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Ask HN: What are the good old ideas that still make money on the web?
HN, i'm wondering, are there still any ideas from the ages of web 1.0 that are still working? For example, software license key stores etc. I feel like there are many of ones i couldn't think of as being still profitable. HN, i want some heavy TIL experience, please help me! :)
- nandemo 15y agoSelling pet food.
- patio11 15y agoSomeone seems to think nandemo is joking, so to clarify, there exists at least one HNer whose business does sell pet food over the Internet. They tried to hire me at one point. Yeah yeah, pets.com blew up. Banks have gone bankrupt before, too: that doesn't mean banking can't make money.
- nandemo 15y agoYes. There was nothing especially wrong about the idea of selling pet food online then; another company started by selling books (a worse idea if you ask me) and they did go fairly well. That's not to say that it's a good idea to start an online pet food business now. By now the margins must be pretty low. But it is an "old" idea for which the market is still big.
- Retric 15y agoThe problem Pets.com had was trying to build a billion dollar company selling pet food online. There is nothing wrong with selling pet food today as long as you stay lean and focus on the niche items and or bulk. Exotic pet food (Squids) + supply's + information. Bulk shipments of food + breeder information for show dogs. PS: I have a friend who has been making good money selling cookies online. It's a classic small business with a few workers in a low cost of living area, and it's been steadily growing for a while now. (http://www.thebestcookie.com/ http://www.thebestcookie.com/) There secret IMO is simply high quality and high minimum order sizes.
- spIrr 15y agoIf i understand you correctly, one does have to pick a big industry, pick a niche, (sell in bulk,) combine it with something else to add more value compared to similar products?
- Retric 15y agoAll companies make money by adding value, the goal is to maximize value created while minimizing the cost and then benefit by charging people based on that gap. The niche is really the type of value your creating and you need to pick a niche is the correct size for your needs and capital. There is a world of difference between the ideal niche for a collage student trying to make some beer money, an unemployed coder trying to make rent, and 3 collage friends who just got 2 million in funding. The smaller the company the more nuanced it's approach and the smaller the niche, can be. What might look like a product feature to Microsoft may support 5 different tiny software companies all going after different angles. The specifics relate to the market and the kinds of product sold. You are not going to make money shipping individual 50lb bags of dog food to people, but you might be able to make money shipping pallets of dog food to people. Things like building communities or creating content are really just another form of advertizing that is theoretically cheaper to create in the long run than Adwords.
- _sentient 15y agoYour friend needs to learn some things about SEO. If you look at the bottom of his site, there are about 40 different domain names that all point to the same content. This is a huge duplicate content issue, and there are much better ways to target multiple keyphrases.
- m0nty 15y ago> another company started by selling books (a worse idea if you ask me) Nope, IMO it's f*cking perfect. Having worked for a book distribution company: the item is easily packaged, it's easily identified by the purchaser (no brand confusion), it's easy to use with no support costs, all items from the publisher are sale-or-return - any excess inventory goes straight back to them rather than clogging the store's shelves if it doesn't sell. Amazon also used the Internet to overcome the traditional problems with book distribution: which titles to carry and market, because there are so many. Just carry all of them.
- cperciva 15y agoYou forgot one of the most important details: Books have a high cost:weight ratio -- between $10 and $200 per lbs -- which ensures that shipping costs stay reasonable. Pet food tends to be around $3/lbs.
- ja27 15y agoEven better, books can be sent "media mail" for even cheaper rates. http://www.usps.com/send/media-mail.htm http://www.usps.com/send/media-mail.htm
- joeag 15y agoI buy dog food online - rotations. I think the company struggled selling through traditional distribution so they went direct by selling online. It's a great business model. They have a differentiated message(it's bad to feed your dog the same exact food for its entire life) and the prices are comparable to premium dog food purchase in a store.
- fendmark 15y agoPayment Processing.
- spIrr 15y agoWondering, are there any vertical niches in payment processing? For me, the average customer of a payment processing company is a business owner who is capable of selecting a good provider (paypal for being around for ages or stripe for being loved), so how do other payment processors survive?
- patio11 15y agoDigital River, who basically consolidated nearly every payment processor for shareware devs, has revenues revenues in the nine figures. (Oh, by the way, shareware the word is pretty much dead but selling software on the Internet makes more money every year.)
