We’re proud to announce the launch of a brand new application: The Priceline Ultimate Roadtrip Negotiator!

Priceline was one of the first companies to sign on with Buddy Media and their application has been in the works for months. It was time well spent, as the application breaks new ground with sophisticated graphics and engaging game play.

Priceline tasked Buddy Media with creating a Facebook application that would leverage the popularity of their Negotiator television commercials, while attracting a new audience of potential customers through a relevant gaming experience. All Buddy Media needed was a hook - something that would draw in an audience, something that would get people talking, something that would boldly go where no man has gone before.

Only one man has that power and he goes by the name William Shatner aka The Priceline Negotiator!

The concept of the game is simple: outnegotiate Shatner for the lowest hotel rates on a wild cross-country journey. Bid too high and Shatner puts you in your place with a snarky comment - bid to low and you’ll meet the same fate. Successful bids will speed you on your way to the next location, as well as save you money.

What good does saving phony money do? Plenty…

That saved money is translated into more AceBucks earned. More AceBucks means more money to bid on great prizes like iPods and Nintendo Wiis.

Check it out for yourself at http://apps.facebook.com/pricelineroadtrip/

Buddy Media solidified its presence as thought leaders in the burgeoning field of social media with a pervasive presence at Graphing Social Patterns East this week.

Buddy Media made its presence known from the opening moments of the conference with a crowd-pleasing tutorial moderated by Jeff Ragovin (Vice President of Sales and Business Development). Jeff led an interactive session in which he had participants develop social media marketing strategies for an imaginary product called “Apple Window.” The audience was tasked with coming up with ideas for an Apple-branded Facebook application that would serve to market the product while engaging users in a fun and addictive “casual gaming” experience.

Buddies Patrick Stokes, Dan Seldow, and Abby Lauterbach chatted up the masses while distributing popcorn and spreading the good word about our success in marketing branded applications for big brands.

Mike Lazerow had the prescience to see what was coming down the social media pike and turned that hunch into a thriving business that’s way ahead of the competition. That forethought was on display Tuesday as Mike participated in two panels on the emerging power of social media advertising - highlights from his presentation are included in the slideshow below.

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The Buddy Media team is very excited to announce our Platinum sponsorship of the Graphing Social Patterns conference in Washington DC from June 9 - 11, 2008.

If anything we’re zealous in our evangelizing of Facebook and all of its possibilities. As part of our commitment to helping the social networking world evolve and grow, we felt it was our duty to take a leadership role at GSP.

Some highlights to look forward to:

• Jeff Ragovin (Vice President of Sales and Business Development) will be leading an introductory tutorial entitled “Viral Marketing and Advertising Strategies for Social Networks.” This workshop will provide an overview of marketing and advertising solutions for popular social networks; including Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and others. Attendees will learn how to create social advertising campaigns, create branded groups, drive brand awareness using social apps & widgets, and reach consumer audiences on social networks & widget platforms. The session runs from 1:30PM - 4:30PM on Monday June 9, 2008.

• Mike Lazerow (Our Fearless Leader and CEO) will lead “Apps & Widgets: The New New Ad Units” which will reveal all of the latest trends around emerging advertising standards for apps & widgets. This session is on Tuesday June 10, 2008 at 9:50 AM. Mike will also participate in a panel discussion entitled “Where Social Gets Down to Business: Advertising vs. App-vertising.” The panel will share their knowledge about using social networks, social advertising, and social applications to reach hundreds of millions of today’s online users.
• No conference is complete without a good old-fashioned cocktail party! All Buddy Media partners and clients are invited to stop by the GSP East VIP bash at 3303 Water Street for drinks and hor d’oeuvres overlooking the monuments in our nation’s capital. (Tuesday June 10, 5:30 - 7:30)

What do you get when you combine a robust and engaging application from the world’s leader in fast, reliable delivery with the savvy and experience of one of the leaders in the social media marketing world?

The answer is simple: 100,000 installs for FedEx Launch a Package in less than 48 hours - with over 50 percent of those users returning more than 10 times since their initial install!

All of that activity led to a groundbreaking achievement for a branded application - the number one spot on Facebook’s Most Activity page! This should leave no doubt that branded social media applications are a powerful form of advertising that can reach customers through interactive content that is both engaging and fun!

Who are the people installing FedEx Launch a Package? The audience is global with a slight weighting towards female users (53%). The most exciting news is that seventy-four percent of the audience is in the coveted 19-34 age demographic. This age group represents the new media generation - a group of young people who came of age in a world of ‘on-demand’ content - making them the toughest demo to reach with advertising. Advertisers need look no farther than the branded social media application for an ad unit that can effectively attract this fickle and impatient generation.

