That’s What Friends are For
First, my thank you speech: “I am most honoured to win this prize. It has been my lifelong dream to appear in everyone’s presentation!” 
Seriously, thank you everyone for using me in your presentations. I’ve never felt so loved in NUS ever.
Next, I’m really worried about the predicament of being friends with people in the class, with groups intending to sell you and sacrifice you. What happened to the scared bond of friendship under the influence of Facebook?! Still, I am inclined to provide commentary about these applications given that I have wasted hours on one and was disappointed that the other wasn’t available in Singapore.
Friends For Sale
Key Viewpoints by the Team: (my immediate comments in brackets)
1. Simple UI & Easy to use (seems that FFS stopped crashing after I quit)
2. Good for interaction & Ice-breaking (when trying to chat up a pretty girl… but is she really a girl?)
3. Involves strategic thinking & is a competitive environment
4. Facilitates communication – creative interactions (but isn’t that done with Superpoke?), unique relationships (your friend is your pet.. hmm..), 2.3m active users (used to be 5m++ at one point I think)
5. An excellent platform for advertisers – Could improve by having sponsorship to get sponsored chores/gifts (e.g. BK Burger)
6. Could Improve by – Add animations to chores & gift giving
It was a fun presentation and I agree with Points 1, 5 and 6, but having spent hours “researching the economics of FFS”, I must say that there is a fundamental flaw in the game that is not being addressed. Inflation in the game is THROUGH THE ROOF! For the sake of those who have never used FFS before, let me explain. Let X denote a pretty girl, and A & B be 2 guys wanting to buy her as a pet. Each time A & B buy X from each other, her “value” increases in a compounded manner (10% of previous value). From $500, X’s price could possibly go up to $50m in a day, and just by trading X, A & B’s cash holdings could each increase by millions! (“The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest” – Einstein)
From a game player’s stand point, all one does is to find the “rising stock” (popular pet) and chase it all the way till the pet’s price goes out of your buying range, and do this regardless whether you really want the person as your pet. This is flawed on so many levels! For new users, you can never catch up with an experienced user unless you spend all your time on FFS riding all these “rising stocks” (and you need to be beside your computer all the time in order to ride that stock). Only then can you possibly have enough $ to buy the pretty girl (or handsome guy) that you have been looking to take in as a pet. This “barrier to entry” turns people off quickly and one might not get the opportunity to interact with the people he/she wants to.
For the conduct of its Commercial Activities, the hyper-inflation makes it hard for sustainable revenue for FFS as well. With its advertising being run by MyOfferPal, one of the most popular ad service on Facebook, users using multiple apps began choosing to earn points for the other apps (performing the same activity) when they realize that the points earned in FFS are not as useful in achieving the desired goals.
FFS did re-adjust the “economy” recently by changing the value of the new user to $100k, but the problem is only going to come up again unless the rules of the game are changed. Maybe a recession might help
Whopper Sacrifice
It wasn’t in my intentions to comment on the application presentation actually, but given that the Whopper the group Sacrificed me for was given to me, it was only right to leave some comments.
Firstly, Crispin Porter + Bogusky is brilliant. Just go to their site and take a look at the stuff they have done for various companies. Not such a big fan of their work with Microsoft though – most seem too reactionary to Apple’s ads. Next, the team that presented it was on the cutting edge of FB Apps. The App was only up for a week or so before being banned on 14th January. Great job people!
The key point that might be of interest, is whether this phenomenon can be repeated. i.e. Can an advertiser gain that kind of publicity enjoyed by BK by repeating the “sacrifice your friend” campaign? My thoughts on it? No, it will get eyeballs, but it will not be as successful as this first attempt. Buzz Aldrin was never as famous as Neil Armstrong, attempts at a sex-focused drama is unlikely to be as well-received as Sex and the City. You get the point. Despite the possibility of using bots to delete friends, I seriously doubt the effectiveness if this were to be repeated exactly for another company. Any ideas for auxiliary features/marketing gimmicks to augment the delete friends feature?
Now all that’s said and done, the final thing I need to do, is to complete the rest of the song and post it onto YouTube. That’s-What-Friends-are-For-2.0
hey seems like i am not the last one to post ! ha well, the video idea for the presentation was gud
Yeah, the inflation problem is definitely out of hand, but it’s hard to fix without all our players complaining. Would love to hear any ideas. Thanks for the review and great job on the presentation for your class. (I’m the CEO of the Serious Business, who makes Friends for Sale)
Hi Siqi, thanks for your comments! I have been interested in Serious Business since FFS was featured in Techcrunch, and was encouraged by how you left Powerset to found the company. You probably would have thought through this millions of times, but these are my 2 cents worth on possible solutions:
Objectives:
1. Attract new customers
2. Retain the existing 2.3m active users (if its not too much to ask, how many are power users [at least 1 transaction a day]?)
Suggestions:
1. Offer interest rates on cash holdings at end of day (Assuming that this is not too database intensive)
a. X% could possibly be adjusted to be a portion of the inflation rate of the “economy”
b. This could possibly attract inactive users to be able to jump back in after a while and have sufficient cash to play
c. This also solves the problem of having to re-adjust periodically
d. Points in MyOfferPal could reflect the interest rate changes periodically (say monthly?)
2. Allow possibility of asset prices to drop
a. For pets that are not being bought for a certain number of days, their demand is low, hence price should drop
b. If owners take care of the pets, keep them healthy, do things to them (whatever things), price could possibly stay the same so as to not piss off existing users
c. Users, seeing that they’re taken care of, might be more interested to play the game
d. Given assumption that FFS is a game with friendship/dating in mind, it forces players to only keep those that he/she is interested to take care of
e. This needs to be communicated clearly before implementation though
3. Other random ideas
a. Ability to choose and showcase my favorite pets on the profile page in coverflow style
b. Additional chores & animations (as mentioned)
Love the Top Pets section by the way, but I’m wondering if it’ll be like the Forbes100 list and only have minor changes. Once again, great to hear from you. Cheers!
I am still racking my brains to think of something that could surpass the delte friends idea…something simple, innovative yet never done before..
kevin
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