Comments on: Social networks making money through giving presents

By: Marc

Marc — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 21:41:31 +0000

DING DING DING! This is exactly what I posted about this week for my new app coming soon. These gifts are simply defining what it is to play a game on a social network. I’m not talking about scrabulous, but game that allows one to attain digital assets in the fasion that World of Warcraft does with its 10mil subscribers.

By: edial

edial — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:24:14 +0000

Mashable has just released a ’9-ways-to-make-moeny’ with your facebook account, some are very interesting indeed… personally I digg the GarageSale (beta) application, but what about the legal side of the story? is it all cool and okay? how must the developers feel about these things, or do they get their own share of the profits?

By: Martha

Martha — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:07:46 +0000

Indeed the future of the social networking biz is the ability to turn a buck. Matt Mihaly (http://www.ironrealms.com/) was one of the pioneers of selling virtual items for real dosh a decade ago and has done well for himself with it. Smart companies (webkinz for example) have begun selling real goods (stuffed dolls) to children in exchage for access keys to their website, where the kids are introduced to the basics of social networking.
I think the future of this trend will be really interesting. How long will people be willing to pay for ‘lips’ or ‘drinks’ to be sent to their friends on FB, when will they tire of it and start to look for something else?

By: David Petherick

David Petherick — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:10:06 +0000

I made a few hundred dollars for charity by adding red noses to personal profile photos last march, for the UK’s ‘Red Nose Day’ and will do the same again this year.

Although I had to create each red nose on a one-off basis and send out images, the great thing about most virtual gifts and virtual drinks is that one is that the unit cost does not increase whether you sell 1 or 100,000,000.

I also have pioneered the idea of the ‘virtual bar’ where people buy me virtual drinks to thank me for my help or advice. I’ve created virtual bars for people in four continents now.

Buy Boris a Drink
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten’s Bar: http://www.buy-me-a-pint.com/boris/

And me:
David Petherick’s Bar: http://www.buy-me-a-pint.com/

Cheers!

By: beanieville

beanieville — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:39:30 +0000

How about trading for a living? http://beanieville.blogspot.com

By: Patrick

Patrick — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 11:46:08 +0000

Virtual gifts are indeed huge. I saw a presentation of Cyworld once (one of the biggest social networks of Asia). They earn loads and loads of money on virtual gifts.
Also the Naughty gifts Facebook application earned a sh..load of money by selling over 33 million gifts!

http://broadstuff.com/archives/485-Porn-2.0-meets-Facebook-Sex,-Shopping-and-Social-Networks.html