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How To Create an OpenFeint iPhone app in 19 min

creating an OpenFeint iPhone app from scratch from Alan Taylor on Vimeo. What are you waiting for? Put some serious social plumbing into your iphone games yourself by integrating OpenFeint today!

OpenFeint Launches 2.0 - Social Community platform

I'm going to be at Casual Connect (June 21-22) next week in Seattle on behalf of Aurora Feint / OpenFeint. Let me know if you want to meet up and learn how OpenFeint can make your games more social and how you can cross-promote your games on the OpenFeint platform.

Oh BTW, OpenFeint just announced the OpenFeint 2.0 social community platform for mobile games :

OpenFeint Social Discovery

OpenFeint Social Discovery supports multiple approaches to discovering games and game content in the App Store

Discovery Lobbies: Chat with other people from any OpenFeint enabled game and discover what they are playing. See the name of the game every player is chatting from alongside each and every message. Clicking on the game's name or icon will take you its iPurchase Catalog where you can click Buy Now to go directly to the app store and purchase the game.  

What are my friends playing:

Clicking on a person in the friends tab shows you a list of all the OpenFeint games they have played. Clicking on any of those games will take you to its iPurchase Catalog page from where you can click Buy Now to go directly to the app store and purchase the game.

Social Challenges: Send a challenge to your friends including those even playing a different game! Your friend will receive the challenge when opening any OpenFeint enabled title. From there, they can see click to the challenge information and are given the option to purchase your game from iPurchase if they don't already own it.

Screenjelly on CNN

Wow, Screenjelly is on a roll. Thanks to the fabulous Chris Pirillo.

Quick Screen recording with Screenjelly

It is always a great to see a project that you have been working on go live. Today is such a day. Veodia, a company I have been actively advising is finally launching Screenjelly. Screenjelly is the result of Veodia's acquisition of the French company Screentoaster.

The idea behind is very simple, we all find ourselves in the situation where we are trying to explain to others what is going on our our desktop. For instance, a software that you downloaded got stuck, a program you are using freezes or you get lost when using a web service. That is when screenjelly can come handy. Instead of rather trying to explain to people what the problem is in words, you just Screenjelly it and share it over Twitter or Facebook etc to get feeback.

Some of the user scenarios that I see is for Screenjelly is:

• Bug reporting
• A developer that want so share some cool code he is working on
• Web designer needing quick feedback on a design he is working on
• Alternative to support ticket
• Consumer feedback on Web services or software
• When you just want to show something cool on your desktop
• You name it

Big congrats to my good friend Guillaume Cohen and the fabulous Veodia team for this very simple but useful service!

OpenFeint Is On A Roll

OpenFeint is really on a roll. The developers keep on signing up, new cool games are being launched and the interest from bigger game publishers & developers is huge. Here's a couple of links to recent coverage about OpenFeint:

AuroraFeint to roll out OpenFeint 2.0 a gaming platform for the iPhone
How OpenFeint plans to become to mobile social gaming what Facebook is to web apps
OpenFeint 2.0 social community platform released
OpenFeint 2.1 beta supporting iPhone 3.0 from today
Tuaw interviews openfeints Peter Relan, Net Jacobsson and Jason Citron
Net Jacobsson joins OpenFeint Advisory Board

Joined the Board of Chinese P1.cn

I'm very happy to announce that I joined the Board of Directors of P1.cn. P1.cn is a private (by invitation only) social network for young affluent Chinese, a target group that is expected to grow from 20 million to 80 million over the next decade.  I've been impressed by the different approach they have taken to social networking and the high quality brands and advertisers they have managed to attract. Looking forward to start working with the Swedish/Chinese founders & the board on this exciting venture!

Tencent Mind 2009 Guangzhou

Qzone's General Manager Peter Zhen and I shake hands after the social networking panel at the Tencent MInd 2009 Forum in Guangzhou. My friend and moderator Gang Lu on the right. Some videos posted afterwards: 

• My short talk (what's up with my accent?)
• Interview with QQ Finance 

Had a great time in Guangzhou and really appreciate the invitation from Tencent. I'm glad to getting involved in China again.  

