Last night’s FacebookCamp marked the 5th in the series that draws local audience to learn about Facebook and some of the latest features and ways to leveage the social network.
It was another packed room at MaRS filled with professionals from the advertising, marketing and technology professionals and the room looked just as busy ever since the first FacebookCamp Toronto back in April 2007. Attendees came from may walks of the business world including , and many start ups who are looking to leverage the social media’s platform. Roy Pereira and Colin Smillie of Refresh Partners started the night off with some quick updates on the growth of Facebook.
A Look At Facebook Over The Last 6 Months
- Sept 1 – “New” Profile launches
- Nov 3 Salesforce.com ties into Facebook
- Dec 4 Facebook Connect Launches
- Dec 10 fbFund opens its doors providing access to $250,000; 3/5 funds were given to Canadian companies
- Jan 7 – Facebook tops 150,000 million active monthly users
- Jan 19 – Facebook Connect + CNN partner for the Obama inauguration; 1.5 million status update
- Feb 15 – Facebook tops 175,000 million active monthly users
Canadian Facebook Statistics
- 70% of users come from outside the US
- 50% of users are outside of college
- Facebook is the fastest growing social network among the 30+ demographic
- Average user has 120 friends
- More than 3 billion minutes are spent each day on Facebook (worldwide)
One of the night’s presentation was given by Matt Wyndowe ( who works as part of the Facebook Platform team), and he provided a walk through on how Facebook Connect which according to Wikipedia is “A single sign-on service that competes with OpenID, the service enables Facebook users to login to affiliated sites using their Facebook account and share information from such sites with their Facebook friends.” Some of us felt it was somewhat reminiscent of Microsoft’s Passport technology that has since been abandoned. Some stats that Matt shared included:
- 2 million status update on CNN
- 8,500 per minute during the Obama speech.
Matt then took some questions from the audience, here are the questions and his answers:
Q – User Response to Facebook Connect?
- very positive, we don’t always get positive response (ex. change to the home page design)
Q – Why Build A Business on Facebook
- “one thing to understand and be clear about, if a user gives you information, that is your information” Ex. Site A and you login with Facebook Connect. You have access to the data the user gives you. If you want to know the users eye colour, you never have to give us that information (Facebook)
Q – How much does it cost to use the API?
- Free, and no intention to charge
Q – If a user leaves Facebook, what happens to that data?
- user comes in, authentic, eye colour is green, you will no longer be able to access that information
Since the CNN-Facebook partnership a few others have used the same technique to engage audiences such as NBA All-Star Game, Red Carpet for the recent Oscars awards
Q – Risk to Facebook Connect?
- any data that is provide would be lost if a user deactivates their Facebook account
Roy also presented a Case Study on the recent Whopper Sacrifice campaign where users were asked to remove a friend from Facebook for an opportunity to win a free Whopper. Here is a Youtube video that one contestant created of their experience.
Whopper Sacrifice Case Study
Burger King created a Facebook application,launched Jan 7th – 3 Day campaign
- 5389 Diggs
- 60,000 installs in 10 days
- No promotional budget
- Users were given a coupon for a free Whopper
- Viral Coefficiency/ Viralocity (how many new users does a user bring) 1.96
Facebook Connect definitely does suggest a great opportunity to speed up the rate that you can grow a community and share content but keep in mind it is only as powerful as the community that is actually using Facebook. Unfortunately what is a hot social network today does not guarantee that it will be that tomorrow. While they do have a growing database of users, there are 6,790,062,216 people in the world. As I looked around the room I noticed a few attendees who looked to be in their early 20′s (if even that old) and could not help but wonder whether they’d be the next “Wonder Kid” who will come along and create the next business that we might all rally around.
