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Looking for a RockStar Facebook or OpenSocial Developer?

Posted on January 20, 2009 by jessestay

SocialToo.com has been a huge success for me so far. Just this last month we have gone from just less than 1,000 users to over 7,000 users, and that number shows no sign of slowing down. We’re starting to monetize the site, via one-time purchases of various services, advertising, and will be adding some premium features very soon. I’m slowly actually starting to monetize a service based on Social Media, and thus far, I’m proving it’s going to work.

However, I’ve just about exhausted my resources financially to continue supporting this on just my own savings alone, and have decided it’s time to find something full or part-time that can supplement SocialToo. I am also looking for financing and investment as an alternate source of income, but in tough economic times I have to put my eggs in multiple baskets to ensure something works out.

So, here’s what I have to offer. If you’re looking for a RockStar Facebook, OpenSocial, Twitter, YouTube, or you name the Social Media platform developer to take your app to the next level, I’m your man. I have a very strong software development background which you can see on my LinkedIn profile. I have written two books on Facebook, one on Facebook Development and FBML for O’Reilly (see those in the upper-right of the blog), and one on Facebook professional growth and marketing. I speak and teach others regularly on the subjects of Facebook, Twitter, Social Media, and related topics. I have a good following on multiple networks and a great platform to build your brand as an employee or consultant for your company. Any such relationship would be announced in full disclosure here and any other place it makes sense to mention the relationship. In addition, I am an entrepreneur at heart, which means I have passion in the products I help build. I love seeing these things grow to become successes!

I can develop software – I wrote SocialToo.com from the ground up, by myself (with thanks to some great advisors). I can market Social Media. I am learning to monetize Social Media. I have a successful business, and have helped businesses based on Social Media become successes. So, if you or your company are looking for someone with my skills, let’s talk. We can talk full time relationships, consulting relationships, temporary relationships. I’d love to help you out. Oh, and international is definitely an option – I speak fluent Thai, some Spanish, and even some Indonesian and am no stranger to learning new languages and cultures!

At the same time, if you know anyone looking for a good investment that will make money in the near future please forward them my way. In either scenario, SocialToo will continue to grow, will continue to be a focus (while if I work full time for you it will be a side-focus), and you can continue to expect to see the same growth you always have as we move forward. At the same time, I’m a hungry entrepreneur.

You can read my LinkedIn profile at http://linkedin.com/in/facebook

My contact info is in the upper-right of this blog.

Please Re-Tweet

Photo courtesy the talented Brian Solis

A Proud Moment for the Geek Dad

Posted on January 10, 2009 by jessestay

I started programming in the BASIC computer language when I was 10 years old. In third grade, I won third place in my school’s Computer Fair Elementary division (I went to a very large International School in Jakarta, Indonesia). So today was a very proud moment for me when I was able to watch the joy in my 8 year old daughter’s eyes as I taught her how to write her first computer program. We taught her a very basic web page first, then, a simple alert() box in javascript. I’m a proud Papa right now.

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I Changed My Twitter Username – How You Can Too

Posted on January 8, 2009 by jessestay

For those that follow me on Twitter, be sure to look for me now under the username, “Jesse” (or @Jesse in Twitter speak). If you’re already following me, the transition should have occurred seamlessly, and you shouldn’t have to re-follow me. If you have me in a TweetDeck Group or similar 3rd party app, you may want to update me there. I have created a new account under my old username, “JesseStay“, just in case anyone has anything pointing to that username still. It just sends people back to this account.

You Can Too!

Making the switch was easy! And it serves as some great Google juice for my first name – maybe I can finally achieve my dream of beating Jesse McCartney as the number one spot on Google! To get the name you want, assuming it’s already taken, verify that there haven’t been any updates for over 9 months on the name. Then, send an e-mail to username@twitter.com – you’ll receive a support e-mail back, asking you some more questions. Answer those questions, and wait a few weeks. Assuming someone hasn’t already beaten you to it, you should be set!

Update Your Third Party Sites!

Now that you’ve changed your username, you may want to go back and create the old account, and put a post, pointing it to your new name just in case. Then, be sure to go to sites like SocialToo.com or clients like TweetDeck and update your username there, as many sites will still think you’re under the old username. It will take some work, but if you really, really want that new name, it may just be worth it. Oh, and change your passwords to something strong! If you have a common first name, you will now be one of the first to be targeted in a hacker attack. Good luck!

