Best West Index - Top Facebook Applications (Open Web Edition) - And the Winner is…

Welcome to the Open Web Edition of the “Best of the West Top Facebook Application Index” compiled to highlight the most popular social web services designed or developed in Canada’s West (including in and around the Greater Vancouver, Victoria, Kelowna, etcetera metros).

The index uses the Facebook data tracked by the Adonomics service and includes the Adonomics estimate of the Facebook application valuation in $$$.

Consider the list in “Beta” since we accept more and new apps getting listed. We have compiled the index using all apps from the last two Vancouver Facebook Developer Garage events. Interested in getting listed? Add a comment to this posting or better add yourself to the SocialCamp event wiki to showcase your Facebook service live at App Nite hosted at the Open Web Vancouver 2008 conference at Canada Place on Day 2 on April 15th.

Rank	App	Installs	Active Users/Day	Valuation($$$)
1.	Scratch and Win	449,900	71,984 (16%)	$408,363
2.	Hockey Pool	347,793	48,691 (14%)	$247,020
3.	Are You Normal?	572,300	5,723 (1%)	$95,077
4.	I’m Reading	61,400	614 (1%)	$17,888
5.	Friend of the Month	31,825	1,273 (4%)	$13,844
6.	Hockey Pool Pro	20,300	203 (1%)	$4,937
7.	The Snow Report	18,200	182 (1%)	$6,020
8.	Eat-A-Rama	17,800	30 (0%)	$265
9.	Green Gifts	7,400	74 (1%)	$403
10.	These Are My Kids	4,200	126 (3%)	$815
11.	Up4	4,700	10 (0%)	$70
12.	10 Friends Notes	3,773	415 (11%)	$1,805
13.	MyBus	2,300	23 (1%)	$144
14.	Vibrator	1,700	5 (0%)	$80
15.	Mixx Maker	1,000	20 (2%)	$130

SocialCamp and App Nite (Open Web Edition) Talk Highlights - Add Yours! Last Invite

(This is cross-posted from the Official (Open)Social(Web)Camp 2008 Blog.)

You’re invited to sign-up for a lightning talk (10-15 min.) or/and Facebook/social network app live demo and Q&A at the upcoming SocialCamp hosted at the Open Web Vancouver 2008 conference on the 2nd day after lunch. Add your proposal to our event wiki or as an alternative send it to the SocialCamp organizer (yours truly;-).

The current App Nite live demo and Q&A line-up includes:

These Are My Kids 2.0 w/ Michael Fergusson

We’ve got a lot of new things to show. These Are My Kids is now a multi-modal, virtual private social networking system for families (no, we don’t market it that way (-; ). It can connect people via Facebook, email, Kinzin.com, and the postal mail. Gramma can be a member of this social network without even owning a computer. Did I blow your mind?

Ski & Snowboard w/ Reza Hussein

Love skiing or snowboarding? This is the app for you. We’ll give an overview of our app, how we take advantage of social elements, and how we use a map-driven interface for you to find new ski resorts, and how user-generated content is helping make this the largest and most accurate database of ski resorts in the world.

Protagonize - A collaborative fiction writing community w/ Nick Bouton

Protagonize is a creative writing community dedicated to writing various forms of collaborative, interactive fiction. One author writes a story, and others post branches or chapters to it in different directions. The result is an organic, evolving story where everyone can participate.

Nick Bouton will discuss community building in niche markets, Facebook integration, and contrast Facebook’s walled garden approach with the development and nurturing of a stand-alone social network / community site.

And the current lightning talk line-up includes:

• Hosting Options, Tips and Tricks for Scaling OpenSocial and Facebook Apps w/ Mark Mayo, Joyent
• Developing Social Web Applications using Ruby on Rails w/ Gerald Bauer
• Social Graph Enabling Every Site: Ideas on the Flock People Bar w/ Boris Mann
• Data Portability and Existing Social Networks w/ Aaron Klemm

Find out more at the SocialCamp event wiki. Add Yours!

Questions? Comments? Send them along to the Vancouver Ajax & Web 2.0 (3.0) Developer Forum/Mailing List. Thanks!

Brian Shire (Facebook) on What’s the Open Web? And Why Open Web and Open Source Technologies Matter

On April 14+15 the Open Web Vancouver 2008 conference will showcase open web technologies, communities and culture, and evangelize the Open Web to developers, designers, organizers and the community at large.

What’s the Open Web? We have invited Brian Shire (Facebook’s PHP Internals Tech Lead) - who will talk about ‘Inside Alternative PHP Cache (APC) - Serving Millions of Facebookers’ at the Open Web Vancouver 2008 conference - for some insight.

I’m Reading - Facebook App Nite Q&A w/ Garth Shoemaker

Welcome back to the Facebook App Nite Q&A Series. Today let’s welcome Garth Shoemaker talking about “I’m Reading” on Facebook.

The fact is that there are many shady approaches out there for promoting your app. You are going to have to make a choice about whether you want to embrace these approaches or not. If you do, you are sacrificing some user satisfaction for pure growth. If you ignore them, then you can focus on providing real value to your users. Personally, I am worried that these approaches have already turned many users away from apps, but hope that in the future quality will come out on top.

MyBus - Facebook App Nite Q&A w/ John Boxall (Handi Mobility)

Welcome back to the Facebook App Nite Q&A Series. Today let’s welcome John Boxall from Handi Mobility talking about MyBus.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about MyBus on Facebook?

