Facebook added as a source!

Just a week after Facebook launched their new Graph API, we released support for Facebook as a FeedMagnet content source. You can now run searches across all public posts in Facebook or pull in all of the public posts from a specific user or group of users - just like you could already with Twitter and Flickr.

by Jason Ford on May. 11, 2010

Social Commerce Summit 2010

About a week before this year's Social Commerce Summit, we got a call from Bazaarvoice wanting to use FeedMagnet at the event. The Social Commerce Summit is an event geared toward the marketing and social media leaders of the top companies in the world. It is put on by Bazaarvoice, and most - but not all - of the attendees are their clients.

The theme of the conference is using social interactions to help sell products. It's a great fit for Bazaarvoice, since their products are about capturing and displaying user generated ratings, reviews, stories, and other interactions. It's also a great fit for FeedMagnet since our product does a very similar thing - the difference being that we gather existing content from social networks as opposed to soliciting users to write content directly on the commerce site.

by Jason Ford on Apr. 23, 2010

Content Curation = Marketing Credibility

We're about half-way through this year's SXSW, and one word I've heard a lot so far is "curation." It seems there is a problem with content on the Web, and a lot of people feel like curation is the answer.

The problem is information overload. We envision the flow of content online as a stream or a river — flowing peacefully by. In reality it is more of a disorganized scramble to consume as much crap as we can. And most of the content out there is, in fact, crap.

Just as we need a museum curator to help us sort out the masterpieces from every day art, content curators can help identify the small percent of content out there that is worth consuming.

As it turns out, this is exactly the role that FeedMagnet provides for marketers.

by Jason Ford on Mar. 15, 2010

Crayons & Aspirin

I attended a half-day seminar by Mike McDerment, the CEO of FreshBooks, yesterday. One of the things he talked about was crayons and aspirin. He says that every good web app is either a crayon, helping you create something new or increasing revenue, or an aspirin, relieving pain by making things easier or saving time. I think he is spot on.

FreshBooks is an aspirin. It takes the pain out of invoicing. SalesForce.com is a crayon. It provides tools that help do more with your business and increase sales and revenue. Both are great web apps.

by Jason Ford on Mar. 12, 2010

Google Buzz? We can do that.

I've had a few people ask how Google Buzz will impact FeedMagnet - which is a great question. A lot of social media tools are locked in to only work with Twitter, RSS, or some other specific source. We made the strategic decision with FeedMagnet to support any source that provides a content feed for us to pull from. So we welcome Google Buzz with enthusiasm.

by Jason Ford on Feb. 15, 2010