Valuing Facebook Apps: $2 Million For “What’s Your Stripper Name”?
The New York Times takes a look at the world of Facebook-focused startups and the VCs who love them with some interesting—if not totally believable—data points on app valuation. “If you told me you were going to write me a check for $10 million, I’d say, ‘Forget it,’” says Lance Takoda, CEO of RockYou, a maker of social networking widgets. The company’s most popular Facebook app is Super Wall, which currently has over 1.2 million active users.
The article also mentions Altura Ventures, which recently launched a $25 million Facebook-only fund. Founder Lee Lorenzen puts a $2 million valuation on the apps Texas Hold ‘em Poker and What’s Your Stripper Name, which have 158,018 and 76,069 active users respectively. The fund has also invested in Adonomics, which is not a Facebook app, but rather a site that monitors and places valuations on them
Of course, not everyone is so enthusiastic. The lack of a clear business model for these companies remains a problem. The makers of Scrabulous, a game with over 300,000 active users, have barely been able to cover bandwidth costs by running Google (NSDQ: GOOG) ads.
Riffing on this theme some more over at the Bits blog, article author Brad Stone wonders whether Facebook will lose its monopoly on developer enthusiasm once other social networking services ape Facebook’s strategy and open up. Obviously, developers will be attracted to any platform with a strong user base although this question leads to another question: will there be enough in common between platforms to allow developers to write once for all, or will they have to reinvent the wheel each time they want to repurpose an app on a new site?
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