Verified Extortion

http://mattmaroon.com/2009/05/21/verified-extortion/

by brett • 17 years ago

62 35 17 years ago

buggy_code3• 17 years ago

Are people still making money from facebook apps these days? I thought it was over a while back (and thus why the mass exodus to develop on the iPhone although apple's approval process sucks.)

mattmaroon7• 17 years ago

Are you joking? The top Facebook apps make more in a month than the top iPhone apps make in a lifetime. Even mid level apps, the sort that would never make the top 25 on iTunes, make more in a year than a top 10 paid app on iTunes does.

Try Googling for Zynga Revenues. The Facebook platform is orders of magnitude more profitable than iPhone.

Don't mistake buzz for profitability.

buggy_code3• 17 years ago

Thanks for the tip.

I can't up vote you enough. Almost tempted to create new HN accounts just to up vote you.

pistoriusp• 17 years ago

Do you have data that you could use to backup your post?

coglethorpe• 17 years ago

> Zynga

Don't get me started on my Mafia Wars addiction.

blader3• 17 years ago

Matt, the more people think that Facebook apps don't make any money, the happier I think we'll both be. =)

alex_c2• 17 years ago

Straight-up ad network banners won't make much money, but incentivized apps can pull in some serious cash.

mattmaroon7• 17 years ago

Actually, you'd be surprised on the banners too. They've gotten better. We've been seeing regular 50 cents eCPM from just 1 banner, and if we tried hard, we could probably work in another one or two without seriously degrading the user experience.

That adds up fast, since the platform makes it not too hard to get to hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of pageviews a day. 1m page views per day at 50 cents eCPM is still $182k per year. Not a bad second income stream.

cellis• 17 years ago

As far as i see it, for media/gaming apps there are two platforms that you can (try to) make enough money to buy a small island with: facebook and iphone. Both are flooded now with competitors, and not of the stupid sort, so good luck...and await the xbox mobile!

teej3• 17 years ago

I don't think Matt is "trying" to make money on the Facebook platform with games. He's already profitable and growing - http://www.bluefroggaming.com/company.php

mattmaroon7• 17 years ago

Don't count out Myspace. There's a lot of money there too, also far more than the iPhone. Google around for Playdom, for instance.

grandalf3• 17 years ago

Why is he complaining about Facebook when all the company did was respond to user complaints about apps that behaved badly?

When thousands of people got daily invites to stupid apps, something had to be done. Regardless of whether facebook had ever announced the verified apps program, the new restrictions would make sense.

When you develop for a young platform (particularly a proprietary one) you should realize it may be a moving target. It's far from extortion!

SamAtt• 17 years ago

Facebook certainly could have handled things better but other than that I agree with you. It seems a little obnoxious to demand free service. Even if it was free before.

If it were more money he might have a better case. But given other platforms cost thousands of dollars (Sony's Playstation program for example) I don't see $375 as that much of a hardship.

mattmaroon7• 17 years ago

You clearly didn't read the article through. I have no problem with them making money (beyond the extra few million ad impressions I generate them each day). I have a problem with the fact that it feels exactly like a Mafia-style protection payment. I guess it's ironic that the most notable game there is Mafia Wars.

If they just said "everyone has to pay us $375/yr once they get over 10k installs" or something, I'd be way happier about making that payment.

mattmaroon7• 17 years ago

They didn't really do that at all. Open up your Facebook home page and take a look. Maybe you like knowing which 80's sitcom star each of your friends are, but for most people the platform has just gotten spammier over time.

The new restrictions certainly made sense when they took average apps from infinite invites per day down to 20. But dropping that 20 back to 12, then charging you to get back to 20 doesn't help users in any way.

blader3• 17 years ago

I assume you're referring to the algorithm change around January/February for allocations. There was a change to the allocation algorithm related to spam weighting - it wasn't an across the board drop from 20 to 12. Allocations actually rose for certain applications.

ssharp• 17 years ago

maybe it's just be, but the stupid quiz spam never bothered me as much as the stupid game spam.

grandalf3• 17 years ago

The situation is much improved. I no longer get all the invitations and they were the most annoying aspect of apps -- as were the invitations required pages on so many apps (which actually got me to stop installing apps)

pj• 17 years ago

For all the logic required to code, programmers are some of the most irrational people on the internets.

haasted• 17 years ago

The article left me with a few "Facebook apps"-newbie questions. Hope someone here will be able to answer.

1. How are Facebook apps monetized? Advertising?

2. What do applications use the collected user data for? I once saw a description of the kind of access an application gets to the user's data, and it seemed a bit daunting.

teej3• 17 years ago

1. Advertising + Virtual Goods (selling "items" or "currency" inside a game for power, pleasure, or status)

2. You can't really "collect" the data. Facebook's Terms state that you can't keep user data for longer than 24 hours. The original idea was that you could use their data to display demographically-relevant ads.

rms• 17 years ago

Also affiliate offers

adamc• 17 years ago

Last line: "It could be worse, they could be Apple."

Ouch. And that can't be something Apple is looking for either.

Verified Extortion

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