SOMEWHAT FRANK

Searching For The B.E.S.T. Bebo Application

I was in San Francisco early last week at the Bebo B.E.S.T. Developer Challenge Awards Ceremony. As an application contest judge with Dave McClure and Jesse Stay, I had the pleasure of examining a number of stellar applications which ranged in form and function. The most important characteristic I looked for were usability and engagement.

Here were some of the fun facts about the contest:

• Almost 2,000 BEST Contest entries

• Entrants include big names like: Playfish, (Lil) Green Patch, Family Link & Large Animal Games

• Contest entrants came from a variety of categories, including Casual Games, Virtual Reality, Communication & Entertainment

Congrats to the five application finalists included KickMania, Banana Grams, RoboKill Trainer, Solid Sudoku & Bowling Buddies. The grand prize winner was Bowling Buddies by Playfish as it offered an extremely engaging gaming experience on Bebo. It only takes a few minutes to bowl an entire game and was easy to pick up and play.

Check out photos from the Awards ceremony like the one below.

myAOL Turns One As Other AOL Products Sunset

I was on the road last week and weekend for TECH cocktail Boston 2 so down time and internet access were sparse, preventing me from wishing myAOL, the personalized startpage product I moved to the east coast to work on for AOL, a proper one year birthday.

Happy birthday myAOL - my oh my, you are looking good at one!

I must first note, I am no longer part of the myAOL team as I have been reassigned to the People Network which includes Bebo, AIM, ICQ, Yedda and Goowy. But I wanted to take a moment to check in with the lovable startpage product that I spent over a year and half working on to see just how it has evolved since launching myAOL in July 2007.

AOL Buys Bebo - KickApps Next?, Yahoo Semantic, Flickr Video Coming, Facebook IM Coming, YouTube Goes Hi-Res & SXSW Coverage

Photo of the Week: This photo was taken while recording this Blog Talk Radio episode with Kris "Croncast" Smith and Rox from BeachWalks.tv at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas. Photo thanks to Roxanne Darling.

SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 03.16.2008

Surprise! AOL Buys Bebo for $850 million

AOL buying Bebo for $850 million was a pleasant surprise to wake up to this morning. Wow!  I think this is a smart move for AOL as Bebo is currently the third largest social network on the Web behind Facebook and MySpace. With AIM offering one of the larger social graphs on the Web but a turnstile of online social networking profile site attempts in the last two years it looks like AOL has finally decided to invest externally in a solution with a lot users and page views. This just adds to the a number of other acquisitions that recently occurred in the social platforms group which include Goowy and Yedda.