FaceBank - Killer of BillMonk ?
BillMonk a social money site which helps you to track the expenses sharing with your friends was profiled on TechCrunch and Arrington was quite much taken by the Idea. You might want to have a look at the links in the bottomt to know what im talking about. And now Facebook has Launched its FaceBank, which seems to be a killer of BillMonk.
The big bullies are turning out to be quite the killers. MySpace nuking singlestat.us and now FaceBank all poised up to nuke out billmonk. Even though MySpace nuked SingleStat.us because it was adding load onto the MySpace servers; FaceBank is very clearly a direct competitor [killer ?] of BillMonk.
Monetization or Feature Bloat
I have always been thinking of how FaceBook would be monetizing its tremendous social network. Now with FaceBank we seem to be already moving in that direction. This actually seems to be a very logical move to me, considering that your social money is tied up with your friends are your pals are all actually inside the FaceBook! This is one simple addition to FaceBook but seems like the move is going to have some really bad repurcussions on other startups in this area.
But whats getting me to think is : Is this direction of a Facebank a clear indication that FaceBook is running out of ideas. By making its API open, it has definitely chosen to tap into the minds of brilliant geeks around the world to build them interesting apps for Free. And with FaceBank coming in, I seriously doubt if really this act is an act of desperation? Clearly this could be one of those shooting-the-gum-on-the-wall-and-see-if-it-works ideas, an act which Google has mastered recently. Putting in everything to just hope that atleast one of them works!
Consolidation as a method of tying up consumers ?
Consolidating the apps is a very common undercurrent here and this looks very similar to the Google myth about atleast one team of 10 engineers working on one very interesting idea in the world. And Im already wondering that if any of the other products or applications with requirements for a network to be present can already use the existing networks: More succintly put will FaceBook be that monster that is going to put its network to use by just churning out new cooler applications thought out by entrepereneurs and just use its network to nuke them out.
I wont however pay my obituaries to BillMonk as yet. It looks like an excellent service and not sure how many people are comfortable mixing up fun with serious money! I mean I never know when FaceBook will suddenly turn out to be my Life Manager?! And moreso who hasnt heard that Bulk slows you down; FaceBooks heading in that direction perhaps?
Links:
a much more detailed thoughts have been added
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