Comic Relief Hackathon
The Facebook Garage hackathon for Comic Relief on Saturday took up much of my social week. We organised it as a “master chef” style head to head between three teams, all competing to create the best Facebook application in a day.
I did the Simon Cowell job of judging which is a lot harder than it looks. Our judging criteria were -
- monetisation - did it meet Comic Relief’s business objectives to raise donations for Red Nose Day?
- distribution - how likely to spread and be viral was it?
- usability - did it look nice and was it simple enough to use?
- innovation - was it a new idea?
- funny - Comic Relief is all about doing something funny for money - was the app funny?
There were three entrants:
- Chris Thorpe (with a little help from Amber) created a comic relief quiz which was clever technically as a Facebook Connect app that also ran on Myspace
- Fabio de Bernardi and Carlos’s “I like u coz” which got friends to donate towards heart warming stories about each other
- Mat Clayton, Sam Stokes, Dan Lester and Josh March’s put together a great looking Funny for Money app to rate each other jokes. Each time you give a friend a red nose as an award you give a donation to Comic Relief.
Hacking away
The Funny for Money app from Mat and team was judged the winner as it’s working Paypal integration, great look and feel and simple working concept made this the Comic Relief Hackathon winner for 2009.
It goes live on Wednesday - the event is supported by 5 million ad impressions from Adknowledge, sweatshirts from Facebook, the venue from Microsoft Biz Spark and hosting by EveryCity. Check out the Every City sponsored hackathon web site for more.
Created in just one day by a team of four
Friend Lists
Hardly seems time to include anything else in this week, however I must just tell you about Friend Lists on Facebook - they are the cure to the problem of ensuring your boss doesn’t see what you did last weekend.
Arrange your friends into friend lists for better privacy control
Here’s how they work:
- You segment your Facebook friends into different groups - I have quite a few but you only really need two or three, for instance I separate between “Clients, Old friends, Current friends, Church people, Work Colleagues and Family”.
- You can use whatever categories you like as these lists aren’t shared with anyone but you.
- Then you set for each friend list what they can and can’t see. Clients only see Posted Notes and Items and my professional profile while Family and Friends can see all my photos, status and even photos my friends tag me in (though this can sometimes be embarassing)
- You can even check it by using the profile privacy settings and use “See how a friend sees my profile” You can then check for individual friends that they are only seeing the aspects of you that you want them to see.
How my work colleagues see me
It’s a great way to manage your privacy while keeping all your social network contacts in one place.
Have a social week!
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