Inside Facebook

More brands are engaging with Facebook’s 150 million users through Facebook advertising solutions and the Facebook Platform, patterns of best practices are emerging for brands in different verticals.  Last week, Inside Facebook spoke with Dave Eisenberg, VP of Marketing at Bonobos, about the ways the specialty pants retailer is reaching new customers on Facebook.

Today, we turn our attention to the restaurant industry and Papa John’s Pizza. Inside Facebook recently sat down with Bob Ford, Papa John’s Director of Online Marketing, about the ways the pizza restaurant chain is reaching customers on Facebook.

Thanks for your time Bob. Why did Papa John’s decide to get involved on Facebook?

We’ve obviously been tracking social networks for a number of years now, but we’ve been looking for opportunity that is right for our brand, and Facebook’s engagement ads made sense to me and to Papa John’s. Facebook has actually initially reached out to us three years ago, but this is the first one we felt like we were ready to try.

Before we built our Facebook Page, there were other Papa John’s Facebook Pages out there.  They had a limited number of fans, but when you looked and saw something that was put up by someone who was literally just a fan, it became intriguing to us. So we dedicated the time to put together our Facebook Page, working closely with Facebook to design it in a way that the audience is looking for.

Who was your campaign targeted at and how did it work?

Facebook is very different today in terms of who their audience is even compared to just a couple years ago. We were really looking for a way to feature some of our new features like mobile ordering, and the 15-24 audience is a great fit for that.

We did two projects with Facebook.  First, in November of last year, we did our engagement ad where we drove people to become a fan of our Facebook Page. Fans were notified on three different dates via an Update from the Papa John’s Page, and were then directed to the Papa John’s site to receive their promotional code for the pizza.

We added 125,000 fans within a day, that number has grown to over 200,000 today.  We’re very pleased with how many fans we’ve gained, and we’re examining ways we can promote it more. We look at our Facebook page almost as an extension of our website, and we have more campaigns coming up soon in the next 6 moths.

We also gave away some virtual pizzas. Using Facebook Gifts, we gave away as many virtual pizzas as we could. We funded and gave away a couple hundred thousand pizzas.  You may think, “What’s the value in a virtual pizza?” We looked at it almost like we do our widgets - they’re a constant reminder that sits on someone’s profile page.

The person sent their friend a gift that was a Papa John’s ad that the friend was happy to get. It’s not often that you find an advertising vehicle that people are happy to get. From the feedback we’ve seen it seemed to be very well received.

How did the ROI on these campaigns compare to your expectations?

We set out  targets for both promotions, and they came back dead on. In fact, we got a much better ROI than we expected from the number of impressions we ended up receiving from our virtual gifts - Facebook did a great job projecting that.

In terms of the number of fans we added to the Papa John’s, it is probably double what we projected. What we were truly hoping for was to sign up 100,000 fans. I would have been okay if we had signed up 50,000. The fact that we’re at 200,000 is fantastic.

Why do you think your Page has been successful?

Facebook has been really good about providing guidance on what their users expect to see on Pages, and how to keep them active. What we need to do is make sure that we keep that page fresh so that people keep coming back, and so that when we send an update people will see it and find it valuable.

Thanks Bob. Do you have any final thoughts for other brand marketers out there?

Industry by indusry we have to be willing to put ourselves out there, knowing that not everything we do will be perfect.  We know we will take some hits from our customers, but we as a brand need to embrace that. We need to monitor it and react to it. We have worked to resolve issues with people who have had any issues - for example, I have sent personal messages to people that have had issues, and the responses I’ve gotten have been fantastic. Even if someone makes a negative post the first time, they often go back and make an unbelievably positive comments.

SocialMedia, one of the leading ad networks on the Facebook Platform and other social media platforms, has raised an additional $6 million from new investor IDG Ventures and existing investor Charles River Ventures, VentureBeat reports. IDG’s Alex Rosen will be joining the company’s board.

In addition, the company says it closed over $15 million in revenues for 2008, largely driven by its centerpiece “Word of Mouth” advertising products for big brands to engage users on social networks.

Here’s how it works: When a user interacts with an ad in the SocialMedia network, the service is then able to serve a special version of that ad to their friends showing what the person did. For example, this could mean watching a movie trailer or answering a short poll - in a recent Macy’s campaign, users were asked “What kind of Santa are you?”, and their answers were shown in ads shown to their friends.

