11:30 a.m. PT  Thursday, October 8, 2009 (US WEBCAST)

Facebook has grown into one of the largest sites on the Internet today
serving over 200 billion pages per month. The nature of social data
makes engineering a site for this level of scale a particularly
challenging proposition. In this presentation, I will discuss the
aspects of social data that present challenges for scalability and will
describe the the core architectural components and design principles
that Facebook has used to address these challenges. In addition, I will
discuss emerging technologies that offer new opportunities for building
cost-effective high performance web architectures.

The white paper is for marketers interested in  digital marketing and growing their brand’s social network.  The paper contains real case studies of successful social networks, which gives you a perspective of how others did it.

The paper looks at how sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flixster, RockYou, Slide and Plaxo grew their Online Community. Growth strategies have been divided into

Easy: not only are their DBAs smart but, thanks to MySQL Enterprise Platinum they have "Virtual DBA Assistants" that help them manage servers in a scale out environment. The MySQL Enterprise Monitor proactively monitors all MySQL servers using a set of MySQL provided expert advisors, to identify and alert DBAs of problems, security vulnerabilities and tuning opportunities so they can be acted upon well in advance of a problem or outage occurring.

The consultative support in MySQL Enterprise Platinum means that Facebook DBAs can also talk to MySQL Engineers for advice on how to properly design and tune MySQL servers, schemas, queries, and replication set-ups to maximize performance and availability. It really is like having more staff but without the cost of hiring. So MySQL not only helps Facebook scale their platform technical, we help them scale their DBA staff and finances at the same time.

So are you a startup ? Do you want access to those same engineers and the same resources to scale and grow without trawling around through contacts to get the right person, then find out they havent got the skills ?

Contact Stewart.Townsend@sun.com  to find out how in Startup Essentials  you can expand your DBA resources team by trying MySQL Enterprise for yourself at Startup prices.

Theme: ‘Realtime Social Web’ – to explore and debate the realtime social web.

What is it ?

What is the value & why should I care ?

Where is it going ?

Location and Date : London January 29th 6.00 - 9.00

Theme:

The Real-Time Web Will Become Critical for News and Information Discovery

Delayed news will no longer be acceptable for early adopters, who will gravitate to the quickest sources of news, wherever they may be. As tools like Twitter Search and FriendFeed real-time offer people to rapidly broadcast their updates, reactions and news with true immediacy, a segment of the population will adopt these real-time sources and favor them ahead of delayed or filtered engines, including RSS, and of course, edited mass media. At the same time, while many of us early adopters may be fairly noisy about this development, we will remain in the significant minority, even as the mainstream becomes more aware of these options.

Go here to register now

Ive been using online social media tools now for over 18 months - 24 months, in various forms and guises essentially I have been communicating to the outside world what my thoughts and feelings are on a daily basis. This has now become a matter of habit around updating random strangers what my movements are, where Im at, showing them pictures of the location, if Im having fun, what Im eating, really a micro view into my life and work to show them ME as a person.

When Im actively blogging, twittering, updating my status feeds, this is giving an insight into my daily routines, who Im talking to, who I know and Im associated with, and enables people to build up a character profile around me and understand a little bit more of who Iam and how I would react to marketing and messages, but also enables me to talk about my passions and promote my job.

What we all need to think about though is this, the world is listening, and recording these transcripts and they are held and stored away for a period of time, most likely indefinitely. So what ? Well, as you go through life, you may succeed in certain aspirations but you are leaving a trail and without thinking, comments and thoughts, that well may change over time, but you are leaving a digital footprint of your character across the data stores that are simple and easy to find.

Well who cares about what I say ?

You should, everything you say and react to leaves a comment or feedback that enables people, potential job prospectors, competitors or your customers to see what you have shouted about in public, thus if you have been critical of your competitor in public, or potential employeer it could be brought against you and reduce your chances of winning a customer or new job.

The Information Shift.

It used to be that people kept their personal thoughts to themselves and maybe aired some of them on occasion in public, now these thoughts are being aired to a global audience with a lack of thinking about the impact or reaction, and how they information will be used and stored for reference. The days of a diary and personal log, seem to have gone, these are now online repositories stored in disparaged silos, most of the time, that can be indexed and brought together to build a profile of that person, if I search for Stewart Townsend I will find numerous references from multiple feeds that then needs to be filtered.

Evidence of how this can affect you.

It’s a story about a PR account executive/vice president named James Andrews from Ketchum in Atlanta who flew to Memphis to visit FedEx, one of the agency’s biggest clients. Andrews’ mission was to — now, this is important — talk with the corporate communications people at FedEx about social media.

Upon landing in Memphis, Andrews posted this message on the popular social media, mini-blogging service, Twitter, that’s widely followed by business people worldwide:

    “True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say, ‘I would die if I had to live here.’”

 So in the old world, this would have been Andrews thoughts as he landed to himself, but he felt the need to broadcast these views to an audience on impulse, the backlash was swift and quick. But what this shows, and is lost sometimes, we have to remember that the World is Listening and what we say is being recored, can be reused and could have some come back so you have to think about your actions as a person and also if you are representing a company what the implications could be against them as well.

We all have an identity and character, and this is being broadcast on a live stage using social media, so be careful about what you say and do, as it will ripple across the globe and using the crowdsource theme reach a destination that you didnt intend it to , also it could get interepreted incorrectly as well, due to limited wordage.

If you want to know more about the FedEx story, go here.

