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Reminder: Utah Social Media / Facebook Developers Garage Tomorrow

Posted on December 10, 2007 by jessestay

I just wanted to remind everyone that the Utah Social Media Developers Garage will be tomorrow, December 11, at 7pm at the Twelve Horses offices in Draper, Utah. We will have the privilege of hearing from Jeff Barr, evangelist for Amazon Web Services who is traveling all the way from Seattle, about how Amazon AWS has been utilized in Social environments. After Jeff’s talk, we will be having a round-table discussion, where I would love to talk more about Google’s OpenSocial, and any other Facebook developments that have occured over the past month. Following the discussion we’ll get a tournament of Xbox 360 Dance Dance Revolution, Halo 3, and possibly Guitar Hero 3 going. Bungee Labs has offered to offer the snacks and drinks for the event. This should be our biggest event yet, so be sure to mark your calendars, and invite your coworkers!

We’d again like to thank Twelve Horses for hosting the event, and Bungee Labs for providing the food. Of course, I also need to make a shameless plug for my Social Media development and consulting company, currently called SNAPlic8 (we’re debating on our name still), who is organizing the event. The first 18 people in the door will get a cool Google-provided Google Code notebook to take notes in. We’ll look forward to seeing you there!

If you’re wondering where Twelve Horses is located, their address is:

13961 Minuteman Dr, Draper, UT 84020

View Larger Map

Basically, it’s off Bangerter on the East-side feeder that parallels I-15. The Twelve Horses office is located in a series of three buildings, in the middle building. Their office is on the left on the first floor, right as you walk in.

Danny Sullivan Just Doesn’t Get SNO

Posted on December 1, 2007 by jessestay

Dave Bascom, of SEO.com, and also a good friend of mine, recently reminded me through a blog post of his about Danny Sullivan’s Whiteboard Daily Search Cast where he criticized Facebook ads as a “revolution”. Danny goes on to say that because search ads are being “requested” by the user, search engine advertising is much more of a revolution than that of Facebook advertising.

I respectfully disagree with Danny here. I think Danny is getting his terms confused. While SEO is the process of me getting what I have requested, search engine advertising is not that case. Advertisers on search engines do not know who I am and therefore cannot detect the best ads to send my way. Because of this, it is extremely easy for advertisers to get what I am truly looking for wrong, and especially hard to convince me that I should buy their product. Advertisers only know what I’m searching for – not who I am, not who my friends are, and therefore what search engines can deliver is extremely basic. Search Engine advertisers (note I’m not saying SEO here) are still pushing ads to me, many of which are not what I want to receive.

Facebook, on the other hand, is a search engine’s biggest competitor in the ad space. Facebook, in essence, has on top of the existing internet, created a personal internet for others to use, associate with friends, purchase from retailers, do business, you name it. People remain on Facebook (and other social networks) because it is where their friends and family are. Facebook knows these relationships, these interactions, and all about who you are and what you are looking for. Therefore, all Facebook needs to do is give a basis for businesses to do business on top of their “personal internet”, and now all users have to do is search within Facebook and they can get way better search results than a normal search engine could ever give you. Facebook has done this with their platform. They’ve done this with their “Facebook Pages”, and they’ve also done this through Beacon.

Now, add to that the ability for advertisers to convince your friends to tell you about your product. Danny, it’s not about getting into “the conversation”. Facebook isn’t just a “conversation” – I use Twitter for that. Facebook is a lifestyle – it’s a way of living. It’s not about someone, even a friend entering the conversation and saying, “hey – do you want a new iPod?” It’s about me and my friends talking about what we’re getting for Christmas, and one of my friends knows I’m looking for an iPod, and tells me about a cool deal on iPods he discovered. Facebook is not an interruption – it’s a natural evolvement of life. Well-placed ads in Facebook are those that Friends tell other friends about. They’re about me seeing what my friends are doing, and realizing – hey, my friend just shopped at Fandango (hi Phil!), maybe I should shop there too!

I am going to be blogging here really soon about a term I call Social Network Optimization (there’s also a chapter in my book), or SNO. While SEO is all about defining your place in a linked relationship between websites, SNO adds a layer to that by defining your place in a linked relationship between real people. You’ll start seeing more and more SNO as social networking becomes more and more used. Is SEO dead? I don’t think so – a good company will need to find ways to utilize both techniques to place themselves optimally on the web. SEO could eventually evolve more and more into SNO, but SEO I think will always be around in some form.

SNO and Facebook ads are the new revolution. Viral and Permissions marketing is here to stay my friends – Danny, I’m sorry, but I think you’re wrong on this one.

I’m on Facebook, Now What???

Posted on December 1, 2007 by jessestay

I think it’s blatently evident that I, Jesse Stay am on Facebook. Now what???

Actually, that’s exactly what. For the past few weeks I have been mentioning on Twitter that I have been working on a “super secret project”. That project is actually a book that I am writing with Jason Alba, founder of JibberJobber.com, and author of I’m in LinkedIn — Now What???. Jason and I are both excited as to the potential for this book to get people excited to use Facebook.

