14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook announced the first batch of 25 out of 50 finalists for the 2009 FBFund, its grant program for Facebook application developers. The 50 finalists will receive $1000 in Facebook advertising and will have a chance to take part in the company's incubator program this summer.
The FBFund is a joint program with Accel and Founders Fund, launched in 2007 as a $10 million fund and designed to give developers of innovative Facebook applications initial funding. This year marks a shift in the nature of the FBFund as now it uses an incubator model as opposed to just handing out grants like it did in the past. Finalists will also have a chance to receive up to $100,000 in equity investment as part of the incubator program as well as to work with the company's advisors in Silicon Valley over the period of the program from mid-June to late August.
The latest group of finalists is focusing more on Facebook Connect, their proprietary log-in standard, but applications or services that weren't built on the Facebook Platform are also allowed to enter the competition. Among the 25 finalists 13 are sites or services that use Facebook Connect.
Previous FBFund winners have had spotty results. Out of the 29 companies funded by the FBFund only seven now have more than 30,000 monthly active users. One success story however had Wedding Book, which was acquired by the Knot in January.
Here is the complete list of finalists. Connect sites: Frintro, GovIt, RunMyErrand, RentMineOnline, MyChurch.org, GreetBeatz, Workstir, NutshellMail, RunThere, DropPlay, Magellan (private beta), Life360 (private beta), Vittanna (private beta). Platform apps: Travel Brain, Networked Blogs, Gameyola, Photos I Like, Paradise Paintball 3D, Veechi Classes, BitStrips (website active, FB application in private beta), SamaSource. iPhone apps: FriendFreak, Near+Now (Sortuv), Paparazzi, CrazyMenu.