You and Your Friends’ Facebook Updates are Public, After All

Posted on January 6, 2009 by jessestay

Nick O’Neill recently wrote about the possibility that if Facebook would just open up your status updates, Twitter could be put out of its tracks. Well, actually, Facebook updates are open – it’s just up to each user to release them. Any user on Facebook can provide their friends’ status updates to any third party provider, through a simple RSS feed, and this feed has been around since April of 2007!

To obtain the RSS feed is simple. Just click on “Friends” in the header at the top of Facebook and select “All Friends” in the drop-down. Now, look up in the URL bar of your browser (this works best in Firefox or Safari) – see the little RSS icon? Click on it, an voila, your friends’ status updates will come, in a live feed, straight to your RSS reader. There’s nothing stopping developers from creating a service around this, asking for this URL from users, and providing a Twitter-like interface around it. The URL goes in this format, and it’s completely controlled by the user, because a key must be provided to the app that wants to use it (this is for me and my friends, key obviously omitted):

feed://www.facebook.com/feeds/friends_status.php?id=683545112&key=xxxxxxxxxxx&format=rss20

This also works for your own updates. To get an RSS feed of just your updates, you have to go to your mini feed page at this url (I can’t find a way to get there through links on Facebook – if you know of a way please let me know in the comments). On the right hand side of the page, you’ll see a “My Status” link. Add that to your RSS reader and now all your personal Facebook status updates will go to your reader! Again, with a key you give out as a user, any app can now use this data to track your own status updates. In fact, FriendFeed is already utilizing this feed! The URL for personal updates is in the format of (I’m leaving my key in this case so you can see my own updates):

http://www.facebook.com/feeds/status.php?id=683545112&viewer=683545112&key=77b2714b66&format=rss20

Of course, any developer can also access these updates, with the user’s permission, via the Facebook API as well so theoretically you don’t even have to collect these URLs. However, through this method, anyone can track you, and your friends’ status updates with your permission. So your Facebook updates are public, sort of.

2008 – The Year My Life Exploded

Posted on January 1, 2009 by jessestay

One of the reasons I started this blog back in 2004 (I believe it was actually earlier, in various forms) was to enable me to chronicle the intellectual things I came across throughout life. This year has been such an amazing year for me, experiencing the birth of my son (which we Twittered and Ustreamed), the birth of 2 identical twin nieces (which I didn’t document here), to the complete opposite of the spectrum with the death of both my Grandfather, and just recently my Grandmother, whose 85th birthday would have been January 1st, 2009. I have experienced such joys, and at the same time such sorrow, and you all have been there with me every step of the way. I’ve never done the “list” thing before (never had time!), so I thought this year would be different. I thought I’d go through each month and share with you some of the highlights on Stay N’ Alive this year.

January

January was the start of my Twitter woes, with frequent outages and frustration. ChaCha saved my brother due to lack of weather and traffic reports in the area he was traveling. January was the month I created my largest annoyance, coining the technique (which was the first time the idea was mentioned anywhere, I believe) of tagging friends in Facebook Notes to bring attention to them. This technique worked and helped me build relationships with several bloggers I am now friends with today. I now hate the technique because everyone uses it on me. Myspace announced their own developer platform, giving hints to a date OpenSocial would go live. Pownce, which ironically I was a user of long before Twitter, began to show purpose for me. People got confused about what the Facebook Platform was, and the leader of my faith passed away (Death #1).

February

I started February by coining my idea of Social Media bringing back the small communities and villages of olden times. I pointed out the fact that Amazon has its own Social Network (which surprisingly still, not many people are aware of). I took my very first trip to the Bay area, and got an awesome tour of the Googleplex from my cousin, who treated me to one of the best lunches I’ve ever eaten. I wrote my first OpenSocial application, and realized web development had changed as we know it. Back then, Twitter Track over SMS still worked, so I wrote one of the very first posts suggesting Twitter as a tool for disasters and emergencies. Other than for news, I’m not so sure about that any more. I launched OpensocialNow.com, which quickly fizzled as I ran out of time. London had a small, but rare earthquake, and I saw it first on Twitter, on my cell phone, via track. In February I published my first book.

