Gareth talks to Ben Wills about Social media and web 2.0 as part of the ECommerce Rocks series. Ben talks about YouTube, MySpace, Digg and Bebo.
For more info visit http://www.gsinc.co.uk/tips

Posted on Friday, May 09, 2008
www.beet.tv

Mashable’s Pete Cashmore Moves to California, Set to Deepen Tech Coverage..without VC Funding

LOS ANGELES — It is amazing how Pete Cashmore started Mashable from his home in Scotland at the age of 19, just three years ago, to create one of the most widely read blog about technology and social media. It is among the top 10 most influential blogs in the world.

Pete recently moved to San Francisco and is hiring reporters to cover technology and other
industries.

Pete says Mashable has been cashflow positive since he launched and has not had the need to raise venture money.

I caught up with him earlier this week at Digital Hollywood,

– Andy Plesser

A video overview explaining what LinkedIn is and how it works.

Found a great feed to subscribe to the other day.. @ http://www.allfacebook.com

I found many topics that are of interest to Facebook Marketing, and I thought I’d give him a plug because you’ll find his site is “right up our alley”..

The most interesting post this week has been the Top 12 Facebook Marketing Hacks, which goes through 12 things that “marketers” have been “taking advantage” of to market their product or get noticed.

Who knows how long Facebook would allow this to happen or what risks you take by using some of them (some I feel just should not be done, like tagging your friends in “every” blog post note that you import, or tagging “popular friends” in photos that you upload)..

But I can think of ways to use them in a “helpful” way to both parties.

The other suggestions were:

• joining every event
• wishing everyone a happy birthday (hey, that’s a nice thing to do anyway!)
• engage in poke wars (I can’t imagine this would be very credible)
• switching your birthday regularly (hmm… thats a bit ugly.. dont even know why facebook would allow someone to change their birthday from the time they signup excepting by manual request)
• posting comments on fast-growing groups (I like that idea.. if you have something to genuinely offer the group)
• holding your own events
• setting up pages & re-posting them on your profile
• changing relationship status (weird way to get attention), & more

Read the full post here.

Here’s some of his other articles that I think you’ll also enjoy..

I’ve become a fan of this site and it will be a regular thing for me to check out his latest posts.

The other day I found a Facebook app that I was interested in putting on my profile but unfortunately it was defunct.. broken, and I was disappointed because it would be a really great app if it worked and would attract those with the same interest as me.

So I had this brainstorm idea a few hours ago that I’d just make it myself ;)

Seeing all those crappy apps on Facebook, I thought that even a donkey with no programming knowledge like myself would be able to easily create an app, and within a few days/weeks, have hundreds/thousands of targetted traffic to my app and therefore my subscriber base, and therefore my friendsbase, etc, etc.. and they would all be into the same thing as me.. etc !

So first step.. I added the guy of the broken app as a friend and sent a message to ask him how he did it. I expected a conversation where I can maybe convince him to fix it but he just sent an app that was kinda promoting their own hosting but it did have a link to the main Facebook developers page.

I went to the page and thought that it seemed pretty easy, I clicked on Create an New Application..

And then.. went .. “What the?” lol

Callback URL? Canvas Page URL? IP Addresses of Servers? argh! help!

But now I want to create one because it’s free to do, free marketing, instant promotion, instant traffic, and I can just see the potential *stars in my eyes*..

Applications have only been allowed on Facebook since June 2007 - that’s 9 months - and there are already applications selling for $3 MILLION.

Click Here For Current Values Of Top 40 Facebook Applications

I think that’s great, although I don’t intend to make an application just to sell it, it’s the access to targetted traffic that I was after.

To get a feel for the Facebook Application, and whether I’d be able to create my own app, I followed the advice of:

• How to Write a Facebook Application in 10 Minutes
• Step-by-step Guide to Creating an Application

I’ve also been surfin` around trying to find step-by-step guides that I can follow and sites that I might need when I’m creating it.

I found these great resources (I’ll keep adding to this as I find the gems):

• How to Develop a Hit Facebook App: 29 Essential Tools and Tutorials
• Facebook Query Language
• Improve Reponse Time with Facebook Dialogs Up to 99%
• Learning Facebook Application Development book (Jun 08)
• PHP Tutorials : Create A Facebook Application
• Notes on Creating a Facebook Application
• My first experience in building a FaceBook Application in PHP
• Facebook Application Development using FBML and .NET/C#
• Facebook Application Development - Getting Started part 1
• Creating your first Facebook Application
• Allow Your Users to Invite Their Friends
• Facebook Developer

Also, found these pages on ideas on types of Facebook Applications to create.

