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New Speakers Confirmed for Inside Social Apps 2012 – February 8th and 9th in San Francisco

Posted: 08 Nov 2011 05:30 PM PST

February 8 – 9, 2012 | San Francisco

 

 

We’re excited to announce our latest round of confirmed speakers for Inside Social Apps 2012, coming back to San Francisco on February 8-9, 2012.

In addition to our 19 previously confirmed speakers, we’ll be welcoming the following new speakers to Inside Social Apps:

  • Carl Sjogreen, Director of Product Management, Facebook
  • Cory Ondrejka, Director of Engineering, Facebook
  • Charles Hudson, Co-founder and CEO, Bionic Panda Games
  • John Earner, GM European Studios, EA/Playfish
  • Will Harbin, Chairman and CEO, Kixeye
  • David Katz, VP of Digital Media, Starz
  • Clara Shih, Founder and CEO, Hearsay Labs
  • Mike Ouye, Founder and CEO, Red Robot Labs
  • Suchit Dash, Co-founder and VP of Product, Ifeelgoods
  • Suleman Ali, Co-founder and CEO, TinyCo
  • Riz Virk, Co-founder and CEO, Gameview Studios

If you're considering attending Inside Social Apps 2012, take advantage of limited early registration pricing and register now.

Space will be limited, and both previous Inside Social Apps conferences have sold out in advance.

A very limited number of passes are available at the Early Announcement price of $299. This price will be good through Wednesday November 16th only, so we encourage you to register now.

Who's Speaking?

We're excited to present the following 30 confirmed speakers at Inside Social Apps 2012:

Carl Sjogreen
Director of Product Management, Facebook
Cory Ondrejka
Director of Engineering, Facebook
Charles Hudson
Co-founder and CEO, Bionic Panda Games
John Earner
GM European Studios, EA / Playfish
Clara Shih
Founder and CEO, Hearsay Labs
Mike Ouye
Founder and CEO, Red Robot Labs
Suleman Ali
Co-founder and CEO, TinyCo
Will Harbin
Chairman and CEO, Kixeye
David Katz
VP of Digital Media, Starz
Suchit Dash
Co-founder and VP of Product, Ifeelgoods
Daniel Terry
Co-founder & CEO, Pocket Gems
Atul Bagga
Senior Analyst – Video Games & China Internet, Lazard Capital Markets
Perry Tam
CEO, Storm8
Peter Farago
VP Marketing, Flurry
Paul Bettner
GM, Zynga With Friends
Kevin Chou
Co-founder and CEO, Kabam
Michael Lazerow
CEO, Buddy Media
Simon Mansell
CEO, TBG Digital
Anil Dharni
Co-founder, Funzio; Founder, Storm8
Mike Sego
CEO, Gaia Interactive
Tim Chang
Managing Director, Mayfield Fund
Micah Adler
Founder & CEO, Fiksu
Arjun Sethi
CEO, 6waves Lolapps
Brenda Garno
COO & Game Designer, Loot Drop
Bill Jackson
Creative Director, CastleVille, Zynga
Hussein Fazal
CEO & Co-founder, AdParlor
Mihir Shah
President & CEO, TapJoy
Lisa Marino
CEO, RockYou
Rick Thompson
Co-Founder, Playdom, and Investor
Riz Virk
Co-founder and CEO, Gameview Studios

We’ll continue to add new speakers to our 2012 lineup, so please check Inside Social Apps in the weeks to come.

Registration

There is very limited $299 Early Registration pricing for the full 2-day conference pass for Inside Social Apps 2012, available until November 16th only.

Previous Inside Social Apps conferences have sold out in advance of event day, so we strongly encourage you to register now.

About Inside Social Apps

Inside Social Apps 2012 will explore new opportunities, as well as emerging risks, in the development, distribution and monetization of social and mobile applications. Inside Social Apps 2012 will span February 8 – 9, and will bring together the world’s leading social and mobile developers and investors for critical discussion and analysis.

