Facebook mania (continued)
Fred has an excellent post today about Facebook apps. After reading his post and looking at my Facebook mania post a few weeks back, I’m still excited about Facebook applications and what opportunities it might bring to startups.
However, I’ve gathered & refined my thoughts when it comes to facebook application developers:
Generally there are two types of application developers on facebook right now.
a) Those that are building apps just for facebook and don’t have a service outside of facebook (and myspace). I’ve seen a bunch of companies in this category. They can build FB apps cheaply and quickly, get user feedback, build more apps, build value. Life is good. But I’m not sure these companies should raise venture capital. Especially if they don’t plan or want to build services outside of their facebook. Angel funding might be a better approach.
b) Those that are building apps on facebook as a way to learn, get user feedback and use their facebook apps as a way to drive low cost traffic to their (current or future) services outside of Facebook. I like this model the best for vc or prospective vc backed companies or large companies even. This is the comment I wrote in response to Fred’s post:
“great post.
i’ve been encouraging our appropriate portfolio companies to develop fb apps. Veoh launched one at the platform launch and we have another one that is going to launch a fun one soon.
since it’s relatively cheap to develop fb apps, the first goal for us is about learning. Learning what’s possible, what isn’t.
For me, the ROI isn’t about incremental ad dollars on the FB “canvas” pages though. Most likely it will be to drive (low cost) traffic back to their respective websites.
That’s why my favorite fb application biz models are those that have services outside of fb as well. It will be a lot trickier if the apps only live inside of fb (at least for vc backed companies).”
(via BijanBlog)