In a slight change from my direction of being a Facebook developer, I am going to use this expertise to give non-developers and business people a new insight on Facebook, and how Facebook could indeed be used for the average Joe, or even in a business sense. I get the question all the time, “Why should I be on Facebook?” This book will answer that question, and more. I’ll write about things like privacy issues, and a new term, which I’ll blog about later, “Social Network Optimization”, which I see as a layer on top of what SEO can do for you.

Jason’s expertise in the job market and what job hunters and seekers, as well as businesses themselves are looking for brings a unique view into how people seeking to use Facebook as a tool can find value. I’m excited to have Jason’s help, and previous experience in authorship on this book. I think Jason’s a smart guy.

If you have any input or suggestions on what you would like to see in the book, or things you like or dislike about Facebook, including tips and tricks, and would like to have an excerpt credited to you in the book, please contact me. Like in Jason’s “I’m on LinkedIn, Now What???” I’m very interested in having lots of quotes from every day Facebook users and how they like to use Facebook.

If you are a blogger, in the media, or have expertise in the area we are very interested in Endorsements and reviews as well. Contact me or Jason and we can send you a pre-edit copy of the book for you to look through, give input, and review before it gets published. We’ll publish the best endorsements and reviews. Please let me know if you have any further suggestions on how to spread the word.

We’re hoping to release the book to readers around January, making it one of the first books on the topic of Facebook to be sold thus far.

Auto-Follow Those that Follow you on Twitter

Posted on November 14, 2007 by jessestay

On Twitter, it is generally polite to follow those that follow you – they are saying, “you are interesting”, so it is the polite thing to show interest in them as well. I have heard from multiple people, including Scoble and Chris Pirillo that they have requested Twitter do this for them.

Well, I’m proud to announce that I’ve written a script that does just this for you. It’s a simple script, that does just what it says it does – auto-follows those that follow you. To install the script, download this script, unzip it (gunzip), then edit it. You’ll need to specify your Twitter username and password in the specified places, and if you want to blacklist any screen-names you’ll want to add those in as well. Then, add the script to a cron job somewhere, say, in cron.hourly or cron.daily, and it will now auto-follow anyone that follows you on Twitter! If you get any bologna (as I call it – others call it bacon) followers, you can simply add them to your black list in the script and it will ignore them.

If you have any problems installing it or running it, please comment. This script is being released under the GPL, v.1. Again, you can download the script at:

http://www.jessestay.com/auto_follow.pl.gz

I’ll post it to CPAN later as I get time so it can be downloaded there.

UPDATE: you’ll need to have Net::Twitter installed – you can install this by running “perl -MCPAN -e ‘install Net::Twitter'”

UPDATE (11/14/2007): Chris Pirillo has pointed out that it’s hitting an API limit if you have to follow more than 70 users within the same hour. If that is the case, set it to run on cron every hour, and eventually it should catch up. Twitter can also add your username to a white list if this is important to you and contact them. If you are on that white list, it should follow everyone in one swoop.

New Executive Title – “CSO”, or “Chief Social Officer”

Posted on November 5, 2007 by jessestay

I am the CSO, or Chief Social Officer for my new company, SNAPlicate. I have interpreted it to be a mashup of a CTO, with a social twist. I am in charge of ensuring my company stays up on social technologies, has communication and networking with other Social developers, and keeping an overall social direction for the company. As a Social Development and Innovation company, I think companies like SNAPlicate need positions like mine to keep them in a forward-moving direction. I wonder how many other social-related positions will be created from this new wave of platform development.

I guess I should use this opportunity to tell a little about SNAPlicate. We’re a social development and innovations firm, perhaps somewhat similar to RockYou, or Slide that also outsources work for other companies desiring a social direction. I am starting this company with my partner, Allan Young (our COO), and already we have applications such as our Holy Rolls suite of meta-religious apps, the SAC App, the GrandCentral App, and several other apps currently in development I will announce shortly. Several of the apps we have developed have tens of thousands of users on them, and we have consulted and helped architect other applications with millions of users. I’ll be updating snaplicate.com soon with more details, so stay tuned!

Web 3.0 – What is it?

Posted on November 5, 2007 by jessestay

I’ve blogged about this before – for some reason (not that I would have an influence), it still hasn’t stuck. We are officially in Web 3.0. Why do I say this?

I define 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and any major computer change as a change in platforms. Back in the day we saw major platform changes from Unix, Apple II, to the IBM PC and Microsoft Windows. All these were major platform shifts, accepted by the general population. People are stuck in trying to define 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc. as marketing terms surrounding the general consumer, when in fact they aren’t. A 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 release is usually a major architecture change instantiated by the developers, and branded by a marketing or business staff.

