Update: We have now confirmed that this deal has not happened and is in the discussion stage only. Inside Facebook pulled the trigger on their post a little too soon.
TripAdvisor has acquired Facebook Application “Where I’ve Been” for a reported $3 million.
Where I’ve Been allows users to share where they have been in the world from their Facebook profiles and has approximately 2.3 million users.
Inside Facebook notes that the $3 million purchase price values Where I’ve Been users at around $1.30 each.
The purchase is the first major seven figure acquisition for a dedicated Facebook only application. Where I’ve Been was recently included on the TechCrunch interns list of favorite Facebook apps.
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I’m going to go out on a limb and say I believe that is more than it’s worth. Kudos to the developers, quite a coup.
I just saw this on Mashable.. this is freaking insane. I remember reading Craig Ulliott’s site about how he was having so much trouble keeping up with the rapidly growing userbase and might have to shut it down. I bet he’s glad he kept working with it! Congrats.
Yup, I remember reading his post on the dev discussion board too. There must be some mistake in the $/user. Maybe they misplaced a decimal point…
Amazing…all the speculators must be biting their tongues and scrambling to find FB developers.
Oh. My. God.
Kudos.
What the heck? Something seems fishy about this.
the hook to this app is the simple interaction model, and unique look (e.g., not google or yahoo maps api). he did a great job on that front. that said, there’s about 25 grand of value in the app itself. travelzoo, tripadvisor, sherman’s travel and friend pay a couple of bucks per email address so they can pummel users with their “special deals.” they discounted that by 50% because there’s no way of telling if facebook users have any loyalty to their little map if something better comes along.
that said — right place, right time. congrats
Amazing! Have to say though, slightly concerning to see insane prices for what appears to be such little effort being thrown around.
At $1.30/user I think it’s a steal. It’s not really about the app. but about the userbase. Often it’s way more expensive to acquire users than what was paid - and it being the competitive travel business only makes it even more of a steal.
Let’s not confuse jealousy with business sense. Do the math.
InsideFacebook calls it at $1.30 / user. Is that worth it? What if you count users who install the app but no longer engagement with it? How many users are actively engaging in it?
The ability to reach 2.3 million users, many of which are in the prime backpacking range, is very tempting.
It doesn’t matter if it’s little effort or big effort. That’s besides the question.
$-per-user are crappy valuation metrics. any buyer who is evaluating deals using that math deserves what they’re getting.
while there is probably a floor price based on per-user #’s, the higher-end of acquisition deals is more likely based on how engaged the user is, which is indicated by time-on-site and/or canvas page metrics or other usage metrics.
my rant on this subject is here:
User Engagement is a depth, not a breadth, metric
Awesome for Craig. This is what this country is about, the American dream is alive and well.
I hope I am not too late.
Is this the first facebook app purchase? I don’t remember seeing another being bought.
Also, this is intriguing as to my possibility to become a facebook app dev.
Jesus, that kid is a millionaire just like in 2-3 months. wow..
Congrats to Craig! He was quick to execute and kept the concept brilliantly simple + with no prior business developed it as a standalone (not like many travel apps, including ours - first to admit!).
One place I like to compare numbers is travbuddy.com because on their site they display their total member numbers vs. on FB which displays the total members currently with the app installed/on their profile. Knowing that travbuddy started off with about 50 000 members before their facebook app, you can see they’ve added about 850 000 members in the past two months. Their app on Facebook reports about 400 000 members, meaning less than half of whom originally added it have kept it. I’d assume that percentage to be slightly less on where i’ve been because it is a standalone app and facebook members prefer these, but let’s say it’s between 30 and 40%. With 2.5 million active occurences of the app, the real number of people who have added it in that period will be something like 3.3 to 4 million! If tripadvisor really has access to all those email addresses now, that’s under a buck per email address. Whether they do something with that remains to be seen of course (I wouldn’t really recommend it and I don’t think the guys over there are that stupid).
On top of all the above, this is an app which will probably have 5 million users in another 2 months, maybe 10 million in a year. Every day that goes by with another 50 000 apps added makes the math better and better. I say congrats to Tripadvisor and Craig!
It’s funny since I had a similar app proposal sent to the Bay Partners Venture Facebook app deal and they were so slow to respond. Oh well…
In one word “@mazing”. The reason for $$$s is Facbook API for sure!
Maybe Facebook wants a cut of that $3 million…
This is crazy. Congrats to Craig. I wonder what the plans are for the app? Will they pull it out and make it its own site with advertisement and then feed the data into Facebook. I will say it is a cool app but I don’t want it to clutter my Facebook page.
Something’s fishy here.
Facebook should capitalize on this great advertising for potential App developers. The potential for a 3 million payout is a lot of motivation to design something unique.
Remember that FB users are not like your average site user. You cannot pull the email addr from a FB app automatically. This app, and pretty much all apps on FB, doesn’t require you to input their email address. So the primary way for TripAdvisor to reach the user would be via notifications, canvas pages, and the profile widget.
Great job and congratulations! Facebook apps are great marketing channels for companies as TripAdvisor has realized. They cannot and will not exist as stand-alone companies.
Mike, you need an update on the article?
http://news.com.com/8301-10784.....ecentPosts.
This is not true.
http://mashable.com/2007/08/17.....-facebook/
Sweet acquisition.
Kind of amazed that this is the only article I saw on this topic that did not offer some kind of skepticism… Which would have proved to be well-founded, since TripAdvisor denied the rumor.
Guys,
“Inside Facebook pulled the trigger on their post a little too soon.”
UUUMMMM… You did also; so take the blame as well.
You should not report it because some other blogger reported it.
Rodney Rumford
http://www.FaceReviews.com
Newsflash: Google is buying the Golden Gate Bridge because Batboy just jumped off and they want to make it safer. Just wanted to share it with the TechCrunch audience because I read it on a blog or something on the Internet.
Thanks for the solid reporting TechCrunch.
misinformation? deja vu? sigh… but i’m still reading.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....nt-1552679
Hello everyone, my official statement:
There have been some rumors in the market that we have sold our business. These rumors are not true. Our future development plans, combined with our robust community of users, current growth rates, and the attractiveness of the travel vertical, have led to a number of strategic discussions with potential partners/acquirers, but we have not agreed to any deals and we are committed to building Where I’ve Been into a sustainable and profitable standalone business. We are, however, exploring all avenues to maximize the value and usefulness of our product for our user base and we expect to announce new product features/enhancements, from both internal development and through strategic business partnerships, in the weeks and months ahead.
Well done Craig. Now can you please repeat that in simple english.
Michael, you should talk to Naval Ravikant from Hitforge. He’s the one that ‘leaked’ the news first at the appdevcon (see transcript at http://www.insidefacebook.com/.....francisco/).
Now, was it really my comment that prompted the follow up post? Got to love the blogging world if that’s the case….
I realize that a pseudo-journalist is only as reliable as his/her sources, but at least take responsibility. Thanks for reminding me why I don’t take blog news seriously.
Hi Everyone, Me again…
We have not sold, we are actually looking to hire people and continue working on Where I’ve Been, if you would like to join me and you live in the Philadelphia area then please let me know:
http://www.whereivebeen.com/jobs.php