• Ideas for Facebook Applications that make money
• See also the Monetizing Your Facebook Application video
• The 101 best Facebook applications in the world today

Haven’t found many “tools” for helping with creating of Facebook Apps, but thought I’d create a list starting with the 1 that I did find:

• Facebook Developer Toolkit
• Blog/Tutorial/Videos about the above Toolkit

I just found a guide that you have to pay for ($49.95), which I bought.
I wrote to the owner first to find out whether you have to be a “Coder” to apply his techniques, and
he said no, but I haven’t quite worked out how to do anything useful with his
information yet.

#1. Step-by-Step “How-to” Video (blonde tested)

#2. Source Files Ready To Be Customized.

#3. Application Quickstart Guide

#4. App Marketing Madness Brainstorm

#5. Facebook Developer’s Resource Guide

#6. LIFETIME Updates

#7. Facebook Marketing Essentials

#8. 5 Days To Make $26 Per Day With Facebook

#9. How I Got 2,012 Subscribers in 11 Days

#10. Complete Installation Support

Facebook Application Profits

Got a great idea? Got the cash? Get someone else to make it for you!

If you’re interested in creating a facebook application and have the money but not the time or skills to create your own Facebook App, these sites have programmers hungry to assist.

If it turns out “too hard” to create my app because I’d have to learn a new language or whatever, then I’ll be heading over to these sites:

• GetaCoder.com
• Facebook Developers for Hire
• RentaCoder.com
• CodingForums.com
• GetaFreelancer.com
• ScriptLance.com
• eLance.com

• Facebook Marketing “Tricks”
  Posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 in Facebook - Views: (50)
  Found a great feed to subscribe to the other day.. @ http://www.allfacebook.comI found many topics that are of interest to Facebook Marketing, and I thought I’d give him a plug because you’ll find his site is “right up our alley”.. The most interesting post this week has been the Top 12 Facebook Marketing Hacks, which goes through 12 things that “marketers” have been “taking advantage” of to market their product or get noticed.

My Fave Facebook posts on Mashable

5 Tips for Optimizing Your Brand’s Facebook Presence

You Might Not Love the New Facebook, But Brands Should

30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook

New Facebook Pages: A Guide for Social Media Marketers

10 Great Implementations of Facebook Connect

20+ Great Greasemonkey Scripts for Improving Your Facebook Experience

Facebook Lets You Open Your Profile to Everyone

Great video from DontDelayAction.com urging you to get your business on Facebook right now! Showing you the potential business prospects you are missing out on and that facebook is not slowing down anytime soon!

First, go to http://www.facebook.com

1st) Create an Account

2nd) Go to Find Friends

3rd) Setup your Facebook profile

4th) Add Bart (creator of the video) to your friends: (Search for Bart Taylor)

If you like, add me as a friend while you’re at it :)

What is Profilactic?

Profilactic is a social media aggregator/lifestreaming service that pulls together just about everything you and your friends create online.

How would you manage all these?

* 43 People * 43 Places * 43 Things * All Consuming * Amazon * Ask500People * Bebo * BlinkList * Blip.tv * Blippr * boobik? * Break * brightkite * Bring Light * Bungie.net * Capazoo * Change.org * Chickipedia * claimID * Clipmarks * Cluztr * coComment * Consumating * Corkd * Correlate.us * Crackle * Crusher * Curse * Dabble * Dailymotion * del.icio.us * deviantART * digFoot * digg * Diigo * Disqus * Dopplr * Dotspotter * eBay My World * eSnips * Facebook * Faves * ffwd * FilmSpot * finetune * Flickr * Flixster * Fotolog * FriendFeed * Friendster * Funny or Die * Furl * Fuzz * GameSpot * Get Satisfaction * Glogster * goodreads * Google Reader * Groovr * Heavy * Helpalot * hi5 * Howcast * hulu * Identoo * iJigg * iLike * iminta * Instructables * iReport * iStalkr * Jaanix * Jaiku * JamBase * Jamglue * Jellyfish * kirtsy * Koinup * Kongregate * last.fm * Library Thing * Life2Front * Lifestream.fm * Lijit * LinkedIn * Listal * Lists of Bests * Live Spaces * LiveJournal * Loudervoice * ma.gnolia * Mahalo * MeasuredUp

