Facebook has just announced a few more details on its 3rd f8 conference coming up next month in San Francisco, and officially opened registration. It’s been a while since Facebook last held an f8, so it’s sure to be a big week. Already, developers are wondering what announcements Facebook will make regarding Credits, location, and the Open Graph API.

Here are the details:

• Date: Wednesday, April 21, 2010


• Location: The Concourse at San Francisco Design Center


• Address: 635 8th Street, San Francisco, CA (Map)

Mark Zuckerberg will be giving the keynote at 10am, followed by breakout sessions in the afternoon on “New Tools,” best practices for building “fast scalable, and engaging products,” and Facebook’s open source products. On Thursday, there will be an “intimate post-f8 Hackathon” that developers can express interest in attending here.

This year, tickets cost $325 for professionals, and $50 for students. Here’s the registration page at Eventbrite, and the Facebook Page for f8. We’ll keep you up to date as more information becomes available.

Inside Social Apps 2010 – April 20th in San Francisco

For developers interested in digging deep into monetization inside social apps and games on the Facebook Platform and beyond, we’re holding our inaugural Inside Social Apps 2010 conference the day before f8 in San Francisco. At Inside Social Apps, executives from all the largest developers on the Facebook Platform, including Zynga, Playfish (Electronic Arts), Playdom, CrowdStar, 6 waves, Slide, RockYou, Five Minutes, and Lolapps will be discussing the future of virtual goods monetization in social apps and games from a global perspective.

For a full agenda of our day’s events, click here. Space is very limited, so we encourage you to register soon.

We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!

While RockYou already provides offers, banners, and other forms of advertising to application developers, it’s added another: a form of engagement advertising, that it’s calling “Deal of the Day.”

The company provides advertisers — especially big brand advertisers — with banner ads that cost based on different engagement actions. These might include a user downloading a coupon, taking a poll, becoming a fan of a Facebook Page, and more. The ads appear within applications from RockYou and developer partners on Facebook and other sites.

Facebook itself offers engagement ads directly linked to Facebook products like events, Pages, and videos.

The ads will be part of RockYou’s various monetization services; earlier this week, it announced others, including virtual currency and local ads.

Facebook has begun sending out invitations to the f8 developer event to press members and other important attendees this evening. Registration is also completely open for all attendees, with the cost being $325 for general admission and $50 for students. The registration page also illustrates how Eventbrite’s newly integrated Facebook service functions.



If you want to register for the Facebook f8 developer event being held on April 21st in San Francisco via the Eventbrite page.

A new Facebook group set up by Greenpeace is calling for Facebook to use 100 percent renewable energy within their data centers. This is a reinvigorated movement from the initial backlash against Facebook’s environmental policies at the beginning of February. The latest group has over 150,000 members, far more than any previous group that has attempted to get Facebook to change their environmental policies.

Is Facebook Hiding Something?

The Greenpeace group calls Facebook’s use of coal powered plants, Facebook’s “dirty little secret” but honestly, there’s nothing secretive about it. As a Facebook spokesperson explained back in early February:

...Our new data center will be receiving our power through PacifiCorp, which like most utilities has a diverse generation portfolio including hyrdo, geothermal, wind and coal... When it comes online in early 2011, the new Facebook data center will also be one of the most energy efficient in the world, featuring an innovative cooling system created for the unique climate characteristics in Prineville, Oregon."

In other words, it’s up to PacifiCorp as to what energy resources are used. Unfortunately it’s extremely easy to criticize a company for a poor energy policy because the majority of this country is still run on coal. Is it possible for Facebook to run off completely renewable resources? Possibly, but it doesn’t make financial sense right now.

Businesses As Leaders

To suggest that Facebook didn’t consider energy efficiency when planning their data center would be pretty ridiculous. The reality is that there isn’t enough pressure from consumers for businesses to act in an energy efficient way. In many cases it also doesn’t make financial sense. However some companies are being extremely proactive by testing out new energy models (as Google, eBay, and a number of others are doing with the Bloom Box) despite it not being the most cost effective.

Google also funds a foundation which invests in new forms of energy. While holding Facebook to high standards is not an outrageous concept, there needs to be a greater awareness of the environmental impact of our own behavior. When you search Google or log in to Facebook, there’s no way of knowing what the impact is on the environment. While I believe we are heading in the direction of more transparency when it comes to our consumption habits, the trend may not be happening fast enough as Bill Gates suggests in the following video:

While it would be awesome if Facebook could announce “We are 100% powered by renewable energy sources”, it probably makes more sense to go after those companies who have greater cash reserves to fund new energy projects. While I’m personally a fan of using renewable energy sources, I also think Greenpeace should go after larger companies. Then again, Facebook is a buzz worthy company, so perhaps their strategy isn’t a poor one.

