Emerging Technologies

First big Facebook application acquisition

By Brij ⋅ August 17, 2007 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Inside Facebook has the scoop on TripAdvisor acquiring Where I’ve Been for a whopping $3 million.

Having followed all the hoopla around F8 right from the begining I can say this is a beginning of a new type of startup building. Call it Startup-dgets (along the lines of widgets and pronounced like startup-jets). Speed of start to exit is amazingly fast.

I have been taking notes on how application writers go about doing the development, feedback, funding, support etc and my take is that Facebook application development methodology is something entirely new. This is like taking extreme programming and dumping it along the sides of TQM, Waterfall and Corba etc. They are doing expedited extreme, if that makes any sense at all.

Some of these app writers were hand-holding user right from day one and developing/evolving by talking to them over Facebook group. Very very capital efficient.

This model is not going away anytime soon and will be formalized in specific market niches.