second-round winners will win $250,000. The money comes as a grant, not an investment, with the only stipulation being that Facebook backers Accel and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund get the right of first refusal for any investment rounds in the future. More »
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Comment by MagBas: @Passerby: Maybe I could hire a 18 year old with Asperger Syndrome, a bad haircut and a lisp as CEO... more » | Other threads
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downtime
Hulu widgets let you watch TV while pretending to use Internet
Finally a widget I can get behind: TV and movie site Hulu has built a set of highly configurable widgets that can preview or even play full episodes in the middle of a Web page. Now if only they'd carry the entire Season 4 backlog of Battlestar Galactica.
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By Paul BoutinComment by WagCurious: Let me save you the time Paul... the Battlestar finds earth, but it's been devastated by war. Did not see... more » | Other threads
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f8
Facebook execs to favor widgets built by investors, relatives
Today at its F8 developers' conference, Facebook will announce a plan to give favored widgets more abilities to promote themselves on the site. The first two apps to get "preferred" status will be Causes and iLike. What does being a "preferred" widgetmaker mean? A source tells us that in the short term, Facebook will simply promote preferred apps in users' News Feeds more often, increasing their chances of spreading from friend to friend. "Basically, it is a subsidy program for their favorite darlings," says our source. Causes is an app backed by former Facebook president Sean Parker; iLike is a startup backed by Marc Bodnick of Elevation Partners, who is also a private Facebook investor and the brother-in-law of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Our source also tells us that after top tier preferred apps, there will be a middle tier of "certified/approved/vetted" applications as well. More »
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Comment by rafa3rafa: Isn't "nepotism" what Silicon Valley is all about? Ridiculous. What is worse is if people just sit on their ass... more » | Other threads
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venture capital
Kleiner Perkins plunges into Web 2.0 far too late with Zynga's $29 million round
Today at Facebook's developer's conference, social games widgetmaker Zynga will announce a $29 million round of funding — the company's second — led by Kleiner Perkins, the VC firm that backed Amazon.com and Google. Zynga has also acquired virtual world app YoVille and added former Electronic Arts creative exec Bing Gordon to its board. The company makes games like Poker and Attack, a Risk clone, for Facebook and other social networks. Zynga founder Mark Pincus told the Wall Street Journal that Zynga has 18 million monthly visitors and adds another 450,000 users a day. Kleiner Perkins partner John Doeer said his firm went ahead with the Zynga deal because of that kind of growth, telling the Journal Zynga has "cracked the code" on how to develop games that go viral fast. But really, how Zynga adds new users isn't all that complicated, clever or sustainable. More »
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Comment by ahaislip: Funny, I would have called the company a video game company. Guess the firm needed something for recent-addition Bing to... more » | Other threads
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venture capital
Steve Case bets on the Facebook platform, just in time for the bubble to burst
Bitter widgetmakers may want you to believe venture capital for the Facebook platform is all dried up, but don't believe it. Not when there's visionaries like former AOL CEO Steve Case still around. Case has joined a $5 million funding round led by Grotech Ventures for widgetmaker Living Social. Living Social builds apps like BookSocial and BeerSocial for Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5 and Orkut that recommend products for their users based on their friend's tastes. On second thought, Case's investment may be the clearest market signal yet that investment money for widgets is soon to disappear altogether.