We’re proud to announce the launch of a brand new application that will change the way you look at branded social media content - FedEx Launch a Package!

After many hours of hard work and fine tuning, the FedEx Facebook application went live yesterday - exploding out of the starting gate with more than 30,000 installs in less than 24 hours. Of course, the Buddy Media marketing machine can take some credit for the initial success, but the real story is the application itself.

Launch a Package represents a giant leap into the social media realm for FedEx - a company that’s known around the globe for fast and reliable service and delivery. The new Facebook application delivers a combination of the best elements of email, media sharing, and virtual gifting - all on one platform.

Users can circumvent problems with sending large files through archaic email servers by launching photos and documents directly to a friend’s profile page. Virtual gifts can be packaged with messaging and photos and sent to anyone on Facebook. The best feature (in my humble opinion) is the ability to embed video content directly into your virtual package. You’ll never have to send a URL hotlink to a friend again when you want to share YouTube videos - just package it up and fling it across cyberspace with FedEx’s package launcher. It’s not just the features and capabilities that make this application great. The UI is simple, the graphics are clean, and the sound effects are guaranteed to make you smile.

Check it out for yourself at http://apps.facebook.com/fedexlaunchapackage.

The FedEx Launch a Package application represents the first in a long line of branded applications in the Buddy Media pipeline. We’ve got applications launching in the near future for Priceline, Reader’s Digest, HBO, New Balance, and Sherman’s Travel.

High Noon – Columbus Circle – Buddy Media Headquarters – 4/30/08

Rumors swirled around the office for weeks– would we spend the day bowling and hitting golf balls at Chelsea Piers? Would it be an outing to Central Park for a picnic and whiffle ball? Or maybe the plan was to go to Jeff’s apartment and scrub the grout in his shower? Most agreed that while scrubbing Jeff’s bathroom tile would be fun, we’d prefer a day out in the sun. Well, our wish was granted when Kass and Mike unveiled the Buddy Media Scavenger Hunt.

After receiving detailed instructions (Instruction #1 - Any calls to Kass will result in a strict penalty!), the staff was split into five teams and unleashed on the Big Apple, with only $50 and a digital camera. In order to complete each task on the Scavenger Hunt, team members needed the courage to negotiate with pedestrians and civil servants, and the street smart savvy necessary to traverse NYC from the Upper West Side to the southern tip of the island.

Five hours of frantic scrambling around town ended on E. 53rd Street at Top Tunes Karaoke, where Kass reviewed each teams photos to determine a winner. (While it seemed like a lot of work went into the planning of the hunt itself, it soon became evident that the most work went into the Excel Spreadsheet that Kass used to track each team’s progress.) When all the points were tallied and all the photos scrutinized, the team of Isha, Josh, and Greg emerged victorious.

The real victors however, emerged after the Scavenger Hunt, as the teams bellied up to the karaoke bar and started belting out classic tunes like true professional amateur singers.

Post Event Reward Wrap-up…

The “Something I Never Thought I’d See” Award - Eugene singing a serviceable version of Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man”

The “Give Me A Stage and a Microphone and I’ll Entertain Myself All Night” Award - Abby, who managed to contribute to just about every performance

The “I’ll Only Sing If the Microphone is Broken” Award - Dan, whose one appearance on stage paled in comparison to his appearance in the back of a police cruiser

The “Who Knew” Award - Luke, whose show stopping version of Elvis Costello’s Alison was the talk of the office for days

The “Thumbs Up” Award - Patrick and MJ displaying their thumbs more times than a hitchhiker on a ten-lane interstate - Runner-up: Jeff, whose thumbs made an appearance for the first time since the X-mas party

I am excited to make two big announcements today: ­ the launch of the Buddy Media Ad Network and the closing of our Series B financing. These two huge advancements will solidify Buddy Media’s current leadership position in the social media realm and help brand advertisers and media companies leverage the power of social networks. The Buddy Media Ad Network will connect our clients to the world’s leading developers of social media applications in a way that provides significant benefits to both advertisers and developers over existing ad networks. Sign up and check it out for yourself at: http://adnetwork.buddymedia.com .

For advertisers, the major benefits are as follows:

• SELF-SERVE PLATFORM: Advertisers can continue to work directly with the Buddy Media sales and account teams or they can sign up and login to the self-serve platform to plan their entire campaign. Advertisers can create a campaign, pay with a credit card and start advertising today.

• PRICING FLEXIBILITY: Advertisers can price campaigns based on clicks (CPC), installs (CPI), and impressions (CPM). Buddy Media can also work directly with performance-based marketers on a case-by-case basis.

• CREATIVE FLEXIBILITY: Advertisers can use existing creative — banners, HTML or flash — or create new units in the Buddy Media system. Or they can do both and see what works best.

