Welcome back to the Facebook Demo Q&A Series. Today let’s welcome
Vancouverite Sebastian Troen from the Social Networking Team at ActiveState.
Q: Can you tell us a little bit about your Up4 Facebook app?
Sebastian Troen: Up4 encourages real-world social connections. Up4 makes it easy for you to tell your Facebook friends when you are open to doing something and what kinds of activities you are up for. If you’re trying to get some friends together for drinks on the weekend, you’d typically call or email to see who’s interested, talk about where to go, etc. Usually you’d contact a small set of friends (compared to your entire social circle) and that group might pretty static (and boring) from week to week. Often you end up leaving people out — even people you’d really enjoy spending time with. With Up4, all you have to do is create an up4 for the get-together with general info about time and place. ALL your friends can see it. And you can choose to especially notify specific friends. It’s up to your friends to join in. The end result: less work for you. And more of your friends find out about what you’re doing and can join in.
Q: What’s the Facebook advantage? How is your Up4 Facebook app different from a plain old web application/widget? How does it tap into the social network?
Sebastian Troen: Up4 is different from most Facebook apps. It focuses on the real world, not the world of pokes and vampire bites. It uses your wide Facebook circle of friends to make it easier for everyone to have real interactions in the real world. It’s fun; thousands of users age 14 to 91 have used Up4 to get together. Most of the get-togethers are with small groups, but sometimes many people add comments and join in.
Q: Inside Up4: What languages (PHP, Java, Ruby, etcterea), libraries and frameworks have you used to develop your Facebook app?
Sebastian Troen: Python using Django framework. Plus we have a great graphic designer so it looks pretty cool.
Q: Any tips and tricks or advice you can share on developing, designing or marketing Facebook apps?
Sebastian Troen: Get things live quickly, rather than worrying about getting it perfect. Often users will use your app in a way very different than expected anyway. Measure, Measure, Measure. And listen. There’s a wealth of data available to tweak and tune your app. Use it. There should be something to engage the users right away when entering the app, otherwise you’ll lose them. And try to provide some real value to the users. This is something that we’re really focusing on because there’re so many apps that don’t offer any real value, besides temporary, mindless entertainment. That’s great, but it’s kind of like the spinning logo days of the Web 1.0 era… we all want something more, something more useful.
Thanks Sebastian Troen for your time. Interested in hearing more about Facebook application development? Join us at the informal Vancouver Facebook Developer Garage follow-up meetup (50 max!) at UBC Downtown.
