I’m Rolling In Acebucks! Uhhh, What Now?
Posted by Matt on September 27th, 2007
Michael Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media, recently defended the company’s Facebook application AceBucks on his blog. Basically with the application, Facebook users can obtain virtual currency called AceBucks by doing certain actions such as adding other partner apps, frequenting a partners’ store, sending an invite to a friend or playing the jumble word game, Griddle. These earned AceBucks can then be used to buy virtual goods in the AceBucks Mall, to bid on items via AceBuck auctions, or to buy stuff from other AceBucks members.
AceBuck critics have cited past virtual currency flops and have pointed out the fact that Facebook is already developing a payment platform which would be a direct competitor. Michael defends AceBucks by responding that it is not in the market to compete with PayPal or any other virtual currency to real currency exchange. He claims AceBucks to simply be a “Facebook-wide loyalty program”. In his own words:
“…while AceBucks has been set up as a currency — you can earn ‘em and then burn ‘em — it really is a Facebook wide loyalty program that rewards users for doing stuff that we want them to do.”
Why the hell do I want AceBucks?
Seriously, why the hell do I want AceBucks? It seems that most people are still waiting for Michael to answer that question. If users are going to spend their valuable time earning AceBucks, there better be a pretty nice reward, not some paltry array of items with whom AceBucks happens to have partnerships with.
It seems to me that Michael, along with a lot of people, are trying to ride this “virtual goods” Web 2.0 wave brought along by MMORPGs. However, they all see to miss the target on the number one rule. Great incentives. MMORPGs have this ingrained into their framework where more virtual currency rewards users with more powerful items used to progress further into the game. There is no such “progression” outside of a MMORPG. I can’t level up my Facebook profile and I don’t want to buy boring little jpeg images that can be displayed on my profile. Unless web companies can offer substantial incentives (much like the way poker sites reward play money users with real money), virtual currency outside a game setting will never work.
Tags: Facebook Apps
Trackback URL
1 Trackbacks/Pingbacks
-
Pingback:
Acebucks Relaunches | Facebook Apps : The Webosphere
October 5, 2007
Craig
January 23, 2008
The way I see it, it is a bit like drug dealing.
Most people believe drug dealers are very rich, and while for the very few this may be true for most it isn’t. In fact if you count in all the peons who move around the drugsand all the middle men the average pay is less than the minimum wage in the united states. People dont deal drugs for the short term money they deal drugs to gamble that they might be able to move up the ladder towards higher social and economic position despite the incredibly low probability of it happening.
In the same way Buddy media in the future will be able to offer large rewards for the top 0.1% richest acebuck holders while others will compete for the large rewards and increased status whilst driving the advertising machine that brings in the money for Buddy media.
While this is happening Buddy can sit back safe in the knowledge that although they are spending large sums on 0.1% of “acebuckers” they have the other 99.9% bringing the cash in whilst not making significant sums due to the large scale money creation leading to large inflation canceling out their actual gains.
Craig
January 23, 2008
The only way to make significant gains through acebucks would be to borrow acebucks and buy stuff in the auctions to sell, the inflation will mean that later on you can buy back the same number of acebucks to pay off the loan for almost nothing whilst still having the goods.