INTERVIEW : Joshua March (iPlatform CEO and Chair of Facebook Developer Garage)

 Joshua March is a London based fresh-faced, cheeky chappy entrepreneur-type who enjoys chairing the odd Facebook Developer Garage (and if you don’t know what that is go here and get reading and tuck into some nerd).  In addition to creating numerous apps and strategies for iPlatform (as CEO) he’s busy blogging and tweeting up a storm until the wee hours.  Not bad.  I caught up with him and put the screws to him about Facebook, apps and general working habits to fight the firehose of information coming at him.  

Describe your life in 100 words or less. 

I spend a lot of time sitting with clients to help them understand the potential of social platforms, then translate those conversations into mock-ups that people can really feel – important when knowledge in this space can still be sparse. Once we have go-ahead, I take a back seat and let the team make it a reality. We’re operating in a new and fast-changing market, so I also spend a lot of time staying on top of everything, and exploring product development opportunities. In my downtime I relax, take a break from the tech scene, and train in martial arts. 

So what’s this iPlatform thing and what can it do (less the sales pitch!). 

We’re social software specialists. [Ooooo. Fancy! - Me]  A large part of our revenue comes from our consultancy services, where we work with agencies and brands to help develop social marketing strategies, execute campaigns and technical development. We also build out our own software products to help manage multiple social media campaigns, specifically around Facebook fan page management. We work directly with platforms like Facebook and Twitter to whitelist our clients’ accounts and applications, including where relevant shutting down unofficial accounts and migrating fans and followers to official ones. 

What do you wish people did better when creating Fan pages? 

The most important thing to get right with fan pages is getting content that people want to engage with – and then remembering that people don’t want to be bombarded by you, even if they really love your brand. Post new updates out once a week, up to a max of around five a week if you have something really interesting to say; any more and you’ll start to annoy people. 

Applications are the new crack.  What are the top 3 things to remember when thinking about making an app? 

1. If you can build it on a normal web app, you can build it in a social app – plus all the additional social graph data and actions you can pull in. 

2. If the app isn’t inherently social, then using FB Connect / Twitter OAuth as an identity provider is a good idea; but building it as a Facebook app isn’t. 

3. Usability is more important than making it look like Facebook; just because it sits on the Facebook platform, doesn’t mean it needs to look like Facebook, and our research does not show any particular benefit for doing this. 

Interesting.  What are the top 3 things people do wrong with apps? 

1. Don’t seed them to anyone 

2. Focus on ‘virality’ at the expense of engagement and retention 

3. Push something out in a big bang release without iterating and listening to user feedback 

Amen to number 2.  What’s your top tip for Facebook when working with clients? 

First, get a brand concept that people love. Before you spend any major money on applications or advertising, get a fan page, get the brand concept out there, and make sure people like it and are willing to engage and share. Once you have this, you can build on it. 

What thing pisses you off most about social media? 

Unrealistic expectations. Social apps are basically web apps with the added benefit of a social identity provider, social graph information which can be used to easily socialise apps, and activity stories which lower the barriers for users to share their activity and content they like with their friends. All this is great – but it isn’t a magic bullet, it won’t save the world, and it won’t make a bad idea good. It’s just a set of tools, although if used correctly they bring a lot of benefit. 

How do you ‘fight the firehose’ of information? 

I’m choosy about what I follow [Amen to that! - Me]; a couple of years ago I realised I was spending hours every day just reading the latest blogs and following thousands of people on twitter. I did a big purge to cut to what was really relevant or personally interesting for me, and now while I often follow new blogs and twitter accounts, I regularly cut any if I notice that I’m not paying them regular attention. I’ve also recently moved fully to Inbox 0 in order to effectively manage my emails. 

Ballsy!  Ok…CRISIS!  You have a Facebook revolt.  No-one likes you anymore.  What do you do first?  

Delete my account and move to MySpace!  For a brand, listen, be honest, and engage – people will forget about me, they won’t forget a big company that isn’t listening!

What is the question you’ve always wanted to answer and never been asked? 

I’d love to be able to talk about all the great apps and campaigns we’ve been involved with under white-label for major agencies across London… 

Ok.  I’ll take that plug as it was meant.  Spill.

I can’t! It would ruin those relationships! 

HA!  What’s the question no-one is asking? 

No-one is really asking about how they can effectively use FB Connect in their campaigns going forward. Fan pages and applications have been around for a couple of years and have hit a semblance of respectability, so major brands and agencies are comfortable with them; Facebook Connect is newer, so doesn’t quite have this reputation. 

And how should they be using it/ thinking about it?

Facebook Connect finally gives the opportunity for a campaign to be able to run across Facebook, multiple websites and apps, and mobile sites and apps, with users having a coherent social identity across all of them without needing to ever register or sign up to anything new. This could be immensely powerful.