I've been meaning to do a post like this, listing all of the dozens of things I've tried. What I've found success with is similar, try to find environments wher

I've been meaning to do a post like this, listing all of the dozens of things I've tried. What I've found success with is similar, try to find environments where ideas are already being proven and take the best parts. I adapted an HTML widget that was making the rounds on layout/generator sites to become a Facebook widget, and that reached 9 millions users. What upset me though was the difficulty of monetizing some small fun widget. So next I looked at what is working on Facebook and that could also make money, and found some widgets where you can collect points to rank higher among your friends. Sort of like social games, just without the game part. I implemented a similar app, but simplified it even further. It is doing very well and is now in the top 20 apps on MySpace. I had no success at all with ideas that were purely my own, and had to look for elements elsewhere. It's like taking ideas from nature, except in this case nature is the app ecosystem.