The company behind AceBucks, the unofficial virtual currency for Facebook, has raised $1.5 million. AceBucks allows users to buy, sell, and trade virtual dollars that they will soon be able to use in a Facebucks store. The application was originally built by Aryeh Goldsmith, who sold it to the newly formed Buddy Media. At the moment, Facebook counts 1,780 daily active users for the application.

It’s worth noting that one of the investors is Peter Thiel, who is also an investor in Facebook. Other investors include Howard Lindzon, Mark Pincus and James Altucher.

– Mashable

Tags: AceBucks

The original is at the TechCrunch 40 website.

Tags: Cake

By Darryl Taft of eWEEK.

PALO ALTO, Calif.—The first and main thing I wanted to learn on my visit to Facebook headquarters here was how the social networking juggernaut was going to take on the enterprise.

It seemed the company had the consumer segment licked and was inevitably headed for the enterprise before bigger, more established competitors stepped in. But Adam D’Angelo, the company’s chief technology officer, assured me that although the enterprise is a possible target for Facebook, it is not something the company is putting much effort into right now.

“We’re really purely focused on the consumer right now,” he said.

This came as a bit of a surprise, as so many people at enterprise companies seem to talk about Facebook with a mix of envy and awe when they discuss the social networking phenomenon and what they’d like their companies to do.

The second thing I was interested in was the inner workings of the Facebook Platform, which the company launched in May in front of some 800 developers at the San Francisco Design Center. What I was interested in and what I found so refreshing in talking with D’Angelo is the company’s outlook on its platform for developers and competition.

“We’re fine with it if developers that build on top of Facebook Platform compete with our own applications,” D’Angelo said.

Moreover, he said, “We think it’s really important to level the playing field because if developers think that we’re going to decide that their application is too valuable and not let it compete with ours, then they’re not going to want to develop in the first place.”

That’s refreshing, and totally in tune with the times and the thrust of development efforts today that have witnessed the influence of open source.

And while Facebook is reportedly cooking up a new advertising system focusing on consumers, the organization itself is, if not focusing on the enterprise, gaining enterprise-worthy experience and scale.

“Everything we do is at pretty big scale,” D’Angelo said. “We have 30 million users and we’re growing at about 3 percent a week. So that means that all the code you develop has to be highly scalable. Every new feature we launch or everything we do has to be able to scale to support our 30 million users.”

D’Angelo further noted that “one of the reasons why startups and small companies can develop code so quickly is they don’t have to worry about scalability problems because they only have a small number of users.”

At its May 24 Facebook f8 event, the company launched the Facebook Platform with 65 partners and 85 applications. Now there are more than 3,000 applications on Facebook.

Jeremy Burton, CEO of Serena Software, which on Sept. 10 is launching its own mashup platform for developers, said he took a page from the Facebook playbook.

“If we weren’t going to do this [develop an enterprise mashup platform for developers], somebody else would,” Burton said. “Because you see it in the consumer world—I mean 3,000 apps on Facebook within three months. … Look at it, there are 3,000 applications on Facebook and Facebook doesn’t crash every night and the photos don’t get compromised every night. Why? Because they thought about exposing functionality through interfaces.”

To help with all those applications and all the developers writing them, Facebook is shaping up its developer program, D’Angelo said.

The company also has held Facebook Developer Garage events where developers discuss developing on the platform. My friend Dion Almaer, a Google developer and co-founder of Ajaxian.com, attended one last month in Palo Alto and said, “There was a great crowd gathered [no surprise] and there was definite energy about the place. The kind of energy that says, ‘Man, I think I can make some money having a lot of fun.’”

Another friend, Salil Deshpande, also has attended Facebook Garage events and has a particular interest. Deshpande is a partner at Bay Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that in July launched its AppFactory, a program for funding entrepreneurs writing applications for Facebook Platform. “Bay Partners is targeting tens of investments of $25,000 to $250,000 using a flexible, fast-track approval process,” said the company’s press release on the subject.

Meanwhile, D’Angelo said in an interview that companies don’t need to partner with Facebook to create applications on the platform. Facebook has partnered with a variety of companies.