SocialMedia CEO Seth Goldstein says these campaigns can sell for as high as $20 CPM, compared to the normally low CPMs that most social banner campaigns see. Goldstein explained the benefits advertisers and publishers see with these ad units in an interview with Inside Facebook last year.

SocialMedia launched in mid 2007 as one of the earliest ad networks serving Facebook application developers. The partnership with IDG will help the company expand and deepen its relationships with major advertisers, as it continues to extend its publisher network across the Facebook Platform and, soon, new platforms like Twitter.

(Note: SocialMedia is an advertiser on this blog.)

Although many parts of the US and global economies are seeing major challenges right now, Facebook is continuing to hire at a fast pace. What do those tell us about where Facebook is going in 2009?

According to Facebook’s current jobs listings, the company is currently hiring for dozens of positions across various departments. In particular, Facebook is hiring large numbers of staff in both sales and customer support - good indicators of where Facebook is seeing current and future growth. Facebook currently has around 800 people on staff.

Sales Team Growing Internationally

On the sales side, Facebook lists 34 open positions, 28 of which are stationed outside of North America. Most of the open positions are in the company’s Paris and Dublin offices, though a few are in Sydney, Toronto, and even the US. However, the focus regions for these roles are more varied, as several positions are listed in Italian, Spanish, German, and Nordic. To get a sense of the geographic hot spots for these new hires, here’s the full list of Facebook’s open sales jobs:

• Account Executive (Paris)
• Account Executive (Sydney)
• Account Executive (Toronto)
• Account Executive, Pan Euro (London)
• Account Executive, Southern Europe - Italian (Paris)
• Account Executive, Southern Europe - Spanish (Paris)
• Account Executive, Southern Europe (Paris)
• Account Manager (London)
• Account Manager (Toronto)
• Account Manager, Southern Europe - Italian (Paris)
• Account Manager, Southern Europe - Spanish (Paris)
• Account Manager, Southern Europe (Paris)
• Account Planner (Atlanta)
• Account Planner (Paris)
• Account Planner (Sydney)
• Account Planner (Toronto)
• Account Planner, Southern Europe (Paris)
• Associate Account Manager (Paris)
• Associate Account Manager (Sydney)
• Head of Sales (Toronto)
• Inside Sales Account Associate
• Inside Sales Associate – French (Dublin)
• Inside Sales Associate – German (Dublin)
• Inside Sales Associate – Italian (Dublin)
• Inside Sales Associate – Nordic (Dublin)
• Inside Sales Associate – Spanish (Dublin)
• Inside Sales Manager (Dublin)
• Inside Sales Representative
• Manager, Market Development
• Sales Associate (London)
• Sales Associate, Southern Europe - Italian (Paris)
• Sales Associate, Southern Europe - Spanish (Paris)
• Sales Director (New York)
• Sales Engineer

Support Team Growth

On the support side, there are similar patterns: 16 out of 21 positions listed are either outside of North America or not in English. In particular, Facebook needs support staff that speak Turkish, Arabic, and Dutch in addition to the usual Spanish, French, German, Italian, and English:

• Analyst, Media Delivery
• Analyst, Media Delivery - French (Dublin)
• Analyst, Media Delivery - German (Dublin)
• Analyst, Media Delivery - Italian (Dublin)
• Analyst, Media Delivery - Spanish (Dublin)
• Analyst, Online Sales Operations
• Analyst, Online Sales Operations - German (Dublin)
• Analyst, Online Sales Operations - Italian (Dublin)
• Analyst, Online Sales Operations - Spanish (Dublin)
• Analyst, User Operations - Arabic (Dublin)
• Analyst, User Operations - Dutch (Dublin)
• Analyst, User Operations - French (Dublin)
• Analyst, User Operations - German (Dublin)
• Analyst, User Operations - Italian (Dublin)
• Analyst, User Operations - Spanish
• Analyst, User Operations - Spanish (Dublin)
• Analyst, User Operations - Turkish (Dublin)
• Fraud Analyst
• Fraud Investigator
• Media Delivery Analyst (New York)
• Media Delivery Specialist - Trafficker (London)

And anecdotally, Facebook is hiring for these positions pretty agressively in some cases. As Nick Carlson recently noted, Facebook recruiters were “reaching out to” a number of ex-Googlers last week letting them know that “Facebook is still growing.” Many of these sales and support roles were noted as “high priority roles” by Facebook staff.

