Seattle was great. The conferance was great. The people were great, and this makes me feel great. Speaking on the panel was fun and I think I added more humor then facts since Dave McClure at the end said to me “We didn’t learn anything but it was fucking fun”. We did have some laughs but I felt that we touched on some interesting points on friending habits, news source, marketing, and professionalism on Facebook. The conference had some really great panels, and had some boring Facebook 101 presentations. I sometimes take for granted I have been growing up with these websites and some people are using them for the first time. The one thing I really enjoy about these conference unlike in many other industries is that Internet Social Network  people are there to help others. ( This will be a post in the future) Anyway back to Seattle, the city has such a positive energy and artistic vibe that you can feel. It is obvious why people want to work and live in Seattle, regardless how bad their Baseball team is.  

Today I will be part of a speaking panel at Web Community Forum. The panel will comprised of Teresa Valdez Klein and Dave McClure, and we will be discussing Facebook as a professional tool. Notes will be provided later on in the week, as it will be a collaborative effort of the entire Carrot Crew to summarize the events of this week’s forum for all of you. Web Community Forum Topic & Description.

Facebook for Professionals: A Session for the Community Building in the Age of Facebook Conference.December 5, 2007 • 11:30 amPresented by Mike Germano, Dave McClure, Teresa Valdez Klein

Now that Facebook has announced that it plans to include granular permissioning for different types of friends, the question on everyone’s minds is, “What does this mean for Linkedin?” Linkedin has long been the social network of choice for professionals. But its dominance in this space has been under attack as more professionals spend their time networking on Facebook. This growth has been limited somewhat by the fact that Facebook does not currently have a system for designating how well a “friend” is known to you, or by what means. This limitation has meant that some content — photos of a Saturday evening spent singing semi-inebriated karoke, for example — might be better suited to an e-mail among friends than a dedicated Facebook album. The restoration of the personal-professional barrier on Facebook is a boon to twenty-somethings like me —who have been on the site since college. With this type of content permissioning firmly in place, all kinds of people are free to start using Facebook as a professional network as well as a place for friends to congregate. This imbues a number of old questions with new importance:

• How do I manage my professional relationships on Facebook?
• What is the proper etiquette for a friend request?
• What are the special concerns for professional women on Facebook?
• How will these granular permissions play out?
• What features would make Facebook an even better place for professionals to network in the future?

We’ll be asking and discussing these questions and more in a session at the upcoming Web Community Forum conference in a session entitled “Facebook for Professionals.” What do you guys think? How are you using the site to network professionally? Personally? Where does the divide create conflict?

Well I am very excited to let everyone know that we are are launching our newest application with Dank Apps called BE SANTA. This is something that I am very excited about and we are def testing the Facebook landscape a little bit with your Virtual and Real goods ideas. Jason Beckerman and the entire Dank Apps team has worked really hard on this now it is up to the users. I did a little video blog to talk about the launch that day. As you can see my family and I have a lot of fun and my brother and sister wanted to get in on the action. 

Wednesday evening I had the opportunity to attended Facebook Developer Garage in NYC with Jason Beckerman and Mike Radparvar. As part of a global effort to link Facebook-minded business professionals with developers, the event was held at Daylife.com’s new headquarters. A huge thank you goes out to DayLife for providing a great venue for the event. If you would like to keep track of future Facebook Developer Garage events, and you are in the tri-state area, check out the Facebook Developer Garage Group.

Overall, we enjoyed the Garage as it did provide for some new insight into the future of the Facebook platform, some libations and plenty of my favorite food—pizza. However, it was apparent that not everyone present was as committed to creative, quality content for Facebook as the Carrot Crew is. I can always expect to get a hearty chuckle out of these events, watching business slicksters in expensive suits beg and plead with young programmers, sporting a Home Star Runner T-shirt and ripped jeans, to get rich quick in the “Facebook Craze.” Still, there was a decent amount of new information available and always opportunity to connect with like-minded Facebook professionals.

I, along with Jason and Phil from Dank Apps, presented the LOTTO to the Garage and it was well received with congratulations and constructive comments. And, yes, we did give a small plug for any designers or developers interested in working for a cutting-edge, fun company, to join the Carrot Crew or Dank Apps. After the presentation, we grabbed a few Brooklyn Brews with a great crowd or developers, designers, professionals and friends alike.

Kermit the Frog once said, “It ain’t easy being green!” My company and I completely disagree, and that’s why we are excited to introduce the first Application released by Dank Apps Inc—LOTTO. Now Facebook users can win weekly jackpots with this weekly contest application. As Lotto grows, so do the jackpots. Best of all, users get up to seven tickets and roll the dice of luck without paying a cent.

Within three weeks of launching, LOTTO already has over 80,000 users and is ranked as one of the most recently active Facebook applications. Its instant and growing popularity has warranted us to start work on a 2.0 version of it, where we will be utilizing more ‘Word of Mouse’ functions. We will have new and improved updates soon, but for now check out the logo and method of design below.