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Utah Social Media Developers Garage a Success!

Posted on December 12, 2007 by jessestay

Utah had it’s very first Social Media Garage meeting as a non-Facebook specific group yesterday, December 11. Phil Burns and I started the Utah Facebook Developers Garage, and at our October meeting, the group agreed to making our name much more generic so we could support technologies such as Open Social. I think the meeting yesterday went better than I could have expected.

Jeff Barr, evangelist for Amazon Web Services, was our featured guest speaker for the night. He spoke on Amazon ECS (E-Commerce Service), S3 (Simple Storage Service), EC2 (Electric Compute Cloud), and SQS (Simple Queue Service). I think it was very educational for all that were there – many there were not aware of what Amazon was doing.

Towards the end he featured Social Media technologies that are currently using AWS. He talked about Paul Allen (the younger)‘s We’re Related (a company I consulted for as they were planning the software) and their tremendous success in dealing with 1.8 million users in just 2 months, utilizing AWS, S3 and EC2 to help them with the process. He featured a couple other examples, including iLike, that were also using their services to scale on Facebook.

My favorite feature of the night was Jeff Barr’s demo of how he uses Second Life to help him evangelize, and present AWS to a worldwide audience. He gave one of the coolest demos I’ve seen on how he’s using the second life rendering engine to model the AWS systems in 3D. He clicks on a little Amazon logo in his model, and in animated 3D in Facebook it all runs, demonstrating the process flow in real time right there in Second Life! He says he plans to tie in a real system to this model, feeding real data to display the data in a real environment. He also showed how he has weekly meetings with AWS developers in right in Second Life, and went on to show a presentation he had made in Second Life to a users group half-way around the world!

Jeff Barr, after last night, convinced me that Second Life is here to stay – it’s an invaluable tool that, if used right can be a great method of communication, presentation, and meeting with a worldwide audience. He convinced me that Second Life is even more useful for businesses than it is for the average non-business user using the service! I strongly suggest if you are a business owner, looking at a Second Life strategy to communicate better with customers, lead-gen with customers, and build new business.

After Jeff’s talk, we went over a few more samples of sites using AWS. The Bungee Labs folk demoed some of their services using the service. One guy (trying to remember his name – sorry, I promise I’ll get it!) showed off his site that counts down to 2008 in binary (http://11111011000.com/ is 2008 in binary)! I talked about my Holy Rolls applications (We’re Catholic and We’re Baptist) and how for an application with 4-5 thousand pageviews a day, AWS handles it fine, and I always have the ability to scale if I need to.

When the event was over we all put our names into a Santa Clause hat and drew for 2 Google Water Bottles given to us by Google Code, and some cool WordPress T-shirts provided by Joseph Scott, from Automattic. We then finished the evening with a great competition (and great singing voices!) of Rock Band on the PS3. It was quite a Social!

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.

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

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!

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!