Acebucks Gets $1.5 Million For Virtual Facebook Currency

acebucks_logo.pngAcebucks, the maker of a virtual currency for Facebook has raised a $1.5 million round of investment. AceBucks was originally purchased by Michael Lazerow to form Buddy Media, whose investors include Howard Lindzon, Peter Thiel, Mark Pincus and James Altucher.

Acebucks is a virtual economy that pays users Acebucks for installing applications and referring their friends (kind of like a virtual pyramid scheme). Users can then spend the currency on either virtual goods in the Acebucks mall or put them toward real items like an iPod Nano.

Acebucks is using the financing to grow the company. They want to become the de-facto virtual currency of Facebook, and will soon launch an API that lets users integrate Acebucks into their own applications. They are also expected to announce a business partnership in the coming days.

I found installing the application to be rather spammy. It refused to let me through the sign-up process unless I sent notifications to my friends, automatically checking five of them. You can uncheck the friends and press the submit button, but they don’t make this obvious.

While virtual currencies haven’t had much luck on the web at large, Facebook may provide the right environment to ensure the security of their money supply and merchandise that precursors lacked.

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