I found this short video on the web and thought it was a great way to illustrate how social networking can be helpful in a business scenario. The publishers, I am sure, didn’t intend to explicitly describe a business case for using social media, but have accidentally given a good example of why business tools are the next horizon for social networks.

Linking Universe provides business tools in a social networking environment to help you sell your ice cream more effectively. Watch the video and I think you will understand…

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While Facebook popularity literally continues to increase by the hour, there are other indications that the Facebook Plaform is fast becoming an important and embedded fixture of internet communications.

Take for example the latest iPhone commercial. You may not have seen it yet, but Apple has chosen to feature Facebook in their latest television ad. This is a remarkable endorsement of Facebook, and lends to the growing credibility of the Facebook Platform moving forward.

Click Here to view the new Apple iPhone ad featuring Facebook: http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/ad16/

As you know, Linking Universe is working to bring robust business tools to the Facebook Platform. We are joining the outstanding social networking tools in Facebook with effective business tools and resources that will help Facebook users grow their social networks and leverage the inherent business opportunities.

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I attended the Facebook Strategy Lunch yesterday and found it to be extremely informative. I am looking forward to the next one.

If you want to be informed of any coming events, join the group titled Utah CEOs With A Facebook Strategy in Facebook.

The luncheon was hosted by Paul Allen and his team at FamilyLink.com including Jason McGowan and Mike Jensen, each of whom presented during the 1.5 hour meet. About 40 people attended.

Paul Allen was first up, and presented some very exciting insights into the Facebook opportunity. I felt like I was watching Rocky for the first time, and left even more excited about the future of Linking Universe. Among the highlights I gleaned from Paul’s presentation:

• Facebook is gaining momentum (currently out pacing all other social networks in growth);
• The Facebook Platform is the first social environment to go ‘open‘, which is spurring unprecedented growth (the development community is jumping on the Facebook coattails faster than you can say ‘new applications’);
• Social networking, and Facebook in particular, is more than a ‘fad’ (not only is it here to stay, but new applications are adding functions and features that make it evermore valuable. Consider Linking Universe, for instance…).

Jason McGowan took over and led us through some incredible stats. He forwarded his presentation to me after the event (thank you, Jason). Here are a handful of interesting highlights:

• Facebook has over 62 million active users;
  • An active user is someone who logs in at least once each day;
  • More than half of active users return again each day;
• Facebook has an average of 250,000 new registrations per day, a remarkably huge audience of new customers that effectively stave off a saturation point for any application;
• So far, the number of active users has doubled every six months;
• More than half of Facebook users are outside of college;
• The fastest growing age demographic in Facebook is 25 years and older;
• Facebook maintains a marketshare of 85 percent among U.S 4-year universities;
• More than 95 percent of Facebook users have added at least one application to their account, or about 60 million.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that 34 percent of Facebook users are professionals, executives, and/or in sales, education, or technical fields. I quickly calculated the potential low-hanging-fruit for Linking Universe at over 20 million. Wow.

Jason wrapped up with a review of the Facebook interface and some tips about how to build applications more effectively, taking advantage of built-in features, and some marketing tips.

Mike Jensen spent some time discussing performance optimization and scalability. Among his advice:

• Go with Amazon’s EC2 platform;
• Plan ahead for scalability (he recalled the scaling nightmare they endured after going live and achieving overwhelming success);
• Loadbalancing techniques, memory optimization, and common practices regarding backups.

The meeting was informative, well informed, and well attended. The who’s who of our local Facebook community were in attendance, too, which made for a terrific networking opportunity.

Lunch was pretty good, too.

Our ‘Thanks‘ and appreciation go to the Utah CEOs With A Facebook Strategy for organizing a worthwhile event.

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I was just notified that Slide, a San Francisco-based Facebook application developer, has received $50 million in funding.

According to Reuters news service, Slide closed a round of institutional financing and will use the money to increase their staff and continue to build applications for both the Facebook platform as well as for MySpace.

This Reuters news brings yet more attention to the growing excitement around Facebook and the increasing valuation of companies focusing their attention on the Facebook platform.

Linking Universe, as you know, is one of these companies. We are edging closer to a public release of our Linking Universe professional business application for the Facebook Platform. As we get closer, we are keeping our ear to the tracks for exciting new stories such as this one about Slide. Our plans include a pursuit of funding immediately after our initial launch.

If you are interested in talking to us about funding, please contact us.

Read the Reuters article about Slide here: http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSN1834455320080119

Congratulations to Slide from Linking Universe!

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As you know by now, Linking Universe is nearly finished developing the first true business application for the Facebook community. We are seeing a lot of opportunity in the Facebook environment and have high hopes for our ability to succeed based on our research and market evolution.

Take for instance the article posted at CenterNetworks this week. Written by Allen Stern, the article discusses the lucrative valuations of the most popular Facebook applications.

The article is irreverently titled ‘Screw Winning the Lottery - Just Make a Facebook App and Get Your Millions Now!’. Stern compares the opportunity in building Facebook applications to winning the lottery, but speculates that the odds are better if you build for Facebook.

Stern references Adonomics, a Facebook analytics company that tracks application usage and has assembled a list of top apps and their valuation. Of particular interest is Stern’s recognition that there are 71 Facebook applications listed with a valuation of over one million dollars. The top ten are over 5 million, with the number-one spot suggesting a valuation of just over 28 million.

While these numbers are speculative, and subject to some scrutiny, they are based on an algorithm that includes potential ad revenue. In support of the valuations offered, an anonymous reader claims to be a developer for one of the apps ‘high in the list’, and says that their expected ad revenue for the coming year will be in the millions.

