Facebook has unveiled a list of 18 applications--for the Facebook Platform, Facebook Connect, and Facebook Connect for the iPhone--that have been awarded investments from its FBFund seed funding program and invited to participate in a summer incubator workshop in its hometown of Palo Alto, Calif.
The workshop, called FBFund REV 2009, will run for ten weeks from June through August, according to a post on the Facebook developer blog by company representative Cat Lee. The post also contains a full list of winners, which range from a paintball game app to a dating service to an e-mail management program.
"Already planned are sessions with speakers from our fbFund Advisory Council, business luminaries, and our Facebook Platform team focused on everything from operating lean startups and metrics for success to marketing and monetization," Lee wrote. "The days will be packed with opportunities to get together, learn from one another, brainstorm and iterate on applications and business models. At the end of the summer, all of the startups will present to Silicon Valley angel and venture capital investors to get feedback and explore investment opportunities."
Facebook announced a chunk of finalists for this year's FBFund earlier this month.
Two nonprofits, a developer assistance program called Samasource and a student microloan project called Vittana, will also participate in the incubator program but can't receive funding due to the terms of FBFund.
There are over 50,000 applications built on Facebook's platform, but the company isn't stopping there. It's continuing to support budding developers with its second annual FBFund app funding competition, with the first 25 of 50 finalists announced Monday. The rest will be announced soon.
The batch of finalists was announced in a post on the Facebook developer blog by Dave McClure of the Founders Fund, the longtime Facebook investor that has provided financial backing for the seed fund. McClure will also be running FBFund's inaugural incubator program this summer.
What's different from when Facebook first announced the seed fund is that in addition to Facebook Platform apps, the finalists also include sites that use the Facebook Connect login product and apps built using the new Facebook Connect for the iPhone. In total, there are 13 Connect sites, eight Platform apps, and four iPhone apps.
The decisions were made with the help of a "Developer Council" consisting of prominent members of the app development and investment space.
The winners, who will be announced soon, will receive up to a $100,000 investment as well as an invitation to participate in the incubator program in Facebook's hometown of Palo Alto, Calif., which starts in mid-June. Last year's FBFund developers stood a chance at winning up to $225,000 (in the form of grants rather than investments), but the incubator program is new for 2009.
Finalists include odd-job seeker RunMyErrand, iPhone photography game Paparazzi, and runners' networking and route-tracking site RunThere. A full list of the first 25 is here.
Facebook members can now vote on the second round of finalists for its FBFund seed funding competition, which will give out a total of $225,000 to five grand prize winners. The 25 companies currently in the running have already pocketed $25,000 apiece for the applications they have proposed for Facebook's third-party developer platform.
This is the second annual FBFund competition, but the first one in which members have been able to vote on their favorite apps. They can vote once per day, and can watch promotional "commercials" about what each one of them does. Voting involves installing an app called "FBFund08," which members can embed on their profiles.
The 25 finalists run the gamut from multiplayer games to college search to event planning.
Not only is the voting system a way for Facebook to promote and reward high-quality apps, but it's also a promotional strategy for Facebook to drum up more member interest in the developer platform and prove that some apps are actually worth installing. Some critics say interest is dropping, and the platform has suffered from months of negative press about "zombie bites" and other goofy apps.
Here's an interesting tidbit: The FBFund08 app was not created by Facebook, but by Wildfire, one of the app development companies in the running for an FBFund grant. Facebook effectively acquired the app from Wildfire to power the poll. But, Facebook representatives assured CNET News, that won't give Silicon Valley-based Wildfire any unfair advantages.
The $10 million initially invested in FBFund comes from Facebook investors Accel Partners and the Founders Fund.
Facebook has announced the 25 finalists for its second annual FBFund developer grant competition, and it now invites them to reapply for a chance at an additional $225,000 in the final round. The five winners of the second round will be announced in December.
Each first-round finalist is entitled to $25,000 from the seed fund, which began with $10 million from Facebook investors Accel Partners and the Founders Fund. About 600 developers, none of whom had received any existing funding for their app prototypes, had applied for the first round.
For the most part, the winning applications haven't debuted on Facebook's platform yet. But they'll have to before getting a shot at one of the five second-round grants. Then Facebook's users will get to have their say.
"These 25 companies will release out their app, users will get a chance to play around with them, as well as watch a one- to two-minute video clip of what the app is about, and vote for their favorites," Cat Lee, the FBFund product manager, said in an interview with CNET News.
The finalists? They range from BarTab, in which Facebook members gift real drinks to their friends; to TrailBehind, an app for sharing hiking routes and tips; to Newsbrane, which recommends news stories. Their creators range from professional programmers to a comparative-literature Ph.D. student, coming from across the United States, as well as Canada and the United Kingdom (the only three countries eligible for FBFund). For developers outside those three countries, Facebook has announced developer competitions in Germany, France, and Spain, but on a smaller scale.
