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SocialToo.com — Your Companion to the Social Web

Posted on January 5, 2008 by jessestay

I’ve been working on a little side project lately, that I think will solve a lot of the headaches caused by lack of certain features in the Social Landscape. In the spirit of the book Jason and I are writing, my company, SocialOptimize.com is announcing the beta launch of SocialToo.com. What is it? It is intended to be a companion to the Social Web – the features you can’t find in the social landscape you will find here. Will it replace your Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or Plaxo account? Probably not, but it will make your experience in those Social Networks much better and compliment that experience.

Over the coming weeks (I have a strong release early, release often policy), you’ll see new features launched on the site that will make your Social experience better. The site is still very basic, but as a taste of what’s to come, for all those that sign up now we’ll enable auto following of all those that follow you on Twitter. Within the next week we’ll add the ability to blacklist those that follow you (so it doesn’t follow them). Soon after that we’ll add statistics, better bulk operations on your followers and following, and many more features. Soon we’ll start to incorporate Facebook data, linking your Twitter account with your Facebook account. After that, maybe Plaxo, or MySpace, or LinkedIn. These are all ideas of where we’re going with this.

So, I encourage all to register to find out what’s to come. Again, all those that register with their Twitter username and password will be automatically given auto-follow capabilities on their Twitter account! Keep following here and I’ll update as we progress.

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.

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.

Next Utah Social Media Developers Garage Meeting: December 11

Posted on November 21, 2007 by jessestay

I mentioned this in the official group, but the next Utah Social Media Developers Garage meeting will be held Tuesday, December 11 at 7pm. Amazon.com’s Jeff Barr will be our featured speaker and will be talking about Social Networking sites that currently use Amazon Web Services and why AWS is beneficial to this medium. I’m excited to have him here and look forward to hearing what he has to say – I appreciate him taking the time to address our group. We will have at least one more guest speaker after Jeff, which will be announced soon – I’ll update that here and on the event page.

After the event we will hope to play some Guitar Hero, Halo 3, or Dance Dance Revolution on the Xbox 360 – bring your GH guitars! As always, the event is bring your own snack, and SNAPlicate will provide drinks for the group.

This event will be sponsored and hosted by 12 Horses and will be held at their new headquarters in Draper, unless there are too many attendees to accommodate. I’ll post a map and directions here and on the event page when that is officially confirmed. The event will also be sponsored by my Social Media development and consulting company, SNAPlicate – we are the ones organizing the event.

Please RSVP on the Facebook event site so we can have a good idea of the number of attendees that will be there – if you don’t have a Facebook account, please comment here and let me know you’re coming. This is critical to us knowing if we’ll have enough space or not. RSVP here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=20803448528

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.

gPhone Launched on November 5th – I was Right!

Posted on November 5, 2007 by jessestay

Some people didn’t want to believe me, but it appears I was right about the gPhone launching on November 5th. I was not completely right about it being their Social Networking platform. Of course the platform launch of OpenSocial was launched early. It appears the November 5th launch so anticipated by all the blogosphere was, in fact, the gPhone and their new platform, Android.

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!

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