Do you think Facebook should be 100 percent powered by renewable energy sources despite the cost inefficiencies? Do you think it’s even possible?

href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/11/iphone-apps-conference-season/&service=bit.ly">width="51" height="61" src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/11/iphone-apps-conference-season/" align="right"/> class='feedflare' href="http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=http://mashable.com/2010/03/11/iphone-apps-conference-season/&title=12 iPhone Apps for Surviving Conference Season&srcTitle=Mashable&srcUrl=http://mashable.com">src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/gbuzz-feed.png" align="right" />

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/iphone-sxsw.jpg" class="alignright" alt="iphone sxsw image">href="http://www.researchgoddess.com/" target="_blank">Amybeth Hale is a Talent Attraction Manager with AT&T’s Interactive Staffing team. She uses social technology to help drive awareness of job opportunities as well as interact with candidates. Connect with her on Twitter at href="http://www.twitter.com/researchgoddess" target="_blank">@researchgoddess.

As conference season is upon us (including href="http://mashable.com/sxswi/">SXSW, of course), I began thinking about all the things one might need to survive and stay connected with a busy schedule of travel and networking. Personally, I’m headed to San Diego to attend both href="http://www.sourcecon.com/2010" target="_blank">SourceCon and the href="http://www.ereexpo.com/2010spring/" target="_blank">ERE Spring Expo.

Then I remembered that I’m the proud owner of an href="http://mashable.com/tag/iPhone">iPhone, and that almost everything I’ll need to make it through is easily accessible and at the tip of my fingers. Here are some of the apps which I believe will help you navigate, stay connected, and meet new friends when you attend a conference.

Accommodations/>

---

1. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/priceline-hotel-negotiator/id336381998?mt=8" target="_blank">Priceline Hotel Negotiator/>

---

If you’re the ultimate procrastinator and you haven’t yet booked a hotel, even on arrival at the conference, the Priceline Hotel Negotiator app is for you. It pairs a great deal-finder with some comic relief in the form of William Shatner, the Priceline Negotiator. Just load up this app and shake — you’ll get a chuckle and some sweet hotel deals within a radius of your current location.

Cost: Free

Connectivity/>

---

2. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/free-wi-fi-finder/id307217005?mt=8" target="_blank">Free Wifi Finder/>

---

So you’ve booked a hotel, but the room doesn’t offer complimentary WiFi (grr!). This app will use your location to find some local spots that offer free WiFi access. You can tailor your results from as near as 0.1 mile away, to as far as 40 miles. You can also filter results by categories such as libraries, cafes, airports, and hotels. You could probably couple this app with the Priceline app to make sure you don’t book a hotel room without WiFi in the first place.

Cost: Free

Local Stuff/>

---

3. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/robotvision/id329678544?mt=8" target="_blank">RobotVision/>

---

Let’s say you’re in a city you’ve never visited before, and you want to find some cool stuff to check out. Sure, you could use href="http://mashable.com/tag/yelp">Yelp, but where’s the augmented reality fun in that? My former co-worker href="http://robotvision.elan3.com/" target="_blank">Tim Sears created this app, and it’s a neat way to find anything from ATMs, to gas stations, to hospitals, to movie theaters. Better yet, you can also check out who else is tweeting around you locally, who is sharing href="http://mashable.com/tag/flickr">Flickr images, and learn about local attractions via href="http://mashable.com/tag/wikipedia">Wikipedia and href="http://mashable.com/tag/bing">Bing search functionality. Note, this app works best with the iPhone 3GS.

Cost: $0.99

4. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/foursquare/id306934924?mt=8" target="_blank">Foursquare/>

---

href="http://mashable.com/tag/foursquare">Foursquare is a great way to see who else is hanging out at the same locations as you, and the gaming element of earning badges for check-ins is just plain fun. You earn points for checking in to multiple places in one day and for being adventurous and going to new places. You can see what your friends have been up to, leave tips and to-do items for other travelers, and tweet out your locations so that others know what’s going on. At any social media-minded conference, there’s sure to be a lot of location-based networking to be done through Foursquare.