March

March, Facebook introduced their Feed Forms (which we were first to announce), providing a way for developers to easily publish stories to the Facebook news feed. March marked the birth of our 4th child and youngest son, Jesse III, which we Twittered, blogged, and Ustreamed the entire way. We began to see the makings of the first Facebook Worm, which this blog was one of the first to report (and henceforth recorded by Fortiguard security, and then PC Magazine’s blog). Google launched the OpenSocial Foundation, and Yahoo became a member and announced their (future) support for the platform.

April

April I attended my first Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. I learned the wonders of the Bloggers Lounge, and met several great new people there. Bungee Labs made some great announcements there, and it was looking up for them as Google announced their App Engine platform and the idea of Software as a Service was put in the public eye. Of course, with layoffs later down the road, things aren’t looking so hot for them right now. April was also a hallmark month, with the launch of SocialToo.com at the end of the month, in a very small announcement, I invited my small audience at the time to join and help build out intelligent blacklisting for the service. It was this time I met Guy Kawasaki and built out the UI on his behalf to enable him and myself to follow those that were following us on Twitter. We didn’t officially launch to the general public until last month. April, I also got to guest post on Guy Kawasaki’s blog.

May

May was an exciting, and somber month at the same time. My former business colleague and friend, Phil Burns’, daughter was diagnosed with Leukemia. Through Twitter and this blog, and others kind efforts of sharing on their blogs, we were able to raise over $10,000 in just a month, all through means of social media. This further witnessed to me the power of Social Media, and makes me truly believe in some of the things people like Beth Kanter are doing right now. In March, I wrote my first 1-word post, in response to another one-word post on TechCrunch, which was in response to Twitter being down for the umpteenth time in a matter of days. That prompted Twitter to blame their outages on Robert Scoble, and Robert Scoble blaming Twitter for their own problems. I took a trip out to Google I/O, and Robert, under last minute circumstances, invited me to join him in going to the Twitter offices and working things out. It was there I met Ev Williams and Biz Stone in person, realized what a mess the service really was, and ended up on the front page of TechCrunch. It was just after that that Twitter continued their classic behavior of cutting out features from the API with little to no notice to developers. It was at the same conference I was able to speak for the Slicon Valley Web Builders on Facebook Development in FBML. April was also the month I began seriously using FriendFeed.

June

June was a somber month for me. It started with Facebook announcing their yearly F8 conference, right in the middle of OSCON, both conferences I was hoping to attend. The most somber part of the month however came when my Grandfather, and namesake, died in a quick turn for the worse due to Cancer and old age. This was a hard thing for me, being one of the closest people I knew to die. It was also death #2 of the year of people I adored. Shortly after that, on my way to the funeral services in fact, I noticed some developers were completely shutting down their apps due to problems with the Twitter API. I predicted they would continue to succeed regardless. The month ended somberly, with Bill Gates, a hero of mine, leaving Microsoft.

July

In July, I got my new 2nd generation iPhone, and realized it needs Privacy controls. I attended Facebook’s F8 conference, where I predicted, and they very quietly announced plans for a mobile platform API. All this occurred as they were announcing the launch of Facebook Connect. Right before F8 I finished my second book. In July I left Twitter, learned some valuable lessons about the service, and ended up coming back a few months later when I realized no one was joining me. SocialToo announced Identi.ca support. July was also the month I began blogging as a member of the team at LouisGray.com. My first post was about none-other than blogging.

August

In August I celebrated my 31st Birthday. OpenMicroblogger launched their competing software to the Laconi.ca Open Source microblogging platform. Twitter launched the ability to track threaded replies in the API, and I began to suggest that the Twitter platform needed a meta tagging language to remove the need for the “@”. Some suggested that the LDS Church was buying Facebook (yeah, I know). We saw history made as the Olympics hit China.

September

September I took a temporary turn to full time work, going to help out i.TV bring their App to the number one spot in the iTunes App store. Since then they have continued their growth, and continue as a client of mine as I build out SocialToo. I launched the first public WordPress plugin for Facebook Connect. WordPress.com passed 4 million blogs. I had an excellent time at BlogWorld in Las Vegas, where I roomed with Louis Gray and met a ton of new people and bloggers (are bloggers people?).