- spIrr 15y agoPatrick, i sincerely want to thank you for participating in this thread. I feel like you have the accumulated amount of knowledge everyone trying to do business both online and offline has to know (or, at least, trying to). Do you ever feel like you are not using your knowledge in full or allocating it properly?
- patio11 15y agoSuffice it to say I know a few things about a few things and get enormous satisfaction from sharing them with people. I'm privileged in that a couple of things I know how to do are worth stupid amounts of money, and perversely the more I try to give them away the more money gets thrown at me for them, so my businesses essentially allow me a lifestyle similar to that of a tenured professor except with less academic politics and an even more flexible schedule. Downside: a regrettable lack of cool faux-medieval robes to wear once a year. I'm pretty happy with the pace at which I'm getting to take on new challenges, and pretty happy with my net impact on the world, including through building stuff and teaching folks. Besides, I'm not even 30 yet, so I've still got plenty of time to achieve total world domination through smoothing out market inefficiencies on the Internet. (I think I'll hire a tailor to get me robes as that point. Something in silk maybe.)
- patio11 15y agoNot good ideas but lucrative: porn, pills, casinos, rebelling fraud, diet scams, Make Money Online, etc etc. Oldies which add value and continue to make money: affiliates (travel, mortgage, credit cards, insurance, etc continue to print money, though barriers to entry are much higher than they once were). Lead gen remains a multibillion dollar industry. There are many companies with six/seven/eight figure sales of unsexy software, not all of which is SaaS on a monthly basis yet. (Though it probably should be :) ). Time tracking, invoicing, collaboration, and all the other usual suspects for freelancers each support more than a dozen companies. Business productivity/communication/collaboration tools. There are thousand niche things you'd never think of if you didn't love a vertical to death. (e.g. Solving the problems of multi property landlords... with software. There's one guy whose supports four families with a very specialized spreadsheet wrapped in a Swing app.) Traditional web page hosting continues to make money. (Not everyone loves VPSes or AWS. Your local bakery has to get on the net somehow...) There are ecosystems around e.g. wordpress themes and shopping carts for getting the Fortune Five million on the Internet. These support marketplace sites, affiliates, etc etc. Niche publishing plus ads remains lucrative in many sectors. If you dominate the Internet for Christmas cookie recipes, that is about equivalent to a full-time job as a cookbook author. Every similarly sized field of human endeavor makes someone the 68% that Google isn't taking. E-commerce still exists. Pick something you can buy: fishing rods, for example. Someone makes a living selling fishing rods online, I'll guarantee you.
- user24 15y agoYou've hinted about the difficulties with affiliates before[1], can you elaborate on this? I'm starting an affiliate-supported business as a spare-time project and would love your thoughts. [1] "Don’t look like an affiliate. Google is very ambivalent about affiliates" - http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/08/06/landing-page-design-tips/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/08/06/landing-page-design-tips...
- patio11 15y agoBig Daddy G basically sees most affiliates as bugs which, if fixed, would entitle them to an extra 100%+ on the purchase at issue over what they're getting currently. This results in a frenemy dynamic because affiliates also spend $$$$$$$$ on AdWords. The space is pretty deep, I suggest reading on it if you care about it. In fact, it is an oversimplification to say there is one affiliate space, because there exist affiliate models which look as different as "startups" or "megacorps" do. Mint is about as different from most CPC arbitrageurs as Heroku is from Airbnb or McDonalds is from IBM. My accidental knowledge about the space comes from hanging around with SEos for too long. Many of them make their money that way, since it offers a compellign way to monetize marketing skills without needing to have a product/business of one's own to promote.
- olalonde 15y agoNot sure if it's still profitable but I used to know a few people who would rent dedicated servers and sell shared PHP hosting to small businesses. See http://www.webhostingtalk.com http://www.webhostingtalk.com, http://forums.cpanel.net/forum.php http://forums.cpanel.net/forum.php and http://www.directadmin.com/forum/ http://www.directadmin.com/forum/.
- Monotoko 15y agoI tried this and couldn't really get off the ground... it's a very saturated market, do you mind sharing any ideas?