Cost: Free

5. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gowalla/id304510106?mt=8" target="_blank">Gowalla/>

---

href="http://mashable.com/tag/gowalla">Gowalla is very similar to Foursquare in terms of location-based social networking, though I personally like Gowalla’s graphic layout better. Gowalla also allows the creation of user-generated “trips” that you can take, like the href="http://gowalla.com/trips/1643" target="_blank">SEC Football Stadium Trip, or the href="http://gowalla.com/trips/28" target="_blank">Austin BBQ Bonanza (for those headed to href="http://mashable.com/sxswi/">SXSW). Again, you can see where your friends have been and also see who else is hanging out at your current check-in location. It’s a great way to meet and make new friends at a conference.

Cost: Free

Pics and Vids/>

---

6. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/twitpic-uploader/id341402122?mt=8" target="_blank">TwitPic Uploader/>

---

I fully intend to take a ton of pictures at both conferences I’m attending. Though I do intend to bring a fairly nice (and very large) digital camera, there’s no greater instant gratification than snapping a photo on your iPhone and sharing it with the world. The href="http://mashable.com/tag/twitpic">TwitPic app lets you do this in four simple steps: Choose a picture from either your camera or a photo album; Write a comment; Log into your href="http://mashable.com/social-media/Twitter">Twitter account, and; Send away!

Cost: Free

7. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ustream-live-broadcaster/id319362690?mt=8" target="_blank">Ustream Live Broadcaster/>

---

You want to share a really fun moment from the conference, but a still photo simply won’t do it justice. Or perhaps you want to share a little taste of a presentation, or do a live interview with another attendee. This app lets you stream live video from your iPhone directly through your href="http://mashable.com/tag/ustream">Ustream channel. You can set it up to automatically tweet when you are live, as well as take instant polls from viewers. It’s an easy way to share some live moments with those who could not be there.

Cost: Free

Social/>

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8. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/facebook/id284882215?mt=8" target="_blank">Facebook/>

---

This one’s a no-brainer. Who doesn’t have the href="http://mashable.com/social-media/facebook">Facebook app on their iPhone? Use it to keep up with your friends back home and share updates about your trip. Made a new contact at the conference? Just search for them in the app and add them as a Facebook friend.

Cost: Free

9. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/brizzly-for-twitter/id360018819?mt=8" target="_blank">Brizzly/>

---

I’ve only recently been introduced to Brizzly, but I really love it. For those of us who manage multiple href="http://mashable.com/social-media/twitter">Twitter accounts, this is a great alternative to trying to navigate the mobile version of href="http://mashable.com/tag/cotweet">CoTweet (which currently does not have an iPhone app). With Brizzly, you can connect to up to five Twitter accounts, as well as Facebook, and keep on top of everything. You can also save searches and upload photos. The only functionality I miss is the column layout from href="http://mashable.com/tag/tweetdeck">TweetDeck, but Brizzly certainly gets the job done.

Tip: href="https://brizzly.com/signup" target="_blank">Create your Brizzly account on a computer before you download the app, as it makes for quicker set-up on the iPhone.

Cost: Free

10. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/glympse-location-sharing-made/id330316698?mt=8" target="_blank">Glympse/>

---

Glympse is a really cool app that lets you share your location with others. But it’s more than just a geo-tagger — it shares your ongoing location. Basically, you can create and share your own “breadcrumb trail.” You can set it so that people will be able to access your location and follow your movements from within five minutes, and up to four hours. This is a great way to share which sessions you’re in with fellow conference-goers so they can easily find you.

Cost: Free

11. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wordpress/id335703880?mt=8" target="_blank">WordPress/>

---

Like a good blogger, I plan to push some content to my readers while I’m at the conferences. Now I can do that right on my iPhone. This app works with both .com and self-hosted WordPress blogs. You can moderate comments as well as add and edit your posts from this app. It’s a nice little travel tool for bloggers who may not always have access to laptops or WiFi.

Cost: Free

12. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/beamme-pro-vcard-exchange/id304918816?mt=8" target="_blank">beamME pro/>

---

You want to stay connected with your fellow conference-goers, but you a) Forgot to bring enough business cards, or b) Decided to “go green” and skip the paper cards all together. BeamME lets you e-mail, text, or tweet all of your contact information to someone instantly. BeamME users can easily reciprocate and shoot their information right back. Plus, your contact info arrives in a manner which can be downloaded in a nice, tidy vCard format.

Cost: Free

Do you have any other favorite apps that would be great for conferences? Add them in the comments below!

