We’ve been selected as one of the twenty start-ups to go to the London Mini-Seedcamp on 20th April. We’re really excited about this - as well as a great chance to showcase what we do, we’ll get a full day of pitching, mentoring and advice from a world class selection of entrepreneurs and industry experts.
Facebook have been making a number of additions to their ‘public profiles’ recently (what used to be called fan pages); the latest of which is to add viral invites to pages, as All Facebook report. This means that a fan of a public profile can send direct invites to their friends, similar to applications. The effect of this won’t be dramatic, as if people really wanted to share a page with their friends they could do it with the share feature, however this could be a stronger call to action for users; and it’s certainly something which brand owners of pages have been calling for.
This Friday it’s Red Nose day 2009, in support of Comic Relief, a charity campaign which, in over 20 years, has raised over £500m to support projects across the globe, from helping disadvantaged young people in the UK, to supporting those in dire poverty or suffering from HIV and AIDs in third world countries.
They teamed up with iPlatform to allow Facebook users to donate their status’s to help spread the word about Red Nose Day this week - the app has launched today. Click here to go to the app and donate your status!
Brave New Talent is an innovative new social media recruitment service which connects under-graduates to companies they’re interested in working for. They are also leading up the search for One Young World, an event in 2010 where 1,500 25 year olds from across the globe will come together to discuss the future.
We’ve been lucky enough to work with Brave New Talent throughout their development, helping with their social network strategy, and integrating the whole of their site with the iPlatform - allowing users to access all functionality within their social networks.
The iPlatform has saved BraveNewTalent.com time and money. The simple solution integrates our technology to the major social networks on the web. This means we can focus on building a larger user base internationally by tapping into the world’s largest communities. It has been a pleasure to work with Josh and Dan as well as the rest of the iPlatform team. These guys are true social media evangelists. I would highly recommend using their solution to make your business more social.
Lucian Tarnowski, Founder and CEO BraveNewTalent.com
Brave New Talent inside Facebook, through the iPlatform
A few weeks ago the Facebook Developer Garage organised a charity hackathon for Comic Relief. You can see more information at www.comicrelief-hackathon.com. It was kindly sponsored by Everycity, Microsoft and Adknowledge.
iPlatform teamed up with Wakari and Mo.Jo to produce the ‘Funny for Money’ application, which ended up winning the judges vote. The app has a simple mechanism for users to upload jokes, and encourage their friends to vote for their jokes by buying digital red noses, donating money to Comic Relief as they go.
According to a new Nielsen Online report, Facebook now has a 47% reach in the UK, the Guardian reports. Together, member communities (made up of blogs and social networks) are the fourth most popular web destination in the UK - ahead of personal email. They’ve grown over 10% in the last year.
However, UK penetration is dwarfed by Brazil - the Google owned social network Orkut has a 70% penetration there, the highest social network penetration of any of the countries in the Nielsen survey.
Brazil is also top in time spent on these sites - 23% of all time spent (1 in 4 minutes), followed closely by the UK with 17% of all time spent online (1 in 6 minutes).
This shows how far social networks have come in terms of personal use - however also points out that despite the seemingly world dominating growth of Facebook, it’s not the total solution if you’re aiming for a global audience.
Today we’re sending a virtual gift to everyone in the Facebook team. Five years ago, Mark Zuckerberg started the social networking phenomenon in a Harvard dorm. Now, thousands of companies and individuals around the world are building exciting new businesses that use Facebook and other social networks to connect users and brands on a level never seen before.
Facebook Home Page in 2005
Facebook has posted a photo album showing the evolution of the home page from its humble beginnings through to today’s site with 150 million active users.
Josh March, the iPlatform CEO, will be appearing on Sky News at 7pm today in a discussion about Facebook’s history and where it will take the web and society at large in the future.
Meanwhile, rumours encircle the tech world that AOL are looking to sell off Facebook’s rival Bebo at a price much lower than the $850 million they paid for it just a year ago. We believe that Bebo may have found the wrong parent in AOL, but that Bebo is thriving as a social community and will continue in importance as a social media destination. Myspace was caught out a little by Facebook’s rise, but is slowly starting to innovate more and more. This is why at iPlatform we’re enabling brands to join the party on all the leading social networks, not just birthday boy Facebook…
