May28
fbFund has announced that we are a “fbFund 2009 Recipient” (see the entire list). The fbFund was created to support efforts outside Facebook that use it’s application frameworks (called platform, connect and iphone). We are happy to receive the honor (and $1000 in advertising credits).
It is our strong conviction that our service helps Facebook’s mission (to increase sharing on its platform), and this award validates our belief. (Of course, we also strongly believe that we help web surfers and sites, too.)
May28
John Borthwick of Betaworks has a thought-provoking piece on the opportunity for sites to tap into activity streams on social networks to drive traffic to their sites. He points to a few interesting data points and quotes to highlight the opportunity:
The impact of Activity Stream Publishing is large and growing.
- Betaworks companies receive “15-20% of daily traffic via social distribution — and the percentage is growing”
- 28 million items are shared on Facebook each day, with 18 million users sharing something daily. (source: Newteevee)
- An increasing number of sites, like PerezHilton.com, get more traffic from Facebook than google
Activity Stream Publishing is critical for mass adoption of interactive content
- An increasing amount of the web isn’t easily searchable–like flash game and toolbar plugins, and so alternative distribution is critical for mass adoption
- “In the last trailing 30 days, twitter has been the #1 referrer of traffic. And the conversion rates are strong.” (Duncan Miller, founder someecards)
Inaction is a serious threat. He boldly claims: “The complete disaggregation of the web in parallel with the slow decline of the destination web.” (read)
You should read the entire article, which has a terrific style that I cannot even attempt to imitate here. And needless to say, SocialFeet is excited to help you capitalize on the disruptive opportunity that activity stream publishing affords.
May26
This weekend, Facebook asked us (as part of our fbFund application) to submit a description of what we do in 256 characters or less. A description of this length is essentially an elevator pitch, and I am psyched about what Nathaniel and I came up with. Here it is:
SocialFeet enables any website to implement “Activity Stream Publishing” easily. With the SocialFeet widget, a website can increase traffic dramatically by empowering its visitors to stream their activities to Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.
I like this description because it is accurate, concise, plainspoken, novel and memorable. That’s a lot of punch for essentially three words–Activity Stream Publishing! So far, the initial reaction was quite positive on the Memorial Day BBQ circuit, and I’ll be interested to see how it fares with our customers, funders and other thought leaders in our nascent but rapidly growing space.