- handzhiev 15y agoGo vertical, even if it's all just a web host in behind. For example "Web hosting for dental cabinets". Of course something with value added over the host may work better
- bartonfink 15y agoPorn.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- user24 15y agoWith certain audiences, forums are still popular and profitable. For example http://candlepowerforums.com http://candlepowerforums.com is still the place to go for advice on flashlights, and has a thriving marketplace and following.
- spIrr 15y agoI think forums are here to stay because they already have the community, i don't know how a newly created forum can evolve like it could have if it has been started several years ago. Although i constantly feel a lack of a dedicated community for several topics...
- yabai 15y agoWow. I can't believe there is forum dedicated to flashlights!
- spIrr 15y agoOn the other hand, flashlights are not that cheap, if you think of a decent xenon/led light in the middle to upper class. So have to think a bit before you make your choice about a flashlight.
- thechut 15y agoIf you think flashlights are expensive. Go checkout CPF, it will blow your mind. I was a member for quite a while, and those people SERIOUSLY love their flashlights. Flashlight porn: http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j95/schiesz/XR19%20Ti%20PD/Ti-Xr19-PD-Proto.jpg http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j95/schiesz/XR19%20Ti%20PD... [SFW]
- LeonidBugaev 15y agoAds.
- TamDenholm 15y agoI think turnkey website scripts (mostly in php) are doing well. People that want url shortners or image hosts or some such things can buy a turnkey website for $50 or something. I know a few people who make money from scripts like this.
- ulvund 15y agoIt takes a hell of a lot of $50 websites to pay an average programmer's salary
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- _delirium 15y agoTrue, but the average programmer typically has to show up for work at least 40 hours a week, while "passive income" like selling off-the-shelf WordPress themes doesn't take up your whole week. It can also be done by people who don't have particularly extensive programming skills.
- bemmu 15y ago5 per day.
- cheez 15y agoUm, depends on how you define making money. Is $60K making money? What if I told you that the author puts in less than 5 hours a month to make $60K a year? Is that making money? If that is your definition, then the answer is "everything". If your definition is "lots of money" then the answer is, as always, very few things which are a lot of hard work.
- spIrr 15y agoTell us more about that 5 hour per month thing, please. You know, a lot of people from developing countries, including myself, find $60k a very big pile of money.
- weaksauce 15y agoThat's a great deal of money for most people in a developed country too. Especially for about one week of a full time job per year.
- csomar 15y agoThat person makes $60K/year from 5hours/month but you can't imitate him. It's not really time = money. He is using some kind of personal/company brand that took years to build. There is value, but it's not in the time he is putting. Okay. An example: Spend 10 years building knowledge and reputation on some field and become really good at it. Then give a one monthly paid talk at some conferences. That goes $5K/talk. Pretty much achievable. You can even make more, depending on the experience and value you bring.
- executive 15y ago------Ads------ Content | Ads
- user24 15y agoConfirmed. I make $100 per month with this exact formula on my blog, which I update about once every 2 months.
- pizza 15y agoJust for reference, roughly how many people visit your blog per day?
- user24 15y ago1500-2000 visits per day. http://www.puremango.co.uk http://www.puremango.co.uk. I rank highly for some good terms like "hacking facebook" and "how to hack", but my long tail is also very long.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- prawn 15y agoOne of my smaller sites is like this. Five short pages, about 30 page views per day, and makes $100+/month. I haven't changed the content in a couple of years. Have got another that makes 20-30x that and I spend no time on it.
- yogrish 15y agowow.can I check those sites to get some idea?
- mopoke 15y agoClassifieds : cars, jobs, houses...
- kingkilr 15y agoSelling things (e.g. Amazon).
- veyron 15y agoDesigning, building, and maintaining websites for businesses.
- DanielBMarkham 15y agoI'm going to say something trite, then try to explain it. "Ideas are useless" A business is a combination of dozens of little ideas supporting a large one. The large one could be anything. Maybe it's a "good old idea." Maybe it's something new and freaky. Doesn't matter. You get zero useful information from the large idea. It's the dozens of supporting ideas -- the execution model -- where the money is. So you can take something done to death and make really good money off of it. Or something totally new and unique that people might want -- and screw it up. (Most likely screw it up in either case.) Maybe a better question would be "Which broad categories of web money-making ideas are hard to screw up?" I'd be interested in that one too. :) From many years of HN-watching, I find lots of folks more than willing to blog and go on at length about the broad-but-useless ideas. It's extremely rare that you actually get a peak into how the cookies are made.
