Google Buys Slide for $182 Million, Getting More Serious about Social Games • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Buys Slide for $182 Million, Getting More Serious about Social Games

#61

Post by erikpukinskis » Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 8:48 AM UTC

donaldc wrote: post #33

zandorg wrote: post #9

Possibly a talent acquisition of Levchin. If he doesn't quit, it seems like a good purchase.

If that's the case, why not just pay him $100 million directly and cut out the middlemen?

Because he wants to do another startup, and he owes his investors BIG TIME.

Those folks are taking a huge financial hit. He convinces Google to buy the company as a favor to them. If he just dumps the company and takes a huge bonus from Google, he loses a lot of friends, and has a hell of a time getting funding next time.

So he's going to do his time at Google. 5 years of startup purgatory. And when he comes out, he'll have a few friends ready to put a couple million behind his next venture.

Re: Google Buys Slide for $182 Million, Getting More Serious about Social Games

#62

Post by idoh » Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 8:48 AM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #47

Slide? Really? They couldn't have picked a much worse company to buy there, except RockYou. Slide got a bunch of users early by making Facebook apps that gave it functionality MySpace had like ability to post videos and photos to friends' walls. Those kinds of apps never monetized well, and all of that stuff unsurprisingly ended up on Facebook's roadmap anyway.

You can't really compare the two. RockYou doesn't really focus on the widgets as much as games / ad network these days (although truth be told you can't really see it if you swing by rockyou.com or visit the crunchbase profile, which is really out of date).

The ad network side of things is really strong and doing lots of interesting things.

Re: Google Buys Slide for $182 Million, Getting More Serious about Social Games

#63

Post by c1sc0 » Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 11:33 AM UTC

alanh wrote: post #48

Does Slide utilize Zynga-style dirty tricks to psychologically manipulate users to their detriment? If so, and if Google continues such products or starts their own using such tricks, that’s evil in my book.

I don't get why you are being downvoted. I know game mechanics are hot right now but you are making a valid point. If we're not careful we're going to turn the whole internet in a giant skinner box.

Re: Google Buys Slide for $182 Million, Getting More Serious about Social Games

#64

Post by mattmaroon » Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 1:01 PM UTC

idoh wrote: post #62

mattmaroon wrote: post #47

Slide? Really? They couldn't have picked a much worse company to buy there, except RockYou. Slide got a bunch of users early by making Facebook apps that gave it functionality MySpace had like ability to post videos and photos to friends' walls. Those kinds of apps never monetized well, and all of that stuff unsurprisingly ended up on Facebook's roadmap anyway.

You can't really compare the two. RockYou doesn't really focus on the widgets as much as games / ad network these days (although truth be told you can't really see it if you swing by rockyou.com or visit the crunchbase profile, which is really out of date). The ad network side of things is really strong and doing lots of interesting things.

I've run these ads on my apps, and purchased them. No ad network on Facebook is making anything substantial.

They do have a couple games doing well lately.

Re: Google Buys Slide for $182 Million, Getting More Serious about Social Games

#65

Post by ahi » Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 8:51 PM UTC

davcro wrote: post #57

BenS wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is buying distribution across many social networks in lots of countries, and a team 100+ smart engineers and product designers.

Quiz Monster and Friend Interview have a bigger userbase both international and in the US than Slide's apps. Granted I'm only looking at FB here, but IMO that is the only social network that matters. I work solo and believe that my apps could be run with just one educated rails developer. Isnt that a better buy than a smaller app that needs 100 eningeers? And I'm not some special case here. There are a handful of Ind…

Buy some foosball tables and hire some engineers. You'll be rolling in it in no time.