From the interesting marketing experiments department, Intuit is running a social media campaign across Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter that is focused on getting users to talk about TurboTax in their status updates.

Here’s how it works on Facebook: First, users must become a fan of the TurboTax page. Then, users must accept a friend request from a TurboTax contest judge. (This is a somewhat awkward step, but done in order for Intuit to be able to access users’ status updates.) Finally, users can enter the contest by updating their status in response to the question on the Super Status Contest website. Intuit will then award prizes to users that have the most “original and unique” status updates involving the word “TurboTax.”

For example, the contest prompt asks:

What’s the weirdest place you’ve found money? How much? Required: Use “TurboTax” in your status.

Here’s an example response:

Leslie was 5 when a clown found a quarter behind my ear. It still freaks me out. Save me TurboTax!

Interestingly, the marketing department has added some additional “tips” in the “How to Win” section of the contest website:

How to Win

• Post an original and clever status thats makes us laugh, cry, or ponder — the more original and unique, the better.
• Post a status that’s relevant to the challenge’s theme — be on topic.
• Get more friends/followers — the more friends and followers you have the better your chances are of winning.
• Playing through all three sites (Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter) with three *different* status updates triples your chances of winning.
• If you want, work TurboTax products into your status somehow.
• Don’t use profanity, and avoid mentioning any competitors of TurboTax.

Clearly, Intuit is trying to get people talking about TurboTax in a somewhat authentic way. While this is not as spammy as a pure “Pay Per Status Update” model, it does run more counter to the implied social contracts that exist between Facebook friends than that between MySpace friends or Twitter followers.

What do you think - will this type of campaign be successful?

The final results are in for Facebook’s very successful CNN.com Live with Facebook integration from inauguration day: over 2 million Facebook status updates were published on CNN.com/live last Tuesday.

While last week’s Facebook integration is one of the first widely promoted events of its kind, it was a symbolic day for “social TV” on the Facebook Platform. The CNN/Facebook integration showed that millions of people want to talk with their friends while watching TV that they care about, even if they can’t be in the same place to watch it together.

Developers like Watercooler, LivingSocial, and Mesmo are also building applications that enable TV fans to watch TV together inside Facebook. As Facebook continues to grow this year, expect to see more people sharing their favorite TV with friends on Facebook and the Facebook Platform.

To gain more perspective on the strategies employed by successful Facebook application developers, Inside Facebook has recently interviewed the winners of the fbFund’s $250k prize. So far, we’ve spoken with WildFire, a brand marketing tool, GroupCards, a collaborative e-greeting company, and Weddingbook, an wedding and events management tool.

This time around, we talked with Joel Auge, one of the founders of HitGrab and creator of MouseHunt, a Facebook game that is not only included in the list of fbFund grant winners but is also one of the most popular and engaging games on the Facebook platform.  Read below to hear some of the unique perspectives of an indie game developer on the Facebook Platform.

Q: What does MouseHunt bring to Facebook, and what inspired you to start this business?

A: HitGrab was started 2 years before we decided to develop on the Facebook platform. We decided to do so when one of our clients needed a content management system for their website and were using Facebook very proactively to connect to their client base. We saw an opportunity to try something different and designed a simple CMS for their customer relationships and web content through Facebook. They loved it and use it to this day.

Facebook is just that; a great way to develop, maintain and increase your social presence. We fell in love with that idea. To that end, we decided to build a game. Games are inherently social in nature. So to develop MouseHunt on a naturally relational platform seemed like a good idea at the time… and it just really took off. Facebook allows the relationships in the game to happen, while MouseHunt allows those relationships to grow into a team-based, time-based, pass-time that is unlike any other social game.

Q: MouseHunt has become incredibly popular, with nearly a quarter million devoted monthly players. How did you reach this point in less than a year? What methods did you employ to gain traction among Facebook users and to market your app? Is this what you would recommend to the next generation of fbFund applicants?

A: MouseHunt will be 1 year old on March 7th, 2009. Our users (on their own) are organizing anniversary meets all over the world on that day. Australia, England, Israel, the U.S.A., and Singapore are among the countries where MouseHunters will unite to celebrate the anniversary.

I think the main reason MouseHunt has become such a deeply engaging game is because we’ve included our users in the development of the game. We’ve done everything possible, used every method to get them to interact directly with us. The users have access to the development team (and each other) through the forums, videos, and a built-in chat system. We’ve decided to share a large slice of our office lives with them.