- spIrr 15y agoThank you, this would be a better title for the question i was essentially thinking of. :)
- paulhauggis 15y agoBuying and selling goods and arbitrage still make money. It's not easy and takes awhile to figure it out, but it's not a bad way to make money. This is what I'm doing while building my startup. I arbitrage web services on Craigslist and other marketplaces. The difficult part is figuring out what makes money and finding reliable service providers. It took me over a year of trial and error to finally settle on what I have now. It will never make me a million dollars. But I have more than enough time to work on my startup and I don't have to work a FTJ or consult (which I've tried and really don't like).
- franze 15y agopeople search huge market and growing (growing with every new person which gets online, with every new person which gets into employment ready age) dominated by a few big players, just waiting for smaller niche players. the only downside is, that you get about 5 "i will sue you" emails per day if you reach a certain size (just ignore them,....) said that: www.facesaerch.com is for sale
- nollow 15y agoWhy do people want a 'people search' in the world of google & facebook? Also what's the business model?
- ruchi 15y agoPeople don't always use their legal name on facebook and not everyone has enough online presence to show up on google. Peoplesearch pulls data from many sources e.g. your electric/water/broadband company.
- franze 15y agowhy? google and facebook are a distribution channel for people search. just google the name of you mother, grandmother, father in law, anyone not in the nerd, hacker, geeks segment and show what turns up (note: on the resulting pages, turn off your ad-block) in non US countries the business model is mostly ads (from the sh*tload of pageviews), in the US the business model is mostly affiliate (delivering traffic to the thousands premium "criminal record / financial record background check" companies)
- ssgrfk 15y agoPorn
- amirkhella 15y agoCreatng a downloadable product and selling it :)
- molecularbutter 15y agoRequires you to have some expertise with Adwords and Facebook ads, otherwise you'll blow tons of money attempting to generate leads and sell nothing. It can work though.
- Tyrant505 15y agoMy college roommate and I embarked on a social network(elephantunderground) to change the way people collaborate/share/media online. This was before RoR and much of the web advances. It was more ambitious than we were able to handle honestly. Then we created yourbarguide. A bar scene type yelp social network competing with Yelp but we could not monetize. He went on to create an online store called Revzilla and is CRUSHING IT. Selling Motorsport gear. Found a nitch(there were no real competitors), had the knowhow, and is growing like a weed. Sell something, drop ship, and grow!
- danneu 15y agoMy 21-year-old roommate sells security devices on a website he updates in Dreamweaver. Parts of it break on my 9" screen. Makes good money.
- ultimatewarrior 15y agoJust wanna add that despite what everyone says, mobile apps are NOT a good way to make money.
- toumhi 15y agoI quitted my job 1 year ago and basically set out to make my own living on the Internet. I went from making an adsense-supported website offering free gift certificate templates to a Body Mass Index calculator with affiliate revenue, an online guide to help choose travel insurance, and now a SAAS offering for sending large files for small companies. All of these websites make money to some extent. However I found the process of developing niche websites not to be too enjoyable (lots of focus on specialized content, nitty-gritty of building links for SEO etc) which is why I now try to focus on the SaaS file sharing solution. If you want some money on the side, then niche sites are a good way to educate yourself on how to do it. On the matter of how to choose a specific niche, I found the ebook by Rob Walling (start small and stay small) to be a real eye-opener : http://www.startupbook.net/ http://www.startupbook.net/ Also, I would recommend you to check out http://www.flippa.com http://www.flippa.com every week or so. You can see which websites are selling, and try to understand why they're successful and hopefully using this knowledge to advance your own ideas.
- user24 15y ago+1 on Rob Walling's book. It contains brilliant advice in an almost formulaic fashion for researching, building and launching a software product for sale online.
- yogrish 15y agoFlippa is useless and Lot of cheating happens. I am a victim of it. Will write a blog on it later. But stay away from it. IMO, warrior Forum and DP Forum are best places for buying/selling.
- toumhi 15y agoI haven't actually bought anything or sold anything there. But I check it once in a while to see how fast people have developed profitable websites, in which niche, using which link building methods, etc. IMO it's valuable knowledge for somebody who wants to make money on the web.