Among others, Facebook has partnered with Microsoft to integrate with Microsoft Popfly, the company said. Microsoft’s Popfly is a Web-based tool that gives Facebook users the power to create applications and add them to their profiles with no programming at all. For instance, users can create and embed mashups of Web sites directly in their profiles, a Facebook press release said.

In an interview with eWEEK, D’Angelo discussed a broad variety of things, including offline access for Facebook, his role as CTO, and his advice to developers looking to develop on Facebook.

And the Facebook developer community continues to grow, with the platform and its potential attracting everything from everyday application developers to superstar developers like Google Vice President Adam Bosworth, who proclaimed on his own Facebook page that he is building a Facebook application.

The “star” appeal is not lost on the Facebook headquarters in downtown Palo Alto. As I exited the building, a trio of college-age folks were posing in front of the rather small lettering of the Facebook logo—the only thing that identified the building as Facebook property. They were posing as they might in front of a favorite rock star’s or actor’s home.

“I can’t believe it, Facebook headquarters!” one of the young women exclaimed, genuinely impressed. She looked to me as if for a comment, but I just shrugged. A Facebook developer that had walked out with me smiled a knowing smile as if that scene is repeated several times a day.

Meanwhile, I’d driven down to Palo Alto from San Francisco, and knowing my ride back into the early rush hour traffic was likely to be thick, I wanted some music to groove to. Thanks to the Facebook CTO, I had my mind set on the troubled, but multi-talented, neo-soul artist simply known as D’Angelo. And as I didn’t have my iPod with me, I drove around until I found a record store and bought a copy of D’Angelo’s first CD, “Brown Sugar.”

I drove back up 101 alternately singing, clapping and bobbing my head, feeling good about having met Mr. D’Angelo and about being re-acquainted with a D’Angelo I hadn’t heard from in a while.

Tags: AppFactory

By Riva Richmond of The Wall Street Journal.

Site’s Growing Ranks Seen as Potential Source Of Revenue, Customers

Another online gold rush is on. Entrepreneurs are scrambling to create small software programs for Facebook Inc.’s social-networking site and grab footholds in its emerging economy.

Three months ago, the Palo Alto, Calif., company invited software developers to create applications for its site. The response was immediate: Facebook says more than 70,000 developers, from college kids to big-corporation engineers, have signed up for the tools needed to build the free applications.

PROFILE BOOSTERS

• What’s New: A growing number of entrepreneurs are creating software programs that allow users of social- networking site Facebook to dress up their profile pages.

• The Uses: Some applications allow people to share reviews on, say, a book, movie, vacation spot or outfit. Others send virtual presents and play games.

• The Potential: To capitalize on the revenue potential, some firms sell advertising, while others promote their products and services on Web pages shown to users of their applications.

Meanwhile, Facebook members are energetically embracing the applications. They use them to dress up their profile pages with everything from maps showing what countries they’ve visited to outfits from a retail site to favorite YouTube videos. They send virtual cocktails and gifts to each other, share reviews of favorite books and movies, and play poker together among myriad other things. So far, Facebook says, there are some 2,000 applications on the site that regularly attract more than 100 users, and quite a few other programs, including the games and reviews, that entertain tens of thousands of devotees daily.

Many of the developers of these applications are entrepreneurs looking to start new businesses while others are expanding existing ones. And the applications, which are inexpensive to create, have the potential to become a large source of revenue and customers for those companies that can successfully mine Facebook’s 30-million-strong community. To that end, companies are using a host of business models. Some, for instance, are selling advertising around the applications, while others promote their own products and services on Web pages shown to users of their applications.

“This is a watershed event that is going to affect business and technology for many years,” much the way Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system did, says Rodney Rumford, editor and publisher of FaceReviews.com, a Solana Beach, Calif., company that reviews Facebook applications online and provides consulting and application-development services. “It’s a tool for people to discover [businesses] in a way they couldn’t be discovered before.”