MouseHunters have responded by participating in a more engaged way than perhaps any other application on Facebook (our daily engagement rates continue to hover around the 30% to 40% of total MAUs daily). I’d highly recommend that anyone who develops an app wholly involve themselves in their burgeoning communities. It’s done wonders for us.

Q: Can you offer any advice to game developers out there on how to create a really engaging game (that actually makes money)?

A: Coming from a PPC/SEO and web marketing background, we knew from the get-go that we couldn’t rely on advertising to make money from the game. There’s no way the initial traffic would have covered development costs. So our plan involved selling a digital product in-game. We feel it was the best decision for us. The trick was trying to get users engaged enough to come back over and over again… and that’s been our focus ever since the very beginning.

We hired great talent to not only develop the game, but to illustrate the characters/user-interface and participate creatively in the expansion of the game. We really try to focus on quality and creativity. We’ve discovered along the way, that some people play competitively (to sound the horn, or beat their friends’ scores) while others play to collect the artwork. It’s great to give users more than one reason to play.

Q: Among the fbFund winners, there were 3 teams, including yours, based in Canada - and one team based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. What insights can you offer to future fbFund applicants that aren’t based in Silicon Valley?

A: First off, I tip my hat to the teams at the Founders Fund, Accel Partners, and Facebook themselves for opening up their coffers to developers all over the world (okay, suck-up time over…). But truly, non-recourse funding is a great way to attract developers to the platform, if nothing else. And once developers see the beauty of creating engaging apps that take into account “relationship” rather than a one-off user experience, I don’t think they’d go back.

So really, I think the geography of the teams working on the Facebook platform has little bearing on their successes. I think the Facebook platform tears down geographical boundaries better than any other distributed information system in the world. Quality will prevail. The MouseHunt social graph expands to players in over 180 countries. And each one of them could develop for the platform themselves if they wanted to. It’s undoubtedly a bonus that 40% of Canadians are on Facebook, because as business owners, Bryan [co-founder of HitGrab] and I are keenly aware of the automatic strength of the people we know in our daily lives who are also Facebook users - but I’m convinced that awareness isn’t necessary to understand the value of this still-growing platform.

Q: What do you think made your app successful in the fbFund competition?

A: Gosh. That’s a tough one. There were countless solid applications I’m sure. Perhaps the difference was in the business model, user engagement numbers, and outright fanaticism of our players. Our users are an undeniable force when it comes to voting for anything. So there’s no doubt that helped. We really do owe a lot of this to MouseHinters globally.

Q: Do you have any specific plans for the $250k from fbFund yet?

A: The money is intended to help continued development on the Facebook platform. We’re using it as such. We’ve hired a few new people to bolster our future plans… and I’ll leave it there…

Q: Where do you guys see the company going in the future, especially with respect to Facebook? What is the next step?

A: We exist currently as a one-hit wonder… and we’re aware of that. Our goal is to keep developing MouseHunt for Facebook, to support our users, and at the same time, develop a solid pack of games in an attempt to go from win to win. We’ve really only scratched the surface of the 140 million users on the platform.

I’ll state it boldly so as to keep myself accountable to my team and to the people I’ve already said this to… I want HitGrab to be the Blizzard entertainment of Social games. Those are hard words to say… But I’d rather aim for the sun and hit the moon, then never have the guts to try. Blizzard has done such a great job in their space. We love how they’ve focused their efforts on long-term user engagement. On making quality rather than quantity. On focusing their craft to a handful of solid titles.

It won’t be easy, but we think we’re onto something stunning with the next game and we’re confident we can bring something new and exciting to social games again. We plan to continue developing on Facebook for many years to come. And as they grow, we intend to as well.

Thanks Joel for some honest and bold answers about what you did to make your company a success.  Best of luck this year!

Now that there are over 150 million active users on Facebook, more businesses large and small are actively reaching and engaging customers through Facebook and the Facebook Platform. Global chains all the way down to the local pub are building social marketing strategies that leverage the strengths of Facebook to drive traffic to their pages and feet to their premises.

However, many business owners are daunted by Facebook’s sheer scale, and simply don’t know where to start. Inside Facebook is here to help guide business owners and marketers through that process.