More iPhone resources from Mashable:/>

---

- href="http://mashable.com/2010/02/23/iphone-apps-runners/">10 Essential iPhone Apps for Runners/> - href="http://mashable.com/2009/12/27/10-iphone-apps-dog-lovers/">10 Best iPhone Apps for Dog Lovers/> - href="http://mashable.com/2009/10/15/top-10-iphone-apps/">Top 10 iPhone Apps as Judged by Mashable Readers/> - href="http://mashable.com/2010/01/13/iphone-beer-apps/">10 Fun iPhone Apps for Beer Lovers/> - href="http://mashable.com/2010/02/19/mashable-iphone-app-2/">Mashable’s New iPhone App: Download Today!

Tags: href="http://mashable.com/tag/brizzly/">brizzly, href="http://mashable.com/tag/conferences/">conferences, href="http://mashable.com/tag/facebook/">facebook, href="http://mashable.com/tag/foursquare/">foursquare, href="http://mashable.com/tag/gowalla/">gowalla, href="http://mashable.com/tag/iphone/">iphone, href="http://mashable.com/tag/iphone-apps/">iphone apps, href="http://mashable.com/tag/list/">List, href="http://mashable.com/tag/lists/">Lists, href="http://mashable.com/tag/mobile/">Mobile 2.0, href="http://mashable.com/tag/sxsw2010/">sxsw2010, href="http://mashable.com/tag/twitpic/">twitpic, href="http://mashable.com/tag/twitter/">twitter, href="http://mashable.com/tag/ustream/">ustream, href="http://mashable.com/tag/wifi/">wifi, href="http://mashable.com/tag/wordpress/">Wordpress

Facebook has threatened to sue the Daily Mail UK for inaccurately publishing a piece about Facebook on Wednesday, according to the Guardian. Daily Mail’s article claimed that whenever a “14 year old girl” joins Facebook she is approached by older men within seconds, who want to perform a “sex act in front of them”.



The article was written by Mark Williams-Thomas, who is an ex-policeman and is now working as a criminologist. However Thomas insists that his article was regarding another social network - whose name has not been disclosed, and that the editors of Daily Mail introduced Facebook in his article. Thomas maintains that Facebook was added to the article even though he told the editors that it was wrong.

Daily Mail has apologised for this mistake/deliberate act in today´s print paper and on its online site yesterday. The initial title of the article read "I posed as a girl of 14 on Facebook. What followed will sicken you". As soon as Facebook got notified of this piece, their PR department made desperate efforts to reach out to Daily Mail. Facebook team even tried to add comments to the article, but claim that all efforts to add comments by Facebook were blocked by Daily Mail.

Although Daily Mail changed the title of the article to “I posed as a girl of 14 online. What followed will sicken you” from “I posed as a girl of 14 on Facebook. What followed will sicken you”, the URL of the article remained "i-posed-girl-14-facebook-what-followed-sicken-you" until 12 noon today.

Facebook has enforced special safety controls for minors, which makes it impossible for anyone older than 18 years to send messages to facebook users who are below 18 years of age.

Facebook´s spokeswoman in UK stated that:

The people at Facebook in the US were reading this and knew at once that it couldn’t have been our platform. We have made Facebook much more favourable to the safety of minors - minors under 18 cannot receive messages from somebody over 18.

Facebook has been specially infuriated over the fact that they were unable to reach out to Daily Mail throughout Wednesday. Sylvia Tidy Harris, who is an agent of Thomas at Daily Mail in her defense maintains that yesterday was an extremely busy day, which led to unusually long delay in rectifying the issue.

Growth slowed down in February for most Middle Eastern countries, especially the smaller and more affluent nations that have the most monthly active users on Facebook. We’re taking a look this month at the Arabian Peninsula, plus Egypt.

Three countries in the Peninsula stand out for a high market penetration of over 30 percent: Israel, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. As you can see below, both Israel and the UAE are continuing to pick up significant numbers of users. We don’t expect that trend to continue for too many months more, as most countries have so far topped out at roughly 40 percent penetration.

On the other hand, growth is also slowing a bit for some much larger countries that have low penetration — both Egypt and Saudi Arabia are well under 10 percent. The dip may only be temporary, especially with Facebook putting more resources into the Middle East.

However, there are clearly also some demographic trends at work. Most of the region is sharply defined by income disparities; the citizens of the UAE, for example, are fairly rich on average, while even a wealthy country like Saudi Arabia has only a small upper class. As in other parts of the world, it’s likely that broad swaths of the population in some of these countries are too poor to be online yet.