Linking Universe is excited to be a part of the Facebook community. We feel that our application is uniquely positioned to rise among the leading apps because we are the first full-featured business application with legitimate value. And while throwing sheep at each other is fun, we feel that legitimate business tools will appeal to the greater population of Facebook, and that Linking Universe will continue to succeed as users migrate from simple social networking to Business Relationship Management.

Click Here to find the article online.

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I just received a pre-release copy of Jesse Stay’s forthcoming book titled “I’m On Facebook, Now What?”, and I think it is fantastic.

For more information about the book, including availability, keep an eye on Jesse’s blog at http://www.jessestay.com/

Jesse Stay is co-author of the book with Jason Alba. They plan to release it by the end of January 2008.

The book is designed to help you figure out ‘how to derive professional, business and career benefits from participating in Facebook’. This, of course, appeals to Linking Universe because we, too, are concerned about bringing professional business applications to the Facebook environment, and to helping you better understand your social business network so that you can leverage it more effectively.

Jesse Stay has provided consulting services to our Linking Universe project and has been helpful in building our understanding of the expanding opportunities in Facebook applications. He is a Facebook expert and has successfully launched his own Facebook applications. His co-author, Jason Alba, wrote the book titled I’m on LinkedIn - Now What?.

In his introduction, Jesse Stay discloses that he has specifically written about Facebook because of the ‘tremendous growth and flexible development platform it provides’. We couldn’t agree more; these are the reasons we choose to launch our Linking Universe business applications into the Facebook environment. Jesse goes on to state that Facebook is ‘a very exciting social network that allows businesses and professionals an opportunity to promote their message, offering, and brand to a professional audience’. We are very excited about this, too.

The book gives good instruction and advice about starting a page in Facebook, taking advantage of applications, and incorporating Facebook into business practices. The book provides great advice about privacy, addresses Facebook do’s and don’ts, and offers some enlightening strategies for building and optimizing your social network.

Linking Universe gets a mention in the book as one of Jesse’s favorite Facebook applications. Jesse has been watching our development process as a consultant and has provided great advice along the way.

We are excited to see this book come to light, and wish Jesse and Jason the best of luck. I’m On Facebook - Now What? will be available as an eBook and in hard copy.

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As you may know, Linking Universe is working to build a suite of business tools into the Facebook environment.

Our progress has been exciting and we are moving ahead at a very fast pace. We anticipate publishing the Linking Universe application suite to a small selection of handpicked beta testers around January 5, 2008. We will make small adjustments between that time and January 15th, when we plan to launch our application to all Facebook users.

The Facebook phenomenon has been astounding. Users are jumping into Facebook by the hundreds of thousands each day. According to the Facebook statistics page, Facebook has…

• More than 59 million active users
• An average of 250,000 new registrations per day since Jan. 2007
• An average of 3% weekly growth since Jan. 2007
• Active users doubling every 6 months

Linking Universe is poised to become the first business networking company to release a business tools application to the Facebook audience.

Linking Universe features business tools that help Facebook social network members understand the strength of their social network in a business sense, communicate with other Facebook users with business-oriented communications tools, and to manage referrals withing the Facebook environment, and to track business opportunities generated from those referrals.

Linking Universe is preparing to raise the bar for Facebook applications, and further legitimize Facebook as a viable business communications platform.

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Business Relationship Management, or BRM, is set to become the next great collaborative networking environment on the Web. Social network users such as FaceBook users are moving toward the workplace, bringing their social networking skills with them, but longing for business tools that help them turn contacts into business relationships, and ultimately business opportunities.

Linking Universe is a Business Relationship Management environment that allows you to build a network of contacts, analyze your network to learn how to make improvements, or to explore the strengths of specific relationships. This amount of analytical power can help you determine where to apply more support to your network, or how to establish nurturing strategies to increase your network score in a particular area of development, for instance ‘connectedness’ or ‘leadership’.

Linking Universe Business Relationship Management (BRM) will also provide powerful nurturing tools that empower you to build and strengthen your business relationships using a host of automated, passive, and interactive tools that keep you in touch with your network, and generate opportunities to make contact, spawn collaboration, and generate sales.

At the heart of Business Relationship Management (BRM) is the ability to turn your network of business relationships into business opportunities. Linking Universe includes a range of advanced sales automation tools that help you track your contact with your business network, and allow you to organize contacts into groups or accounts, and to indicate and track opportunities for each contact.

Linking Universe is poised to enter the market as the leader in Business Relationship Management.

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A recent article posted at eWeek.com discusses a marketing mistake made by a social network called Queschup.

It seems that users are abandoning Quechup in drolls due to the social network’s invasive invitation scheme.

Users who sign up for the social network are asked if they would like to ‘include’ all their contacts from online accounts such as Google and Yahoo!. Once approved, Quechup starts sending mass emails to each of the contacts, inviting them personally to join the original user’s social network in Quechup. Users are startled to learn that they have just emailed each of their contacts, and are reporting that they were not aware this was going to happen as part of the sign up process.

Linking Universe is developing the next great business network environment to include advanced social networking features along with a robust collection of tools that will help you convert your social network into an amazing business network.

As you build your business network, we give you full control. You decide who to invite, and when to invite them. Of course we are including a host of amazing tools and services that will enable you to invite single individuals, or even large groups of people. However, rest assured; you will be in control.

Linking Universe means Business, and we are serious about it.

Read the article about user concerns over having full control, here.

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Mobuzz TV today featured a discussion with Alexis Bonte, a successful Internet entrepreneur who is venturing into the online dating market, seemingly a little late. Olivia asks how social networks might compete with dating sites, and Alexis explains a few differences, and why people tend to use social networks. As it turns out, they are not used for dating so much.

The Linking Universe take on social networks is, of course, that these environments make a great foundation for business networking, given the right business networking tools.

Stay tuned for future announcements about how Linking Universe is fast becoming the most powerful business networking solution on the Web.

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