Here are Inside Facebook’s top 10 ways business owners can more effectively leverage Facebook to reach their target audience and drive more business. To dive deeper on the ways you can leverage Facebook for your marketing goals - including each of the tactics listed below - check out the Facebook Marketing Bible: The Guide to Marketing Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook.

10 Things Business Owners Can Do to Market More Effectively on Facebook

1. Create a Facebook Page

Your Facebook Page should be the “hub” of your Facebook marketing presence. With a Facebook Page, Facebook users can become a “fan” of your company or product; when that happens, your name and logo will appear on their profile page and your name will appear in their profile feed. In turn, more users will be able to discover your Facebook Page through their friends’ profiles and Facebook searches, and your Page can grow “virally” without you even having to do much work. Finally, Pages rank very highly in Google search results, boosting your SEO rankings.

2. Create Facebook Events for Promotions and Special Occasions

Once you’ve created a Facebook Page, create regular Facebook Events for promotions you’re running. For example, a local bar might want to create a Facebook Event each week for happy hour! Larger businesses might target them around major campaign target events. When you create Facebook Events, they are automatically promoted on your Facebook Page. Plus, when Facebook users RSVP to your event (think “Biff Henderson is attending to Thursday Happy Hour at O’Malleys,” etc.), their friends see the updates on their profile or news feed.

3. Promote Your Events with Highly Targeted Social Ads

Facebook’s Social Ads platform makes it easy to target your spend to a very specific age, gender, and geographic audience. (You can even target based on words they’ve put on their profile.) Purchasing Social Ads throws fuel on the flames of the “natural” viral distribution you’re already getting from Facebook’s feed system, and you only pay for performance!

4. Add Contests and Voting Applications to Your Facebook Page to Give Your Customers a Voice

People love fun ways of engaging and feeling like they are contributing to your direction and decisions. Why not create a poll and let your users vote on the next menu item addition? White label solutions are readily available, and thousands of developers are able to easily build custom applications that you can add to your Facebook page.

5. Sponsor Popular Applications with Ads and Virtual Gifts

For larger chains and brands, sponsoring Facebook applications popular with your target audience offers richer opportunities for deeper engagement. For example, sports bars or sporting goods stores could partner with popular sports applications, and music retailers or pubs with live music could partner with popular music applications. What to do exactly? Sponsor or skin a whole section of the app, or offer sponsored virtual goods (i.e. virtual “bumper stickers”) for users to send to their friends on your behalf.

6. Go Big with Facebook Engagement Ads

For those who want to achieve the widest reach, Facebook’s variety of available home page engagement ads offer a simple way to engage millions of users. If you’re able to meet Facebook’s minimum spend requirements, Facebook can deliver big unique numbers.

7. Integrate Facebook Connect on Your Website

If your website is an important channel to you, Facebook Connect can help you amplify engagement you’re achieving by spreading information and updates about your visitors activity with their Facebook friends.

For example, with Facebook Connect, you can publish updates like “Peggy Bush just ordered a pizza from Mancini’s Chicago Pizzeria on 31st St” to your customers’ Facebook profiles, where they are seen by thousands of friends.

8. Add Facebook Share Links to Your Website

Does your website even make it easy for your customers to share information about you with their friends? Adding Facebook “share” links is the simplest step you should take to get your URL floating around Facebook.

9. Publish Fresh Photos, Videos, and Updates to Your Facebook Page

Facebook Pages are not “set it and forget it.” They require regular updates with new content that feels authentic and community generated - not “from the marketing guy who doesn’t get it.” Which leads us to the last and most important point…

10. TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS

Facebook is made up of people, and people want to talk to you. If you don’t enter the conversation they invite you into, they’ll stop paying you much attention. When you start a Facebook presence, you’ll need to “man the wheel” by allocating staff to participate in discussions on your Page and respond to concerns. When customers discover that there are actually real people there, their appreciation for you will grow - as will their willingness to let others know!

One final note…

Keep in mind, however, that while Facebook marketing is powerful, it isn’t free. Your Facebook marketing plan should be part of a larger strategy that incorporates all the elements that make social marketing successful. Participating in the Facebook ecosystem most effectively requires consistent participation and willingness to engage your customers. There’s a good chance you will find it more rewarding than you expect!

Inside Facebook recently detailed the five types of Facebook home page “engagement” ads available to advertisers: event ads, video ads, virtual gift ads, page ads, and regular website ads. Today, Facebook is adding a sixth type of home page ad: polls.

