Last Friday a group of my friends and I set out for a fun little evening of free vodka, art, and snacks at the Swedish embassy. We had RSVP’d via Facebook and left our apartments early to attend was was sure to be a crowded event.

We knew the event would be crowded by the over 2,000 people that RSVP’d online to attend. The event, organized to meet the needs of about 300, would surely be overwhelmed by the massive interest of over 2,000 Facebook users.

Arriving half an hour early my friends and I were no where near the front of the line and began working if we would be able to even get in. According to the Washington Post the lines for this event stretched around the block and through most of Georgetown.

To be honest after my friends and I gave up waiting online after an hour and half. We were in sight of the entrance but were becoming turned off by the wait. We all wanted to be part of the event but found it difficult to wait in a line for an event we were uncertain of.

This event really demonstrates the massive marketing potential of Facebook when trying to attract the crowd. Massive groups of friends were waiting online together to attend this event and you could almost see the how it must have spread through the local colleges in DC; 1 friend inviting 5 friends who invited 5 more.

From what I read the event was a success. Well dressed mid-20’s experiencing culture. If you look at the event from another angle you have to wonder if the House of Sweden did the right thing by posting the event on Facebook.

Social media is a great way to get exposure, but sometimes that exposure can go viral, and you have to be prepared. The House of Sweden held a great event and used Facebook to drive traffic to the event. The one thing they failed to do was plan for the massive draw they had created.

If you know about any other event happening around the DC area let me know. I love attending all sorts of events and enjoy seeing how they are marketed. Do you think that the House of Sweden did the right thing posting the event on Facebook?

After a successful Graphing Social Patterns in October, Dave McClure has teamed up with O’Reilly to bring a second Graphing Social Patterns West to San Diego March 3rd and 4th. I’m going to be hosting a panel on “Driving Fanatic User Engagement & Addictive Retention.” The purpose of the panel is to learn how to create more engaging applications so that users keep returning to your application. Also joining me on the panel is Mike Sego of (fluff)Friends, Keith Schacht of 42 Friends LLC and Tim O’Shaughnessy of D.C. based Hungry Machine LLC.

There will also be some great keynotes by Patrick Chanezon of Google, Amit Kapur and Jim Benedetto of MySpace, Charlene Li of Forrester Research, Benjamin Ling of Facebook and others. The conference will be expanding to cover MySpace and Bebo given the opening of their platforms. Want to get a 30% off discount? Use the following code when you register: gspw08spbl.

To learn more about the conference check out the Graphing Social Patterns West website. I’m also proud to announce that there will be a second edition of Graphing Social Patterns later this year in the Washington D.C. area. I will be helping organize the event so if your company would like to participate in the east coast version of the event please reach out to me.

I just wanted to invite all my readers to my Social Times launch party happening in D.C. this Thursday. If you are in town then you should definitely register for the event and drop by. It is from 6:30 to 9:00 at MCCXXII which is 1223 Connecticut Avenue. The Social Times is my new site that will be dedicated to covering everything that’s social on the web. We will be hosting a number of events around the country starting with D.C. and New York city. If you are interested in sponsoring or hosting an event please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

What type of stuff will we be covering? Tons of things related to the convergence of social technology, media and advertising. I’m sure this vision will manifest itself over time but for now there will be a heavy technology focus. Check out my first video with Hooman Radfar, CEO of Clearspring below.

Today, I’m attending an event on “Using Social Networking Tools” in D.C. One of the speakers at the event is Chris Kelly, Chief Privacy Officer of Facebook. I will be streaming the entire event on my new Social Times site. Here are more details about the event:

Politics always has been about social networking, whether it was a union worker getting his family to a rally, or a ward boss getting his neighbors to the polls. The new wave of social networking websites and related tools just supercharge an individual’s ability to do this and make a political impact.