- jjoe 15y agoThere's relatively OK money to be made from repackaging OSS and making it easier to use. Cheers
- spIrr 15y agoIf possible, could you expose any more details on this? It it more re-packing like bundling it with other software, or just using your own logo, or more like customizing? Many thanks in advance!
- EtienneJohnred 15y agoThat "Punch the Monkey" thing had a damn good run. But it was done in Flash. HTML5ify that baby and you just wrote your own ticket!
- rhplus 15y agoTechCrunch profiled a company called Mind Candy recently that is dominating a market in the UK you might not immediately think of a big money spinner: social gaming for 6-10 year olds. The money comes from subscriptions and... merchandising. Lots and lots merchandising. To the tune of $100 million dollars last year and growing. http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/11/moshi-monster-madness-in-which-i-get-a-snookums-tattoo/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/11/moshi-monster-madness-in-wh...
- mVChr 15y agoI think the hidden subtext behind this question is "what are the good old ideas that still make money on the web THAT SOMEONE CAN BUILD ON THEIR OWN?" At least that's a question that half of the replies answer and one that I'm also interested in answering. Most of what I do can only be done to make a livable amount of money when done at a company with other talented people to fill in for aspects of the business that can't be covered by an individual even if they had all the necessary skills if only because of the limited amount of time in a day. Any ideas for the lone wolf?
- Joeri 15y agoYou can solve problems in any space, as long as you think about the problem first, and not about the exact kind of solution you want to make. I can't think of any problem space where the lone programmer can't do something useful if they have the domain knowledge.
- csomar 15y agoAs an Internet citizen, there goes my 2012 bill estimates - Desktop Software (around $1,000) - Hosting + Domains (around $300) - SaaS (around $50) - Mobile Apps* (around $5) That should give you an idea where my money goes. I still believe that desktop software has lots of potential. Especially, when your target market is educated about purchasing a license. You eliminate the server costs and their data maintenance. *My (probably) only purchase will be for AirSync (doubleTwist) on Android.
- pragmatic 15y ago> I still believe that desktop software has lots of potential. Shhhh... don't let anyone in on the secret. :-) I'm glad that everyone is now looking at the mobile space for the next pot of gold. More room to maneuver in the desktop space (where many companies spend most of their money each year).
- maushu 15y agoWhat kind of desktop software have you bought? It's kind of hard fighting in that arena when you are just starting, you don't have enough visibility and there is lots of competition with alternative (but not as good fit) products.
- jeffool 15y agoJust go to any company and see what they do poorly. Ask them what problems they face. Working in TV in the past, you would not believe the hassle phone numbers and email addresses were. I would've killed for a spreadsheet-like layout for contact info that userbased contact lists, department based, then company based. Bonus points if you let people pick up the phone, then click to dial out. Or, working in a relay center now, I have to wonder why no one has created a simple TTY automated menu system for the deaf. Sell it to companies, let them associate an 800 number to that line, and deaf people could call in and navigate themselves, largely rendering my job obsolete. (Well, when someone also does a good voice-to-TTY mobile app.)
