Facebook Platform’s greatest asset
I’ve read a lot of posts and comments around the blogosphere that the Facebook Platform is the new AOL. Maybe that’s a little harsh, but it’s not too far from the truth. If the AOL comparison sounds harsh, bear in mind that AOL was successful for a while. 
It still remains to be seen whether the Facebook Platform will blossom into more than a glorified platform for controlled widgets, whether the “Social OS” concept will stick, and whether applications will actually make any money. If there’s a fighting chance, it’ll be from applications that leverage Facebook’s existing user networks. Facebook’s greatest asset is their user database: I would hazard to guess that they have the most accurate and trusted database of personal profiles and relationships on the web. It’s not Identity 2.0 utopia by any means, but it’s the biggest and best database of trust relationships that exists today, and being able to tap into that as a developer is huge.
There’s a lot of hype surrounding Facebook Platform, but you can’t say it’s not warranted.
Your reward for writing a wildly successful Facebook app: $60,000 and a job
This article from Reuters pretty much confirms my belief that it’s hard to make money on Facebook. Despite the massive amount of hype surrounding Facebook applications, a wildly successful Facebook app, like Favorite Peeps with 1.6 million users, is worth a piddling $60,000 and a job at Slide. Granted, it’s not a bad payday considering how much effort was required to build Favorite Peeps, but the developers got in on the ground floor — forget duplicating that kind of success now, because all of the simple ideas for Facebook apps have been done, and creating anything that successful again is going to require a lot more effort.
I’m not sure if the creators of Favorite Peeps or SuperPoke should have sold out to Slide. I can think of a few things to do to innovate and expand those apps to generate more advertising revenue. It’ll be interesting to see what Slide does with Favorite Peeps and SuperPoke to generate revenue. Come to think of it, how does Slide generate revenue? Do they make any money at all??Virtual gifts - why they just might work
James Hong, one of the founders of HotOrNot.com, emailed GigaOM yesterday to announce that they are doing away with paid subscriptions to their “Meet Me” dating site. Instead, they’re turning to a mostly ad-based revenue model, as well as selling virtual gifts.
The concept of virtual gifts is a brilliant idea — even Facebook is trying to get in on the action too, testing their own virtual gifts. It’s a concept that’s been proven to work in international markets with sites like Cyworld, but whether it will catch on en masse in North America is another question. A quick survey of the discussion out there shows most people are pretty negative on the idea. Where it might stand a chance, though, is if there are enough guys out there willing to shell out money to get the attention of girls — and if girls don’t find virtual gifts cheesy, tacky, or just plain stupid. Put it another way, it’s a concept that will work only for dating purposes. Hence, it’s probably not going to work for Facebook, since Facebook isn’t a dating site per se (at least nobody thinks of going to Facebook for that reason). It just might, however, work for HotOrNot.
With paid (and even free) dating sites losing subscribers to free social networks, making themselves free was a move that HotOrNot had to make to survive. The problem with free, though, is that it attracts the looky-loos, unemployed bums, players, stalkers, etc. When real money is involved, you can weed out the guys and girls who aren’t serious about meeting people. For HotOrNot, virtual gifts could go a long way to filling that gap they left by going free.
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