Sellable?

I've made contact with Fuser to see if they're interested in buying the fblocalmail code. Fuser is kinda cool, but it's an in-browser Java applet and tbh I found it a little slow and awkward. They did point out that fblocalmail was pretty similar to what they do, so we'll see how it goes.

What I should've done first, and what I'll do next if I don't hear back from Fuser soon, is see if FriendFeed was interested. They don't have any Facebook integration, and I'm sure it would be attractive to show new Facebook messages in my feed, and possibly show my messages received in my feed to others (hmm .. not sure about that last one.

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Other news

In other news, I think I'll abandon fblocalmail. I'm going to get mylocaltakeaway up and running fully, with costs for owners and affiliate payments, then use Google and Facebook ads to get some interest. As I'll obviously be targeting Australia only, the effectiveness of the ads should prove to be quite good.

After that, I'm going to develop a few iPhone/iPod touch apps. The SDK has been recently released, and apps go "on sale" in June. I'm also going to learn Ruby-on-Rails, to hopefully decrease the time it takes to implement my ideas.

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Facebook messaging

Facebook is to launch a new instant messaging service (TechCrunch story here). I'm wondering also if they are about to launch some sort of email integration for their messages too. My fblocalmail ads that were running on Facebook have suddenly stopped, and new ones I try to get running have been rejected, even though they don't break the terms as far as I can see. The official rejection reason is below:

This ad includes references to Facebook. As per sections 2 and 8 of Facebook's Advertising Guidelines, ads are not permitted to use Facebook logos, trademarks, site terminology, or refer to Facebook in the title, body, image, or destination URL.

and here's the ad text:

Manage Your Messages
Use your email client to send, receive, filter and organize messages, online and offline.

Now what is especially strange is that I have an identical ad running on Facebook that hasn't been rejected. Also, no matter how high I raise the click bid for that ad, it never gets any impressions. Of course it may be possible that my ads are being rejected because someone at Facebook checked out the fblocalmail website and didn't like the fact that it allows Facebook messages to be managed externally, but it may also be that they buried fblocalmail because they are planning some similar functionality themselves.

I just find it strange that my ads ran for a few days before suddenly not getting any impressions.

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Facebook ads

I've decided to advertise with Facebook too. I'm trying $5 a day and see how I go. So far, I've got a few clicks, but unfortunately I haven't worked out (if it's even possible) how to get my ads to appear only on the Inbox/Messages page.

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Upped ante

Google ads are providing lots of impressions, but not too many clicks. However, there's a reason behind this. My "targeted keywords" don't get hit too often, but the Gogle network (basically AdSense I think) provides over 300k impressions in a few days. So, the keywords are the most likely to provide clicks, and these aren't massively high for impressions (about 1k all up). All in all I'm fairly satisfied that AdWords are value for money, so I've decided to expand them but uppin the spend to $60 per month and added Australia, the UK, Ireland and Canada to my targeted countries. The other good thing is that the $60 is a monthly maximum, so it's not like I'll end up owing a ton of money if there's a rush of clicks :)

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