- callmeed 15y agoI'll repeat some of the other answers here, while giving examples from my own company and industry. I'll provide numbers when possible. You can still make money by taking: (a) a moderately-sized vertical (excluding hackers & developers) (b) and doing any/all of the following: - Web hosting - Email newsletters - Forums - SEO - Publishing tools (web & print) - Ecommerce Ok, now details from my own industry (professional and semi-professional photography). Web hosting: at BIG Folio, we provide web hosting for photographers. We host the sites we build as well as WordPress blogs. We charge $20/month with very low space/bandwidth limits. If we tried to be a generic host, there's not way we could compete with GoDaddy at those prices. But in a vertical, people don't mind. Even though we use expensive, managed servers from Rackspace, our margins are really good. Email newsletters: Take a look at Photojojo's ad rates: http://photojojo.com/advertising/ http://photojojo.com/advertising/. $6K for a 1-week sponsorship. Forums: We advertise on one paid forum that is focused on only wedding and portrait photography (a vertical of a vertical). They have roughly 5,000 members that pay $100/year + they get good advertising rates and run an annual convention. You can do the math on that. SEO: If you know SEO and/or social media, my guess is you could easily make $50K or more by publishing an ebook on "SEO & Social Media for [insert vertical]". I published a DVD on SEO for photographers a few years ago. I pressed 1,000 copies at Discmakers and sold them all within 18 months ... for $79/each. http://photographyseo.com http://photographyseo.com Publishing tools: This could be anything from website tools/CMSs, WordPress themes, or even tools for printing (yes, people still print stuff). One of our competitors just sells a "WordPress theme for photographers" ... they get $200 for a theme that is no better than themes you buy for $29 on Theme Forest. I know people that sell Photoshop templates for borders, albums and greeting cards. In my recent foray into restaurant tools, I've notice that a lot of people search for restaurant menu templates (the kind you print). I could go on and on in this section, but just know that people have all sorts of web/print/mobile/social publishing needs and are willing to pay for it. Ecommerce: Not selling things directly but helping people sell things and taking a fee. We do this at NextProof (nextproof.com). We take 7-12% of sales and it's the lowest I know of in the space. The forum I mentioned above has a classified ad section and it's one of the few places I trust to find used camera gear. People are used to giving Apple 30% and Groupon 50% of their sales. I think there's lots of room to monetize (either through fees or ads) a vertical sales platform, classified system, or "Shopify for [insert vertical]".
- jbuzbee 15y agoI have a little bit of a funny story regarding web 1.0. In 1996 or so, my then grade-school age son put up a web page on one of my sites with his then favorite subject, the Goosebumps book series. Somewhere along the line, I helped him add a few ads and he maintained the page for a bit, but he eventually lost interest. Now, 16 years later the page hasn't been touched for at least 11-12 years, but it continues to bring in a couple of bucks per month from the ads. And my son went on to get a job at Google. So, good investment all the way around!
- spIrr 15y agoNice stories for your son to share with his grandsons.
- shaydoc 15y agocontent is king! as it always has been. If you have fresh, unique content about your passion, damn sure there are a stack other people looking to find out that information. As cheesey as it sounds,I personally think you are better off not chasing the money, but fulfilling your mission, be that success or failure and learning from that experience and doing better the next time.
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y agoIf you're looking for a product idea; here's one that I have thought of since it's something that both I and enough other people have wanted that I think it's profitable. A simple invoicing and shipping application, SAAS at a fairly low rate for tiny businesses. You need to be able to enter customer data and product/service info, generate a nice, printable invoice and envelope and also offer the option to email the invoice. On the ship side, it should print out a packing list and a shipping label. Bonus points if it an print USPS postage paid labels, or FedEx, or UPS. A very simple app to be sure (so why the hell haven't I done a basic version for myself yet but still keep doing it manually???) but I've seen enough people online looking for this that I'm convinced it's worthwhile. Go build it and make millions with my blessing!
- hrayr 15y agoYou should look into http://www.freshbooks.com/ http://www.freshbooks.com/ I use this for my invoicing needs, and they do offer to send paper invoice as you describe. They have awesome customer service and the people behind the company are great too, I think they send a cake to a randomly selected new subscriber every month.
- drue 15y agoFreshbooks is great for long-term clients. I don't think it's adequate for one-off invoicing in an e-commerce type situation.
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y agoI have tried Freshbooks. Nice service, but it only does the invoicing part, leaving me to do the packing list + labelling myself. The service I want/should program myself does both automatically.
- hrayr 15y agoMaybe I'm not understanding you correctly but Freshbooks has a service that will print out the invoice, pack it, and send a physical envelope to the client on your behalf. You don't need label or pack, they will do this for you for an additional charge.
- kappaknight 15y agoSell business cards. No matter how big or small, rich or poor, established or not, the startup, they will always buy some. =)
- fHbjKlf6 15y agoBuying up second hand books in bulk (think 5k+) and selling them individually on the Amazon marketplace. Incredible markups. Need lots of storage space though.
- kalpakd 15y agoClickbank. Seriously, i made a few bucks using it. Unfortunately, i could not redeem the money as i was 17 and now I forgot my account username. Also, you can buy domains names which are somewhat related to the current web phenomenon and then sell them at a much greater price. (eg. the domain fb.com was bought by Facebook for $8.5 million)