Recently I attended the Google I/O conference with Jason Collins, our CTO. Since this was a developer conference I was initially a little concerned that it would be too technical for me. None-the-less I decided to attend because so many sessions were focused on OpenSocial and social networking containers and this was the exact type of research we needed for our web 2.0 start-up MyFrontSteps. I was pleasantly surprised that most of the sessions I attended did not delve too deeply into code. Also as expected both of the keynotes were very impressive. Marissa Mayer reminded me once again how important it is to let user data drive the decisions and that the “simplest design is probably right”.

For me some of the most memorable information was contained in the session “Best Practices for Spreading Your App without Ruining the User Experience” put on by Vivian Li, Chris Schalk, and Kevin Marks. In it they described how to foster organic growth over brute force viral growth by focusing on a “usage group” instead of an “invite loop”. The latter can lead to what they termed “Application Fatigue” where users become tired of all the noise and lack of value then unistall their apps. The application that MyFrontSteps is creating will be a highly useful one that brings true value and therefore it only makes sense to focus on sustained organic growth through high adoption and retention. MyFrontSteps will allow users to share their home, inspirational ideas, and helpful recommendations in order to engage their friends across social networks. We will do this while respecting users privacy and giving them complete control over privacy settings.

More to come on the specifics of MyFrontSteps and how these best practices will be applied to its social applications…