John Boxall: MyBus for Facebook was originally developed to complement our TransLink text messaging system (also called MyBus!) With MyBus for Facebook we try to make transit information accessible to the widest audience possible. The majority of Vancouver transit riders are high school and university students - and they are all on Facebook. It seemed like a natural fit.

Q: What’s the Facebook advantage? How does MyBus tap into Facebook’s social network and circle of friends?

John Boxall: The current version of MyBus doesn’t leverage the social graph - instead it simply tries to present relevant information in a relevant place. Whenever I’m going somewhere, typically the last thing I do before I go is hop on Facebook to update my status. By putting MyBus on Facebook I could do two things at once - and if it turned out I was going to miss my bus, I could surf Facebook for a few more minutes before I had to go.

Q: Inside MyBus: What languages, libraries and frameworks have you used to develop MyBus?

John Boxall: MyBus uses PHP & MySQL coupled with Propel & Memcache.

Q: Any tips and tricks or advice you can share on developing, designing or marketing Facebook apps?

John Boxall: Useful != Popular. When designing an application on Facebook you need to step back and ask yourself exactly how you will attract users. To be successful you may have to be devious. Many top apps restrict functionality until a member has invited a certain number of friends. This may seem counter intuitive but actually is could be necessary for your app to grow.

Thanks John Boxall for your time.

Join us for Vancouver’s 3rd Facebook Developer Garage and App Nite hosted at Open Web Vancouver 2008 at Canada Place on April, 15th and see more Facebook widgets live in action or sign-up for a live demo and Q&A.

Questions? Comments? Send them along to the Vancouver Ajax & Web 2.0 (3.0) Developer Forum/Mailing List. Thanks!

Vancouver (Open)Social(Web)Camp incl. Facebook Developer Garage - Call for Lightning Talks, Call for App Nite Demos

(This is cross-posted from the Official (Open)Social(Web)Camp 2008 Blog.)

You’re invited to sign-up for a lightning talk (10-15 min.) at the upcoming SocialCamp (incl. Facebook Developer Garage) hosted at the Open Web Vancouver 2008 Conference at Canada Place.

Post your proposal to our event wiki or send it to our mailing list/forum or to the (Open)Social(Web)Camp program chair (yours truly ;-).

We also welcome OpenSocial and Facebook demos for App Nite. To sign-up for an App Nite live demo and Q&A please follow our simple 2-step nomination procedure (Step 1: Post a blurb and link to our event wiki; Step 2: Answer the mini Q&A. That’s it).

These Are My Kids - Facebook Q&A with Michael Fergusson and Paul Prescod (Kinzin)

Welcome back to the Facebook Demo Q&A Series. Today let’s welcome Michael Fergusson and Paul Prescod talking about “These Are My Kids” - the 2nd and latest Facebook application from Kinzin following the “Are You Normal?” hit that celebrated 1,000,000 Facebookers served sometime last year.

Viewers never need to sign up for anything, but if they are already Facebook users, they can take advantage of Facebook’s existing infrastructure of invitations and notifications.

You need to have a lot of extra capacity available because the traffic can come in waves depending on how you are ranked in the application directory. The safest way to be ready for extra capacity is to use load balancing, memcached and carefully selected database indexes.

The Snow Report - Facebook Q&A with Jeremy Holland and Dean Halford (MOK Agency) - Best of the West Facebook Awards Nominee

Welcome back to the Facebook Demo Q&A Series. Today let’s welcome Jeremy Holland and Dean Halford from MOK Agency talking about The Snow Report.

To grow within a niche market of Facebook we knew we had to tap into the interactive elements of Facebook, setting up profiles, setting up and documenting trips, posting gear online that riders can review and most importantly providing riders something useful.

Facebook Mixx Maker (V2.0) Q&A with Jeremy Lim (Project Opus, Donat Group)

Welcome to the Facebook Demo Q&A Series. Today let’s welcome back Jeremy Lim (Project Opus, Donat Group) updating us on what’s new in Mixx Maker, what lessons Team Mixx Maker has learned on Facebook, insight on sharing music online, and more.

Mixx Maker and MixxMaker.com are both running on the same Drupal install, so they share the same database. Because of that, they both share a mutual blog and forum. Plus, we can also aggregate all Mixxs for display on MixxMaker.com.

Not reinventing the wheel can be a good thing. Mixtapes worked, so Mixx Maker works. The concept of contextual music is tried and true, and people don’t have to relearn the idea – they just know. Personality pieces are also good. A Mixx’s theme and the music tied to it speaks volumes of a person, which does cater to the ego.

Facebook Eat-A-Rama Q&A with Sebastian Troen (ActiveState) - Best of the West Facebook Awards Nominee

Welcome back to the Facebook Demo Q&A Series. Today let’s welcome Sebastian Troen talking about Eat-A-Rama - the latest Facebook application from the Social Networking Team at ActiveState following up on Up4 - ActiveState’s 1st entry into the social networking world.

Join us for Vancouver’s 2nd Facebook Developer (& Designer) Garage and 1st in the new year and see Eat-A-Rama and other Best of the West Facebook Awards Nominees live in action at the Vancouver Film School Theatre.

Identify the potential revenue sources for a project up front. With Up4 the idea was rather general and so we wanted something that was more focused on a specific area and had clearer revenue options. There’s a huge industry around dining that gives us plenty of options with Eat-A-Rama over and above advertising.