* Meetup * mEgo * Mixx * MOG * moonrise * MP3.com * Mugshot * Multiply * Muxtape * 360 voice * MyBlogLog * MyGamerCard * MySpace * mystrands * Netvibes * Newsvine * ODEO * Onaswarm * Orangutag * Orkut * Pandora * Picasa Web Albums * Pickle * Ping.fm * Plazes * Plurk * Polar Rose * Political Base * Popurls * Pownce * Profil.es * ProfileLinker * Propeller * QIK * Qype * Rapleaf * Readr * RedBubble * Reddit * Revver * Rock Band * Scribd * Second Brain * Sevenload * Shelfari * Simpy * Skitch * Slide * SlideShare * SocialURL * Soup * Stage 6 * Streem * StumbleUpon * SugarLoving * Suprglu * Technorati * The Hype Machine * Thingfo * ThisNext * Tioti * toluu * Trendrr * TripAdvisor * tumblr * TV.com * Tweeterboard * Twine * TwitPic * twitter * twittervision * Twitxr * upcoming * Ustream.tv * Utterz * Veoh * vi.sualize.us * Viddler * Vimeo * vodpod * Vox * Wakoopa * Webshots * Wink * Xfire * Y!gg * Yahoo! 360 * Yahoo! Live * Yelp! * Yokway * YouTube * Zooomr * Zune.net

… With just one click!

http://www.profilactic.com/profile/happyches

Also, watch this video on how to implement Ping.fm so that when your content changes..
Profilactic have partnered with Ping.fm to allow members to post content to 11 social services from within Profilactic.

Explaining Profilactic’s new “Post something” feature from sMoRTy71 on Vimeo.

If you’re not familiar with Ping.fm, what makes their service super cool is that you can post to all 11 of those social services *at the same time*.
So if you want your Twitter friends and your Facebook friends and your LinkedIn connections to know what you are doing, you you can do it with their “Post something” tool powered by Ping.fm.

The list of services currently supported are: Bebo, Blogger, Facebook, hi5, Jaiku, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, MySpace, Pownce, Tumblr and Twitter.

1. watch this video
2. join profilactic
3. add me to your friends there so we can share our content: http://www.profilactic.com/profile/happyches
4. grab the Profilactic Wordpress Plugin to create your own lifestream

• Introduce yourself as a human being, you are human first! Make sure you add your photos. Don’t be embarrassed! :) Add your interests, books, etc,
• Tell your story of how you got to where you are. Everyone has a story. What are your dreams and aspirations?

• Your MySpace profile is not an advertisement, it’s about people connecting with people, like Facebook. First and foremost, it’s “all about you”. Who are you? :)
• Add a slideshow of your photos of yourself, your family, your experiences and your friends. http://www.slide.com

• Upload your photo albums.
• Upload your videos & any mind-movies you’ve made to your MySpace profile.
• Download FriendBlasterPro (free edition, there’s no need to pay because we won’t be using it to spam, nor do we have multiple profiles).
• Surf MySpace using the program for people who would be suitable for the product you are marketing and add them as a friend… it’s just HEAPS easier to add friends this way than the MySpace way.
• The awesome thing about FriendBlasterPro is that it can save the same message, invites, and everything inside the program, so that you don’t have to type them all in each time.

• Comment on their MySpace profile after you’ve added them, or send a message straight after you have requested the add.
• Don’t add more than 40 people at a time.
• Ensure you use the “Time Delay” option.. go to Options -> Time Delay.. you want a natural delay (like 40 seconds and 20 seconds, etc)
• Start your own Group on MySpace
• Whatever you learn on MySpace, can become a future “how-to video for someone else.. keep this in the back of your mind for future video promotion.
• Dont push your product, befriend first, develop a relationship next, after the topic comes up, then you can offer a free copy of your brandable book, if they like it, then you can tell them about your group/blog/site.. this is a “secret to success” method, don’t jump the gun unless THEY initiate it!)
• Remember the big picture.. if we train 100 affiliates to train 100 affiliates, the $$ will be beyond our wildest dreams. You are going to be helping these people closely so building a relationship is important.. just getting random people to signup is a waste unless they are self-starters that know what they are doing because most won’t do anything with it unless you guide them.

a. Develop a Real Relationship
b. Give Them a Free Copy
c. Be Sure They See the Good Things People are Saying
d. If They Like It, tell them about your group/blog/site/list.
e. Don’t Be Pushy.
f. Don’t Treat Them with Anything but the Highest Respect.

Check out my MySpace profile