Hi. Welcome to another post categorized under “development.” Please stay tuned to this category to find out more about what happens in product development. We might just dish out some juicy info so come back often.

James, Austin and I attended the 4th Facebook Developer Garage in Toronto. Toronto has one of the biggest Facebook (FB) user bases, so it is no surprise that FB Developer Garage in Toronto is the biggest in the world. The event opened with a keynote from Rebecca Sawyer of Facebook on basic marketing strategy using targeted ads in FB. This was followed by a quick showcase of the improved FB profile page. The new version allows for more self-expression and is much cleaner – I truly welcome it as an improvement. The second portion of the event consisted of sponsored talks about FB apps.

The FB API has really taken off. In the year since the initial release FB has added 400K+ developers and 30K+ apps (which is several times more than they expected). This fact, coupled with FB’s popularity in Toronto, has encouraged us to consider adding a FB app for Snowflake. So, we went to FB Developer Garage to learn more about FB dev community and opportunities from the very guys who are involved in it. Here are some of the key takeaways that we noted:

• Don’t overwhelm FB app users with too much event information from their friends (FB itself 3-5% only)
• FB ads allow targeting based on users’ profile settings
• FB is evolving into a social network where most people come for entertainment several times a day
• A lot of viral apps are simple games or fun concepts that engage user’s friends
• Giving points for participation drives virality
• Competition amongst friends leads to addictive behavior which is so powerful that it can lead to monetization of virtual goods
• Many FB apps first focus on building a large and active community that can eventually be monetized

Ok – that’s what we learned last night. More to follow…