Talking at Tencent Mind 2009 Forum

I'm in Guangzhou, China getting ready to talk at Tencent Mind 2009 Forum . Tencent's conference for its biggest advertisers in China. It's a great honor to be talking with QZone's General Manager Peter Zheng about social networks trends in China and in the world at large. Of biggest interest to the 500 advertising executives invited to the conference is probably the return of investment for advertisers on social networks. 

QZone - the Worlds biggest Online Social Network

Many people are not aware of that China hosts the biggest online social network in the world, namely QZone with than 200 million active users. Of whom around 50 million are concurrently chatting on it's immensely popular IM service QQ. 

While some social networks are struggling to find a sustainable business model beyond standard online advertising, Tencent clearly shows the way. There is a lot to learn here, and that is actually a point I am going to make. While many accuse Chinese Internet entrepreneur for taking the easy way out by "Copy-to-China" (C2C), the Chinese is actually leading the innovation on the Internet in terms of business models. 

Virtual goods and micro-transactions are well established here and I think that there is a lot the Chinese can teach the rest of the world when it comes to monetizing the social Web. And with the advent of the iPhone OS 3.0 enabling micro-transactions on iPhone apps, I strongly believe that we are going to see an explosion of monetization opportunities for the social Web. 

If you are an iPhone game developer or publisher. Check out OpenFeint! The mobile social gaming platform.

Joined Aurora Feint Advisory Board

I am very excited to announce that I recently joined AuroraFeint's Advisory Board. Aurora Feint is the company behind the tremendously popular Massive Multiplayer iPhone game, Aurora Feint and more importantly, behind OpenFeint the Social Gaming Platform for the iPhone that recently announced OpenFeint 2.0 in connection with the WWDC covered by Techcrunch.

I'm very impressed by how the two creators of AuroraFeint, Daniella Cassley and Jason Citron managed to develop such a great game and then move to a social gaming platform in no-time signing up popular titles like: Pocket God, SticksWars, MyBrute, Knights On Rush, iDracula, EpicPetWars, Ankagua3D, KnowitAll, Optime 4 in a row, Sneezies and many more. Over 3 million users have now joined the OpenFeint social community.

What is then OpenFeint 2.0 and why should you care? Well, if you're an iphone game developer you have probably realized how increasingly difficult it has become to be discovered in the iphone app store. Just as social discovery through friends and people you care about drove the usage and engagement of applications on Facebook, it's going to become very important for games on the iPhone. Through social discovery, your friends become the filter for what is relevant and important to you in a sea of clutter. People are more likely to download applications and play games if they discover that their friends are using them.

OpenFeint 2.0 is really all about answering the question What Are My Friend's Playing?'
in a myriad of ways. The developers of Aurora Feint has taken every
piece of OpenFeint and injected a healthy dose of Friends into it.
Every page you look at, from a game's iPromote page to your
achievements list, has social context.

iPhone games that have integrated OpenFeint have seen a significant boost in sales as a result of the social discovery features embedded in the platform. The developers I met with are very excited about OpenFeint 2.0 and what an impact it will have on their games in terms of user-engagement and the fact that you don't have to worry about developing leaderboards, achievements, profiles, chat rooms and friends list imported from social networks. The best of all is that it only takes around 30 minutes to integrate.

Since I had the privilige to work on Facebook Connect related stuff while at Facebook before it was rolled out in the open, I am very excited to see that through OpenFeint 2.0 game developers get full Facebook Connect integration as well as Twitter and MySpace integration - winn!

So if you're an iphone developer that want to provide your game with some powerful social plumbing and boost your sales don't hesitate go here now: OpenFeint and if you want to get in touch with the team at AuroraFeint - feel free to reach out to me directly.

Click here to get OpenFeint now.

My Business Card

If you need a real business card, just print and use scissors!