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

TiE Host: Ro Choy – Vice President of Business Development, RockYou
Moderator: Gus Tai – General Partner, Trinity Ventures
Panelists:
Anil Dharni – Director of Products, Hi5 Networks Inc.
Seth Goldstein – CEO and Co-Founder, SocialMedia Networks
Sab Kanaujia – VP Digital Product Strategy & Development, NBC Universal
Keith Rabois – Head of Strategy and Business development, Slide, Inc.
Anthony Soohoo – SVP & GM, Entertainment Communities & Social Media, CBS Interactive

Lessons/Facts
Online shows and watching TV is similar in activity – Case: NCAA Tournament on CBS
Take fan base to enhance interaction -> higher ad & impressions
Apps that enhance communication works, not info apps
Realty based shows get more people to talk
maximize exposure by building communities based on the show
Widget (hard to monetize)
Platform strategy to monetize
Monetize mobilized social activities (games)
A decreased value proposition will cause product failure – if you don’t need to spend much and the product can still spread, you’re addressing an important need
Most social platforms don’t know how to monetize. The main platform needs to be able to monetize to have the application useful for monetization
Data Portability the trend of the future
Vertical Market Platform: Context will drive CPM, even if a smaller market size (Flixster). BUT look at the size of the vertical. If its too niche also no good
Using network effect to prevent privacy. Release the premium content to everyone that doesn’t have pirated content.

Killer Apps, Niche Social Networks, What Next?

TiE Host: Ro Choy – Vice President of Business Development, RockYou
Moderator: Gus Tai – General Partner, Trinity Ventures
Panelists:
Anil Dharni – Director of Products, Hi5 Networks Inc.
Seth Goldstein – CEO and Co-Founder, SocialMedia Networks
Sab Kanaujia – VP Digital Product Strategy & Development, NBC Universal
Keith Rabois – Head of Strategy and Business development, Slide, Inc.
Anthony Soohoo – SVP & GM, Entertainment Communities & Social Media, CBS Interactive

Lessons/Facts
Online shows and watching TV is similar in activity – Case: NCAA Tournament on CBS
Take fan base to enhance interaction -> higher ad & impressions
Apps that enhance communication works, not info apps
Realty based shows get more people to talk
maximize exposure by building communities based on the show
Widget (hard to monetize)
Platform strategy to monetize
Monetize mobilized social activities (games)
A decreased value proposition will cause product failure – if you don’t need to spend much and the product can still spread, you’re addressing an important need
Most social platforms don’t know how to monetize. The main platform needs to be able to monetize to have the application useful for monetization
Data Portability the trend of the future
Vertical Market Platform: Context will drive CPM, even if a smaller market size (Flixster). BUT look at the size of the vertical. If its too niche also no good
Using network effect to prevent privacy. Release the premium content to everyone that doesn’t have pirated content.

Keynote Panel – 4-5pm
Kara Swisher, Wall Street Journal
Jia Shen, CTO & co-Founder, RockYou
Kent Lindstrom, President, Friendster
Derek Liu, CTO & co-Founder, Gaia

Lessons Learnt
Mathematic growth of huge market will allow for huge growth
Self-expression a need for human interaction
Dorm rooms still not producing quality apps. Slide and RockYou still key players.
Youtube app?
Huge applications might not be the key. Niche but high interaction would be more monetizable
Building applications onto platforms instead of building social network platform
Friendster facing “Innovators’ Dilemma” that’s why mySpace and Facebook got to take over despite Friendster’s initial success
Agility to keep success of website over long period of time
CTR rates????

Monetization Models
Long tail model (Google) vs. Site target model (Yahoo) of advertising
Data Profile that each advert publisher “must buy” – e.g. if you want to meet college student you must buy Facebook ad, if you’re launching movie must buy MySpace ad. This is actually still similar to buying ad during the relevant TV show
Fake cars, fake houses to impress real people =)
Microsoft Passport Model – Friends Connect, Facebook Connect; Expanding of Social Graph beyond the own website
Mobile – will grow from there
Micropayment systems in Asia
Ads as brand advertizers instead of cost per click model for people who want to drive traffice to their website