• POWERFUL TARGETING: Upon launch, advertisers will have the ability to target ads by age, sex, and location with more targeting options to follow in coming weeks.

• TRAFFIC QUALITY: Buddy Media’s invitation-only developer network ensures the highest quality of traffic within social media applications. Advertisers will even have visibility into the apps that their ads will appear on.

Buddy Media’s focus on loyalty and engagement with its AceBucks platform helps ensure Buddy Media’s users are quality users.

For developers, the major benefits of the Buddy Media Ad Network include:

• QUALITY OF ADVERTISERS: Buddy Media is focused on working with major brands to drive their social media marketing programs. Our current clients include several of the world’s leading companies, like Microsoft, FedEx, Anheuser-Busch and Priceline. The Buddy Media Ad Network gives developers access to the quality advertisers we work with. Trusted brands plus quality creative equals higher effective CPMs.

• INVITATION-ONLY NETWORK: Buddy Media approves each developer to certify that only developers working on engaging applications can leverage Buddy Media’s sales engine. Our main focus at Buddy Media is not to aggregate the most amount of inventory in the social media space. Frankly, there’s already too much social media inventory. Add together the traffic from MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and the other social networks, social applications, blogs and more, and you get to trillions of impressions a month! We’re only focused on helping developers of quality applications make more money from their apps with access to higher-paying advertisers who value targeted, premium reach.

• KNOWLEDGE: Buddy Media knows social media. We also know brand advertising. Using our own extensive app development experience, we know what it takes to optimize ads and generate higher eCPMs (effective CPMs) to maximum revenue. We have built the system to display ads to users based on what ad will generate the highest eCPM for the developers. We have already proven this with our own apps and now are opening up this monetization engine to other applications and developers. We display targeted, relevant ads based on the demographics of the applications and users. Developers share directly in the higher rates that we can command versus the remnant players in the social media field.

Buddy Media’s full-service approach provides a one-stop-shop to develop and grow applications on any social network or distribution platform. We’ve built an impressive client list that includes Priceline.com, Microsoft, Anheuser Busch (Sea World, Aquatica, and Bud Light), People.com, InStyle.com, Real Simple, Makeover Solutions, Sherman’s Travel, Campus Tech, FedEx, Readers Digest, Huffington Post, Time Inc. and many others. We are confident that our focus on helping brands will translate into more effective programs for marketers and more money for developers.

In order to fully execute our business plan, Kass and I made a decision to raise additional capital for the business. Even though we now generate meaningful revenue, we felt that this was a huge opportunity that we wanted to pursue aggressively. After two months of meetings with several great firms (and getting five offers!), we decided to take on Softbank Capital as the lead investor of a $6.5 million Series B round. We are excited that several other firms we wanted in the round are joining Softbank and our existing investors. Each of the following investors who participated in the Buddy Media Series B brings significant value, contacts, and knowledge to Buddy Media:

• Softbank : There are two main reasons we decided to accept Softbank’s term sheet: ­ Karin Klein and Eric Hippeau. Karin, a VP at Softbank, and Eric, one of the firm’s managing partners, got the model and the opportunity immediately and I’m excited to have them join Roger Ehrenberg and me on the Buddy Media board. They understand brand marketing, distribution, monetization and engagement, all topics near and dear to us at Buddy Media. Eric is the former CEO of Ziff-Davis and was instrumental in SoftBank’s first investment in Yahoo! in 1995. He currently serves on the boards of several public and private companies, including Yahoo!, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Purevideo, Thumbplay, Associated Content, Huffington Post, and Goodmail Systems.

• European Founders Fund : European Founders Fund is run by three super successful entrepreneurs and brothers — Alexander, Marc and Oliver Samwer. Together, they founded Alando, which was sold to eBay, and Jamba!, which they sold to VeriSign. European Founders’ other investments in the social media space include LinkedIn and Facebook.

• GreyCroft Partners : GreyCroft is a $75 million venture fund founded by Alan Patricof. A longtime innovator and advocate for venture capital, Alan entered the industry in its formative days with the creation of Patricof & Co. Ventures Inc., a predecessor to Apax Partners ­ today, one of the world’s leading private equity firms with $35 billion under management. Alan has assembled a top-notch team of digital media investors.

• Ron Conway: Ron is a well-connected Silicon Valley angel investor. Ron has invested in over 500 companies in the last 15 years, including Google, PayPal and Ask Jeeves. He’s invested in 140 as an individual angel in the past 3 years.

• Buddy Media Series A Investors: 14 Buddy Media Series A investors joined Softbank and re-invested in Buddy Media.