Note that Facebook counts all the countries from Morocco to Pakistan in its measurement of the Middle East. We’ll be covering the African countries next week, while Pakistan and its neighbors go along with our coverage of Asia. There’s also the matter of Turkey, which we’ve included in Europe. Although quite large, Turkey also has over a quarter of its population on Facebook, making it a force in the region.

Breaking out the Peninsula on its own, there are only about 9 million Facebook users in the region, but about 15 percent market penetration overall. As Facebook expands its advertising efforts in the region, many will be watching growth data to see if Middle East growth is slowing for the long-term, or if this is just a temporary fluctuation. More data  and specific country breakdowns can be found in the full Facebook Global Monitor report.

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src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/ipad2.jpg" alt="" title="ipad facebook fan page profile" width="260" height="190" class="alignright size-full wp-image-225543" />If you’re a Facebooker who’s lusting after the href="http://mashable.com/tag/ipad/">Apple iPad (so much so that you’ve joined a Fan Page), then chances are you’re aged between 18 and 25 and have an interest in popular culture — or so says href="http://blog.rapleaf.com/facebook-fan-page-analysis-the-ipad-x3/" TARGET="_blank">RapLeaf, a company that analyzes social media stats to draw meaningful conclusions from the likes of Facebook Fan Pages.

RapLeaf looked at the top three Facebook Fan Pages (all of which are imaginatively named “The iPad”) to see if iPad fans could be easily grouped into a particular demographic.

The numbers are certainly there for such a study — the three pages together boast almost 98,000 members. While gender pretty much averaged out across all the pages, the age range came in at under Facebook’s average with 85% of overall fans 35 or under, and nearly 50% 25 and under.

iPad-owner-wannabes are also fairly social, with a third boasting more than 300 friends. Other Fan Pages they have joined include, in many cases (and perhaps unsurprisingly), iTunes, as well as other Pages related to caffeine, sleep, pop culture and humor.

What will be truly interesting to see as we edge closer to the href="http://mashable.com/2010/03/05/ipad-coming-april-3/">April 3 iPad launch is how many of those 98,000 put their money where their href="http://mashable.com/social-media/facebook">Facebook fandom is and go out and buy the device.

Tags: href="http://mashable.com/tag/apple/">apple, href="http://mashable.com/tag/facebook/">facebook, href="http://mashable.com/tag/ipad/">ipad, href="http://mashable.com/tag/statistics/">statistics

April 20 | San Francisco

Inside Social Apps 2010, our first conference on the future of monetization on social platforms, is now only a few weeks away. On April 20th in San Francisco, one day before Facebook’s official “f8″ event, many of the leading developers from around the world will be gathering to discuss the future of monetization inside social apps and games on Facebook and beyond.

Today, we’re excited to announce that Inside Social Apps 2010 will be held at the Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF, located at 1675 Owens St in San Francisco (map).

In addition, today we’re excited to announce 7 new speakers for the event: Rick Thompson, co-founder of Playdom and active social gaming investor; Jens Begemann, CEO of Wooga; Alex Rampell, CEO of Trialpay; Steven Goh, CEO of mig33; Jim Bobowski, Director of Online Partner Marketing at Netflix (who manages Netflix’s social network offers); Eric Goldberg, Managing Director of Crossover Technologies; and Benjamin Joffe, Founder of +8*.

They will be joining our full list of 34 speakers listed below.

• Atul Bagga, VP Equity Research, Games, ThinkEquity


• Jens Begemann, CEO, Wooga


• Jim Bobowski, Director Online Partner Marketing, Netflix
  
  


• Adam Caplan, VP Virtual Currency, Super Rewards / Adknowledge
  
  


• Renata Dionello, Chief of Staff to the CEO, eBay, and former Director of Consumer Business Development, PayPal


• Eric Eldon, Editor, Inside Facebook & Inside Social Games


• Dave Etling, VP Product Development, InComm
  
  


• George Garrick, CEO, Offerpal Media


• Steven Goh, CEO, mig33


• Eric Goldberg, Managing Director, Crossover Technologies
  
  


• Vikas Gupta, CEO, Jambool


• Sebastien de Halleux, Founder and COO, Playfish, and VP Business Development & Strategic Partnerships, EA Interactive


• Ron Hirson, Co-founder and SVP Product, Boku


• Benjamin Joffe, Founder, +8*
  
  