Social applications first made their splash in the US in 2007, and have now evolved into a global media ecosystem. Today’s social and mobile apps comprise a profitable multi-billion dollar industry, characterized by vibrant investment activity and newly emerging opportunities on mobile platforms.

Inside Social Apps is Inside Network’s content-focused conference series that investigates the latest trends and challenges for social and mobile applications and the companies that bring them to market.

Past Inside Social Apps events have seen sold out well before conference day, so we strongly encourage you to register early.

A full agenda will be announced shortly. Keep an eye on Inside Social Apps for more information.

Registration

We have made available a limited number of tickets at special $299 Early Registration pricing, and we strongly encourage you to register now.

From all of us at Inside Network, we look forward to seeing you on February 8 and 9 in San Francisco!

Music on Facebook: New Stats Show Spotify, Others Growing Fast

Posted: 08 Nov 2011 01:21 PM PST

Music apps using Facebook have seen their traffic double or even grow tenfold since f8, giving developers at companies like Spotify, and even Ticketmaster, more to love about Facebook’s big platform feature launched at its f8 developer conference in September.

According to a Facebook developer blog today, users have shared their listening activity more than 1.5 billion times using Facebook-integrated apps since f8. As we’ve been tracking in our AppData traffic tracking service, Spotify has been the biggest beneficiary, rapidly growing from 1.2 million to 2.4 million daily active users so far since f8. It has even seen some sharp spikes in recent days, although it’s not currently clear why.

The features driving the growth include the newly-introduced ability for apps to publish listeners activity to Facebook's news feed and new home page Ticker, as we’ve been covering. Of course, so has the licensing agreements that Spotify and its partners have worked out — Facebook hadn’t been able to offer streaming music for years due to disagreements with record labels.

Timeline, the new version of user profiles, has yet to become available for most people, but Facebook says today in the post that it expects it to be ”one of the key channels for expression and discovery.”

Facebook also says it has helped stimulate the music industry’s ability to sell tickets for shows. Eventbrite, Ticketmaster and Ticketfly have all seen between $2 and $6 in direct ticket sales for every link shared, according to today's post. Global online revenue for the music industry is forecasted to increase 7 percent to $6.3 billion this year, reported technology research firm Gartner; Facebook could now be helping to drive that.

The developer blog includes some other numbers seen by music app partners since f8, noting a 1350 percentage increase in number of Facebook fans of the band users are listening to on Earbits, a 246 percent growth in business for MOG, and a 30x increase in new users from Facebook to Rdio. Of course, any growth equals a huge percentage when the starting number is small, and that’s the case for all of these other services. Still, we expect the tight integration of music, and the new features, to keep the music industry liking Facebook for a long time to come.

Samsung, Levi’s, Walmart, Zynga, Sports, Halloween and More on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages

Posted: 08 Nov 2011 11:15 AM PST

Brands such as Samsung Mobile, Levi's Walmart and Facebook were popular on our list of the fastest growing Facebook Pages by the number of Likes this week, in addition to a few sports Pages, a small business Page and the Halloween Community Page. There were also a few Page consolidations that made the list. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks Page growth across Facebook.

Name Likes Daily Growth Weekly Growth
1.  Jamaicansmusic.com 1,896,477 +131 +675,353
2.  TNT We Know Drama 820,504 +1,769 +613,466
3.  Samsung Mobile 4,242,723 +99,905 +546,700
4.  Levi’s 8,564,067 +67,589 +509,796
5.  John Grisham 983,221 +445,938 +451,101
6.  Titanic 13,486,119 +57,296 +409,479
7.  Texas Hold’em Poker 52,422,603 +48,919 +348,831
8.  Small Business Saturday 1,884,732 +19,346 +337,015
9.  facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake! 445,351 0 +333,025
10.  Walmart 10,084,387 +51,460 +328,335
11.  Facebook 55,174,470 +42,966 +324,688
12.  Need for Speed 4,459,374 +14,882 +324,261
13.  Hotel Urbano 800,712 +41,795 +323,379
14.  UFC: Ultimate Fighting Championship 6,867,709 +3,189 +323,106
15.  Toma tu like .l. 1,192,678 +143,173 +304,661
16.  Real Madrid C.F. 21,248,219 +30,610 +303,954
17.  Halloween 651,288 +127,724 +298,886
18.  Te quiero ♥… Ver BIEN lejos :D 408,752 +61,101 +296,513
19.  Adele 8,087,732 +37,192 +296,030
20.  Cristiano Ronaldo 35,893,624 +41,471 +276,318

