"If you told me you were going to write me a check for $10 million, I'd say, 'Forget it'" | Hacker News Reader

"If you told me you were going to write me a check for $10 million, I'd say, 'Forget it'"

4 pointsfleaflicker11 comments

--Lance Tokuda, the chief executive of RockYou, which developed the "Super Wall" Facebook application.

I have a difficult time seeing the value in an application that can be developed by a first-year computer science student in one weekend.

Also, if Facebook ever decided to enhance their Wall feature, Super Wall would become obsolete. (Facebook would never cannibalize its highest profile developers like this. At least not yet.)

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Of course, Lance is saying that because no one is actually stupid enough to write him a check for $10 million right now. Not for Super Wall, at least.

Most Facebook-only apps are in absurdly precarious business positions: they're features, not products, they've got a low barrier to entry for competitors, and they exist at the whim of a shrewd, aggressive company with a history of "incorporating" applications on its platform into its own product with little regard to the developers who created them.

"I have a difficult time seeing the value in an application that can be developed by a first-year computer science student in one weekend."

First of all, the value doesn't come from the technology, the value comes from the users. RockYou's applications have millions upon millions of Facebook users, each of which can generate revenue via... advertising!

Second, that said, I doubt a first year CS student could write a scalable implementation of Super Wall, etc, that would support said millions upon millions of users.

Basically, RockYou is like HotOrNot... not very technologically exciting, but managed to get a critical mass of users. If another company tried to duplicate what HotOrNot or RockYou has done now, they would fail miserably, and believe me, many have tried.

I assume that was $10 million for more than just Super Wall. RockYou's not poorly positioned in this whole widget/app/gadget/plugin space. Meanwhile, Super Wall is a Facebook developer's boring weekend away from irrelevance.

But super wall has lock in, vis-a-vis the existing posts.

If there's anything dispensible on Facebook, it's wall posts. Superwall is popular because people mass migrated from the original Wall, and they'll go right back if Facebook makes a clearly superior product (or if it integrates in a way that's impossible for an outside developer).

really? The features I use the most are 1. pictures 2. wall posts

> I have a difficult time seeing the value in an application that can be developed by a first-year computer science student in one weekend.

I have trouble believing that billions of gallons of oil discovered in 5 minutes by a 5 year old should be worth anything. Wait, that reasoning makes no sense at all.

I agree SuperWall isn't worth $10 million, but wanted to point out that "could be created in a weekend" doesn't mean anything at all. A lot of successful startups could be written in a weekend.

For example, this guy created the core structure of twitter in 170 lines of Scala and lift. http://blog.lostlake.org/index.php?/archives/55-Prance-with-... That could easily have been done in a weekend.

Often you start with something fast/tiny and iterate like mad to fill in the gaps, but the basic concept is often easy to start.

I'm a little skeptical when their main revenue source is selling users to other facebook applications. Feels like the whole subprime thing to me.

Wasn't superwall made redundant wihtin a few weeks of release thanks to facebook wall and message attachements feature?

$10 million checks: Accepted here.

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