October

In October I announced for the first time I would be voting for a (gasp!) Democrat. i.TV reached #1 in the iTunes App store, and I got to witness it first hand, having a part in their promotion and growth. Facebook reached their 10 billionth photo and we were one of the first to report it. Proposition 8 in California became the center of a love/hate storm. Someone left a suicide note in the Facebook developer forums. SocialToo announced Follower statistics for our users.

November

I spent a lot of November speaking, starting with an O’Reilly Webinar on Facebook development for beginners. America elected our first African American president, and I voted, but had to pay for my Chik Fil A sandwich. I presented to a large group of CIOs in Dallas. SocialToo went live to the public! (and Guy Kawasaki joined forces to help launch it, as co-owner) I presented Facebook Development in under 5 minutes at Ignite Salt Lake City.

December

I started out December participating on several panels. We launched a new redesign on Stay N’ Alive. My family and I took a vacation to Las Vegas. After getting back, just 2 days before Christmas we received disheartening news that my Grandmother had passed away. This would make death #3 of the year, but we’re happy she’s home for Christmas. We ended the month with great news however, announcing Louis Gray joining the Board of Advisors for SocialToo.

Have a safe and Happy New Year!

As I write this, it’s quickly approaching midnight here in the MountainWest. It’s been an incredible year for me and this blog – I can’t wait to see what lies in store for the next year. In the meantime, “Stay” tuned, and keep watching here and LouisGray.com, as well as my new business, SocialToo.com for more great content regarding Technology, Social Networking, and new technologies. I promise to keep things exciting around here, and look forward to the upcoming year. Let’s hope I don’t explode!

Louis Gray to Join the SocialToo.com Board of Advisors

Posted on December 31, 2008 by jessestay

I’m very proud and excited to announce that Louis Gray, my publisher and fellow-author at LouisGray.com, will now be part of my company, SocialToo.com’s, Board of Advisors and helping us to further build out our strategy in the near and long-term future. Louis comes from a strong PR and marketing background, and when not blogging, he works in corporate marketing and public relations for a private Silicon Valley technology infrastructure company, and is an advisor to ReadBurner, Inc. Louis is a UC Berkeley graduate, holding a degree in Political Science and Mass Communications. He’ll serve as a great help in building out strategy for SocialToo, which I believe is a tool for Marketers, to a mass audience.

Louis approached me with several great ideas which I hope we can implement soon, and which we’ll be working to integrate into the already rich set of tools which SocialToo provides. His transparency in what he does I think will serve well in keeping us a responsible participant in building tools that work to meet the needs of all users on social networks our users belong to. Louis himself has quite the following, and has introduced the likes of Robert Scoble and others to FriendFeed – I’m sure you’ll be seeing more from us on that service now with him on board, especially as we branch out to other services beyond Twitter.

Louis was first to recognize and report TweetDeck, the now extremely popular Twitter Client. He was first to cover Social Median, which recently sold for several million dollars under a year. He’s covered many other very successful services and clients, and he’s one that knows a successful company when he sees it. I’m very honored and excited to have him on board, and plan for much, much more thanks to his advice and involvement in SocialToo going forward. Welcome, Louis!

Are You Addicted to Twitter?

Posted on December 16, 2008 by jessestay

Are you addicted to Twitter? Janet Meiners Thaeler (@Newspapergrl) thinks I am. Guy Kawasaki has a great SocialToo survey asking the question. Janet even gave me an award for it! (and I sincerely appreciate it – I love awards!) I’m not so sure I’m addicted though. Even though I do have near 10,000 updates on Twitter and am active on the service, I think I use FriendFeed much more, and in a much shorter time frame I have near half that in likes and comments on FriendFeed. I think I also use Facebook more – I wrote two books on it after all.

Twitter is a tool, and I use the best tool for the job. This is part of why I left Twitter a few months ago – Twitter wasn’t doing what I wanted it to. When I realized I wasn’t going to get better from other services I came back. Twitter is where I post my thoughts and share things that I can’t post to this blog or elsewhere. This status propagates my Facebook status (through the Twitter App on Facebook), as well as FriendFeed, where more people comment, and I can have more personal, lengthy conversations in those places. Twitter is a tool I use to meet new people, to share thoughts, and build relationships, just like I do on FriendFeed and Facebook.

