Uno de Waal Blog

First spotted at ReadWriteWeb:

But there’s still a small problem here. Most Facebook applications aren’t worth paying for. “It’s sort of the chicken and the egg scenario,” says Zuora chief executive Tien Tzuo, “we’re providing the chicken, but are hoping it will hatch an egg.”

It’s not as if there isn’t potential for a paid application marketplace. Facebook hosts some 50,000 apps and there are more than 600,000 developers on the Facebook platform. The problem is that a good bit of these apps are time-wasters, games, trivia, quizzes, and other somewhat non-essential applications – hardly anything worth your hard-earned money.

Facebook to Get “Pro” Apps Thanks to Z-Commerce – ReadWriteWeb.

I certainly see Facebook launching some sort of currency sometime this year, similar to what Mxit has done with Mxit Moola. My problem with the analysis of Zuora is the very explicit assumption that most apps aren’t worth paying for. This of course assumes that people will only pay for something that offers them some sort of utility. I don’t disagree that apps that offer utility are more desirable in a store, but the assumption that some apps are better than other (in a revenue generating sense) is hogwash.

Pretty much none of the cellphone apps and content offer any kind of utility, yet they are currently the drivers of revenue in mobile. They offer content, ridiculous dog-watch ring tones, F1 backgrounds, silly games and a host of other content. The assumption that applications should be valuable is misleading. It might not be worth your hard earned money, but I’m betting there are about a million people out there that would gladly pay for a wizard hat that will allow them to see who viewed their profile.

My point? Not all your apps need to offer massive utility. Often enough you just need some silly ringtones.

Hopefully though, a solidly monetized app store would motivate more developers to spend more time building useful apps for those of us who aren’t interested in games and trivia.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 7:20 pm and is filed under Ideas, Products, Social Networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.