Category Archives: facebook

gnomedex 2007 – thoughts from the floor

Posted by Todd Sawicki on August 10, 2007 View Comments

I am attending gnomedex today and tomorrow grokking with an interesting slice of the tech blogosphere and startup-sphere.  Some of the folks I have finally met face to face include Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, Beth Goza, Vanessa Fox, Shannon Clarke, Chris Pirillo, Dave Schappel, Jeff Bar and many others.  Great to catch up with friends and colleagues like Dave McClure and Renee Blodgett.  Here are my thoughts about the event so far:

- Why isn’t every founder, sr. marketing and PR exec for every startup wanting to make some noise not here attending?  In a world where the social media and blogs drive more awareness and success then traditional marketing programs and channels, here’s your chance to dip your toe into the stream of blogosphere consiousness.  It’s unconscionable that those folks aren’t reaching out to make personal connections to this community.  The biggest bitch that influentials have now – whether Arrington, Scoble or even Denton at Valleywag – is that they are sick and tired of the endless pitches from flaks.  In an era where connecting is easier then ever thanks to the wonders of social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn, there is no excuse not to try and make a personal connection to those folks.  If you are wondering why it is so hard to get those folks to listen to your pitches and you are not here, then I think you have your answer. 

- Facebook has made attending Gnomedex wayyy more interesting and networking here sooooo much easier.  LinkedIn offers a lot more professional depth then Facebook does (and therefore will continue to exist) but it doesn’t provide any information about who that person really is.  Facebook offers insite into who the person is beyond a title and a career.  And having friend-spammed the attendee list at gnomedex list who’s on Facebook, I was able to learn quite a bit about a fair number of interesting attendees.  And when I met these folks for the first, it made it a lot easier to find things to talk about beyond just what their title, responsibilities and current company are.  Networking is easy and fun when you actually get to know the person since i think we all agree as much as folks in the tech startup sphere love to work, there’s a lot more to talk about then trying to figure out a new bizdev deal.

- It’s awesome to have an event of this magnitude in Seattle (and Ignite Seattle as well).  One of the things that I wish Seattle had were more A-list events that draw out the best and brightest of seattle’s startup crowd, but as in this case actually attract A-listers from Silicon Valley to head up here.  Seattle needs a lot more of these level of events. 

OMG – FACEBOOK IS DOWN!!!! Scoble and McClure might go into Convulsions!

Posted by Todd Sawicki on July 30, 2007 View Comments

facebook down

I hope McClure and Scoble aren’t going through withdrawal ;-)   Jason Calacanis is probably relieved.

UPDATE: It wasn’t just me as CNET reported here.

valleywag calls it – facebook is the new microsoft

Posted by Todd Sawicki on July 30, 2007 View Comments

Valleywag – one of my favorite daily tech reads (please owen start covering the scene here in seattle) – posts what I believe a lot of folks are wondering – is facebook the new microsoft?  Facebook is following the Microsoft development platform playbook (as discussed here previously) with their F8 application development platform.  Suddently there are hundreds of ISV’s running around creating new facebook apps much like Microsoft was ultimately able to create hundreds of thousands of ISV’s for Windows.   However for much of its history though Microsoft was notorious for suposedly eating its young (the ISV’s) and their custom applications (for us old timers who doesn’t remember the bloom county version called Microsquash?).   As Owen Thomas from Valleywag writes - Facebook developers, you’ve been put on notice.

My point isn’t necessarily to rain on the FB app parade as I think it’s got a ton of opportunity and have plenty of ideas for apps myself.   What’s interesting is that just last week I had a very similar conversation with a VC friend of mine.  My VC friend is awfully concerned about FB eating its young.  His counsel on investment ideas around FB apps is – be very careful.  He just can’t believe that FB will allow ISV’s to make unlimited amounts of money without FB getting a big cut.  And if FB gets a big cut, then my VC friend is concerned as to whether there’s enough money on the table for the app developer to make it big financially.

And if not, then FB will just eats its young and make the money themselves since there is nothing to stop them.  Just a reminder that as much as Scoble and Dave McClure are smoking the FB crack-pipe (and to an extent rightfully so), all of us looking at FB as the new startup business playground need to think about the risks that the current environment might contain. 

OK you may now return to your favorite FB hype-fest.

appaholic – the facebook app billboard

Posted by Todd Sawicki on July 11, 2007 View Comments

another thing – thanks for dave mcclure for pointing this out for me today – great resource for fb app research – appaholic.com - check it out.

facebook apps – here, there and everywhere

Posted by Todd Sawicki on July 11, 2007 View Comments

Facebook is quite the buzz these days in startup land especially since they opened up their app platform (something that those of us in online marketing have been begging for years for fwiw – hint, hint, wink, wink FIM).  For those building consumer web services you know absolutely need to understand facebook and think long and hard about your facebook application strategy (just like in 2006 you needed to think long and hard about your myspace widget strategy).  So we’ve been down this road before.  The main difference is that Facebook is trying to allow it’s application providers actually build real businesses around the apps!  I know shocking!

My buddy Dave McClure does a great writeup around initial thinking about facebook application marketing (check it out – it’s the feed, stupid!).  I’ve been playing around with Facebook like Dave these past few weeks and trying to ramp my ultra n00b status up and think Dave’s hit a lot of key points.  One thing is that the Feed has some limitations that I’ve found recently that limit some of it’s godsend ability for app marketing within Facebook.  I’ll be posting more details soon.  Also one thing I noticed is that how early stage and unpolished most of the apps – it’s early for sure.  And that’s not a bad thing.

And now another pal – Scott Rafer is up to no good again ;)   with Lookery according to GigaOm an ad network for facebook apps – assuming it can be expanded to all widgets – all I have to say is why didn’t I think of it first.  Great idea.

McClure on SMO (Social Media Optimization)

Posted by Todd Sawicki on June 6, 2007 View Comments

Dave McClure, man of 1,000 startup connections (seriously if you’re a startup in the valley and haven’t met dave I am not sure you exist :) ), writes a good ”come-to-jesus” post about the importance of social media in online marketing.   As I have commented before here – the social media hubs can drive an insane amount of traffic if you get hooked in either with catchy viral content or with user generated comments and feedback.  Just ask guys like iLike about the power of social media to drive online marketing.  It’s also one of the reasons Dave and I are stoked about Spock (discloure – we’ve both worked with spock) since it piggybacks on that movement.

For some perspective on the size of social media and it’s traffic – check out this post which gives context to the amount of traffic traffic that MySpace and Facebook drive as a % of all internet traffic.

And lastly, Dave thanks for the props!