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Comment by Shadowlayer: The FB bubble is over, but not the entire industry's.. more » | Other threads
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widgets
Facebook's F8 conference all about rapping developers' knuckles
Facebook will follow its F8 developers conference this Wednesday with another 8-hour "hackathon" for third-party developers and Facebook engineers to work on widgets. This will be fun to watch, because those two groups kind of despise each other right now. Last spring, Facebook began taking a hardline stance against widgets that spam users or violate privacy rules, even going so far as to temporarily remove popular apps like Top Friends and Super Wall from the site this summer. Then, a beta test of Facebook's new profile revealed a new feature that made Slide's Top Friends redundant. Slide responded cheerfully to the news, but one exec at a widgetmaker told us that if Facebook keeps up the regime of enforcement and copycat apps, venture capital for Facebook-focused startups will dry up. Of course, we hardly expect a brawl or even public arguments during the "hackathon" — passive-aggressive Twitter notes and other forms of repressed resentments, anyone? Developers, save yourselves the future therapy bills. Just do what Facebook wants and build the kind of apps its employees describe in the video below. That seems easier. More »
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Comment by Widget Economist: This is honestly like Amway/Quixtar cult. Commonalities: - Promises of viral marketing (therefore money, fame) - You make no... more » | Other threads
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developers, developers, developers
Widgetmaker: How not to get your app suspended from Facebook
Over the past month, Facebook has shown itself to have a quicker trigger when it comes to banning applications from its site for rule violations. It's part of the reason, observers say, that venture capital for Facebook-app startups is slowing down. The punished include apps from major developers RockYou and Slide. But they also include guys like developer Dan Abelon, who saw his popular SpeedDate widget booted from the platform for a couple hours earlier this month. Abelon told Inside Facebook what other application developers should do to make sure the same doesn't happen to them. The bullet points — which paint a picture of Facebook as a fairly ruthless enforcer — are below, trimmed to give widgetmakers more time to call those VCs who suddenly all seem to be on vacation all the time. More »
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Comment by ScalaWag: @Rachel Marsden: Very impressive stats you got [www.facebook.com] 0 daily active users0% of total Congrats on your mindblowing popularity! more » | Other threads
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e-commerce
A Facebook payments system? Zuckerberg not sure he wants your money after all
Facebook will not launch a payments system for its platform application developers at the upcoming F8 conference. Inside Facebook says though Facebook engineers are working on a system, it just won't be ready in time — even though Facebook began asking developers to participate in a payments beta test last December. Silicon Alley Insider offers a stranger explanation: The Facebook payments system hasn't come out yet because Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg "hasn't bought in to the idea completely." More »
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Comment by Widget Economist: why do we need the middleman to be facebook? haven't we been through this? we already have e-mail. we already have... more » | Other threads
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facebook apps
The Valley's Facebook frenzy fades
They can't say they didn't have it coming. But widgetmakers are angry all the same about Facebook's decision to clone Slide's Top Friends application as a feature in its latest redesign. "It would be insane for a new developer" to begin creating new apps the platform now, says an executive at one of the many Facebook-applications firms watching the story. The exec says the VCs widget startups pitch for funding know it, too, and are closing their wallets. He blames Facebook's "new regime," including new COO Sheryl Sandberg and recently-appointed flack-cum-platform director, Elliot Schrage: More » -
widgets
New Facebook feature makes Slide's Top Friends app redundant
If you're the application developer and they're the platform owner, you have to know death can come at any moment: Create a popular, simple application, and the platform owner might just rip you off in their next release. It's happened to Max Levchin's Slide, maker of the popular Facebook widget Top Friends. With its latest profile redesign, Facebook now allows users to specify which friends they'd like to display to profile visitors. (See how Facebook's version works in the image above and you'll note that with the friends I've selected, my goal is to intimidate profile visitors with my powerful connections.) Before you feel too sorry for Slide, note that this is a feature MySpace has long offered. Slide, seeing that Facebook lacked it, promptly cooked up Top Friends, which filled the void. Top Friends is Slide's second most popular application with nearly 1.5 million daily active users. On the strength of those user numbers, Slide has raised $50 million in a recent financing round, and is opening an ad-sales office in New York. We asked for Slide's reaction. They were surprisingly chipper! More »
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Comment by sggrf: agree that these companies are a joke and should all crash and burn! more » | Other threads
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facebook apps
RockYou spends around $3 million on two new profile decorators
Widgetmaker RockYou acquired Pieces of Flair and Speed Racing, applications which, according to Facebook's directory, see about 432,042 and 190,441 daily active users. Terms of the deals weren't disclosed, but an industry insider says RockYou probably paid $1 million for Speed Racing and $2 million for Pieces of Flair. RockYou's most popular Facebook application, Super Wall, continues to lose traffic ever since Facebook turned off Super Wall's ability to send notifications to Facebook users. More » -
your privacy is an illusion
Slide's Top Friends back on Facebook after third-party privacy audit
Facebook's third-most popular widget, Slide's Top Friends, is back after Facebook suspended it on June 26. (The offense: displaying Top Friends' users birthdays and other private information that wouldn't normally be visible on Facebook.) What took so long? Following the suspension, Slide wanted to call its apps the most secure on Facebook. To feel comfortable doing so, it contracted a third-party audit firm to review its applications and source code, Slide exec Keith Rabois told us. "The issue with Top Friends was fixed immediately," Rabois told us, "But as you might imagine an independent audit takes time to perform." Elsewhere on Facebook, Slide's privacy troubles seem to be spreading. More »
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Comment by Ted Dziuba: Excellent. Now slide can get back to profiting wildly from Top Friends. more » | Other threads
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developers, developers, developers
Facebook's F8 schedule in plain English
Facebook released its schedule for its second annual F8 developers' conference on July 23. Facebook's servile, so-called independent developers have three tracks to choose from: "User Experience," "Technical," and "Business." If you work for a Facebook widgetmaker, you're probably confused, because who among you trying to build a business on the Facebook platform doesn't also need to be fully briefed on its user experience and technical aspects? To clarify, we've translated Facebook's description of each track out of verbose PRspeak. More »
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Comment by Widget Economist: Duly noted Carlson. The whole Valley is in an uproar over this F8 conference. Superwall and Zombies is some serious... more » | Other threads
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widgets
VH1 and Slide sign deal to create Facebook's killer app — Flavor Flav SuperPokes
On Wednesday, Facebook and MySpace users who have installed Slide's near-ubiquitous SuperPoke widget — the one that lets you throw sheep — will be able to send messages branded with characters and slogans from VH1's stable of reality series such as Flavor Flav from Flavor of Love. It's all an effort to promote the new series I Love Money — which, surprisingly, does not star hypercompetitive Slide founder Max Levchin. Who knew?
