Next Generation Shopping

PayPal is ready to give away $25,000 to seven Facebook developers who create innovative applications that utilize the Facebook platform and the PayPal API.  The following is a break down of the awards:

• Grand Prize (1) - $10,000
• Second Prizes (2) - $5,000
• Third Prizes (4) - $2,500

Check out the comments on this Mashable post as their has been some controversy over the rules of the contest, which have just recently been updated (better for the developers).  More about the new terms on AuctionBytes.

Our official press release for our new Facebook application went out just last Friday. Since then the application has been gaining attention from bloggers around the globe (including France and Japan). Coverage ranged from popular social media news blogs like Mashable to the shopping industry’s own InternetRetailer magazine.

Shannon from Varien provided a nice review. I figured I’d respond to her question directly here. In her review she refers to the shopping news feed (found on our application’s entrance page) and asks,

“How do I filter out all of these other users?”

Great question! As time goes on and we see more “networks of friends” versus individual users, we’ll add filtering features.

She also states

“In the end, I came away wishing more Facebook application developers had given their offerings this much thought and care.”

That means a great deal to me personally.

Next up… I’ve talked about viral expansion a lot recently. Here is what I am talking about. A continued uptrend of % of change in users. A picture is worth a thousand words right? The graphic below looks at the growth rates of our application and that of the eBay Shopping app as well (since last Friday, July 20th). While the eBay Shopping app has been around longer and has more users, our app is growing at a rapid pace.

I’ve recently spent some time putting together a social shopping solution for Facebook users. I wanted it to cover a wide range of products and categories, so I choose to use Shopping.com as my data partner. They have a very extensive product database and a good search engine. Also, this will allow me to integrate the application into our website SecretPrices.com going forward if I should choose to.

As always I’ve created my application on Microsoft’s ASP.NET. I’m still preaching the Microsoft word, even after returning from the second NYC Developers hackathon which was about 99% guys with Macbooks and programming in PHP, Ruby or even Java. Yeah, I was that 1%. However, the guys from ClipMarks came eventually and were developing on ASP.NET (but- .NET 1.1). At any rate, you can develop your own Facebook solution with whatever language you wish. Without getting too technical, here are the basics for ASP.NET developers:

1) Get an application key on Facebook, if you don’t already have one. See developers.facebook.com.

2) Goto CodePlex and download the latest (v 1.2) of the Facebook Developers Toolkit by Microsoft. Note: Requires .NET 2.0. Optionally, there are a few other open-source ASP.NET development frameworks including this one.

Next, Load it up and read the Facebook Developer resources. Read the ASP.NET and other tutorials. Hit up the developer discussion boards as well. There is a lot of information. If you are encountering a problem with the Facebook platform, the answer is probably out there somewhere. If you know what IRC is, you might be able to hop on and get some instant answers or feedback in the #facebook channel on irc.freenode.net.

3) Creating A Page – Be sure to assign the your developer key and secret key with every page load, as you’ll need it before you call the Facebook API

_fbService.ApplicationKey = “YOUR_APPLICATION_KEY”

_fbService.Secret = “YOUR_SECRET_KEY”

Read more »

With all the hype about social shopping, Facebook, Shopping 3.0 (what?), etc. we couldn’t stand to be left out. Today we released our own social shopping application on the Facebook platform dubbed “My Shopping”. The application was released via SecretPrices.com with plans of integrating portions of the functionality in the future.

The application allows users to shop online with their Facebook friends. Anyone can search for books, music, movies, gadgets, clothing, or anything you have a need for. They can then rate, mark, and share items. For any item a user can view how many of their friends like or dislike that item, as well as compare the lowest prices available from retail stores.

View www.secretprices.com/myshopping for the full details or read the official press release on Yahoo! News.

You may also notice that SecretPrices.com has a new look and some new features. We’ll be getting to that news shortly as well.