So let’s look at Web 2.0. Web 2.0 started making a name for itself at the launch of Gmail, YouTube, Flickr and maybe even sites such as del.icio.us, and Digg. What was special about these sites? They all utilized AJAX, a relatively new platform which allowed developers to create desktop “clients” on top of the previous, 1.0 web platform. Around this same time came Adobe’s Flex, another similar platform which accomplished the same purpose. Add to that Google’s Gears and Adobe’s Air, (and maybe even the soon-to-come Mozilla products), developers now had the capability to provide media-rich, client-side platforms that have the ability to communicate with the web all through a single web browser or web communications platform. This was a major change from the previous web architecture of only being able to shift from page to page to get what you wanted your applications to do on the web.

Over the last year or two, as some of the Web 2.0 applications have released social capabilities – sites such as Classmates (not a platform), LinkedIn, Hi5, MySpace, and Facebook. Users have embraced many of these sites, and have begun to utilize these sites as their own “personal internet”, allowing them to view what their friends are doing, keep track of relationships, business contacts, and use the internet at a much more personalized level. Some of those have released APIs to the platform controlling the social capabilities within their own architectures. These APIs, such as OpenSocial and the Facebook Platform bring an entirely new level to these social websites, giving access to hundreds of millions of individual internet users. Now, through an entirely open methodology, developers, like never before have access to an entirely new internet, inaccessible before, that brings completely new customers, a much more personalized audience, and a completely new method of application development. Social API, my friends, is Web 3.0.

What will Web 4.0 be? I predict the cell phone market – perhaps through phones such as the iPhone and just announced Android architecture. There are more than a billion cell phones out there, at an even more personalized level than even the social networks can provide!

Utah Facebook Developers / Social Media Developers Garage This Tuesday

Posted on October 26, 2007 by jessestay

I’ve announced it on the group page, but I’d like to announce that the second annual Utah Facebook and Social Media Garage is this Tuesday, October 30th at 7pm at Noah’s in Lindon. The last one went really well I thought, many of us were still very new to the Facebook craze though. Since then there have been several prominent Utahns that have had successes in the Facebook development arena.

We have 2 great speakers that will be addressing us:

Jason McGowan, the lead developer and designer of We’re Related, which went from 0 to 100,000 users in several days will be addressing us. Also, Thom Allan, the “other Utah Facebook Developer” (if you read my blog you’ll get that) of Digital Thom will be addressing us.

Already, I’m expecting 10-20 people to be at the event. It should be a strong event for the West Coast Facebook enthusiasts! It’s BYOS (Bring your own snacks), so bring something, whether it’s snacks or soda to contribute to the pot. I’m also working on some schwag – we’ll see with short notice if we can get anything though. The next event we should have a ton of stuff like that. This event will be sponsored by WebWave Technologies Incubator and Twelve Horses.

To find Noah’s, see:

http://mynoahs.com/locations.php

The best way to find it is look at the picture in the link above – you can see the building from all around. I’ll look forward to seeing you there!

UPDATE: The location has changed. Thanks to Perfect Search Corporation, we were able to secure a last minute location to host the event. The event will now be held at Perfect Search Corporation in the Fibernet Building in Orem. Same time, same speakers. The address is:

1145 S 800 E Suite 325
Orem, UT

Our instructions are to stay out of the development areas and in the conference rooms only. To get in, if no one is at the door, please call me on my cell phone and we’ll send some one to let you in: (801) 979-7576. I apologize if this inconvenience. Thanks again to Tim Stay and Perfect Search Corporation for their willingness to host our event.

Here’s a Google Maps to that location: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=1145+S+800+E+Suite+325,+Orem,+UT&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=29.219963,76.025391&ie=UTF8&ll=40.276612,-111.676068&spn=0.006859,0.018561&z=16&iwloc=addr&om=1

Facebook LDS App Acquired by LDS Non-Profit

Posted on October 17, 2007 by jessestay

I’ve been twittering for awhile now about a “big announcement”. I’m proud to say this is that big announcement! In my first successful exit from a Social application, a private, LDS Non-Profit has acquired the Facebook LDS App from my Social Apps incubator, Snaplicate. This is one of the first few apps to be sold on Facebook, so this is big news! Today we signed the final document and the news is official! I’m very excited for this, as it will mean immediate help for the LDS App and strong progress in its development. Managing this on my own has been difficult. I have high regard for the organization taking over, and I know they will do very good things for it. I’ll announce the name of the organization and more details as we finalize the press release (hopefully tomorrow!) and agree on what details will be released.

If you are a user of the LDS App, you have nothing to worry about. While I have no final control over what happens, the organization that has acquired the app is non-profit, which means it should continue to be free, without advertising or subscription charges. They have made it known to me that they have intentions to keep it this way, and hearing of their plans of where to take it in the future, it fits in well with where I was going to take it. If they let me, I will continue to volunteer my time in development on the app as well.

What will I do next? I have retained rights to the code, which is currently being used on the Catholic App, and will continue to expand to other religions as I enhance the code base. Feel free to tell your Catholic friends about the Catholic App! I am also focusing on some other big projects which you will hear of very soon.

In the next day or two we should have a press release finalized and more details should be released. Stay tuned!…