In addition to the grant money, FBFund finalists will also have access to advisory resources from Facebook and FBFund's supporters, who include LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman and Stanford University professor Rajeev Motwani.
Elliot Schrage, Facebook's head of global communications and public policy, said Facebook isn't concerned about the stability of a seed fund at a time when the credit crunch and subsequent financial crisis have dealt a blow to the venture capital sector.
"The great thing is, we have a $10 million commitment from Founders Fund and Accel, we've been in pretty close contact with them because they were intimately involved in selecting these 25 first-round recipients, and they've made clear to us that they think this is a great investment not only in the developers themselves but in Facebook Platform and in Facebook," Schrage told CNET News. "So I actually think this is a significant opportunity for us in this climate to create some real incentives for people to develop on Facebook Platform."
The $25,000 will be given to each finalist to build the application in question, but after that, winners of the $225,000 grant will have to prove that they're actually putting it to good use.
"That $250,000 grant (the $25,000 plus $225,000) is given in payments based on milestones, and those milestones are tied to engagement within Facebook," Lee said.
"If one of these 25 has an application that ends up failing or crashing, you can be pretty sure it won't be one of the top five," Schrage said.
So here's who's getting a chunk of that $625,000:
-- BarTab, in which you send virtual gift certificates for drinks to your friends
-- Black Drumm, a social-event planner
-- Bottle Rocket, a wine-picking and comparison tool
-- Check My Campus, a college search and review application
-- Daikon, an application builder
-- FaithFeed, an app for sharing personal religious beliefs and prayer requests
-- Good Call Sports, for predicting the play-by-play in major sports games
-- GroupCard, printable online cards signed by groups of friends
-- HitGrab, manufacturer of a game in which players hunt mice
-- Kontagent, an analytics tool for social-network applications
-- Koofers, an academic reference for course information sharing
-- Newsbrane, a sort of mini-Digg, with recommendations
-- Party Buzz, to find out what your friends are doing and where they're going
-- Pongr, a price comparison tool
-- ProfessionalProfile, which seems to bring a bit of LinkedIn to Facebook
-- RealGifts, a commerce app to send presents to your friends
-- Socialfly, an activity planner and reminder system
-- Teach The People, an "open educational platform"
-- The Game Creators, a way to build your own Facebook game
-- TrailBehind, an app for sharing hiking trail information
-- Twenty20 Cricket, a resource for cricket fans (the sport, not the bug)
-- vDream Racing, which appears to be something like fantasy sports for car freaks
-- WedSnap, creator of the Weddingbook wedding-planning app
-- Wildfire, a promotion and marketing campaign generator
Facebook is moving to the next step of its $10 million FBFund developer grant program, the company announced Friday in a blog post by employee Catherine Lee. The first round, announced early in August, is now closed, and 25 winning proposals will be announced on September 22; 5 final winners will be chosen out of all first-round winners who apply for the second round, and winners will wind up with grant money between $25,000 and $250,000.
"Our team has been busy reviewing each submission and we're amazed and excited by what we've seen," Lee wrote. "We're blown away by the remarkable amount of creativity, dedication, and hard work put into each application. The competition is intense!"
FBFund was first devised by Facebook last year, with cash provided by company investors Accel Partners and the Founders Fund, as a way to encourage developers to create high-quality applications for its platform. It hit an early snag, however, when Facebook abruptly voided existing applicants and asked that they re-apply while agreeing to a new set of fine print. FBFund's initial round gave away 10 developer grants, which were announced at the company's F8 conference in July. But those applications--which include wedding planner ConnectedWeddings, game creator HotBerry, and carpool organizer Zimride--were not selected in a contest process.
Several applicants for this year's round of FBFund have made their pitches available on the Web: e-commerce gifting service Real Gifts, contacts management system Socialfly, and greeting card creator GroupCard.
Developers, start your engines: submissions are now open for the developer application contest that Facebook created for its FBFund grant program. Winning developers, who submit business plans for their prototypical Facebook Platform applications, will receive between $25,000 and $250,000 in grant money. The company plans to give away $10 million total.
The contest was originally detailed at this year's F8 conference, in which the 10 original FBFund selectees were also unveiled.
Monday saw the kickoff of the competition's Round 1, in which 25 winning proposals announced on September 22 will each be awarded $25,000. The winners of that round will have the option to apply for Round 2, in which five final winners will receive $250,000 to fund the development of their Facebook applications. Winners will also have access to "mentorship" from Facebook as well as a boost in publicity and marketing resources.
Facebook is drawing developer attention to its platform at a crucial time: first, it's expanded its API to the Facebook Connect initiative; and second, it's now competing for geek attention not only with rival social-networking platforms but also with Apple's iPhone, the hot platform du jour.
Additionally, FBFund has heretofore flown under the radar, unusual for something that has come out of a publicity magnet like Facebook--and some of the moderate press it's gotten has been fairly negative. Throwing a contest is probably a decent way to drum up some attention.
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