• Nick Lawler, Managing Director, Maverick Capital


• Keith Lee, Co-founder and CEO, Booyah


• Jeremy Liew, Managing Director, Lightspeed Venture Partners
  
  


• Vish Makhijani, COO, Zynga


• David Marcus, CEO, Zong


• Lisa Marino, CRO, RockYou
  
  


• Dave McClure, Investor, Founders Fund Angel and fbFund Incubator


• Rex Ng, Co-founder and CEO, 6waves


• Jason Oberfest, VP Social Applications, ngmoco


• Mark Pincus, Founder and CEO, Zynga


• Shervin Pishevar, Founder and Executive Chairman, SGN


• John Pleasants, CEO, Playdom


• Keith Rabois, VP Strategy and Business Development, Slide


• Alex Rampell, CEO, TrialPay
  
  


• Peter Relan, Executive Chairman, CrowdStar


• Justin Smith, Founder, Inside Network


• Kavin Stewart, CEO, Lolapps


• Rick Thompson, Co-founder, Playdom, and Investor
  
  


• Jay Weintraub, Founder, LeadsCon


• Season Xu, Co-founder and COO, Five Minutes
  
  

Finally, a limited set of “early general admission� tickets is now available through Friday at a special price of $329. This price will change after Friday, and space will be limited, so we encourage you to register now.

Inside Social Apps 2010 – April 20th in San Francisco

Three years after the Facebook Platform launched in 2007, what started out as sheep throwing and vampire biting has quickly become a profitable billion-dollar industry. Today, social games monetizing through virtual goods have quickly become one of the hottest sectors of technology and entertainment, both in the US and around the world. Where are social apps going, and who is leading the way?

Inside Network is proud to announce our first conference on the future of monetization on social platforms: Inside Social Apps 2010, happening April 20th in San Francisco, is bringing together the world’s leading entrepreneurs all in one place to discuss the future of social applications and games monetizing through virtual goods.

This will be an in-depth one day event geared toward developers on Facebook, MySpace, and the iPhone, senior executives, and investors. At Inside Social Apps 2010, founders and CEOs of the top social gaming, mobile social gaming, payments, and virtual goods infrastructure companies will be tackling the key issues facing the industry. We’re hosting it one day before Facebook’s “f8″ event in San Francisco, so this will be an excellent opportunity to learn about the key issues facing the future of the Facebook Platform and beyond before Facebook’s official event.

Register Now

A limited set of “early general admission� tickets is available through Friday at a special price of $329. This price will change after Friday, and space will be very limited, so we encourage you to register early.

From all of us at Inside Network, we hope to see you on April 20th in San Francisco!

In the frozen void of space, a now derelict mining vessel has had a communications failure. Unfortunately, for engineer Isaac Clarke, the USG Ishimura isn’t quite so derelict after all, as its inhabitants are now the skittering, the lumbering, and the grotesque horrors that hail from the deepest corners of the galaxy.

This, of course, is the basic premise behind the sci-fi, survival horror game, Dead Space from Electronic Arts’ studio, Visceral Games. As a popular, title among the horror genre, the folks over at Visceral are looking to make the next one even better, as they work to spark up some buzz for their next deep space adventure. To do this, the company has worked with Wildfire Interactive Promotions to make, well, and interactive promotion for the upcoming game, Dead Space 2, on Facebook.

The idea is two-fold. The app page, entitled “Get Dismembered in Dead Space 2,� is a contest that is not only intended to get more people talking about the game, but also give players the opportunity to design their very own melee combat kill move for the title. Essentially, in Dead Space, every little critter wants to eat you and when the player character gets locked into a grapple, they have to use some form of melee move to save themselves and hopefully kill the baddy before it gets back up.

To this end, Visceral Games is looking for player input as to what would be the coolest attack poor Isaac could use. Fans will be able to submit descriptions, photos or drawings, and even video (3D animation or live action) to show what they have thought up. These can all be done through the Facebook app itself after a short registration, and the top 10 will be chosen. From here, the fan-base will vote on which one gets put into the final game.

Traditionally speaking, contests have always been a strong marketing way to get people involved in something. However, with it now on Facebook, players that discover the app will be able to invite their friends to check it out as well. Obviously, this use of the social graph will increase the spreading of this promotion significantly, and hopefully the upcoming game’s buzz as well. Of course, even if you friends don’t want to participate, they can always view everyone else’s submissions. Maybe they’ll even find that video of you making a fool of yourself grappling that invisible lurker!