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By Jackson WestComment by Shadowlayer: So a crackhead AND flav are going into the net business. more » | Other threads
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online advertising
AOL can guarantee your widget 0.04 cents per pageview
For the makers of widgets, those annoy-your-friends applications littering social networks, it's fractions of pennies from heaven: AOL ad network Platform-A has promised Facebook and Bebo widget developers that it can guarantee them "one of the industry’s highest" CPM — cost per thousand pageviews — rates if they sign up for its Widgnet publisher network. A Platform-A source says widgetmakers will get about 40 cents per thousand pageviews. Which is, of course, terrible. "Most [widgetmakers] won't sniff $1 CPMs," AdWeek's Brian Morrissey snarks.(Photo by MrVJTod) -
widgets
Zombies creator OK with being "the jackass" on Facebook
Blake Commagere created the all the widgets you hate most on Facebook — the Zombies, Werewolves, Vampires and Slayers. The ones that spam you with bites and inspired knockoffs like Pirates and Ninjas that everyone also hates. You'd think Blake would hide from publicity given his monstrous creations, but no, today we found him giving an interview to Silicon Alley Insider, saying how "totally wrong" people are who (like us) say that Facebook apps should be useful instead of annoying. More »
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Comment by Shadowlayer: @WhatBubble: So he has no friends? that explains a lot... But on the other hand, this goes to show how much... more » | Other threads
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slide
Facebook suspends Max Levchin's Slide over security loophole
Until last night, Top Friends by Slide was Facebook's third most popular widget, judging by daily active users and installations. Today, Top Friends is no longer on Facebook at all. News.com says its because pesky Canadian Byron Ng discovered a security loophole in the widget that allowed any user with Top Friends installed to view more profile information — birthdays, gender, and relationship statuses — then Facebook allows strangers to see. Ng discovered a similar loophole in SuperWall, an app made by Slide rival, RockYou. But RockYou already fixed the problem and SuperWall remains on the Facebook platform. No word on whether this little tidbit has Slide founder Max Levchin in this hospital from punching holes in a wall or two. (We hear the rivalry is a little intense).
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Comment by a1choi: @pepelicious: how about explaining "widget-breaker" on your resume? more » | Other threads
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facebook
When will "team buying" come to Facebook?
In China there's a popular consumer practice called tuangou or "team-buying," in which a large group of like-minded shoppers meet online and organize a trip to a local store. On that decided-upon day, they all show up in a huge pack and offer to buy, say, 75 digitial cameras from the store owner, but only if he'll agree to a 25 percent discount. If the owner doesn't agree to the deal, they all walk out. Instead of spending all their time developing better ways for Facebook users to poke each other or play board games online, why don't widgetmakers use the "social graph" to determine which users might have like-minded shopping interests, band them together and send them as a pack to amenable online and offline vendors? People have tried this before, but they didn't have acess to all of Facebook's data. I'm sure nobody would mind such an actually useful service taking a PayPal-esque cut off the top, Mr. Levchin.
