Building a Facebook App – week 1

Building a Facebook App – week 1

With the newest release of the Facebook C# SDK I decided to revisit the Social Books idea I have been working on with a friend. Previously we had build the web app outside of Facebook – you could sign in with your Facebook credentials through Facebook Connect and we’d then grab the pages and items you liked in Facebook and try to make you some book recommendations.

I decided to try and build a much more simple version of the application that would allow you to post to your Facebook wall what current book you were reading, and also ask your friends for new book recommendations. I also wanted to build this as a Facebook Canvas Application rather than a standalone web site in the hope that more people would trust it and authenticate and allow their Facebook details to be passed in.

The Facebook C# SDK is a real joy to work with. It’s got some good sample applications and code snippets up on the site. With the existing code we already had using the Amazon web service to retrieve books I was able to put together something in 2 days and launch it.

You can try the application out here:
Social Books Facebook App

The hope is the app will be quite viral. By posting a short message to user’s Facebook wall when they select the book they are reading I hope their friends will be interested to click on the link and then sign up and post the book they currently have open.

Adverts

I’ve been running some adverts on Facebook to try and attract some initial users. I was hoping the viral effect of people posting the books they were reading on their walls would mean that one advert enticed member would lead to 3 or 4 eventually coming over. Last week I spent £33.91 on Facebook ads which got 46 clicks.

Overall stats.

Here are the stats for Social Books from week 1.

Users : 59
Books Added : 50

This is pretty good for a first week, although I had hoped the viral aspect of posting messages to your Facebook wall would have meant a larger number. It’s a good start though and something to work on and try to increase as we move into week 2.
I need to build in some better tracking of users so we can tell where new registrations are coming from – adverts, wall postings, friend invites etc…

Unfortunately the process in Facebook for submitting your App to the App Directory is broken! Hopefully they’ll get this fixed soon as I’ve read getting your site submitted can lead to an influx of new users (at least for a short while)

Week 2 Plans

This week I plan one new development feature, and a different attempt on marketing.
The new feature will allow you to add books to your ‘Shelf’ that you’ve previously read. Upon doing this you’ll get the choice as to whether you want to post the book to your Facebook wall. If you are going through and adding 50 books in one go that you’ve read over the past 2 years you might not want to let your friends know about every one of them.

I’ve switched off the Facebook ads and will now try a little bit of Twitter marketing. Also on Thursday I’m planning to send out an email newsletter to all the registered users to try and keep return usage of the site up and let everybody know about the new features for them to try.

If you’ve any ideas on how to do extra marketing around Facebook Apps please leave them in the comments!

Introducing ToDo Rewards

I was looking at the post-it notes over my desk last week and started thinking about how I manage tasks, and also about the things that motivate me to get tasks done. Sometimes I’m really motivated and the day flies by with all tasks accomplished by the end of it, other days I get virtually nothing done and the day drags.

I think there’s a pattern emerging that the days that are most productive are also the days I’m most organised. My tasks are written down, and broken into steps if necessary – and I feel a sense of accomplishment as I strike them out. Wanting to create something new last week I thought about how a web app could make me more productive each day. It would need to help me do a few things…

1, be more organised
2, get motivated
3, feel accomplishment when tasks are done
4, feel accountable – encourage me to get my tasks done!

So I’ve built something simple called ToDo Rewards – www.todorewards.com

Yes it needs a design implement – but the functionality is there 🙂

The idea is that each ToDo item has a number of points against it. As you complete it, these points are added to your daily productivity total. From trying this out for a few days you certainly do get motivated to improve your daily points total. Lets see how ToDo Rewards achieves the 4 original aims set out above.

1, Being Organised
My ToDo items need to be in ToDo Rewards for me to be able to complete them and get the points value for doing them. Also you can setup re-occurring tasks that automatically get created for you each day in your ToDo list.

2, Get Motivated
Seeing the points total rising each day as you accomplish more is a good way to get motivated. Also I’ve created ToDo Rewards so you have a public profile – so others can see how productive you are each day (this also covers accountability). Here is my public ToDo Rewards page.

3, Feel Accomplishment
You get points, tasks have a strike through line, what more accomplishment do you need? You can also share your completed task lists on Twitter of Facebook to brag to your friends/co-workers.

4, Feel accountable
There is a public view of your ToDo list showing the tasks, which you’ve completed and your total points for that day. This is good for sharing with friends and colleagues to show what you’ve already got done, and what else needs to be done. Not everything needs to be shared of course – if you mark a task as private it won’t show in the public view.

So through some simple openness, game mechanics and accountability – ToDo Rewards can help make you more productive and have a little fun along the way.

There are many ideas around tasks that could be implemented…here are a few…
1, Rewards – get rewards throughout the day as you hit certain productivity point scores
2, Analysis – track through weeks and months how productive you’ve been and spot trends
3, Social – find people who have similar tasks to do, help them out or share the workload
4, Team management – allow managers to set tasks and priorities for team members

Please give it a try at www.todorewards.com , and let me know your feedback…