ThinkingNectar

Today I am engaged to cover the 2nd facebook garage held in Singapore. Jointly organized by e27 Singapore and PHP Meetup group Singapore. Venue is kindly provided Microsoft Singapore.

So there is some time left before the actual start of the event. Meanwhile early birds can help themselves to the food.

Officially we are underway. Michael is providing a over view of the event. With a panel discussion to start off the event. And 2 separate tracks, a demo and technical track. Plus a lucky draw to round off the event.

The Panel Discussion

Bernard Leong open the session titled: Marketing and Monetization of Facebook Apps. His slide throws a question to start off: Are there too many social networks?

Next he show a chart that covers the growth of the different social networks and briefly touch upon social network fatigue.

With regards to marketing, he mention that social network provide a great platform for marketing all due to peer pressure. Next he mention that facebook faces (pun unintended) privacy issues and can be used for different agendas, citing the latest American election with Obama being the poster boy for such usage.

The panelist introduce themselve, with Leonard Lin, Andrew Wee and Kien Lee.

Warm Up questions

Any useful tricks to share about how to spread the word quickly thru the social graph?

Addressed to Andrew.

Andrew mention that knowing the user base is important to address the correct type of interest. This will in turn result in the quality of the user who will pay or use the service or the application.

Hot Chick theory proposed by Kien.

The right seeds at the right places will get the message out. Get to the important people or correct people and the crowd will tip towards you. How to identify such people was not covered. He cited an example from the popular book, “The Tipping Point”.

Andrew also add that 90% of the revenue will come from the States and Canada. Hence it is still important to focus the effort on these geographic regions.

Are there any monetization strategies other than online advertising?

3 strategies: Pay per click. Pay for impression and Pay per action(sales/install). Leonard added that selling virtual items are viable for his case which is Battle Station.

Andrew introduced a concept of “forced upgrade” to allow user to get premium services, even without the user paying for it. And he quoted that he had seen users filling in a 20 mins survey just to get “glitters” on their profile.

What are the reliable metrics for one to measure the success of a facebook marketing campaign?

I missed out this part as I cannot type, listen and process at the same time. I do not come installed with Quad Core.

Given the increasing number of facebook apps, are the users hitting the point of marginal utility given the spam and endless number of invitation?

Andrew mentioned that when the market is saturated, the cream apps will surface as user will pick the best app to spend that attention on. Also saturated market is where word of mouth marketing is at the most effective.

Leonard cheekily mentioned that he had users who had to logged in to facebook just to have fun with Battle Stations and indirectly, he is doing facebook a favour.

Also touched upon is the Report Abuse App by Kien. It allow users to report apps that force invitation for 20 users. And those apps that have spammy ads, or target children. Generally anything that is unacceptable for the good at large.

Bernard now open questions from the floor.

What are the Strategies that can be used to select who to invite? Think I gotten this question really way off as I cannot hear what was the question asked.

What are the concerns that developers should be looking at in marketing and cashing in on their apps?

Do not block the best guys and the best guys are for example: Slides, Fun Wall to name a few. The big players have a relation with facebook and are the forefront of app development and marketing. They have gone around force invites and able to forward their invitation to new users. In short, they been there done there and learning from them is something that new developers must do.

What does the panelise think of Open Social? Any of the panelist have moved or intend to move their app out of facebook?

Moving on, the panelists feel that going for Open Social still premature and targeting established sites like MySpace or Bebo. Also to take notice are the different type of users in Myspace, Friendster etc. A straight port from on platform to another is highly difficult without understanding the demographics, said Andrew.

Kien also added that from his experience, MySpace users are more ads savvy and will not click ads and will go to the extend of ignoring them. He expects facebook users to be that way and it is just a matter of time.

Is using facebook app a good way to direct traffic to a external website?

The point here is to provide value for facebook and to give more value for the user to go to an external site. Not just framing an external site and call it an app.

Last question: Is facebook a gold mine? Asked by Bernard himself.

Leonard mention that there is not loyalty among developers. Developers can by all means go onto other platforms. To monetize, it does take luck, timing and again, more luck!

With this, Bernard closes the discussion.

Added Post Event:

Kein did mention during the discussion that developers who looking to create any facebook app to have a gameplan as there are people who shamelessly copy apps concepts and duplicate the apps. Make sure that there is a solid user experience, traction, and sound business model to back up the app before releasing it in the directory or the developers forums.