Do you remember ChipIn – the grassroots fundraising widget that I reviewed
a while back? Well they recently decided to sell off their stable of moderately successful Facebook apps including Pirates vs. Ninjas and Vampires vs. Werewolves.
Here’s ChipIn founder Carnet Williams on why the widget maker sold their suite of Facebook Apps to Buddy Media for an amount “in the low seven figures”: “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.”
While it’s easy to make fun of somebody complaining about a business that is only making millions of dollars, you can understand the thought process here. Grassroots fundraising doesn’t have a lot to do with Ninjas, Werewolves, Vampires, OR Pirates. Managing multiple completely unrelated businesses is no fun for a small team, and you can see why Carnet and his team would feel the need to focus.
