Buddy Media buys Facebook apps from widget-maker ChipIn
ChipIn started in 2005 as an online fundraising service, then also became a widget maker for other businesses, then after struggling, found small hits with Facebook applications Vampires vs. Werewolves and Pirates vs. Ninjas.
The company has now sold off its tiny empire of Facebook applications to Buddy Media (of Facebook virtual currency Acebucks fame) in order to focus on its core business of creating, tracking, and managing widgets for others.
The sale price, according to a rather laughable puff piece about ChipIn that ran in Inc.com last week, was apparently “in the low seven figures.”
We wish the Honolulu, Hawaii-based company the best of luck but we need to point out the small size of these applications. Vampires vs. Werewolves has 9,169 daily active users, one percent of the total number of people who have installed the app. Pirates vs. Ninjas has 34,167 daily active users, one percent of its total.
Adonomics, a Facebook app measurement service, priced the two applications at roughly $2 million in late September, according to the Inc.com article
To be slightly kinder, ChipIn did find an interesting way to monetize the applications. Lionsgate Entertainment used the former application to promote werewolf movie Skinwalkers — it spent $15,000 a month to embed a promotional video inside the Vampires vs. Werewolves widgets.
“For us, Facebook applications were like a drug,” Williams tells the Inc.com reporter. “They were loads of fun and making a little bit of money. But in the end, we want to make hundreds of millions of dollars, not millions of dollars. And I didn’t think Facebook could do that for us.”
Chipin has raised more than $1 million from angel investors.
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About the Author, Eric Eldon
Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.