FacebookCampToronto4
Last night, I attended FacebookCampToronto4 which is the fourth installment in a series of unconferences, aimed to share ideas in an open setting with developers, marketers, people interested in social media, students, whoever. I’m definitely not a developer, and this is the first time I’ve attended, along with my friend Sarah who invited me. I had no idea this event existed before, but I wish I had. Particularly since it was free. Always a bonus.
I have to admit, though I knew of the marketing opportunities and targeting activities associated with Facebook, it was a bit of an eye opener. Mostly, I’m talking about the developers who make the applications available for everyone to use and optimize their profiles.
Rebecca Sawyer of Facebook talked about monitizing Facebook applications. Developers create these applications, but like most creative ventures, the marketing tends to be an afterthought. If I could summarize it to a basic principle, her strategies were to cut the fat: meaning, target specific groups of people using specific tags or words etc..
There were plenty of solid case studies to demonstrate that targeting smaller groups produces efficient results. I also have to comment that she handled a certain, well I wouldn’t call him a heckler, but a disgruntled facebook user/developer/whiner with aplomb. The audience wasn’t appreciative either, with many of the audience shouting “way to represent Canada!!.” Even at a social media unconference, we want to act our best in front of the Americans.
Aside from the some of the (funny) unpleasantness, what’s coming up for Facebook is a redesign of the layout and organization of user profiles. It’s definitely going to cut out the clutter of the many, many, many applications that have been released in the last year. I can already envision groups like “BRING BACK THE OLD LAYOUT!” springing up, but it’s going to a simpler, optimized profile space. In Andrew Cherwenka’s own words from Trapeze, it was “starting to look a little like MySpace” and I have to wholeheartedly agree with that statement. With the new site design, there will be separate tabs for your wall, photos, personal info, applications etc.. and applications won’t be in the way.
A key new feature will be the customization abilities of the applications tab and users will be able to place their favourite apps front and centre (one developer who was sitting in front of me looked particularly pleased).
There also some case studies from Refresh Analytics and SlangBook but two applications that were particularly interesting were Praize’n’raze presented by Sebastien Provencher, Praized Media and MouseHunt by HitGrab which was represented by Joel Auge.
I tried to sign up for the Praize’n'raze application, but it didn’t seem to be working. Not so good for launch day, but it’s up and running now. I hope to try it out in the next days and write about it here. Very cool concept for a facebook app.
Aside from the deluge of rain upon exiting MaRS after the event, it was definitely a good event. A bit taken aback from the lack of signage and initial set-up, but overall I took alot away from this unconference. Looking forward to the next one.