Jamaicansmusic.com grew by 675,400 Likes, apparently by a Page consolidation. The other musician that was on the list was singer Adele, whose Page saw 296,000 Likes in the past week as she was nominated for a music award. A few media Pages made the list, TNT We Know Drama by 613,500 Likes as the result of a Page consolidation and then " Titanic" with 409,500 Likes.

Brands previously mentioned included Samsung Mobile with 546,700 Likes as the company promotes a new phone. Then Levi’s saw 509,800 Likes after the company sponsored a nationwide hiring day in its stores. Walmart saw 328,300 Likes on its Page, which includes a variety of promotions that create feed and news ticker stories. Facebook grew by 324,700 Likes and Brazilian discount travel company Hotel Urbano by 323,400 Likes, the Page is constantly posting updates about deals.

There were games on the list, Texas Hold’em Poker with 348,800 Likes and Need for Speed with 324,300 Likes, growing a lot after the release of a Michael Bay-directed commercial. There were also sports on the list. UFC: Ultimate Fighting Championship benefitted from a Page consolidation with 323,100 Likes. Then Real Madrid C.F. with 304,000 Likes and team star Cristiano Ronaldo saw 276,300; both Pages posted constantly about news and team-related photos.

The rest of the list was rounded out by author John Grisham, who seemed to benefit from a Page consolidation with 451,100 Likes. American Express' Small Business Saturday Page grew by 337,000 Likes as the November 26 event. The  facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake! grew by 333,000 Likes but doesn't appear to work. Toma tu like .l. is a Spanish language humor site with 304,700 Likes this week. The Halloween Community Page grew by 298,900 Likes and finally the Te quiero ♥… Ver BIEN lejos :D Page grew by 296,500 Likes.

Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sandberg Talk IPO, Engineers, Steve Jobs With Charlie Rose

Posted: 08 Nov 2011 10:12 AM PST

Last night, Charlie Rose aired exclusive conversations with Facebook's top executives, chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. Taped last Thursday in Palo Alto, the interview first ran on PBS and will also appear tonight on Bloomberg TV and on CharlieRose.com.

Here are highlights we saw.

On the upcoming IPO:

"…We've made this implicit promise to our investors and to our employees that by compensating them with equity and by giving them equity, that at some point we're going to make that equity worth something publicly and liquidly… Whether it's a dividend or not, they'll be able to trade their equity for money. And you know, that's something we take seriously, as a responsibility of running the company."

Sandberg and Zuckerberg both remain discreet about timing of the IPO, and Zuckerberg says he hardly thinks about the IPO at this point.

'Can't find' enough talented engineers:

Sandberg: "We have both an education problem and an immigration problem…" We do not train—we don't graduate enough kids from high school. We don't graduate enough kids from college in this country. And having these kinds of skills, we're just absolutely far off."

China expansion is likely far off:

After some hemming and hawing about its plans to expand into China, Zuckerberg and Sandberg agreed that they’ve decided not to try to go in at present because of government policies.

Sandberg: So it’s not really our choice. It’s the government’s choice, you know. We’re not available because they’ve chosen to make us not available.

Rose: Because they’ve acted a certain way,  you’ve chosen not to go there. Fair enough.

Zuckerberg: Yes.

Sandberg: No, it’s — yeah, yeah.

Zuckerberg then goes on to explain that Facebook wants to be everywhere eventually over the decades and so he hopes they’ll be able to get to China one day.

