The Kontagent Blog

Inside the World of Social Analytics

 

Posts Tagged ‘fbFund’

Facebook Developer Garage SF, Hosted by Kontagent

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

fb_garage_sf

We’re extremely excited to announce that we are hosting the upcoming Facebook Developer Garage in SF, sponsored by Intel.

Sign up here!

Topics: Metrics, Social Gaming and fbConnect!

Date: Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Time: 6:30pm – 9:30pm

Location: Hyatt Regency San Francisco  map

Street: 5 Embarcadero Center

City/Town: San Francisco, CA

Confirmed Speakers

  • Andreas Weigend (Data Mining Professor at Stanford and Former Chief Scientist at Amazon) – Keynote
  • Eric Ries (Kleiner Perkers, co-founder IMVU) – Metrics for Social Engagement
  • Jeffrey Tseng & Fredric Newberg (Kontagent co-founder/CTO & VP engineering) – Viral tuning beyond conversion + insights across applications
  • Josh Elman (Facebook) – fbConnect on Web & iPhone and others
  • Justin Smith (InsideFacebook, Head of Products at Watercooler) – Social Gaming trends
  • Andrew Mayer (Media Shifters) – Casual gaming metrics applied to social gaming
  • Vikas Gupta (co-founder Jambool) – Virtual Economy Optimization

Overview

This Facebook Developer Garage, co-hosted by Kontagent Ananlytics, will be the first to event of its type to exclusively cover fbConnect, social games and advanced social app metrics. We will reveal some of the development processes and metrics that are behind top multi-million dollar social games. Our lineup of expert speakers include a number of experts in metrics (Dr. Andreas Weigend/Stanford, Erics Ries/Kleiner Perkins, Justin Smith/InsideFacebook, Jeffery Tseng/Kontagent, Vikas Gupta/Jambool, etc.) and successful game developers sharing their insights on how to utilize metrics to increase growth, engagement and monetization of Facebook applications and social games.

This event is open to all developers (social game developers are encouraged to participate), marketing professional and all Facebook enthusiasts. The presentations will be data driven and very actionable. Every developer should be take away something that can be used to change the way they’re developing applications.

There will also for thousands of dollars in prizes, including a draw for premimum passes to web 2.0 expo, and other exclusive prizes to be announced at the event.

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Why are International Facebook Devs Rockin’ It

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

3 out of the 5 FBFund Finalists are Canadian. That got me thinking.

Coincidence? Perhaps. Not reflective of the entire development community? That I’m not so sure. I noticed a strikingly large number of pretty successful non-US/Silicon Valley developers, and have a couple of theories on why we have so many (and arguably, a disproportionate) Canadian and Non-US developers on Facebook:

1) No/Low Capital Required: traditionally, Canadian (non-US/Silicon Valley) b2c startups/developers lacked the resources/venture capital (seed funding esp.) to launch competitive B2C offerings — Facebook Apps take VERY little resources to get off the ground, and their success if usually a function of creativity

2) Low Distribution Costs/Viral Distribution Required: again, traditionally, its been more difficult for Canadian (and non-US/Silicon Valley) ventures to secure high profile distribution partnerships to “get the word out” — the great thing about Facebook apps is that some of the most successful apps are often launched with small to no artificial viral seeding costs. In other words, success comes from optimizing their viral loops in their apps to secure distribution. Heck, they might even be using some pretty cool viral analytics to optimize their K-factor (aka: pass-along rate/viral co-efficient/pick-your-buzzword). Yeah… that was a pretty blantant plug, but come’on, you saw that coming.

And of course, huge congrats to our fellow Canadian FBFund Winners WedSnap and Mousehunt!

(Sidenote: Technically, we’re a US HQ’d startup, but both founders are Canadian and we have a Canaidan presence… so that makes us at least half Canadian, Go Canada! ;-)

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Kontagent Wins Phase-2 FBFund/$250K Grant!

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

Congrats to all the winners , and a big thanks to all those that have blogged about the announcement!

This was a result of a ton of hard work from the entire team, and its been a fun process getting here. Thank you for all those that voted, Cat and Julia from the FBfund team, and the judges from the surprisingly enjoyable due diligence discussions from the partners at Accel and FounderFund.

An interesting tid-bit: did you know that the 3 out of the final 5 winners out of the 25 finalists are Canadian (including me and Jeff – both Canucks!). Go Canada! =)

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