brooke07t7: Making Money With Options

The Yankees and Derek Jeter are making a big mistake with the way they are handling the negotiations for a new deal. After Jeter’s agent, Casey Close, referred to the Yankees negotiating position as “baffling”, GM Brian Cashman responded with this gem of a quote:

"We've encouraged him to test the market and see if there's something he would prefer other than this. If he can, fine. That's the way it works."

It wasn’t exactly a “thank you for all you’ve done, Derek” and it made the Yankees look small. But, not to be outdone, word leaked from Jeter’s camp that the shortstop was seeking a six-year/$150 million deal. That was later amended down to somewhere around four or five years for “only” $23 or $24 million. Pretty good money for a guy coming off a year where he hit .270/.340/.370.

The fact is the Yankees need Derek Jeter at shortstop in 2011. There are no in-house candidates, Eduardo Nunez didn’t exactly set the world on fire at AAA this year, and the free agent pool is weak. Throw in the fact that barring injury, Jeter will become the first Yankee to get 3,000 hits in 2011 and his return should be assured.

But the Yankees’ problem is beyond 2011. Maybe Jeter’s 2010 campaign was an aberration and he will return to his prolific hitting ways next year, but what if he doesn’t. What if he is like 99% of the shortstops who came before him and plays progressively worse after age 36?

And Jeter is rightfully looking at all the mega-deals the Yankees have handed out and wondering why he isn’t worthy of one. He has always played hard, played hurt and he has never embarrassed the franchise. For fifteen seasons, Jeter has been a great ballplayer on the field and a great ambassador off of it.

What the two sides need to do is find the middle ground. A series of team and player options, triggered by certain performance levels would make the most sense. That followed by a personal services contract after Jeter’s playing days have ended would also probably ease the turmoil. Whatever approach they take, they would be smart to erect a “cone of silence” and keep everything out of the press from this point forward. Neither side will look very good if the current rhetoric continues.

As we’re all well aware, Facebook doesn’t offer an iPad app. Well, maybe we’re not all so aware of that. Because Friendly, an unofficial app made by Oecoway, has been a massive hit on the platform. In fact, it has over 500,000 active users, co-founder Cyril Moutran tells us. And that’s pretty amazing considering that they have been charging for the app. But you can probably expect that number to explode even further, as they’ve decided to make the app free.

To be clear, there will still be a $0.99 version of Friendly, but the only difference from the new free version is that it won’t have ads. Undoubtedly, most users won’t care about that and will opt for the free version. And the app will rack up even more downloads because 1) again, Facebook doesn’t have an official app and 2) Friendly is a very solid way to use Facebook on the device.

“We’re making Friendly for Facebook free, because we want to expand our user base and put Friendly for Facebook in as many people’s hands as possible,” Moutran says. The service essentially takes the touch-optimized version of Facebook’s site and wraps it in their own native app wrapper. But this allows them to add more functionality, such as the ability to change fonts and colors. Plus you can browse the web within it and quickly share back to Facebook. You can also easily manage multiple Facebook accounts from the app.

The app also brings a native app look, feel, and performance to Facebook. That may not sound like much, but given the usage numbers, it definitely can’t be overlooked.

But while Friendly is very good, let’s be honest: if Facebook had their own app, most people would likely use that. People currently searching for “Facebook” on the iPad only have the third-party options — and this has tricked some people. And considering that many of these apps are paid apps, that has cost people money — something which Facebook can’t like too much.

So did Facebook pressure Friendly to go free? It doesn’t seem that way. Moutran says that Facebook has been very supportive of what they’ve been doing. “The Facebook Platform team in particular deserves kudos for their around the clock dedication at providing help and guidance to developers on iOS SDK,” he says.

Maybe we should take Friendly going free as a sign that an official app is coming? That also doesn’t seem all that likely given Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent words about the possibility.

While Moutran declined to talk about their revenue numbers, if you simply take the 500,000 user number and multiply it by the one dollar the app had sold for, you get $500,000 (before Apple takes their 30 percent cut). Of course, Moutran did say the 500,000 is active users, so it’s possible the app has been downloaded quite a bit more, bringing Oecoway even more money.

Now they’ll likely have to replace a lot of that money with ad revenue. Will it add up? Who knows, but this move will undoubtedly bring them a lot more users.

“We’re really excited because Friendly for Facebook has been an extremely successful paid application. It’s held the top overall spot for paid applications for more than 40 days, and it’s been the top paid social media iPad app since we launched version 1.0. But we want as many people as possible to be able to experience Friendly for Facebook so that’s why we are making it free,” Moutran reiterates.

That’s great news for Facebook users and iPad lovers alike.

You can find the free version of Friendly here. And the paid version here.

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Thursday, December 9, 2010

Making Money With Options

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