Facebook Flyers Are Scary Good

This ad appeared as I was browsing through Facebook today. What’s scary cool about this is that I list Marc Cohn as one of my favorite artists in the music section of my profile. With the new release of Facebook Flyers Pro, we can expect to see a lot more of these targeted ads coming at us. It’s a bit weird to think just how much Facebook knows about me and just what they will be able to do with it. I know I’m drinking the kool aid — stuff like this will definitely bring in advertisers and help me grow out the promotional opportunities for sports on Facebook.

The way I look at it, it took several years for traditional advertising agencies to catch up and start understanding the medium of the Internet as a real advertising channel. And I don’t think they’re even there yet. It will definitely take a good while longer for these same ad agencies to embrace social networks as an advertising medium, but there’s a lot of money betting that they will.

I’m pretty excited, as I think Facebook is going to offer incredible opportunities for advertising in the future. This is where people of my generation (and those generations going forward) interact while we’re online. And I’d like to point out that I just don’t buy the concept of MySpace. It’s sketchy, annoying, full of spam, and not something I’d want to associate with. I like Facebook for being clean, easy to use, and more professional looking.

Zoooooooooooooooooooooooom.

That’s the sound of Facebook over this past year.

I’m coining my own word

If Stephen Colbert can do it and get truthiness into Merriam-Webster as a Word of the Year, then I’d like to stake my claim on the word applicationeur. It’s simple. An entrepreneur who is focused on making applications and widgets for the web is an applicationeur. Done.

New England Utopia

I finally had a chance to go home this past weekend on our school break. It reminded me just how much I love New England and Connecticut. Everything is better back home. The air is fresher than in Philadelphia. There are beautiful evergreens and wonderfully colored leaves raked into neat piles along the streets. The sun shines bright and beautiful songs of hummingbirds wake me in the morning. The grass fields stretch on and the forest paths where I once ran exhilarating races still give runners problems with random juts of rock, sticky mud, and cracked branches generously piled throughout. Everyone wears their North Face jackets and EMS fleeces. Life is beautiful.

None of my friends were on break, which worked out well — I had no distraction from spending lots of time with my family. My grandfather and I went out to catch trout and we were reasonably successful. I don’t think I’ll ever stop learning from him — his wisdom and understanding of everything from business to sports to academia is hard to put into words.

My little sister, a 4th grader, busted out with multiple Power Point presentations that they had made in school. I don’t think I ever used Power Point until high school. Am I getting behind on my technology?

We watched the movie “Everything Is Illuminated” as a family. I highly recommend it — it brings in a lot of humor and serious issues at the same time. A unique movie.

Overall, it gave me a chance to step back from life in the 1000mph lane and just spend quality time with a bunch of people I love in a place I will always call home.

I’ll return soon New England.

Agile, Mobile, Versatile

That’s a startup. What happens when you’re a big company? You lose a lot of the elements that let you lead in innovative sectors. I remember when Facebook first launched the Platform, CBS Sports released an application that merely consisted of an iframe with a re-direct back to their website. The best part: their website had an advertisement for their application!

ATT has now issued a $5000 developer challenge for whoever comes up with the best mobile application on Facebook. Now I just saw this in my news feed (thanks for the spam Facebook), and it just struck home how awesome it is to be an early adopter of a new technology like F8. Companies like ATT are starting to pay attention to Facebook and I think this will only grow as the Platform develops and matures. Eventually, every big company in the US will want to have a Facebook presence. I don’t think anyone who can actually make an awesome app will or should consider submitting to this type of “challenge.” Just make it and launch it yourself.

Nice try ATT.

Just to say thanks

I’ve been doing a lot of reflection and thought lately on life, my company, and the world around me. One thing I particularly wanted to post about was the idea of appreciation and saying thanks. It’s remarkable how many people in our lives help us everyday. From little things like letting you borrow their pencil to big things like helping you move into a new apartment. With the crazy 1000mph pace that is life, it’s sometimes hard to really show full gratitude and appreciation. An extra thank you, when deserved, never hurts a soul.