NutshellMail, one of the early participants in the fbFund, has been acquired by Constant Contact, the email marketing provider. The acquisition aims at providing small organizations with a tool “to monitor and engage with social networks right from their email inbox”. It’s a pretty obvious acquisition opportunity as NutshellMail is one of the only email marketing companies in the social media space.
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Today at the fbFund REV demo day, Thread.com (formerly “Frinto”) announced that they have received funding from a number of well known valley investors. Thread.com leverages Facebook Connect to create a site for social dating via friendly introductions. While Facebook has a number of large dating applications, none of them work quite as smoothly as this one.
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Today Facebook will be hosting the fbFund REV demo day to showcase the 25 companies that participated in the first incubator program run in partnership with Facebook and Founder’s Fund. Dave McClure was the primary organizer of this year’s program but Facebook is clearly pumped up about this year’s companies and the new format. Last week I had a chance to speak with Cat Lee of the Platform Product Marketing team to discuss what will be taking place later today.
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Last week we got the opportunity to speak with the team behind NutshellMail, a recent fbFund winner. NutshellMail enables users to manage all of their social network email accounts through one system. I took the time to sign up last week and I have to admit that the service is pretty slick. I actually don’t use multiple social networks to manage my contacts (although I still occasionally log in to LinkedIn), but many users have distributed contacts across many networks making this product extremely useful. Check out my interview with founders Mark Schmulen and David Lyman below.
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MyChurch, the winner of the most recent fbFund incubator program, has undergone a lot of changes this year. A relaunch of its application a few weeks back and the participation in fbFund ’09 has provided a wealth of opportunity for the MyChurch team, as they find useful ways in which to create an application around existing faith-based organizations that need additional social networking tools. I had an opportunity to interview Joe Suh, CEO of MyChurch, who speaks on the relaunch of the application, as well as being a winner of the fbFund.
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The fbFund is Facebook’s investment program that provides entrepreneurs with the opportunity to receive funding for their Facebook application ideas on and off Facebook. This afternoon Dave McClure pointed out an article posted by the ChubbyBrain team which analyzes the performance of fbFund applications from the first and second fbFund classes.
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Today Facebook will be announcing details of a new incubator program today that will be part of the latest round of the fbFund. The incubator program will be held from mid-June to late August in Silicon Valley. In addition to the incubator program, there will also be an fbFund Developer Advisory Council, “whose members will participate in the Incubator Program as Mentors with all” of the fbFund 2009 startups.
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fbFund winner LuckyCal is a social calendar tool that takes advantage of Facebook for its connectivity amongst users and application platform for interactive purposes. Months after being awarded funding from the fbFund, LuckyCal has been pushing forward and seeking growth. One way in which this application is looking to gain more users is through a promotion where users are entered in the chance to win a prize by inviting their friends to join in on the LuckyCal fun. I took the promotion as an opportunity to catch up with LuckyCal, and learn more about the promotion.
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Trazzler is a personalized travel-planning tool that was one of the most recent recipients of the fbFund. What started out as a Facebook application has since expanded to a standalone site. With new Facebook Connect features launching today, and Trazzler’s standalone site growing as a result of leveraging its Facebook app, there are a few lessons to be learned in taking advantage of Facebook’s Platform. Below is an excerpt of an interview with Trazzler founder Adam Rugel:
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You may have noticed that we here at allfacebook.com had been reviewing the competing applications for the Facebook fbFund, which ended late last month. With over $1 million in prize money being allocated amongst the winners, this year’s fbFund competition let users vote for their favorite application based on the apps that made it to the second round. Last night we learned of the winners of the fbFund competition, which include GroupCard, Kontagent, MouseHunt, Weddingbook and Wildfire. Each application receives a $25k grant to built out their apps and businesses, which are rather reliant on the Facebook Platform.
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