Come to a lunch event where the New Politics Institute explores how to do politics in this new social networking environment. Social networking is one of the least mature of the new media tools transforming politics, so figuring out effective strategies is more difficult than with tools that have been around longer like blogs. That’s why we are ending our fall roll-out of the 2007 New Tools Campaign of eight tools with a whole event devoted to social networking.

We will be bringing together four experts who know the technology and the best new strategies, and can clearly explain what works. They are:

Chris Kelly, Chief Privacy Officer, Facebook, one of the big two social networking sites where an explosion of politicking is going on. Chris has written a memo for NPI that will be released that day on all the ways social networking is being used in politics.

John Hlinko, President and CEO, Grassroots Enterprise, a DC Communications firm helping politicos use new media and tactics.

Cheryl Contee, Vice President, Fleishman-Hillard has worked with progressive organizations like U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Amnesty International and ACLU to get their messages out through social networks and engage their supporters.

Ben Rattray, Founder and CEO, Change.org, an up-and-coming smaller social networking website dedicated exclusively to serving social and political groups.

The event is open to the public and is free to all. Feel free to spread this to anyone in a progressive organization who might benefit.

Tomorrow I will be the New New Internet conference in Reston, Virginia. Some of the conference speakers includ Gary Vaynerchuk from WineLibraryTV, Ryan Carson, Tim Ferris, Om Malik, Ted Leonsis, James Surowiecki and my good friend Frank Gruber. The conference looks like it is going to be a great event. The organizers of the event have been kind enough to provide my readers with a $200 discount by entering the discount code: Facebook00.

If you are interested in attending, go check out The New New Internet website or register now. If you plan on attending, be sure to let me know so I can say hello at the event.

Are you going to be in the Sanfrancisco Bay Area on Friday? If so, I have 3 free tickets to the Snap Summit. Snap is a one-day, single-track conference that focuses in-depth on the Facebook platform and beyond. It is relevant to developers, entrepreneurs, marketers and visionaries. I will also be speaking on a panel at the event so if you would like to come I will see you there! If you are interested in receiving the tickets either post a comment, send me an email or give me a call. The first three people will receive free tickets.

Some of the speakers at the event include:

• Ami Vora - Facebook
• Robert Scoble
• Keith Schacht - Developer of Grow-a-gift
• Dave McClure
• Rodney Rumford
• Justin Smith
• Susan Wu - Charles River Ventures
• Jia Shen - Rock You
• Matt Marshall - Venture Beat
• Michael Lazerow - Buddy Media
• Tim O’Shaughnessy - Hungry Machine LLC
• and more!

This should be a great event and a great start to the weekend. If you are interested in coming and don’t happen to get one of the free tickets you can still get discount tickets (10% off). Let me know if you have any questions or comments!

I’m a little behind in posting videos from the events over the past couple weeks but I will continue to post them even if the timeliness is a little off! The following video was of a panel at the Graphing Social Patterns conference a couple weeks ago. The panel included Tantek Celik (moderator), David Recordon of SixApart, Chamath Palihapitiya of Facebook, Joseph Smarr of Plaxo and Ted Grubb from Satisfaction Unlimited. The panel was a great overview on portable identities among social networks.

This panel provided a great overview. Chamath of Facebook had some memorable quotes including the concept that there is “One social graph” as well as his final statement which was that “we want as much information as humanly possible to flow across the graph and we are going to continue to build whatever it takes to get to that goal.” Not a bad goal for Facebook! If you want to know more about the panel, check out the video below:

Popfly, a new tool by Microsoft that enables point and click application development, has been receiving a lot of buzz recently. I had the pleasure to watch Dan Fernandez of Microsoft speak at the Graphing Social Patterns conference a couple weeks ago about Popfly. He gave a pretty entertaining presentation. Now you can enjoy it as well!

Dave McClure has posted a video of Jia Shen speaking Graphing Social Patterns conference last week. Here it is:

Dave McClure just posted the video of Tim O’Reilly’s keynote at the Graphing Social Patterns conference. I previously live-blogged the talk. If you want to see the whole presentation, here is the video:

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