$1m/week facebook app - an insider's look...

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Why is everyone getting their panties in a bunch? Because someone makes money off of Breast Cancer? As long as part of that money is going to the research too, who the fuck cares? That's more than they had before he created this app, so all the better.

EDIT:Oops I just realized this is exactly what Andrew said. Carry on.
 


I'm just curious about the legal ramifications. If it says "a portion of proceeds" that's probably good enough.

Anyone with ethical questions can go to another forum... WickedFire is not the place for you... :)
 
I read the article and watched the videos; great stuff. Illustrates the power of trends and fads and social networks that let you develop for them.

By the way, I heard something about Facebook opening their apps to be used on other sites with some kind of toolkit? $$$ Develop once, deploy anywhere...
 
beejeebers said:
The app was not made to help the breast cancer cause, it was made to profit off the breast cancer cause.

To each his own.
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The typical chartiy gives anywhere from 1 - 30 cents per dollar donated to the actual cause. Charity is a business, and a lot of people become millionaires because of it. (and if you happen to be the leader of a third world country, a whole fuck of a lot more.)
 
andrew wee said:
on the "ethics" of all this...

Should the grocery store sell you it's goods at cost?
a pound of potatoes for $0.05?

Then right after that we quit affiliate marketing and join the monastery?

doesn't sound too fun...
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sorry, but that is a bad analogy and nonsense as well.

buying potatoes is a business case, where people expect the store owner to profit from that transaction. it is still a profitable deal for both sides, as the store owner can make a much better deal as if everyone would have to get those potatoes from the field himself (as long as the profit margin does not exceed this exact amount of work and time required).

a charity however has no other cause than to benefit the final receiver, in this case e.g. breast cancer research. any "profit margin" like e.g. for overhead costs is an economic loss, as the money is wasted and not channeled into the originally intended use.

hence, the formula "people can be happy as long as there is a dime being given to charity at all, which is better than nothing" is plain wrong.

if mcdonalds spends e.g. ten percent of their earnings on charity it is economically not "for free" for the charity but rather more costly for the whole society as if mcdonalds instead would lower its prices by 10% and leave it up to you to give those 10% to charity, which you then could even deduct from your own income taxes. by letting mcdondalds do the job, you are economically wasting a certain percentage of your income that could be instead directly invested into the charity by yourself, instead of letting mcdonalds take the benefit of the tax deduction.

on top of that, moral and ethics have a dollar value for themselves. hence, the assumption that business has no place or need for ethics and moral is plainly wrong as well. from image and reputation, to costs for refinancing and loans, a lot of cost factors are influenced by the way your adoption of ethics and morals are perceived by the markets. people do not tend to salute unethical behavior and hence tend to spend less with your if you have a shady reputation. so, you can amke a buck but generally, you can make much more profit doing the same business but doing it legit.

it is very one-dimensional thinking, if anyone today believes that ethics and morals can be disregarded in business relations.
 
I'm surprised no one here mentioned the TAX BENIFITS that you'll be into at the end of the year for donating a portion of that income to the charities. Its a smart way to make money all the way around, give some to charities so you can increase sales, at the end of the year get the money back from Tax Benefits.
 
Aequitas said:
I'm surprised no one here mentioned the TAX BENIFITS that you'll be into at the end of the year for donating a portion of that income to the charities. Its a smart way to make money all the way around, give some to charities so you can increase sales, at the end of the year get the money back from Tax Benefits.
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i am surprised that you did not read my post where i mention tax benefits ;)
 
i always enjoyed the fact that universities were businesses... just make sure you know where you are donating and the percentages...
 
cyberworkspace said:
sorry, but that is a bad analogy and nonsense as well.

buying potatoes is a business case, where people expect the store owner to profit from that transaction. it is still a profitable deal for both sides, as the store owner can make a much better deal as if everyone would have to get those potatoes from the field himself (as long as the profit margin does not exceed this exact amount of work and time required).

a charity however has no other cause than to benefit the final receiver, in this case e.g. breast cancer research. any "profit margin" like e.g. for overhead costs is an economic loss, as the money is wasted and not channeled into the originally intended use.

hence, the formula "people can be happy as long as there is a dime being given to charity at all, which is better than nothing" is plain wrong.

if mcdonalds spends e.g. ten percent of their earnings on charity it is economically not "for free" for the charity but rather more costly for the whole society as if mcdonalds instead would lower its prices by 10% and leave it up to you to give those 10% to charity, which you then could even deduct from your own income taxes. by letting mcdondalds do the job, you are economically wasting a certain percentage of your income that could be instead directly invested into the charity by yourself, instead of letting mcdonalds take the benefit of the tax deduction.

on top of that, moral and ethics have a dollar value for themselves. hence, the assumption that business has no place or need for ethics and moral is plainly wrong as well. from image and reputation, to costs for refinancing and loans, a lot of cost factors are influenced by the way your adoption of ethics and morals are perceived by the markets. people do not tend to salute unethical behavior and hence tend to spend less with your if you have a shady reputation. so, you can amke a buck but generally, you can make much more profit doing the same business but doing it legit.

it is very one-dimensional thinking, if anyone today believes that ethics and morals can be disregarded in business relations.
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Well put. :)
 
Andrew said:
The typical chartiy gives anywhere from 1 - 30 cents per dollar donated to the actual cause.
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I worked for a PBS station for about 2.5 years. THEY give more like 70-80% of their intake to the 'marketing company' who handles all their advertising/donations...

They see it as a cost of doing business. BAH! I see it as someone inside that PBS station getting their palms greased by that company!
 
I'm surprised no one here mentioned the TAX BENIFITS
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[THIS APPLIES TO USA TAXES] No, you don't get a tax benefit for doing this. If you donate a portion of the money to a 501c3 charity then you can DEDUCT that from your taxable income. So, you don't get taxed on the money that you already GAVE AWAY to the charity. You don't come out ahead - you still gave the money away to the charity, you deduct it just like another business expense. The benefit is that you are doing something for a good cause.
 
I guess it's better to profit through helping someone. People are attracted to and supportive of helping other people, especially when it reflects their own fears and benefits their sense of self. Perfect marketing exercise. You only need to look into politics to see the benefit and system of 'pretending to care' or 'doing something for some benefit'. It's not as if if anyone's profiting from a war or anything :)
 
I wouldn't be comfortable with that particular business model, but each to their own and we can certainly learn from it... pick another charity, donate a higher percentage and emphasise how others only give 15% or whatever to the charity whereas you give, say 50%...
 
The YuleLog piece of shit product capatilized on this also. Through all the PR they said, "proceeds goto charity".

Upon further investigation they were actually giving less than 10% of the take to charity but felt that they didn't need to correct those evil countless blogs/sites for "misuderstanding" ( I called them out publicly on Techcrunch for bullshitting and Techcrunch actually corrected the original post to reflect the fact that it was only a small portion ).

For some offers, doing a charity hook up is fine, gets shady when you intentional imply through omission of key facts that you are donating everything other than costs to charity (the Yule log guys, it turns out, meant that 2 of the 4 partners in the venture were going to donate 25% of their portion of the net, which if you can do the math tells you it ain't fucking much).
 
people are downloading a fucking toolbar, they're not even having to pay any money. The fact that the owner is able to donate that much money to breast cancer just from people downloading something (not spending money) is great!
 
Have you ever seen those gumball machines with pictures of missing children on them? At a glance, it looks like the proceeds go the charity. I read that the owner only has to donoate $1 a month or something to the charity to stay legal.

I am not commenting on the ethics, just pointing out to some of you young puppies that this practice is probably the second oldest profession.
 
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