Mark, great post. This is one of the best posts on Mashable in my recent memory. More of an opinion/analysis piece than I'm used to reading here.
I would agree with you that AceBucks seems to amount to nothing but marketing spam. I think the reason that these powerhouse VC's made the investment is that they saw it was a good opportunity in taking a significant land grab on Facebook. With most spamming techniques (notifications, etc) being eliminated by Facebook, it is becoming really hard to develop a viral application. This scheme is a way for the company to get around these limitations and still grow rapidly (in terms of users). And once you have the users, you can always find a way to monetize it.
Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
· 2 years ago
Thanks muchly! It's been mandated that I do more of these types of posts, so look forward to more pontificating and judgmental pieces by me in the future! :)
You make a good point on the userbase, though. Their actives are lower than I'd expect them to be, which I didn't exactly go into when analyzing their valuation, but having such a large number of folks to use as a viral marketing platform is something to count in the assets table, for sure. I've already received five notifications since installing the app yesterday to install other applications.
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I would agree with you that AceBucks seems to amount to nothing but marketing spam. I think the reason that these powerhouse VC's made the investment is that they saw it was a good opportunity in taking a significant land grab on Facebook. With most spamming techniques (notifications, etc) being eliminated by Facebook, it is becoming really hard to develop a viral application. This scheme is a way for the company to get around these limitations and still grow rapidly (in terms of users). And once you have the users, you can always find a way to monetize it.
You make a good point on the userbase, though. Their actives are lower than I'd expect them to be, which I didn't exactly go into when analyzing their valuation, but having such a large number of folks to use as a viral marketing platform is something to count in the assets table, for sure. I've already received five notifications since installing the app yesterday to install other applications.