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Congratulations to CrowdStar & Facebook for entering into a five year strategic relationship around Facebook Credits. I remember a little more than a year ago when I had just walked out of the door at Facebook and I first got involved with CrowdStar. In those days they were called HotBerry and had some of the most popular trivia apps on Facebook. I worked with CrowdStar as an advisor before I launched my own company PlayHopper and initiated the first meeting between the two. Its amazing how far they have come in such a short period of time and wish all the best to Suren, Jeff, Peter and Niren.

Disclaimer: I’m a former advisor to CrowdStar and a small share holder.

Congratulations to Jason & the Aurora Feint crew on launching OpenFeint X - the coolest thing since sliced awesome! Now you can build free-to-play iPhone games just like the ones on Facebook with virtual goods, micro-transactions,  millions of players and all that stuff! Aurora Feint rocks the iPhone games market once again. If you are a game developer – don’t be a looser ! Integrate OpenFeint now & get that Xbox-live experience in your iPhone game + million of users. Nuff said. Disclaimer: I’m an advisor.

Big congratulations to the CrowdStar team on the successfully launch of Happy Pets, yet another great social game on Facebook.  In just a week Happy Pets went from 0 to 890,000 Monthly active users. Amazing.  Following Happy Aquarium’s tremendous success not long ago, this is just shows that it wasn’t a one off only. Keep a close eye on these guys – they are going to go far. Social gaming have just started to take off, and it is definitely not the-winner-takes-it-all market. There is plenty of room for new companies in this space. The key thing for all social games though, is to convert active users to active paying users. My advice: focus on optimizing mobile payments to a more salient place in the UI.

Disclaimer: I sit on CrowdStar’s advisory board.

• What are the pros and cons of an apps only strategy?
• What are the best practices around a hybrid website/app approach?
• And, is there still such a thing as a website only strategy?

This and many other questions will be discussed at the Consumer Web – User Acquisition in the Era of App Platforms panel  that David Hornik, August Capital, Jason Oberfest, MySpace, Rashmi Sinha, Slide and myself will participate in moderated by Dave McClure, Founders Fond this Friday at TieCon 2009.

What do you think? What is your take on the above questions?

Dear friends, I am no longer with Facebook and am now going to spend the near future exploring new ventures. I you are interested to talk to me, please contact me using the contact details to the left. You may also leave a voice mail on: 650 488 7688.

Stay tuned for more.

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The Israeli elections were just held earlier this week. Inspired by what we at Facebook did with CNN during the inauguration of President Obama, and Nana10 & Israeli TV Channel 10 decided to totally by themselves launch a similar integration. What was impressive, was the fact that they did it all by themselves and manged to even upgrade the integration by allowing people to actually comment on the live reports during the live stream, not just making status updates.

The Nana team told me afterwards that the reactions were so positive that they have decided to luanch similar integrations for the very popular reality show “Survivor” as well.

Kudos, the Nana team for being so innovative and showing the world what you can do with Facebook Connect. I am postive that this will inspire other media companies to follow suit.

To learn more about how you can implement Facebook Connect to make the world more open and social, just follow this link. Everything you need to know is here and you woun’t need any approval or support from Facebook to launch it.

SIME 08
Originally uploaded by Net.

I am really looking forward to SIME 08 in Stockholm, Sweden next week. I can't believe that it has been five years has passed by since I was there last time. It will a great opportunity to meet up with Scandinavian entrepreneurs and media folks.

Facebook is really hot in Scandinavia and I am looking forward to hear how people use Facebook and what impact it has on people's life in my old back yard.

I recently read an amazing story on how a Swedish teenager from my old home town Lund, who was adopted from Colombia when she was only two month old, found here biological mother in Colombia on Facebook. Talking about making a a difference in people life.

Do you know any other stories like this? I'd love to hear.