A Facebook Crazy Ivan T-Bones an Application Company

Social.im got some play on mashable a few weeks ago. They are one of a few outside application developers that were working on an instant messaging platform for social networks. They did a few things well. The review was decent, the future looked decent.

The team working on social.im dropped all of their other projects to focus on this one.

Yesterday, news was out that meebo, a reasonably established IM platform, was trying to raise money at a huge valuation.

The crew at social.im must have thought this was exciting. There was some action in the space. Even if the deal was done for half of the hoped for valuation, it would mean there was appetite for what they were building.

Everyone work harder! Let's get adoption up!

Then Facebook comes out today and says they will be launching their own chat - to everyone on Facebook at once. In two weeks.

Game. Over.

Sorry guys.

It's rough out here.