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Social Networking - Thursday, January 3, 2008

Honolulu's ChipIn Sells Facebook Apps To BuddyMedia

We covered angel-funded Hawaiin startup Chip-in last May. The startup was the subject of a funny series of profiles by a local newspaper which wrote that ChipIn had "the potential to be not just Hawaii's – but the world's – hottest tech phenom in recent memory." In a later profile ChipIn acknowledged that its original epayment business model didn't work so it did a restart. Now in its 3rd or 4th incarnation ChipIn seems to have won some financial return for its investors. Facebook app rollup firm BuddyMedia is buying 5 Facebook apps from ChipIn. They include Pirates vs. Ninjas.

For sure, ChipIn's Facebook apps have been a huge success. BuddyMedia says the applications have been installed by 5.6M Facebook users and generate more than 5M page views a day. ChipIn CEO Carnet Williams explains that the reason they sold the Facebook apps was to help them to add operating cash to the $1M in angel funding that they have raised and to help them to focus on their core business.

BuddyMedia was founded by Michael Lazerow who previously founded GolfServ which was bought by Time Inc and folded into Golf.com. BuddyMedia is focused on milking Facebook, with its lead product being Acebucks - a payment system for Facebook.

Read - Inc. Magazine
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