Evan Carmichael Facebook Application?

[Kevin Lee]

Hi Evan,

I know you were previously looking for different ways of using Facebook for business, so I was just wondering if you've considered creating an Application for Facebook?

"With the Forbes integration into Facebook, you can track company stocks and access related financial information, along with the latest headline news from Forbes. You can track up to ten companies by their ticker symbols, view the three most recent news headlines, and get immediate access to relevant financial data. This can be displayed on your profile page and shared with friends."
http://mashable.com/2007/05/24/facebook ... m-30-apps/ (*check out this article to see how 30+ brands are using Facebook Applications to promote their businesses and offer value).

One idea would be to allow Facebook users to pick and choose articles they follow on http://www.evancarmichael.com/ (or even recent forum posts), while another cool suggestion might be to allow users to select their favorite entrepreneurs from your list of "Famous Entrepreneurs" (similar to the "Tennis Fan" application on my Facebook profile). For instance, when someone clicks on the face of "Dana White" or "Gordon Ramsay" on my profile, it would link directly to the articles on your site. Personally, I think the ability to list your favorite entrepreneurs on your Facebook profile would have a much broader appeal than simply tracking content (e.g. people who aren't hardcore entrepreneurs or frequent users of your site would be more inclined to add an Evan Carmichael Application).

I believe Facebook Applications also allow you to collect all the personal information of its user.

Let me know what you think
Thanks

[Evan]

Hi Kevin - thanks for the suggestion!

The two that we were thinking of were Famous Entrepreneur Quotes and Which famous entrepreneur am I most like?

I like your idea as well. We've got a rollout schedule of new features for the site that we are working on first before we can get to the Facebook app. We're also not sure how hard it is to integrate into Facebook. It looks like there is a php way to do it which is great because that is our core competency.

[OmnivoreInk]

....

The two that we were thinking of were Famous Entrepreneur Quotes and Which famous entrepreneur am I most like?

So far my own foray into Facebook has been a complete bust, though I expected that from the start.

But if I do an Application for my own particular field of interest, such as Your Favorite Sci Fi movie...that might get people going.


So Evan when you figure out how to do this please let me know how complicated it is!!

[Evan]

Will do Barbara - The famous entrepreneur quotes we think would be a good Facebook application but we soon realized that we could probably get more leverage from it using it off of our site than only on Facebook so we're developing it for our site first and then seeing how complicated it is to move to Facebook.

Our first entrepreneur will be Oprah Winfrey - we're still in beta right now but I will let you know when it's fully ready to go!

[ChrisH]

Will be interesting to see how this evolves. I'll keep an eye on the posts to see what happens. There are so many social networking sites and so many ways to use them for promotion. Its just tough to figure out which to sink the time and effort into.

I'm with Barbara that I'm not overly impressed with Facebook yet, but I need to find more time to figure out how to use it better.

Chris

[TheAnonymousMan]

In regards to using Facebook I only use it to catch up with friends and old school mates. In saying this rarely do I add many applications as you are always "flooded" with requests from your friends so I simply delete 99% if all requests due to lack of commitment.

At this stage I don't believe you would see much adoption for a commercial application for Entrepreneurs on Facebook due to the way it is currently utilised as more of a personal tool.

Most people think of Facebook as a "social networking" site rather than a "professional networking" site therefore a lot of people will use it as a personal tool to display photos etc rather than using it strictly as a professional business tool.

One thing that has impressed me about Facebook in regards to business opportunities is the marketplace. I have viewed heaps of items and even one proposal for a Designer to redo a website, which I could of easily taken an interest in but chose not to due to lack of time so that was slightly exciting at the time.

What are everyone elses thoughts on facebook?