“Hey BillyBob, you wanna watch a cat playing the piano on YouTube while we video chat?” Conversations like this can now be materialized, thanks to a company called Rounds.
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Last night Mark Zuckerberg faced a dual interview from David Kirkpatrick, author of “The Facebook Effect”, and NPR’s Guy Raz, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. We attended the event to see what, if anything, would be announced, and while there weren’t any significant announcements, there were a few takeaways, all of which have been included below.
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Last week I had the opportunity to speak with the NutshellMail co-founders, Mark Schmulen and David Lyman, about building their company and the quick exit to ConstantContact. While we had a long conversation, I’ve cut down the interview to 7 key points that we covered during our conversation. There are some great takeaways for entrepreneurs looking to build their own businesses.
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What better place than among your friends to find free stuff?  As soon as someone gets a tip on something, they are sure to pass it along their social network first, right?  Surprisingly, the freebie game has not lit up on Facebook just yet.  Sites like slickdeals.net, dealcatcher.com and redflagdeals.ca don’t really have much of a Facebook presence, and it’s somewhat surprising.  That doesn’t mean that Facebook isn’t affecting these sites.  Here, we talk with Ryan Eubanks from HeyItsFree.net, a site dedicated to alerting people to free giveaways on the web, and ask him about how Facebook has changed his business.
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A supposed anonymous interview with a Facebook employee is generating some buzz around the web, after some apparently controversial information was spilled. While some blogs are saying that the interview provides new “revelations“, nothing in the article came as a surprise to us. Is this information true or false and how much of it really comes as a surprise? We’ll break down all the facts (as we understand them).
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Earlier this week I had the opportunity to speak with Will O’Brien of TrialPay to discuss the company’s offering and the current state of offer-based advertising on the web. While there has been the argument that social applications don’t have effective monetization strategies, there’s no doubt that social games have already cracked the monetization nut and are bringing in significant revenue.
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Last week I had the opportunity to speak with Sean Flannagan, the product manager at Etsy responsible for their recent Facebook Connect implementation. Numerous companies have been implementing the service and we’ve been keeping track of the experience for developers as well as marketers. Etsy recently launched their first integration with Facebook Connect and from the sounds of it, have a number of other exciting Facebook-enabled products on the way. Below is my interview with Sean Flannagan about the company’s experience with implementing Connect.
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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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AdNectar is one of the most interesting advertising companies that currently service the Facebook platform as well as other social platforms. What makes them unique is their laser focus on virtual gifts. When I first met them in person earlier this year, they were one of the presenting companies at a conference in New York and I had a chance to learn more about what their company offers. AdNectar is in an interesting position in that they are competing directly with companies like Facebook who currently offer branded gift campaigns outside of the platform.
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