Why America and Silicon Valley rules:

One, Sandberg says, is the ability to have high caliber engineers, and other is to "educate engineers who can just try out their own ideas" and the "freedom to do that." Free market economics, as Sandberg says. Facebook, Google, Apple: they've all capitalized on America's supportive entrepreneurial environment. And Facebook and Google are pretty similar, admits Sandberg, since they are both founder-led. Then Zuckerberg adds a dig, as an aside: “Google, I think, in some ways, is more competitive and certainly is trying to build their own little version of Facebook.” Google’s Bradley Horowitz responded on Bloomberg yesterday to say that he was happy to be underestimated. Anyway.

Sandberg: In America, we've had a country of entrepreneurs.

Zuckerberg: Yeah.

Sandberg: We've set up our political system so you can start companies. You can close companies. I think people don't always see the costs of increasing beauracracy on entrepreneurship. The best people are going to go where they can get the best talent and where they have the best environment to hire.

Why Facebook won't build games:

Zuckerberg: "What we're doing is really hard. And we think that we're better off focusing on this piece. I think that building a great game service is really hard… And we just believe that an independent entrepreneur will always beat a division of a big company."

On Steve Jobs:

Zuckerberg: "He's amazing. He was amazing… I had a lot of questions for him on.. How to build a team around you, right, that's focused on building as high quality and good things as you are. How to keep an organization focused…It's like we're trying to do this thing in the world. And I don't know, a lot of it I just think we connected on that level."

There was a little hesitancy when Rose asked if Jobs ever wanted to buy Facebook. But Zuckerberg recounts that Jobs once said, "I admire Facebook because you guys don't want to sell out."

Here’s the preview of the show:

Facebook Picks Up Talent Behind SproutCore With HTML5-Focused Strobe Acquisition

Posted: 08 Nov 2011 09:02 AM PST

Facebook has announced a second mobile talent acquisition in two days as the company bought Strobe, the maker of a platform supporting mobile web apps that can work on multiple devices and operating systems like iOS and Android.

The company’s founder Charles Jolley was behind Sproutcore, an open source Javascript framework that lets developers create web-based applications that resemble native desktop experiences. He also designed the architecture behind MobileMe’s web-based applications at Apple. Facebook said Jolley will join the company’s mobile engineering team.

His company Strobe, which raised $2.5 million from O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Hummer Winblad, lets developers test code for mobile web apps and manage their deployment across multiple platforms from a single interface. It also comes with analytics to track usage.

The deal to buy Strobe plays into a big push this year to get developers building HTML5-based mobile web applications instead of native ones for the iOS or Android platforms, which Facebook doesn’t have as much power to influence.

After several months of anticipation, Facebook launched an HTML5-centric platform last month that enables mobile developers to spread their applications virally — which is something the native iOS and Android app stores aren’t really designed to do because they’re directory-based and curated (especially in Apple’s case.)

>> Read more on Inside Mobile Apps.

New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: AdParlor, SNAP Interactive, Syncapse and More

Posted: 08 Nov 2011 06:27 AM PST

Several companies hired sales and account management staff this week and SNAP Interactive brought on Jon Pedersen Sr. as CFO.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com, and we'll get it into next week's post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes directly from company updates from LinkedIn.

Looking for new opportunities? Check out the Inside Network Job Board, which shows the latest openings at leading companies in the industry.

Here's this week's list of hires:

SNAP Interactive

  • Jon Pedersen Sr., Chief Financial Officer – formerly Senior Vice President – Controller of Warner Music Group.

Syncapse

  • Deirdre Jarvis, Product Manager - formerly the Manager of Measurement Science at Syncapse.
  • Nirujan Suresh, Software Developer - formerly Application Software Developer at CriSys Limited.

AdParlor

  • Denis Melnik, Account Manager – formerly the Xbox Marketing Assistant at Microsoft.

Efficient Frontier

  • Floris ter Braak, Associate Account Manager – previously was a student.

Wildfire

  • Joe Elga, Social Media Marketing – previously a student.

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.