Unless you’ve been living under rock, you are probably aware of the all the hype that Facebook has been receiving. With something like 45 millions users, everyone, from politicians to activist/Non-Profit organizations, has been trying to leverage for their purpose and or cause. The first event I attended focused on how political organizations and candidates can utilize Facebook to reach the masses. The Facebook reps started the presentation with statistics about the site, its users and the potential for growth. The numbers were impressive but nothing that hasn’t been published everywhere on the web. Needless to say, I was really excited about that part of the presentation. In latter part of the presentations made following recommendations to organizations and candidate that wished to tap into Facebook users:

 

• Form groups and keep the content fresh (i.e. pictures, wall post, notes, and posted items).
• Be candid, transparent, and relevant (i.e. don’t used canned photos only, don’t run everything by legal and PR, talk about Grey’s anatomy…everyone watches it)
• Encourage interaction between group members and have actionable items.
• Build Facebook application using the Facebook Platform when you find limitations in current Facebook functionalities (i.e. Barack Obama app & Causes App).
• Purchase various Facebook advertising package to target a specific audience (i.e. all 22-24 yrs old males living in NY) or to gain wide audience.

Post presentation, they had a Q&A. Again nothing exciting, expect you politician profiles can now have more than 5000 friends, and Groups administrators will soon be able to message more than 1000 people at a time.

The second event, titled Facebook Developer Garage, was held at GW the next day. By the title you can see that it was geared towards geeks like me. There was a bit of an overlap between the presentations. The presenters displayed the same stats from the other conference. I guess they can’t really compile new statistics overnight. During the second part of the presentation, the focus was more on the much touted Facebook Platform. To summarize, their message to developers was “build fast and iterate.” They made the case that the platform is young and full of potential. They, as in Facebook, have not yet identified all the characteristics of a killer app. The best way to discover users’ likes and dislikes is by trial and error, which is what they do themselves at Facebook (…think of backlash when news feed was first introduced). After the presentation from Facebook reps, some local developers came up and demoed their Facebok apps. Each of them talked about the challenges encountered while building their app and fielded some questions. I can not end with out a word of thanks for Jesse Tomas and Nick O’Neill for setting up the second event. It was very ad hock, but successful.

Next post what I learned…