SNAP Facebook Conference 10/26/07
Last Friday, October 26, 2007, five of us from World Vital Records went to the Facebook conference in San Francisco. Our CEO, Paul Allen, is emphatic about each of us going to conferences and trade shows to make sure that we have access to the latest information and best practices in our respective areas of responsibility. So even though we are all swamped with our day to day responsibilities and dealing with the rapid growth of our user base, we stopped what we were doing and went to San Francisco for the day.
The immediate detail that jumped out to me about the conference is the real-time exchange of information with everyone else that is dealing with the same issues that we are. Speakers would say things like "earlier this week we tried this, and it didn't work so we tried this and it did." In the rapidly changing technology world real time sharing of information is powerful and valuable.
I know that Paul has expressed his frustrations about the Provo Labs Academy and how he wasn't able to accomplish what he wanted to with that project. However, those who participated benefited greatly. Listening to the experts that are working in the trenches to solve the same problems that we are is worth many times the price of admission. I know that I learned a lot from the Provo Labs Academy lectures and hardly a day goes by that I don't use something that I learned in those classes.
The key focuses of the SNAP sponsored Facebook conference that appealed to me were scalability and monetization of Facebook apps. Both are issues that we are working on at World Vital Records. Scalability is critical so that we can still rapidly expand our user base to meet the demand while maintaining a positive user experience. There were several references to Amazon's EC2 and S3. The main downside to those services is the lack of load balancing in their server clouds. I expect Amazon to address those issues in the future.
Monetization is critical in that now that we have huge installed user bases, we need to generate the revenue to take care of those users and installed systems. We will begin our monetization plans later this week based on what we learned at the conference.
We think that our We're Related app on Facebook will be the first of the 2nd generation apps on Facebook. Most of the 1st generation apps were 'internet toys.' But now serious apps like ours are giving people real reasons to benefit their lives by using practical and real world applications.
We have adopted the industry term 'Social Graph.' We have used other terms to describe that, but it makes sense for us to use the common terminology.
One other thing that stood out to me is one of the strategies to virality. The viral triggers need to be initiated during the first 20 clicks that a person does on your app, or it won't happen. Now that I have learned that I have noticed that feature on a half dozen sites. I wouldn't have recognize that without that concept that was discused at the conference.
Lastly, while this was Facebook specific confernce, over 85% of the things that were discused apply outside the Facebook arena. I plan to implement things that I learned on our We're Related Facebook app, WorldVitalRecords.com, FamilyLink.com, and even my personal web sites.
The immediate detail that jumped out to me about the conference is the real-time exchange of information with everyone else that is dealing with the same issues that we are. Speakers would say things like "earlier this week we tried this, and it didn't work so we tried this and it did." In the rapidly changing technology world real time sharing of information is powerful and valuable.
I know that Paul has expressed his frustrations about the Provo Labs Academy and how he wasn't able to accomplish what he wanted to with that project. However, those who participated benefited greatly. Listening to the experts that are working in the trenches to solve the same problems that we are is worth many times the price of admission. I know that I learned a lot from the Provo Labs Academy lectures and hardly a day goes by that I don't use something that I learned in those classes.
The key focuses of the SNAP sponsored Facebook conference that appealed to me were scalability and monetization of Facebook apps. Both are issues that we are working on at World Vital Records. Scalability is critical so that we can still rapidly expand our user base to meet the demand while maintaining a positive user experience. There were several references to Amazon's EC2 and S3. The main downside to those services is the lack of load balancing in their server clouds. I expect Amazon to address those issues in the future.
Monetization is critical in that now that we have huge installed user bases, we need to generate the revenue to take care of those users and installed systems. We will begin our monetization plans later this week based on what we learned at the conference.
We think that our We're Related app on Facebook will be the first of the 2nd generation apps on Facebook. Most of the 1st generation apps were 'internet toys.' But now serious apps like ours are giving people real reasons to benefit their lives by using practical and real world applications.
We have adopted the industry term 'Social Graph.' We have used other terms to describe that, but it makes sense for us to use the common terminology.
One other thing that stood out to me is one of the strategies to virality. The viral triggers need to be initiated during the first 20 clicks that a person does on your app, or it won't happen. Now that I have learned that I have noticed that feature on a half dozen sites. I wouldn't have recognize that without that concept that was discused at the conference.
Lastly, while this was Facebook specific confernce, over 85% of the things that were discused apply outside the Facebook arena. I plan to implement things that I learned on our We're Related Facebook app, WorldVitalRecords.com, FamilyLink.com, and even my personal web sites.
Labels: EC2, Facebook, S3, We're Related, World Vital Records
posted by David at 9:15 AM
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