Thursday November 13th - 18.30 - Late

Location : Sun Customer Briefing Centre - 45 King William Street - London

Do you want to know how to Scale your company ?
Do you ask, what happens when I cross that chasm ?
Have you thought, how do I answer the VC when he asks for my business model on growth, and how Im going to tackle it ?

Startup Essentials meetup is driven by the audience, you tell me what content you require and discussion points, I provide the speakers, content, beer and pizza. We have two main speakers, and then break out into a mini bar camp style session to discuss technology and commercial focused areas and let the audience drive that interaction.

So this month, we have the following agenda

Agenda :

18:30 - Late (Coffee, Water, Beer,Pizza all available)

Meeting Agenda

6.30 - Registration/Networking

7.00 - Paul Dowling - RD Tax Credits for Startups

The Government R&D credit scheme is a very effective way of getting tax relief for innovation. It is the single largest way the government has of helping SME's with funding. However, the scheme is much understood and greatly under-utilised. Paul's company GGTC helps clients to claim on a no win, no fee basis.

Paul will also talk about how his other firm Dreamstake helps to incubate start-ups and other early stage companies

7.30 - Paul Robinson - CTO For Hire

'You might have found great developers, amazing infrastructure engineers and inspirational support personnel to help your ideas bloom, but have you thought through what happens if systems or procedures fail? Or if you need to scale quickly? What happens if you need to change your business model overnight? Do you have the right processes, checks and people to make sure your technology business "just works".

Paul Robinson from Vagueware Ltd runs through some issues common to businesses his firm helps every day, and gives you a checklist to run through tomorrow morning to make sure your technology - and your business - is ready for what comes next.'

8.00 - 9.00 Mini BarCamp

Two breakout sessions, Technology and Commercial

With Pizza and Beer to feed the conversation

On Wednesday evening, the first Facebook garage after the Summer break took place at Sun's CBC facility in London, and it was a stonking turn out with over 75 people eating pizza and drinking the beer dry. It has been a quiet few months and as such, the first garage was full of a buzz and vibe again with lots of networking taking place and some quality speakers as well.

If you aren't aware, once a month there is a Facebook Garage supported by Startup Essentials with the aim being to bring together facebook, opensocial and Myspace developers with pizza and beer to listen to guest speakers, chat amongst themselves and look for new business opportunities in general. They are always well attended normally with over 60 people there, its a great night and well worth attending if you are interested in developing on the social networking platforms or just want to understand what are the benefits.

Want more information ?

Go to FACEBOOK GARAGE GROUP

Want to see what you missed ? A fantastic write up from Inside Facebook

Want the presentations, go here now.......

10th September - Sun Startup Essentials Supported Facebook Garage London

Join us this month at Sun Microsystems, King William St as:

* We listen to Steve Ford from Channel Four as he gives us his Client perspective
* Max Niederhofer from Atlas ventures informs us on Financing and finding those Facebook apps that "If you build it, they will come"
* Martine Parry from Apply Group gives us some lessons from the games industry.
* John Cole from Adknowlege, the UK's leading Advertising Social Network explores marketing and monetising your app.
*Duncan Arbour from Lbi talks about Digital Marketing
*And Iskandar Najmuddin from Nudge tells us What's new on the platform.
Plus all the regulars- Apps to Watch and this months App Awards

This month thanks to Gold Sponsor Sun (http://uk.sun.com/startupessentials/) we're back at Sun Microsystems Customer Briefing Centre and they'll be laying on the pizzas, wifi and beer 

Our Video Sponsor: Logicode, And our Event Sponsors: Nudge (www.nudgelondon.com/blog)
Media partners: www.intruders.tv 

This is a ticket only event. Tickets are £7.
Student ticket available for £4 with a valid Student ID card.
NB: Tickets can be bought on the door however, please buy online to avoid disapointment 

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Be sure to join the Facebook group to be kept up to date and get notified of the next event too:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5282952746

Vodafone Sim dies after 7 years

My mobile stopped accepting calls and wouldnt ring out at 9.05 am today, out of the blue, no reason I had made some calls at about 8.00 o clock or so, and was planning my morning. Then the dilemna..!!! I couldnt make an outbound call, just assuming that it was the area I was in, then started to get emails saying people couldnt get through.

I contacted Vodafone, whose customer service is excellent, within 5 minutes the lady had identified that my Sim was to old and I required a new one, this will be shipped out on Mon or Tues, and rediverted the calls to my land line at home, thus I cant now go out to my planned meetings.......

But the aspect of all this is, Im lost without my mobile, it feels like something is lacking in my technology toolkit, blankly looking at it, hoping the sim will come back to life, its like losing your Internet connection, you feel lacking. When I first started in sales, it was selling out on the road with a list of customer calls, some pre booked some cold calling, but you had to find a phone box to ring in every two hours the orders or updates that you had to made certain you hit deliveries, now if you arent available in the day, at any time there is something wrong.

So is technology an enabler or an inhibitor ?

Simple really, Sun and Joyent have teamed up to bring you FREE HOSTING for Facebook and Open Social Applications. 

Developing the next hot application for Facebook, OpenSocial or other Social networking platforms?  Designing and architecting your application to be able to serve millions of users?  Developing on infrastructure that costs nothing when you have only a few users and grows at a reasonable cost as you capture millions of users?

THEN HIT HERE NOW FOR FREE HOSTING

If you are unable to attend the Facebook Garage in London, held every
month at Sun's London Theatre, then fear not......we have replays
available...so you don't miss a thing...hoooray you cry.

Go to Facebook Garage now and catch some of the sessions