Our current team and current investment group is the best that Kass and I have ever worked with. We now have the money, the team, the investors, the products and the roadmap that we need to create a meaningful business in the social media space. If you are an advertiser, give us a call and let’s work together. If you develop applications, let’s talk. Or you if prefer, just sign up through our site and start earning money today. And if you are looking for a job in the social media world, please drop us an email. We’re hiring!

Are you trying to figure out how to build a social media business? Are you a major brand thinking about how to leverage the social networks? Are you just bored with nothing to do?

Join me and many others who are much, much smarter than me, at Dave McClure’s Graphing Social conference. I’ll be speaking on the social games panel. I’ll also be hanging out a ton by the pool in my Buddy Media-issued Speedo.

The conference is March 3 & 4 in sunny San Diego.

I am extremely excited to announce that Buddy Media has acquired 5 applications from ChipIn, Inc. Combined, the applications have been installed by 5.6 million Facebook users and generate more than 5 million page views a day.

The acquired applications are a series of popular Facebook applications based on a “Versus” franchise. In the applications, users join one side (Vampires vs. Werewolves, Pirates vs. Ninjas, Skiers vs. Snowboarders, Santa vs. The Grinch, Cops vs. Robbers) and create armies and battle each other to win virtual gold coins.

Why did Buddy Media buy these applications?

~ Huge Traffic: We are currently working with many large media and marketing companies to drive their overall Facebook and social media strategy. This includes application development, application marketing and more. This deal gives us 150M+ page views a month (and growing) to use to fulfill our current and future ad deals.

~ Loyal Audience: Buddy Media is all about loyalty. With 11,000 applications already live on Facebook, we believe strongly that the social networks need a loyalty system to keep users coming back. The “Versus” apps have a VERY loyal audience. According to third-party analytics services, the apps average 33 page views per visit. And more than half of all the applications’ unique visitors came back 9 times or more in the past week. That’s more than once a day! They will be even stickier as soon as we complete the AceBucks integration.

~ AceBucks, AceBucks, AceBucks: We will use these applications to promote AceBucks to 5M+ additional Facebook users. This helps solidify AceBucks’ position as the leading loyalty program on Facebook, with short-term plans to expland on other social nets. The games fit AceBucks really well. We will be allowing users to take their earned gold coins and transfer them into AceBucks, where they can buy any of the 4800+ items for sale in the AceBucks Stores. We will also be adding new life to the games by promoting the games to our growing audience.

~ Revenue Potential: The apps are currently generating significant cash flow through several third-party networks. We will be able to generate premium CPMs from the applications by selling the advertising and sponsorship inventory directly. We can drive much better results for our partners (and CPMs for Buddy Media) by operating our own apps in addition to working with others. ChipIn has already shown success with the apps. Lionsgate Entertainment used the application to promote the werewolf movie Skinwalkers, spending $15,000 a month to embed a promotional video inside the apps.

~ Additional Apps: We plan to use the flexible “Versus” application technology to launch other apps. The model has appeal. Proof is in the numbers.

Why would ChipIn sell the applications given their popularity and intense loyalty? Simple … Focus. Carnet Williams, the company’s CEO, is trying to create a monster widget business. I have no doubt Carnet will be successful. I enjoyed getting to know him during our negotiation and he’s as bright as they come. And he is smart enough to know that with $1 million in angel funding for ChipIn, he can’t do everything. The Facebook apps, which were launched as a marketing campaign for Carnet’s real business, started to “take its toll on ChipIn,” this month’s Inc. Magazine reports, detailing Carnet’s growth and decision. “Its software developers were finding themselves devoting more and more of their time to coding for Facebook applications.”

This deal is one of many great deals we already have in store for 2008. Stay tuned! This is just the beginning.

UPDATE: Here is Carnet’s blog post about the deal. AllFacebook.com, Social Times and Mashable have some initial coverage as well.

I’m really excited to announce that many of the deals we have been working on with major brands are starting to launch. The most recent is with Busch Entertainment Corporation, a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch, centered around a really cool Facebook game called Splash Blast.

The app answers the age-old question of “What happens when Shamu and Seymour the sea lion hang out together?” The answer: You get a total Splash Blast!

The object of this wonderfully wet and addictive game is to create clusters of three or more like colored beach balls. You aim Seymour’s nose with your mouse, then click to shoot a beach ball into the air. Put together a cluster and watch the balls tumble down to the SeaWorld park - bringing you a pool full of AceBucks. (You also earn 50 AceBucks for installing Splash Blast.)

BEC has partnered with Buddy Media on an integrated marketing campaign to drive user traffic for Splash Blast, which resides on Facebook. Busch Entertainment has chosen to integrate the Splash Blast game with AceBucks to drive user loyalty and virility.

Thank you Busch Entertainment and Anheuser-Busch for partnering with AceBucks and Buddy Media! We look forward to working with you on this and other projects.