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Comment by seth_barnburner: Well, there's no doubt that's it's the most geeky way to shop. I'd rather just not buy as much crap and... more » | Other threads
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facebook
Add the wrong Facebook widget and your face could appear in ads all over
Ad network for widgetmakers SocialMedia plans to serve ads in Facebook widgets and possibly across the Internet that use pictures of the ad-viewers' Facebook friends. Called "social banners," the service can only display a Facebook user's picture if that user already added a widget made by one of SocialMedia's partners, thereby agreeing to share such personal information. But after adding the widget, the "social banners" service is opt-out only — much like Facebook Beacon, the controversial ad program Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg called a "mistake" at the AllThingsD conference. The news has Facebook-watcher and SocialTimes blogger Nick O'Neil freaked out. "There are a number of issues at hand and many of them are extremely complex," O'Neill writes. We're not that worried. Facebook users should know that adding a third-party application means you're willing to share your personal information with that third-party. A commenter on O'Neill's post puts its simpler: "If you don’t like it just change settings to block 3rd party cookies. 10 seconds, privacy issues solved." -
design
Facebook's Wall comes down
Facebook has removed the "Wall" from its redesigned profiles. Early screenshots of the redesign featured a separate tab for the popular feature, but the latest shots show the Wall, where other users can leave comments on a profile, with the user's News Feed — now just called the "Feed." Users will be able to filter the Feed to see only Wall posts. Facebook-app developers, already exasperated by the redesign process, tell us they don't like the idea. Says one: "Mixing in 'X wrote on Y's FunWall" along with more personal messages from friends may deteriorate the quality of the new Wall/Feed feature as a whole." Put another way? Widgetmakers don't like losing their privileged position in the News Feed. Full screenshot of the new look, below. More »
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Comment by Ben Parr: WHAT?! I've been very happy with the progress of the redesign until now. The wall is an integral part of... more » | Other threads
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online advertising
Like developers, marketers also unhappy about Facebook redesign
Ian Schafer, CEO of marketing agency Deep Focus, got to play around with a redesigned version of his Facebook profile and has this bad news for social media marketers to report: More »
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Comment by G2GdoB2B: It's a nice way to give merit to those who do a good work, and punish (in some way) the... more » | Other threads
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rockyou
Did Facebook's developer-unfriendly redesign cost RockYou $150 million?
Despite the rumors, we all know widgetmaker RockYou isn't really worth $400 million. Not with the way ad buyers feel about spending on social media. We hear RockYou's latest investor, Doll Capital Management — which funded the company with another $35 million today — didn't value the company at $400 million either. "I believe the round was priced at $250 MM, and definitely not higher than $300 million to $325 million," an executive familiar with the deal says. More »
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Comment by BobDope: If you invested a dollar in Microsoft in 1794, you'd be able to buy a whole planet now. more » | Other threads
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widgets
Slide to stop making Facebook apps
Slide VP Keith Rabois says the widgetmaker is done making widgets — at least for Facebook. Rabois told SIlicon Alley Insider that Slide wants to focus on improving its existing apps, like SuperPoke and Top Friends. The company also knows it needs to start figuring out how to make enough money to justify its $550 million valuation. Last week, Slide hired AOL's former director of national sales, Jason Bitensky, to head up a new New York office. Money aside, Slide's announcement may be little more than politicking. More »
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Comment by BobDope: I didn't even advance to the 'look at the API' documentation with FadBook's API. I'm really great at time... more » | Other threads
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venture capital
RockYou raises $35 million
Widgetmaker RockYou raised $35 million from venture firm Doll Capital Management and private investors. Rumor has the deal setting RockYou's value near $400 million. RockYou created Facebook widgets SuperWall, Vampires, Likeness, X Me and claims 87.5 million visitors a month and 2.7 billion pageviews. Paying advertisers on RockYou include Paramount, New Line Cinema, Sony, Microsoft, and CBS. But they're not paying much. More » -
your privacy is an illusion
Facebook's widget security? You could throw a sheep through it
Linking up social websites, as proponents of "data portability" would have us do, can be hazardous to your privacy. And Paris Hilton's, and Lindsay Lohan's. But even the widgets on a single social network can leave us exposed. SuperPoke, a popular application made by Slide, will show you who's thrown a sheep at anyone, as long as you have their Facebook ID — the unique numeric identifier which shows up in the URL of their Facebook profile. Mark Zuckerberg's SuperPoke feed is here; substitute the number of another Facebook user for Zuckerberg's "4", and you can see every last sheep he or she has been involved with. More » -
facebook platform
Facebook's new profile: "Orwellian"
Welcome to the Silicon Valley hype cycle: One year, and you're over. That seems to be the consensus on Facebook's vaunted platform, whose one-year anniversary went largely unremarked. The company itself didn't blog about it until today, and sources tell us an open-bar party Facebook held in Palo Alto was low-key to the point of despair. It can't have helped that Google was throwing a massive party in San Francisco the same day to close out its conference for developers. How different a scene from a year ago, when the F8 launch event of Facebook Platform won comparisons of the company to Microsoft and of founder Mark Zuckerberg to Bill Gates. More » -
widgets
Facebook widgetmaker claims a six-figure profit
Snap Interactive, the widgetmaker behind Facebook apps Are You Interested and Meet New People, earned first-quarter revenues of $519,902 for a profit of $190,509. We know because their PR firm sent us a release saying so.Created by two brothers, the company shows that one year after applications were introduced on Facebook that this is more than just a fad and definitely a legitimate business model.
