I went to a 60+ conference where WidgetBox, Google (the dark empire), and Hi5 were hosting a OpenSocial and get-to-know how to launch widgets event in San Francisco.  I was pleased with the turnout, roughly 60+ people attended representing between 10 to 15 different companies.  And did I mention that they had FREE  free pizza and beer?  Good stuff!

Anyway, the biggest takeaway for me was the contacts that I met at the event and to hear what Google was up to next.  Hi5, for those of you that don’t know, is by far the largest social network with the most up-to-date implementation of Open Social to date.  We’re excited to begin working towards building our first OpenSocial appliation on Hi5 when the time comes - and hopefully, we’ll be ready.

Okay, its been almost a week since new year day but it’s better late than never, right?

Here’s my New Year’s resolution:

1. Get out more (i.e. biking, running, swimming, etc.)
2. Use my 24-hour membership (i use to be in good-to-decent shape and tone but now even my friends are telling me I’m looking quite “square” lately - bastards!!)
3. Life-work balance!! (is there such a thing for start-ups and new business operators?)
4. Eat more veggies, drink more water, and eat less junk food
5. Connect with more entrepreneurs, business operators, and start-ups in the surrounding area
6. Get more sleep (perhaps a half an hour more each day)
7. Take at least one day off a week (one full day with no email, laptop, cellphone, yogurt…)
8. Read at least one book a month that is not marketing, business or tech related (Charles Tyler - a fellow UCD grad - recommended a book to me, “The Art of the Start” by Guy Kawasaki). Thanks Charles!!
9. Keep in contact with friends (even if it is simply “poking” them)
10. Focus on the big plan (first) and then the tactical steps, not the other way around (in the hyper Web 3.0 world it’s sometimes easy to get caught up on the daily ups and downs which can be extremely distracting - don’t do that!!)

On retrospect, 2007 was a nail-biting, grueling (long hours), uncertain (risky) and definitely a rewarding experience in the making for an unbelievable year. Here’s a summary: opened a traditional retail business (Mochii Yogurt), graduated from UC Davis (MBA), and partnered up with good friends to start tech ventures in the flat that sits above my yogurt cafe. Looking back, I’m proud of the incremental steps towards becoming a full-time entrepreneur. I thoroughly enjoyed what my friend Meliza calls the “process.”

I’ve met new friends and contacts along the journey. People I probably would not have met otherwise. Contacts from the Sacramento Bee, KVIE, Sactown Magazine, SN & R, UC Davis, The Blue District, Facebook, Mochii Yogurt, and other organizations and communities.

Looking forward into the year, I would like to continue to build upon what was built in 2007; for example, continue to expand upon Mochii Yogurt’s momentum and to expand the KlickNation.com community from 500,000 members to 10 million members (fingers crossed) . This is going to be an exciting year all around, for sure. Up, up and to infinity and to beyond…

“May fortune favor the bold and brave…”
- Mark Otero the well caffeinated marketer

I received an email from Bebo’s VP of Marketing two days ago regarding their developer’s program.  It appears that only a handful of developers are part of their beta-developer program and the doors are closed for new developers - including us.  Of course, I’m not happy - but we’re deep in developing in Facebook at the moment.

Now that we have over 250,000 users (in less than 4 weeks), we’ve developed a decent sized database to gather statistics from.

Research Findings:

• 78% of all users are between the ages of 19 and 29

• 19-year olds make up over 15% of all users (the largest group) - see the histogram

• The age group that invites the most friends are people over the age of 30 and under the age of 16
• England, Canada, United States and Croatia (in that order) make up the largest user installations, with Croatia almost tied with the United States
• For our projects “Happy Pills” and “You and Me” they receive over 180,000 daily page views and over 36,000 daily active users, which means:
• ~7,500 page views per hour
• ~125 page requests per second over three dedicated servers
• Pageviews are up 400% over last week’s and should increase by another 100% next week
• The most popular times are between the hours 9AM to 4PM (PST)

Summary:

• Growth is in INTERNATIONAL markets not DOMESTIC (U.S)
• The sensitivity of the experienced U.S. users’ reluctance to install new applications is being offset - mostly - by the tremendous growth of Facebook’s popularity in international markets (i.e. Croatia, Indonesia, South Africa, Australia)
• England is the fastest growing market, eclipsing all countries by 4x!!!
• The top 2 to 4% of applications appear to make up over 99% of all daily active users - if you’re not in the top 4% you’re not making $$
• Simple “HUG ME” and “KISS ME” applications are all all decaying fast in daily activity (i.e. KissMe) due to several factors: (a) novelty is played out, (b) competition is fierce and rapid, (c) these apps exhibit “spam-like” qualities that are turning users off, and (d) the utility (i.e. engagement) of these applications is pitifully low.

The beauty of launching apps in Facebook and other social platforms is that you get real-time results: the good and the bad.

“You and Me?” shot up to 7,000 users within three days, but it’s growth has waned and plateaued; “Happy Pills”, strangely enough, has continued to gain ground and is now ranked # 166 (up 20 positions over last week) out of 11,300 apps.

You and Me is a real-time match-making service where it facilitates the meeting of interested-people through three simple buttons: Yes or No or Maybe. If a user says “yes” or “maybe” to someone and that someone says “yes” or “maybe” back then it’s a match. Happy Pills is a very simple application where you send “happy pills” to friends - and strangers - to cheer them up. The algorithms that drive You and Me are much more complex than Happy Pills’.
We’ve changed You and Me’s algorithms for user recruitment and imagery on the first page, and made a number of other changes which resulted in real-time results and information in helping us make rational decisions. What have we learned? Match-making may be the wrong position in Facebook. Saying “YES” to someone - I think - is more about feeding someone’s vanity than it is about match-making. Why? We mocked up a really HOT girl’s profile and she said “YES” to a number of guys. About ~20% of the guys said “YES” back. We’ve also noticed that there have been over 10,000 matches made but slightly less than 3,000 messages have been exchanged between the matching parties. What does this mean?
The data is telling me that match-making may not be the ideal position in Facebook, it’s a good position - but not a great one. We’re aiming for 100,000 daily active users - not just 8,000 daily active users. Don’t get me wrong, 8,000 daily active users is an incredible feat to achieve within a week but we’re aiming higher than that. We want over 100,000 daily active users.

What’s next for You and Me? Vanity. We’re going to make some changes and see what happens. It may work, or it won’t. That’s the beauty of creating apps in social platforms you get immediate results, sometimes within hours and at most within a day or two.