Facebook Creates List of “Preferred Developer Consultants”
We often get asked for recommendations about trusted service providers for application development, Page development, and marketing strategy. A list of the companies we recommend is provided in our Facebook Marketing Bible. We also recently published our list of 9 Top Companies That Provide Facebook Page Management Tools.
But today, Facebook itself is starting its own “Preferred Developer Consultant Program” in order to help interested companies and organizations find third party service providers officially blessed by Facebook. The 14 companies included in the program at launch are:
- Archrival
- Buddy Media
- Context Optional
- Fluid
- Involver
- iPlatform
- Kresma Design
- Shuffle Interactive
- Sprout
- StepChange
- Stuzo
- Terralever
- Vitrue
- Wildfire
As you can see, the list includes companies that provide application and Connect development, as well as Page service providers. Eventually, it plans to include more companies in the future, says Justin Osofsky, who works on the Facebook Platform team. Interested parties can register their interest in applying to the program here.
It makes sense that Facebook would create its own list of “recommended” developers. Although the company can’t guarantee their work, it’s a helpful step for the ecosystem overall.
Rage Against The Machine become bookies’ chart favourite over Joe McElderry | News | NME.COM
Rage Against The Machine have become the Ladbrokes bookies favourites to bag the Christmas Number One slot ahead of Joe McElderry.
Their song ‘Killing In The Name’now has odds of 8/11 to be top on Sunday (December 20). The X Factorwinner’s ‘The Climb’ has moved down to second favourite at evens.
Lady GaGa is a distant third favourite with her song ‘Bad Romance’.
Rage Against The Machine’s song has entered the charts as the result of a Facebook campaign to get it to the top spot ahead of this year’s The X Factor champion.
Uhh - let the battle begin…
Facebook Credits Take Another Step Toward Becoming the Web’s Currency
All the way back in March, I wrote about how Facebook could rival PayPal by creating a virtual currency and making it usable for financial transactions, essentially making Facebook Credits the currency of the web.
Since then, we’ve seen several developments that have clearly pointed that Facebook
is heading in this direction. Theyintroduced Facebook Credits in April as a way to simply give friends spending money in the virtual gift shop. It’s now part of the Facebook gift marketplace, where you can use Facebook Credits to buy real gifts. PayPal’s concerned enough that last month they announced PayPal ID, a project to make your financial identity portable and secure across the web.
Today marks another milestone in the development of Facebook Credits as a legitimate currency. According to Inside Facebook, the Facebook Game Happy Island now utilizes Facebook Credits as its exclusive currency.
Think about this: Virtual currency is a multibillion-dollar market, and it only keeps growing. If Happy Island is successful with its Credits integration, other games will surely adopt the Facebook currency as well, further building Credits as a virtual currency that not only works within games and online gift stores, but is transferable between them.
This is a small step, but an important one for Facebook Credits. The real shake-up of the payments market, though, is if and when Facebook decides to integrate Credits into Facebook Connect and offers it as a way for payment on e-commerce websites. Imagine logging into Amazon.com or Walmart.com with Facebook Connect and buying your Christmas presents with Credits.
It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds, but it’s still going to be a while before we see anything so advanced. Facebook and third party app developers are just beginning to explore the potential of what Credits can do.
