GSP East '08--Social Networks Move into Future

For Immediate Release 
For more information contact: 
Maureen Jennings 
maureen@oreilly.com 
707.827.7083 

GSP East Captures Vast Potential of Social Networking Phenomenon 
Conference Teaches Developers and Businesses the Tools for Success 

Sebastopol, CA-At the O'Reilly Graphing Social Patterns East conference in 
Washington, D.C., June 9-11, Facebook announced that it had more than 80 
million active users worldwide, a milestone that illustrated the 
phenomenal growth and business opportunities presented by the explosion of 
social networking since Facebook was founded barely four years ago. 

Social networks are quickly changing the way people connect, communicate, 
work and play on the net. In another example of the rapidly evolving 
field, just the day before the conference Apple introduced an iPhone that 
is smarter, cheaper and faster on the Internet, spurring talk at GSP East 
2008 that social networking on mobile devices will become even more 
prevalent. 

Tackling this fast-moving arena with a two-track approach, the timely 
O'Reilly GSP East conference presented both technical developers and 
business executives with the tools and know-how they need to reach 
millions of users by building and distributing applications for MySpace, 
Facebook, Google's OpenSocial, and other such platforms. 

The development track, App Development and Technical Strategy, featured 
detailed explorations of the features, APIs, applications, widgets, feeds, 
and platforms that are driving innovation, thereby giving developers the 
first-hand information they need to roll up their sleeves and start 
writing code. 

The business track, Business and Marketing Strategy, taught strategies 
that make sites truly successful. From the trenches, experienced speakers 
shared their hard-won knowledge of how to attract online communities, how 
to retain them, and how to profit from them. Sessions emphasized the 
differences between advertising and app-vertising, showing that social 
applications are a new way to advertise by combining content and 
advertising into one unit. 

East Coast Blogging commented about a Tuesday session that illustrated the 
potential for growth. In the session titled "Ten Million in Ten Weeks: 
What Stanford Learned Building Facebook Apps," GSP East conference chair 
Dave McClure told about enrolling 100 students in a Stanford University 
class on building Facebook applications in September 2007.  By December 
the students had created more than 50 applications and attracted 10 
million installs and 1 million daily users. 

"Several companies have been formed and many of those students have no 
shortage of job offers," East Coast Blogging wrote. 

Social networking is particularly hot this year, following the 
groundbreaking launch of the Facebook Platform last year and the emergence 
of multiple new open social platforms this year, including MySpace, Bebo, 
and LinkedIn. For both developers and business leaders, this means 
far-reaching opportunities for innovation and profit. 

To help conference-goers keep track of this fast-moving realm of the Web, 
Roger Magoulas, Director of Research at O'Reilly Media, provided an update 
on the big-picture trends in Facebook application building and usage, 
highlighting O'Reilly's most recent research findings. Among the topics 
Magoulas covered were concentration of usage in top applications and a 
look at applications by category.  
  
The social graph is a key feature of the next-generation Web. To stay 
current on its rapid evolution and to build on the skills developed at GSP 
East 2008, users should check out the three Web 2.0 conferences that 
O'Reilly Media and TechWeb are co-sponsoring later this year: Web 2.0 Expo 
New York September 16-19; Web 2.0 Expo Europe in Berlin October 21-23; and 
Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco November 5-7 

At GSP East 2008, five keynote speakers plus nearly 30 skill-building 
tutorials and in-depth sessions filled the three-day conference, which was 
attended by 400 application developers, product managers, administrators, 
business people, advertisers, and marketers. 

The keynoters were: 

-Patrick Chanezon and Paul McDonald (Google, Inc.), "OpenSocial + Google 
App Engine Technical Overview" 

-Allen Hurff (MySpace), "Technical Overview: The MySpace Developer 
Platform (MDP)" 

-Benjamin Ling (Facebook), Dave Morin (Facebook), Ruchi Sanghvi 
(Facebook), Josh Elman (Facebook), Dave McClure (500 Hats), "Poke Back: 
Facebook Live and Interactive" 

-Adam Nash (LinkedIn), "LinkedIn: The Business Social Network" 

-Kent Schoen (Facebook), "Facebook Business & Marketing Solutions" 

Other presentations and panels included:  

-Sean Ammirati (mSpoke / ReadWriteWeb), Chris Messina (Vidoop), Dave Morin 
(Facebook), Adam Nash (LinkedIn), David Recordon (Six Apart), Kevin Chou 
(Watercooler Inc.), "Social Networks & the NEED for FEEDS" 

