Our Facebook Pitch Video, and Facebook Apps

Facebook in its quest to make money has done a couple things to control and promote good applications.

When the app platform was developed, it went from 0 - 60 in months, everyone wanted to get in on the fastest growing social networking site to make money. Anyone could submit an app and the facebook community could evaluate it. If it was good, it spread far and wide. That's the beauty of social networking.

A lot of bad apps were developed that didn't work, didn't hold true to facebook values or whatever. So facebook started the facebook developers fund. It sounded like a great idea, they'd take applications for funding and then pick the apps that will most likely keep facebook users using facebook, and give them money to make their apps better.

Facebook has also recently started charging a fee to become a "verified developer". This is $375 per year and you go through an evaluation process. The blogs that I've been reading say it's the same thing as an extortion racket and they're offended. One one hand I see their point because it's like the net neutrality issue. If people who have great ideas for apps can't afford or aren't willing to pay, then the users of facebook miss out on something that could potentially be great. Scrabulous would be an example, did those kids in New York know it was going to be huge, and would they have done it if they had to pay? Well, probably, but that doesn't mean others wouldn't have.

I think overall it will keep the flakes from putting up bad apps that I try out for a day or two and then delete, continually wading through the massive tides of unfinished, untested and plain crappy apps.

I think we should rely on user feedback and reccomendations instead of a fee to facebook, but they are a business and I understand.

We created a pitch video to try to get facebook funding. This is before we changed our branding to Oistr. I think we did a pretty good job. We didn't get the funding though.

Writing the Oistr Press Release

This is the release I plan to send to bloggers, newspapers and anyone who might want to write about our site once it is released as version 1.0

I've written it and re-written it. Writing a press release is actually quite hard.

You want it to be dramatic to get peoples attention, but you don't want to talk crazy. It has to sum up the business and what makes it unique without boring people. It has to be done in as little as 3 paragraphs, and certainly not reaching 2 pages unless each paragraph is more engaging than the last.

I think I've done quite a nice job. It's straight forward, it accurately describes what we are doing, it tries to convey the excitement we feel about the product and has specific calls to action at the bottom.

I'd love to hear what anyone else thinks.

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, December 2008 — Oggle Interactive announced today their new travel-tourism site aimed at increasing customer travel satisfaction.

“Stats are showing a decline in satisfaction from customers that book trips through big online companies, and we aim to fix that. As travelers ourselves, we’re also sick of the corporate pandering that most travel sites inevitably pass on to their customers, and we present a better option.” - Co-founder and Marketing Director Scott Carmichael.

Oistr.com, in its infancy, is designed to be a unique integrated travel resource that uses a wiki-style aggregation of information to present all sides of the travel world to its users. Designed to be media rich and map-based for geographical reference, the future will see the addition of travel blogs, games, online booking of hotels, flights and restaurants, and the sponsoring of users that inspire other people to travel.

Currently the site is giving users a unique and powerful interface to show their travels and allowing them to recommend places to go, businesses they liked or didn’t, and to share their pictures and video in trips or right on the business listing. The “trips” can be public or private but Oistr asks that useful information for other users be marked as public with or without your contact information. Also, make friends, be a traveling leader people will watch or ask for advice. If you found a great deal out there or a bait and switch, others want to know.

Oistr is asking for your help. Go to the website, www.oistr.com, use the customer feedback feature and tell us what you think! Explore the site, inspire others to travel and guide them by showing your travel experiences, or simply your own home town.