The Zuckerbucks Experiment

Join me in my attempt to create a virtual currency for Facebook! Here is a video explaining what Zuckerbucks are:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=2704700350&ref=share

Facebook Answers

I have created a mini question and answer Web site inside Facebook. After 8 or so years thinking about Q&A with points and money incentives - we decided to go with a simple points and voting system for this one. Facebook Answers is a fun app, with lots of interesting questions - and I've learned a ton about what it takes to build a Facebook app that spreads.

About 5 weeks ago, Facebook opened up their Web site to allow external developers to build mini-Web sites ("Apps") right inside Facebook. It has been accompanied by some fantastic success stories about new Facebook apps rocketing to millions of users within a few weeks. Facebook's goal is to become a "social operating system" - a layer of software that tracks your friends - on top of which guys like me can build applications.

This advancement has really turned my world upside down. For years, I've been creating social apps (incompletely catalogued on this blog) but generally always fail to market and advertise them sufficiently. The Facebook advancement makes that significantly easier - apps are discoverable via your network of friends with almost no registration required.

Because of what this means for developers like myself, I think Facebook has a very promising future. It certainly has become "the place to be" for me. At the very least, it will force other sites to follow suit.

Amazon Search Inside the book

Amazon helped me find a paragraph in a book that I vaguely remembered from a year ago. After five minutes of flipping through the book, I was able to find it in one search. Unfortunately the paragraph wasn't directly relevant to what I was researching (viral marketing). Fortunately, I saved an obsessive half hour scanning for it.

on Page 94: "... Guide and Parade ad, he had his art director put a little gold box in the corner of the order coupon. ..."

- from "The Tipping Point" by Malcom Gladwell

The point being made was that advertising is more sticky if it is interactive and incorporates the real world.

Today's Ride - Cedar River Watershed

We went clockwise from the top left, the line jutting out to the east is a climb into the watershed. It started raining going into the watershed.

Total Mileage: 78.6 (126.5k)
Total Ascent: 4539 ft (1.38k)

Facebook Eats Itself

Check out the New Apps App for all the exciting underground Facebook apps.

Apparently, people are adding facebook apps so quickly that Facebook can't keep up. Apps are queued for days before being approved to appear in the sanctioned directory. However, anyone can still add (install) an app before it appears in the directory. SO, an enterprising developer has created a NewApps App that is a directory of "underground apps" that are not yet approved by Facebook.