While the second internet boom has settled and, for now at least, there might not be billions to be made, there is still a lot of buying going on, but it’s the small stuff and a lot of it is happening around Facebook.
You've seen them. Those little applications that Facebook is allowing developers to create. And all of this only started in May when Facebook opened the floodgates, with 1,700 applications having been developed since then.That surge is applications has, of course, been matched by a surge in users. It’s the talk of the town and it gives those developers an instant audience for their work.The Zombie applications have you been bitten? I've resisted this one and lots of others. There's the Super Poke app, the Gift App and the Fortune Cookie app as well. My fortune cookie today is: Recognition will come from unexpected sources". Its all sub Yoda no substitute for the real thing.
There are load more some of which I have no idea what they do: the Super Wall app? And do you really need Poke Pro as well as Super Poke? Your guess is as good as mine.It is a mini industry of development and those behind these little applications, while not being the next Larry Page or Sergey Brin and winning themselves untold billions of dollars, are being snapped up all the same by firms looking to high top young developers.Max Levchin, founder and chief executive of San Francisco software developer Slide, told Reuters: "There's this giant competition for brilliant young developers. Facebook is this instant leader board of who's best at user engagement and technical ability."Levchin's Slide earlier this week acquired SuperPoke, which is one of the top 10-most-popular programs on Facebook. Not only that, but it hired the three-strong student team behind it. Slide had already bought another Facebook app last month with Favourite Peeps."That really opened us up to the calibre of people you could meet through this filter of watching who was building successful Facebook applications," Levchin said.It isn't going to stop anytime soon either. Like Xerox Parc for social media this week, Bay Partners, a Menlo Park venture capital firm, created AppFactory, a programme to fund what it says will be 10s of different Facebook application projects.
It's all reminicent of Po Bronson's 1998 novel The First 20 Million Dollars Is Always the Hardest, which is well worth a read (along with Douglas Coupland's Microserfs) for anyone interested in the workings of Silicon Valley.
Gordon Macmillan
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