When geeks meet other geeks, lots of news is then discovered as being unreported – at least this is the scenario that played out tonight after attending Geek Social. The agenda-free gathering provided a small glimpse into the window of cool projects getting coded the folks working at Firefly Logic, who in addition to throwing intentionally vague meet-ups once a month, are leading the mid-state in homegrown iPhone apps.
Apparently the company has dabbled in Facebook applications as well with great success. By that I mean they made one. It was a platform that allowed country music fans to predict the winners of this year’s CMA awards. Typically, the short time span of the app’s release date (which I believe was only days/weeks before the show taped) would be the cause that prevented local media from picking up the story and running it as the lead in their business section. It certainly wouldn’t have appeared in their technology section because those don’t exist. And while that may be the case in this situation, there was no chance of me hearing about the Facebook app and why it was notable that they created one since no one blogged about it.
Personally, I hate Facebook’s initiative for developers to create web applications specific to their social networking site. But, I won’t deny that the site brings in a ridiculous amount of traffic each day and it would be dumb to ignore that. Most developers still don’t like the idea of producing an app for a web site because of the risk for failure and lack of revenue model. So the fact that Firefly Logic created an app for Facebook at all is newsworthy.
So why was the info not better circulated? Mostly because they aren’t familiar with how the media, both local and mainstream, work. When I asked Firefly Logic Partner and Senior Software Engineer Chris McPherson about it, he said it was because no one thought to do it. Having met a handful of others at the company, I have to say I do believe him. Those guys are definitely amazing geek-coders who enjoy their work and not media savvy journo-marketers.
Ideally, Firefly Logic does need a PR/media person who understands technology and tech culture keenly enough to create a buzz about accomplishments, like the Facebook app, that would no doubt drum up additional clients. But, they also need a PR person who understands how to frame those accomplishments for an ignorant local media. The need for such a position will only increase as they take on additional projects, which trust me will happen soon enough [hint: more iPhone apps.]
They actually invited me over to their office tomorrow to hang out and talk shop. Definitely looking forward to it and being able to report some original news of the tech variety.
Tom Cheredar 