2010-09-30 FamilyLink MyFamily: going, going, gone?

FaceBook app

MyFamily

MyFamily is a FaceBook app owned by FamilyLink. It was originally developed by Paul Aschman for several social networks and is known by several names, the most descriptive of which is Stick Figures. The FaceBook app is classified as a game.

When FamilyLink née WorldVitalRecords acquired the MyFamily app back in 2008, they considered it news worthy of a celebratory press release posted on the WorldVitalRecords blog. The press release gushed that MyFamily had more than 1.5 million users across five social networks. It quoted a user saying that My Family application is one of the greatest applications on Facebook.

why

The press release also made it clear why FamilyLink bought MyFamily: The acquisition of My Family will boost FamilyLink.com, Inc’s potential for increased ad revenue. and Acquiring My Family gives us a significant presence on other social networks, such as bebo, myspace.com, hi5, and Friendster and extends our leadership position in family social networking...
I've more than once stated that I believe that FamilyLink did not really buy MyFamily for the app or the user base, but for the technology, that having a working cross-platform app makes it easier for them to port their own applications to other platforms.

When FamilyLink introduced GenealogyWise (ning.com), they said that it replaced FamilyHistoryLink, that GenealogyWise would offer the same family tree functionality as FamilyHistoryLink did. So, they essentially promised to redevelop FamilyHistoryLink for ning.com. That was a rather bold promise, as FamilyHistoryLink née FamilyLink was based on TNG. So far, FamilyLink has not introduced any app for ning.com yet.

gone

Today, the FaceBook MyFamily app is gone. When you try to visit the app, you do not even get any error message, just a blank space. All that remains is a FaceBook fan page for MyFamily. There are some discussions of users who think they know how to load the app.
Perhaps FamilyLink will fix the issues. Perhaps the app will work again tomorrow, but I doubt it.
What I know for sure is that FamilyLink isn't interested in MyFamily anymore. FamilyLink has tried to sell it.

for sale

On 2010 Jul 23 FamilyLink CEO Paul Allen tweeted to tell the world that he had a FaceBook app for sale.

2010-07-23 04:30 paulballen Decided to sell a FB app with 2MM MAU. Click here for more details and how to contact me: http://bit.ly/cX4zk8

The short link leads to a message titled 2MM MAU app for sale on the FaceBook Developer forum.

Family MyFamily for sale on the FaceBook Developer Forum

The FaceBook developer forum message explains why FamilyLink wants to sell MyFamily:

So why in the world would we be selling this app? Well, it's a financing strategy for the rest of my company. We are trying to get cash flow positive this year and the sale of this app should get us to that point. And this can be done more quickly than going to investors right now.

Forum member shockzone asked a pertinent question: how do you envision this app will be affected once FB kills profile boxes in the next month or so? I'd imagine that a lot of your new users come from profile boxes?, which Paul did not answer. Member XNoArchive responded in his stead: ouch!.

eBay

FamilyLink's attempt to sell MyFamily on the developer forum was unsuccessful. On 2010 Aug13 FamilyLink marketing manager Cydni Tetro tweeted about MyFamily being for sale.

2010-08-13 00:25 familylink Facebook MyFamily Game Application For Sale http://bit.ly/c7SJxx Please retweet this to your followers!

This isn't her best marketing moment. The request to retweet the message smacks of desperation. The link itself is hilarious: FamilyLink put their for sale on eBay.

FamilyLink MyFamily for sale on eBay

They asked a starting price of U$ 150.000 and offered a Buy Now price of US$ 300.000. The auction started on 2010 Aug 13 and ended on 2010 Aug 17 with zero bids.

updates

2011-04-23: ebay listing no more

The ebay listing is no more. The broken link has been removed.

2012-05-22 FaceBook Developer Forum

On 2011 Sep 1, the FaceBook developer forum became read-only. FaceBook has designated Stack Overflow as its official developer support forum.
By now, the old FaceBook developer forum has been deleted. The broken link to the 2MM MAU app for sale post has been removed.