Promising Platform

The applications are garnering a big buzz among Web companies and venture capitalists alike. Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture firm Bay Partners has raised $300 million specifically for companies developing Facebook applications and is making $25,000 to $250,000 investments per application. “All Internet companies need a Facebook strategy or a presence on Facebook,” says Partner Salil Deshpande, because Facebook usership is growing so quickly.

Indeed, Facebook’s monthly visitor numbers doubled to 30.6 million in July from six months earlier, according to measurement firm comScore Networks Inc. That growth has been propelled by a mass movement onto the site since Facebook opened itself to nonuniversity email-address holders.

The Facebook platform is so promising in part because its members use it to connect with people they know — or want to know — in the nonvirtual world. Unlike News Corp.’s MySpace and most other social-networking sites, Facebook members aren’t anonymous. They use their real names and connect with each other to the degree they choose. Facebook also allows businesses to interact with Facebook users fairly freely, while restricting access to any personal data.

“They make it a safe place for communication and for doing business,” says Lee Lorenzen, chief executive of Altura Ventures LLC, a Monterey, Calif., firm that also is funding application creators and has purchased several applications.

“We’re certainly pleased with how much it’s taken off,” say Brandee Barker, a spokeswoman for Facebook. “We already have a thriving ecosystem of businesses built on the Facebook platform.”

Getting More Sophisticated

Applications are easy to create. Developers build, test and debug their applications and, when they’re done, submit them to Facebook for review and testing. If approved, Facebook simply turns them on.

The first wave of Facebook applications were simple and designed to win over large numbers of people. For instance, more than two million users have been recruited by their friends to put cartoons of ninjas and pirates on their profile pages, thanks to a contest created by a trio of developers.

A sample of a ShopStyle application that was added to a Facebook profile page.

But the new entrepreneurs entering the arena are bringing with them applications that are more sophisticated and can engage users more often and for longer periods of time. To do so, they try to harness the connections that link its members, or what has become known as Facebook’s “social graph.”

Take “Neighbors,” an application launched four weeks ago by Point2 Technologies Inc., a Vancouver-based company that operates a Web-based real-estate listing service called Point2 NLS. The application uses the company’s broker-defined neighborhood system to help Facebook members meet other people who live near them and share local information and photos. It also shows properties for sale in the neighborhood from any of Point2’s broker and agent members, which the company says number about 140,000 in 86 countries.

“We’re trying to help these real-estate professionals connect to the Facebook community,” says Brendan King, Point2’s chief operating officer.

“My Style,” which was created in June by online-shopping site ShopStyle Inc., lets Facebook’s fashionistas place on their profile pages pictures of items they like from the retailer’s site, such as Oscar de la Renta dresses. Los Altos, Calif.-based ShopStyle.com, which debuted in February, sells brand-name products from about 100 retailers.

“Our aim is getting more people involved in the ShopStyle community,” says Andy Moss, the company’s founder and CEO. He says ShopStyle.com has gotten 5,000 of the 25,000 members of its own fashion-focused community from Facebook, but it remains unclear whether the application will successfully drive product purchases.

Help Getting Away

One application helps people plan real getaways. SideStep Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif., travel search-engine provider, launched its “Trips” application eight weeks ago to help friends and families organize vacations. The application, which SideStep says has about a quarter million users and cost $10,000 or $20,000 to build, provides a place where groups can set travel dates, create itineraries and post messages to each other.

Less than two weeks ago, SideStep added a search box to its application, which, the company says, now drives 2,000 visits to its site each day — where people can search for airplane tickets, hotels and rental cars. SideStep plans to enhance the application and, eventually, show some targeted ads.

Another popular application, “Visual Bookshelf,” helps Facebook members find new books to read by getting recommendations and reading reviews written by their friends. The application, which is adding 10,000 new users a day, was created by Web-development firm Hungry Machine LLC of Washington, D.C., which operates several Facebook applications and creates others for clients. The application shows ads to Visual Bookshelf users. Also, Hungry Machine has a link to Amazon.com on the application and gets a commission for each book sold through the link.

Tim O’Shaughnessy, head of business development at Hungry Machine, says applications that help people express who they are and connect with friends over the things that matter to them will spread person to person and become big successes.

Tags: AppFactory