Six-figure quarterly revenues aren't exactly Google money. Or even Google search-engine-optimizer money. But if you're a widgetmaker who cares to disclose your profits, we're all ears — if you include the phone number of your auditor.
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Comment by mediawhoremeow: JimbHO's the only one getting any mileage out of those two widgets. more » | Other threads
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clearspring
Widget bubble inflating, deflating
Widget ad network Clearspring raised another $18 million in a third round of funding. New Enterprise Associates led the way and previous backers including Novack Biddle Venture Partners joined in, too. Is the so-called "widget economy" really so big that Clearsping, RockYou, and Slide are worth the $118 million they've collectively raised this year? Not even according to Clearspring CEO Hooman Radfar, who told PaidContent, "We generally think there's a healthy ecosystem that's going to continue to grow," but that "you literally can't have as many companies that there are" in the space. Especially since ad projections for social networks are getting knocked down from their frothy heights. eMarketer has reduced its 2008 estimate on social-network ad spending from $1.8 billion to $1.4 billion. -
politics
Obama leads in the widget race
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama traded states again last night, but Obama is only a handful of delegates away from securing the Democratic Party's nomination. The latest Web metric — widgets embedded on social-network pages — puts him firmly in the lead against John McCain. If only widgets counted as much as having a Republican running voting-machine maker Diebold. [ReadWriteWeb] (Photo by Steve Jurvetson) -
developers, developers, developers
MySpace bans the spam tactics that ruined Facebook apps
Little-known MySpace "cofounder" Kyle Brinkman announced new rules for application developers on the social network's platform today. They're meant to prevent the spam bubble Facebook went through after it launched its platform last year. In response, Facebook tightened up its rules, and offended developers in the process. MySpace's new rules: More »
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Comment by ScalaWag: What idiot would waste time developing on MySpace after these changes? Most of successful apps are games with a point... more » | Other threads
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widgets
Bezos-backed Kongregate moves to Facebook platform
Kongregate, a sort of YouTube for Flash games backed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos as well as Greylock Partners, will adapt some of its 4,500 games to Facebook's platform this week, Kongregate CEO Jim Greer told Inside Social Games. Kongregate makes money, or tries to, through advertising it shares with third-party game developers. Facebook doesn't need more gimmicky games, but with other widgetmakers like RockYou and Slide asking for (and getting) nine-figure valuations, don't expect the deluge to let up any time soon. -
keith rabois
Slide exec on widgets: Fun is where the money is
This decade's greatest Internet hits — Google and PayPal — make so much money because they help money change hands more efficiently. The next great wave of moneymakers on the Web won't be nearly so utilitarian, Keith Rabois, VP at widgetmaker Slide, argues in a guest post to AllThingsD. Rabois says the Web's next mint will be made on fun — a very underrated commodity, he says. To demonstrate his point, he harkens back to the week of April 21 and the electoral contest that captured all of America's attention. Not the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, Rabois writes. "I'm talking about American Idol." Then he lays down some convincing numbers: More »
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Comment by dailycandor: ConFlamingo: [news-service.stanford.edu] It's most certainly real. I was a (gay) Stanford freshman at the time. A good friend of mine dropped out... more » | Other threads
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online advertising
Facebook ad revenue projections revised down to $265 million
Due to a souring economy and a shift in spending from Facebook itself to third-party developers who place widgets on the social network's site, market research firm eMarketer lowered its projections for Facebook's 2008 ad revenue from $305 million to $265 million. eMarketer expects ad spending on widgets and applications — which goes to their makers, not Facebook — to reach $40 million this year.
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Comment by Widget Economist: $40 million bucks from ads in the facebook "widget economy"? Hahaha. Gonna move to high price area in Miami and be... more » | Other threads
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venture capital
Hyped widgetmaker explains the widgetmaker hype
Union Square Ventures funded Mark Pincus's casual games maker Zynga with $10 million not long after Max Levchin-founded widgetmaker Slide raised $50 million. Competitor RockYou wants a round of funding that would value it at $400 million. We like to scoff at these purveyors of online sheep-throwing tools, but that's serious scratch, people. In this excerpt from a longer interview with Kara Swisher, Zynga's Mark Pincus explains what widgetmakers see in our future — and shows us exactly what kind of pitch VCs are going for these days.
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Comment by longtimereader: He's the guy who was smart enough to buy, with Reid Hoffman, the Six Degrees social networking patent. more » | Other threads
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