Could I leave Twitter? You bet. If another service with a much larger network, and just as many opportunities comes along with an actual revenue model and something I could rely on to not delete my followers or data, I’d leave in a minute. It’s part of the reason I have a close eye on FriendFeed, and have built an early hold there to build a strong network. I see potential there. I’m not addicted – I use the best tool for the job. I’m building a network everywhere I go.

The honorable Chris Brogan (if I may call him so) enlightened me back at BlogWorld. He was joking around at the time, and I can’t even remember our conversation that led to it, but his comments were something to the effect of “Listen, TechDork, technology doesn’t solve problems! Humans do!” Oh how right he is. How do you define Social Media? Social Media is about the technologies we use to enable real-life relationships. Emphasis on real-life. If a service isn’t doing that for you in the most effective way, or if you can’t do it with just one service – be prepared to leave. We can’t afford to be addicted to these services. I know I’m not.

Janet had a great idea though. What awards would you offer your Twitter friends? Janet and Larry Weaver have come up with “Social Media Awards” you can create for your friends. Share yours below.

Stay N’ Alive Has a New Design!

Posted on December 16, 2008 by jessestay

If you haven’t been by to visit the actual blog lately (hello my loyal RSS Readers!), you might want to click on the link up there to come see what it looks like. Thanks to my friend and talented Graphic Designer, Brandon Babb, we now have a new design! I’d also like to announce a few new directions for Stay N’ Alive.

Community

You’ll notice on the right there’s now a “Community” sub-section with options to join the community on either Google Friend Connect, or Facebook Connect. Choose one, or the other, or both! Right now it’s a great way to know what other friends of yours are readers of this blog, or perhaps get introduced to someone new. Or you can just invite your friends and tell them about a story you like, asking them to join the community as well! (I suggest you personalize your message)

It should be noted that by joining Friend Connect (just a single click if you have any Google account anywhere), you’ll have the option to also post on the wall you’ll see under the same “Community” subsection. I encourage you all to get on the wall and communicate! You can leave a message for me, or respond to others’ messages. The replies are threaded, so it makes for a great place to just talk amongst yourselves. Also, through Friend Connect, if you are a Twitter user, you can now invite your friends to read an article via Twitter by clicking the “Invite” link, choosing the “other” option, and then Twitter. Google just announced this today. I’m sure you’ll see many more features launched in the future as Google tries to compete with Facebook.

If you join Facebook Connect, you’ll have the option to invite your Facebook friends. In the very near future you should be able to also use this same identity to comment on posts, post those comments to Facebook, among other things. (It’s still unclear if this will be through Disqus or not) For now you can still share the posts to your profile, and see other Facebook users and friends that have visited the site. Expect to see much more as I begin to enhance and expand both Friend Connect and Facebook Connect to further enhance the site.

More About Me

Let’s face it, I have to pay the bills. So I have included some more information about me, and about the blog. Go ahead – click on the “About” section. Oooh – see it expand and contract? Pretty cool, eh? This will only get better.

You’ll notice I now have information about my Speaking, and Consulting. If you know someone, or have an opportunity in either of these areas, please don’t hesitate to send people my way. I’d love to see how I can help you, as I feel I have a few talents I can share with you and your friends in various capacities. Check out my client list if you want to know results.

Also, I’m avoiding it for the moment, but those little square boxes in the upper-right could be for sale if you would like to make an offer. I also have 3 more boxes that could go below those, and they can be combined to make bigger boxes. Let me know if it’s something you’re interested in. Make me an offer and I’d love to consider it, although I’m still debating if I want to sell ads here or not.

Photography

Dooce, watch out – I’m coming for you! There’s more than enough room for the two of us here in Utah, and us Daddy bloggers can compete with the rest of ’em! As of yesterday, I’m now starting (at least) a photo of the day. What the subject of these will be I’m still debating, but I’m open to suggestions, and feedback. My goal is to tell a story. Photography is a passion, and hobby of mine – I’d like to share some of that with you.

You’ll still get the same tech news, same early adopter technologies. I’ll still be blogging regularly on LouisGray.com, InsideFacebook.com, and occasionally Dadomatic.com (just search for my name on any of those sites), but this is always my home. Keep coming back! Oh, and trust me, there’s much more to come.