-Kevin Barenblat ([context]), Jeff Ragovin (Buddy Media), "Viral Marketing 
& Advertising Strategies for Social Networks" 

-Ro Choy (RockYou), "Intro to Social Networks for Business & Marketing 
Managers" 

-Frank Gruber (Somewhat Frank / TECH cocktail / AOL), Alex Blum 
(KickApps), Michael Jones (Userplane / AOL), Kerry Pearce-Parkins 
(Mixx.com), Sean Roach (Got Access), "From Zero to Community in 60 
Seconds: White-Label Social Networks" 

-Benjamin Joffe (Plus Eight Star / Mobile Monday Beijing), Ben Keighran 
(Bluepulse), Gregory Cypes (Open AIM (AOL)), Craig Dalton (Hook Mobile), 
Chris Butler (Dash Navigation), "Social + Mobile = Sociable (Social 
Networks for SMS, IM, & Mobile Devices)" 

-Michael Lazerow (Buddy Media), "Apps & Widgets: The New New Ad Units" 

-Dave McClure (500 Hats), Hiten Shah (CrazyEgg / KISSmetrics), Ian Swanson 
(Sometrics, Inc.), Albert Lai (Kontagent), Roy Pereira (Refresh). "Geek 
Metrics: Using App Analytics to Drive Distribution, Engagement, & 
Monetization" 

-Hooman Radfar (Clearspring Technologies, Inc.), "Widget Strategies & 
Social Platforms" 

-Shiv Singh (Avenue A | Razorfish), Michael Lazerow (Buddy Media), Kevin 
Barenblat ([context]), Eddie Smith (SocialMedia Networks), Chris 
Cunningham (appssavvy), "Where Social Gets Down to Business: Advertising 
vs App-vertising" 

-Allen Stern (CenterNetworks), Jodi McDermott (Clearspring), Ro Choy 
(RockYou), Carnet Williams (Sprout), "The Joy of Widgets: Everything You 
Want to Know But Were Afraid to Ask" 

Sponsors included Buddy Media, AOL, Bebo, Clearspring, Friendster, Gratis 
Network, Hook Mobile, and SocialMedia. 

During the conference Clearspring and KickApps announced a strategic 
partnership to further accelerate widget usage and monetization. Under the 
agreement, Clearspring will promote KickApps' new WYSIWYG Widget Studio 
(currently in beta), a self-service widget-authoring environment, to the 
Clearspring user base. This will enable Clearspring customers to easily 
build their own rich-media and interactive widgets. KickApps will use 
Clearspring's distribution and tracking services to provide one-click 
distribution and in-depth analytics to anyone using the KickApps 
Platform. 

For complete information on O'Reilly Graphing Social Patterns East 2008, 
visit:  
http://conferences.oreilly.com/gspeast 

For speaker presentation files, go to:  
http://en.oreilly.com/gspeast2008/public/schedule/proceed... 

For articles, blogs, photos, video, and other coverage of the event, go 
to:  
http://en.oreilly.com/gspeast2008/public/content/news-cov... 

View pictures of the GSP East 2008 conference at:   
http://flickr.com/photos/x180/sets/72157605535004182/ 

To see Interlude Videos from the conference, go to:  
http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2008/06/graphing-soci... 

To read Tim O'Reilly's take on the future go to the O'Reilly Radar at:  
http://radar.oreilly.com/ 

To find out what it takes to launch a successful Facebook application, 
understand the new rules of the application development game in a Web 2.0 
world, and get the scoop on the most popular Facebook apps, order a copy 
of The Facebook Application Platform, An O'Reilly Radar Report, by Tim 
O'Reilly and the O'Reilly Radar Team, with Niall Kennedy & Dave McClure, 
final update February 2008, at:  
http://radar.oreilly.com/research/facebook-report.html. 

What do the killer apps on the Facebook platform have in common? What must 
you build into your application if you want Facebook users to adopt 
it--and pass it on to their friends? To find out, order The Facebook 
Application Ecosystem: Why Some Thrive--and Most Don't, An O'Reilly Radar 
Report, by Shelly D. Farnham, Ph.D, March 2008, at: 
http://radar.oreilly.com/research/facebook-app-eco-report.... 

If you would like to discuss forming a media or promotional partnership 
with O'Reilly for an upcoming event, send a message to:  
mediapartners@oreilly.com 

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Central  
-Web 2.0 Expo New York September 16-19, 2008, co-produced with TechWeb 
-Web 2.0 Expo Europe in Berlin October 21-23, 2008, co-produced with 
TechWeb 
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TechWeb 
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February 9-11, 2009 
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2009 
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