Hope to see you tonight!

We’d also like to call out the other two Los Angeles-based nominees, One Good Love and Gamerfood.  Gamerfood was big hit on the floor as well as on stage as they were referenced all night long by Adeo Ressi during the Founder Showcase.

The Founder Showcase was an eye-opener as 10 FI companies presented and got critiqued by five VCs.  Most of the pitches were excellent but few of the companies impressed the judges.  Congrats to Neo for winning the vote as the best presenter.

After taking time to digest Facebook’s Timeline and Open Graph initiatives, I’m  absolutely thrilled about both concepts because they open the door even further for Dather to become the foremost Facebook application for events.  Dather is a social media marketing application for event sponsors and organizers that expands brand awareness, builds communities, and increases revenue.  Dather’s an online hub for all of the social media activity surrounding an event that can integrate with any brand’s Facebook page or website.

Let’s take a closer look at how Dather can extend the power of Open Graph.  Open Graph is exciting because it takes sharing to a much higher level.  Now rather than simply “Liking” something, a whole range of user activities can be shared.  The key for marketers is creating activities that drive user engagement, which will drive a whole new breed of Facebook apps.  Dather is a perfectly suited app because it supports community sharing around events. As a result, Dather will drive the kind of engagement that will explode via the Open Graph.

For example, the Glee Live Tour fans were encouraged to demonstrate that they were the biggest “Gleek” by sending in their photo from the shows.  In the new Facebook, every photo added would appear in a user’s Facebook Newsfeed and Ticker.  These posts would in turn trigger others who attended the event to view the photos which could then trigger more posts and comments.  The viral possibilities are unlimited.

Now let’s examine how Dather can leverage the Facebook Timeline. As previously mentioned, the timeline concept is core to Dather’s vision of how content should be organized – we always felt it was logical that timelines were the way to organize the history of content.   The Timeline on Facebook becomes more valuable if to marketers if they can capture more details of users’ favorite live events.

So how does a brand or business focusing on live events step up to the new marketing challenge?  By leveraging Dather’s ability to brand live experiences of  customers, brands will live along with their memories forever via our application.  Talk about a powerful way to increase the ROI of your live event budget!

For Dather, quickly integrating with the new Facebook tools is incredibly important.  The first movers will reap the biggest rewards as consumers are looking for the newest ways to capture their attention and drive the creation of their ongoing Timelines. We have more to come on our recommended strategies for leveraging Dather, but in the meantime please contact kieve@dather.com with any questions.

In the end, it is nice for the Dather model to be validated.  But now we want to take what we’ve learned and take your business to a whole new level.  Exciting times!

Please join us at Ogilivy & Mather on Tuesday, September 20 at 6 PM. Craft beers and wine will be served and the demos should start around 6:15. Hope to see you there!

John Lennon Educational Tour is a non-profit mobile recording studio dedicated to providing students free hands-on experience to create music and video. Here is a teaser video they created to introduce Dather to their audience.  More to come on this initiative!

Feed Our Children Now distributes food locally to non-profit charities that serve children of need at no cost.  They have YouTube star Naughty Nate on tour with them.  You can see him rave about Dather at the end of this video.

Two great charities on an incredible summer tour.  Dather is proud to be able to support  them both!

This program was hugely beneficial to Dather as we were pivoting our business right when it started. The Mentors were very helpful and in particular we found Joey Tamer, Oded Noy, Travis Schmidt, Dale Fox, Richard Gibbs, Peter Sorenson and Brian Deagon to be particularly  great for us. The other large benefit were the connections to the other Founders who we look forward to remaining in contact with and supporting as we each move forward with our businesses. All in all, a valuable experience.  Now on to building on the great momentum we’ve started.

• Here’s a piece on ESPN.com about the UFC and social media. Really cool to see how much they are using Twitter and FB, etc: http://dat.hr/lDmHag
• Another post is from a guest writer on Huffington Post, who is also a school principal, about how he’s using social media in his school. I know back in high school I could have benefited from a tweet showing up on my phone warning me that the campus cop was near: http://dat.hr/jqf2jd
• And here’s one about how Dems are using social media to keep their constituents up to date on redistricting reform: http://dat.hr/kSejl5
• Lady Gaga and Starbuck’s have teamed up recently, and it’s cool to see the partnership, but hopefully in the future they’ll come up with something bigger than an online scavenger hunt: http://dat.hr/lLoSM1
• ShowHopping is a site that mashes up LastFM data and Google Maps to let you know when bands are coming to your area. Would be cool if there were pics and reviews and setlists from previous shows on the tour so you could do a little research and decide if you should show up for the opening act: http://dat.hr/kuAhgQ

Marketers are starting to understand that there are ways to increase the value of their live event marketing spend by leveraging the tools provided by social media. The campaign Nike ran in Indonesia to leverage their sponsorship of soccer matches is a good example of this. When you see innovative companies like GetGlue increasing engagement around TV viewing you realize that the surface has barely been scratched when it comes to live event engagement.

An excellent post on how social media improves sporting events highlights some examples of what is being done today to increase fan engagement. However, there is so much more possible as these engagements are fleeting and scattered. What is needed is a central hub for all the social media activities where all of the participants and fans can build a community and have a meaningful dialogue that can be referenced back to easily over time.

There is a lot of innovation going on in the live event space and leading the way are those in the ticketing sector. Eventbrite and Ticketfly are using social media to create a legitimate threat to the 800-pound gorilla known as Ticketmaster. Both of these companies have excelled at making the pre-event experience a great one for all involved. Some social media marketing campaigns are beginning to happen during events. And there has been no focus on post-event engagement. What a missed opportunity.