Social startups need Facebook applications

The GigPark team launched our Facebook application yesterday. The app is completely integrated into our main site so it took some work. Launch was definitively a proud moment!

The GigPark app lets you ask all of your Facebook friends for a recommendation, let’s say you are looking for a plumber, and see all of their replies. The app is not invite only, like the main site, so please feel free to add it here.

So, why build a Facebook application when GigPark is only a few months old?

Two reasons:

1. Services like ours, that get better when more of your friends are involved, need to offer their service where your friends hang out – i.e. Facebook!
2. Short of a miracle, there is no faster way to grow

For us, Facebook is one of a few important places GigPark should be available. Since GigPark is all about finding services with the help your friends, we need to be where friends communicate. Facebook is definitely one of those places but there will be more in the future.

I believe being platform agnostic is the name of the game. Startups should see themselves as services that people can use wherever they like: On a website, within their favorite social network, through IM, on their mobile phone … . This is especially true for social startups.

There was a good quote from James Hong of Hot or Not about this on TechCruch last year:

“I have really stopped thinking of Hot or Not as a destination site and worry about how many people are using our service no matter where they are … People will go where they will go. The world is evolving.”

How to build a successful Facebook application – insights from FacebookCamp Toronto

Last night the GigPark crew, a handful of my friends and what seemed like most of the Toronto tech community descended on the MaRS building for FacebookCamp Toronto.

FacebookCamp was part of the Facebook Developer Garage series and focused on strategies and tips for developing a successful application on the Facebook platform.

The highlight of the night for me was a presentation by Meagan Marks, a platform manager from Facebook. She offered some great insight into user behaviour on the site, clearly laid out all of the ways you can integrate with Facebook and offered some strategies for making sure your application benefits from “the Facebook effect“.

I was going to write up my notes but Joey deVilla has already done a much better job than I would have over on the Global Nerdy blog (thanks Joey!).

The key points I took away from the event were very simple:

1. Successful applications offer self promotion for users (on my profile as well as other areas of Facebook) and social comparisons based on actions (am I smarter, hotter, better travelled… than my friends?)

2. Successful applications often integrate very deeply into Facebook (apparently some developers have found up to 14 different ways to integrate: messages, profile actions, the wall, share buttons…)

Happy Facebook developing everyone!

Facebook (not so) temporarily unavailable

When you create a platform as pervasive as Facebook (which I love by the way) I think you need to do 3 things very well:

1. Be open
This means letting other people/companies develop features that exist within or have access to your site. Facebook gets top marks for this.

2. Be secure
Goes without saying really. Unfortunately after the last week Facebook probably gets a 7 out of 10. From The Register: “Office workers logging into Facebook on Tuesday morning were shocked to discover they were being served up other user’s private pages.”

3. Be reliable
When people integrate a platform into their lives they get really upset when it disappears offline, even for a little while. 6 out of 10 and dropping…

Facebook’s growth over the last year has been completely insane. Any other site would have disintegrated by now and you have to give them kudos for that. But when a site that you rely on so much is “temporarily unavailable” so often it starts to hurt. This is especially frustrating for me this week because I’m trying to organize an event on Facebook.

So come on Mark – let’s get it sorted!

Canada (hearts) facebook

I’m always quoting figures to my non-facebook using friends about how many people in Canada are on the site (i.e. everyone). I’m also always getting them slightly wrong :(, so, here they are once and for all:

Scott Brooks over at ConceptShare has the original post with all of the info.