Bickel Blog

The original reason to develop a Facebook application was to generate advertising revenue. Many college and even high school students have made some decent money doing this. However, with the Ringside Social Application Server there are several new reasons for developing Facebook applications. 1. Run your Facebook application on other web sites and charge money. This let’s existing Facebook developers make money other than from Facebook advertising. Let others deploy your application easily – charging the web site to run your application, or charging the end users for that application. This includes charging for virtual goods. 2. A Facebook Application is better than a Facebook Ad. I’m not sure if that many advertising agencies or corporations who do on-line advertising realize this – but creating a Facebook application is free. And if it is a decent one, it can be seen and used by a LOT of people. It is also much more engaging than banner ads (and more targeted since they ar...

I’ve just gotten back from our announcement of Ringside Networks at OSBC and SNAP in San Francisco. The feedback and encouragement was very nice, and it seems we may have hit a need in the market. We are only at Beta level right now, but will be in production by June. Hopefully we will have a couple of sites up and running our software in the next week or two. Our team worked very hard – a big thank you to Rich Friedman, Jason Kinner, Mark Lugert, Mike Schachter, Bill Reichert, Brian Robinson, Jeff Kiesel, Rich Frisbie and the dozen or so “Friends of Ringside” who helped us get so much done. I’ve always believed that killer teams can produce a lot in a short period of time – and this team has delivered. Try out the software today by downloading it here. Here are some of the highlights from the press and blogosphere: “This sounds incredibly cool. It means that existing corporate websites can be made socially aware.” http://www.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9900858-16.html “Ringside Netw...

Today we launch the Beta version of our Ringside Networks Social Application Server. This is the first open source platform that enables businesses to weave social capabilities directly into their existing websites while seamlessly integrating with social networks such as Facebook. The open source software is available for immediate download at www.ringsidenetworks.com and www.ringsidenetworks.org , the corresponding open source community website. Companies have spent far too much time and effort building their brands, websites, content and applications to hand over social networking to some third party. Ringside Networks gives them a way to get control over this important new way of interacting with their users and customers, while still being able to tie into the big social networks. By integrating social networking as an integral part of the user experience of corporate websites, companies will be able to directly engage their global communities, enabling them to interact and com...

While Social Networking is all the rage, there is a second phase coming – the Social Application. Of course the social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace offer a variety of social applications – like connecting with friends or colleagues, blogs, picture sharing, walls, event sharing, polls, etc. There are three main features to this new social wave of the web: 1. User generated content – allowing for self expression 2. Social connect ions – friends, groups and ways to organize and communicate between them 3. Social applications – combining user generated content and social connections with traditional content and applications The large social networking sites provide the generic social applications. By opening up their API’s, they have allowed others to create social applications. Many of these new applications have targeted fun and interesting ways of getting user generated content with applications like “Super Walls” or connecting to friends (and enemies) with “Vampire Bit...

I was meeting with the CMO of a large e-commerce company yesterday talking about the use of social networking approaches for existing web sites. He echoed what he felt was most compelling about Ringside’s plans: “If you go to any person responsible for a major web site and ask them if they want to find a way to make their web site more engaging to their users and create better ways to lead new users to their site, they will all say ‘YES!’. And it is obvious that making social applications a part of the web site will do just that.” Of course being in the e-commerce business he needs to see proof and an ROI on the promise of increased user engagement and virality with the big social networks. Right now this company is dipping their toe in the water by opening up their own web services to allow affiliates to build applications in the large social networks – thus driving traffic and sales towards them. Later this week and into next week I plan on doing a series of blogs about the benefi...