collegiateceo

http://upandrunning.entrepreneur.com/2010/04/07/rice-business-plan-prize-money-hits-1-million/

Zuck is a rock star!! (In the sense that ‘rockstars’ today are not really of their own making and doesn’t really mean that they have artistic merit.) Sitting at F8, the Facebook Developers’ Conference in a large dark room with what has to be over 300 people (I am sure more, my off the cuff head counting abilities have never been that good, kinda of like my lack of ability to measure distance), I’m starting to sweat a little bit because it’s a bit steamy and out comes Mark Zuckerberg to give the keynote. Not much new here in his speech, and to be honest, I heard the words ‘open bar;, so I’m itching to get out of here into the main area. The main reason I wanted to attend was the workshops - App Building 101, Making money on Facebook, Building Successful Apps, etc - I want to be in on the action - most importantly, I want a piece of that fbFund money. CollegiateCEO and another app which I have yet to get things completely together on, I would enter into the Fund competition by the end of August deadline, so I need to get cracking.

Zuck mentioned time and again that the goal of Facebook is openness and transparency, trying to extend the reach of openness, giving people the power to share by making things more open and connected, making the world more open. He mentioned that at last year’s F8, there were 24 million users of Facebook, today there are around 90 mil. Facebook is now about 2/3 international. Almost 40% of the Canadian pop is on Facebook. Facebook is opening up the translation tools for app developer translation. There are over 400k developers for Facebook apps at the moment. I can’t say that I am a big fan of Facebook as a monetized business model, however, I am completely in awe of it’s ability to ingratiate itself into our lives. Insane.

This conference has shown me the importance of the social graph - a graph of everyone’s real connections. However, I had a discussion with a web developer in which he made a good point, the way that we leverage or reach out to our social graph in the real world is entirely different than the way we do online - no one has yet to duplicate it. For instance, what you might tell your friends last night about that party you went to and that person you made out with, will most likely (and without much effort because that filtering and editing tends to be automatic) not be the same story you tell your co-workers and parents. So how does one bridge the real and the virtual? Moreover, how does this bridge become the pain in the ass, I can’t help but check the website at least 5x a day tool (a pun is definitely at work here…) that Facebook has?


Highlights of F8/Announcements:
Incentives for meaningful applications instead that are trying to do more than spread themselves virally. Full story feed - choosing from different templates, meaning if someone has spent a lot of time developing an album, etc, they can highlight that particular album in the full story feed. The simplicity of Facebook connect, in mounting one site to another, was made available yesterday.

I am in awe of Ben Casnocha. This blog and the CollegiateCEO site will be following this young entrepreneur and pass on any knowledge he chooses to share on his blog.

I read the Four Hour Work Week a little less than a year ago and in my quest to gather knowledge for CCEO, came across the illustrious Mr. Tim Ferriss again. Being in a space in which the desire to be a student of lifestyle design and become one of the new rich is at an all-time high, I’ve begun absorbing his blog and rereading the book. Tim has accomplished many of the things that I have always dreamed and have resolved to accomplish in the very near future. One project I am working on is contacting one businessperson/writer/musician, etc everyday for the next two weeks, starting yesterday. Monday: Brian Solis PR 2.0 wizard, Tuesday: Ben Casnocha, Wednesday: Emily Chang (awesomeness, if I was a true technie, I’d want to be her), Thursday: Chris Sacca, Friday - not sure yet, still making the list. Quite possibly Tim Ferriss. Thinking also Rick Moody, Benjamin Kunkle, Christiane Amanpour, Erol Alkan, ILK, Robert Kiyosaki, Ivanka Trump…

Studying the viability of Twitter as a successful business tool. :-)

Just getting started!!