Direct sales clients can use the new home page polling ad to reach large numbers of Facebook users. People who respond can see how others voted - and how each of their friends voted - in the poll.

For example, CareerBuilder.com is running a test with the polling ad unit around the Super Bowl, asking Facebook users who they think will win the biggest football game of the year as a lead up to their 60-second in game TV ad. CareerBuilder plans on running another poll after the Super Bowl asking Facebook users which part of the ad they liked best.

Originally launched as a separate advertising product a couple of years ago, Facebook recently removed polls from its standard list of self-serve advertising options and has instead decided to make it available to larger clients through its sales team.

A Facebook spokesperson said the company expects polling ads to become available to the general public within the next few months, but the exact date will depend on the results of these early tests.

The last time we spoke with Seattle-based Facebook Platform startup Jambool last summer, the company was developing its own network of Facebook applications. Since then, however, the company has quietly been focused on developing its own payments platform and virtual economy tools for social network applications and online games.

According to CEO Vikas Gupta, Jambool closed a (previously undisclosed) $1 million round of funding in Q3 2008 from Hit Forge (Naval Ravikant), Charles River Ventures (Jim Scheinman), and Bay Partners (Salil Deshpande). And at the end of last year, the company launched its SocialGold payments and virtual economy platform for social applications and games.

Now, SocialGold is live on several applications on Facebook and MySpace, including (Lil) Green Patch on Facebook (see the “Buy Gold” feature). In addition, SocialGold is integrated and live with SuperRewards and SocialCash on applications like Pieces of Flair and Mob Wars.

The SocialGold platform enables payment with credit cards and bank accounts through PayPal, Amazon, and Google - as well as mobile phone payment in 37 countries through other partners. In addition, SocialGold provides virtual economy dashboards so that developers can learn about payment patterns amongst their users. While Gupta isn’t ready to share these publicly yet, we saw a beta version and they look good. Reports include per-capita money sourced vs. sunk, price elasticity comparisons for virtual goods, and top items purchased within any timeframe after a credit purchase.

Tonight, SocialGold is turning on a self serve system and a new payments widget for developers interested in trying out the service in their Facebook applications. The API is built for quick integration with Facebook (through FBML), but support for other platforms will be coming soon. Here’s how it looks:

Overall, Jambool’s shift makes sense, given Gupta’s background as a lead developer on many of Amazon’s core payment systems (from 1999-2004) and the continued growth of virtual goods transactions revenues for Facebook application and game developers. It also remains unclear when Facebook will develop an in-house Platform payments system itself. We’ll continue following this space closely in the months ahead.

Publicly traded “lifestage” media company The Knot (NASDAQ: KNOT) announced today that it has acquired WedSnap, the developer of Weddingbook, the most popular wedding planning application on the Facebook Platform. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition comes only six weeks after Weddingbook was awarded a $250,000 grant through Facebook’s fbFund competition. fbFund, organized by Facebook, Founders Fund, and Accel Partners, deploys non-recourse grant capital and provides mentorship to entrepreneurs building on the Facebook Platform.

WedSnap’s strategy of focusing on building the best product for a highly valuable audience has apparently paid off. As of today, Weddingbook had 450,00 monthly active users doing things like seeking wedding advice from other brides, sharing wedding details and guest registries, and managing guest lists.

Shortly after the fbFund announcement, WedSnap CEO Kevin Lister spoke of perseverence and focusing on building products that users love:

We’ve been building Weddingbook for over a year. At times it’s been disheartening to see some spammy quiz application zoom past us in a matter of days. But we have a vision for what we want the product to be and we know that it will transform how people plan weddings. We’ve grown slowly and steadily and now have more monthly users than many of the applications we admired when we first started…

To create a successful application on Facebook, you can either build an app that takes advantage of the viral features of the platform or you can build an application that users love. I think it’s easier to build an application by exploiting the viral tools of the platform but easier to build a business by creating an application that users love. Of course if you’re really smart you’ll do both.

The Knot will add Weddingbook to its network of websites that serve “well over a million engaged couples each year.”

“With this acquisition, The Knot community broadens by branching into the fastest-growing social network of brides on Facebook, while Weddingbook members will have access to our extensive repertoire of tools, content, and vendor directories,” said The Knot CEO David Liu in a statement.

According to The Knot, the WedSnap team will stay in tact and continue to operate out of their Toronto offices.