I’ve got 99 friends on Facebook but I hear from Jason Calacanis more than anyone. He has turned Facebook into a marketing platform for his human-powered search engine, Mahalo. And he doesn’t pay Facebook a dime for this primo branding opportunity.

Every morning I log in to Facebook and there is a link is posted through Mahalo with the Mahalo logo right next to it. As you can see by the screenshot of my news feed, yesterday (and most days) he had 5 items all with the Mahalo logo right next to it.

So how does he do it?

Well, the next generation of optimization is taking shape. First it was search engine optimization (SEO), next came social media optimization (SMO), and now we’ve got news feed optimization (NFO).

Dave McClure thinks “its effin’ brilliant.” and I’m sure other marketers are taking note. Inside Facebook has a very comprehensive post on how you too can optimize your submissions for Facebook’s news feed. Some of their tips:

• The most important thing you can do as a Facebook application marketer is to publish engaging, authentic Feed items.
• Be sure you optimize your Feed items for all of the Feed item elements made available to you by Facebook: title, body, and images.

Now here’s an amazing tidbit from Inside Facebook “News Feed publishes just a little more than 0.2% of the stories it considers.” Meaning Calacanis must truly be the master of NFO.

Now interestingly, Calacanis has taken on the search engine optimization industry before.

The SEO folks got really pissed off at me for saying “SEO is bulls@#t.” last year, but the truth is that 90% of the SEO market is made up of snake oil salesman.

Do you consider having your Facebook newsfeed dominated by headlines posted to Mahalo (and using the Mahalo logo as the image rather than an image related to the story) to be Facebook SPAM? At the very least, is the rationale behind posting it “optimizing” links for Facebook, hence marketing those links (Mahalo)?

(Now I know I could unfriend Calacanis or block him from my feed, but thats not the point. How is he getting so much content in there in the first place?)

The point is, is it OK to use what others are using for conversation and updates for marketing. And don’t tell me he’s not, because that is exactly what those 5 Mahalo logos every day are doing there. What do you think?

We had a great weekend for BarCamp NOLA. We had about 45 participants and everyone contributed to make it a great weekend. Saturday was BarCamp with two sessions going on concurrently all day and Sunday was Hack Day where we worked on two different non-profit profit projects.

BarCamp NOLA – Weekend Video from Chris Schultz on Vimeo.

There are more detailed summaries by Brian & Alan. Thanks to everyone who participated, it was a great weekend. Let’s do it again soon.

Tomorrow is the big day for BarCamp New Orleans. Calling all Gulf Coast geeks, digerati, entrepreneurs. Join us for NOLA’s first BarCamp!

Get Ready for BarCamp NOLA from Chris Schultz on Vimeo.

• BarCamp NOLA – A Technology Unconference
• Price: FREE
• Date: Saturday & Sunday – Feb 16 & 17, 2008
• Time: 10am-until (both days)
• Where: Voodoo Ventures, 757 St. Charles Ave., Suite 301
• Map: http://tinyurl.com/2s4pck
• Web: http://www.barcamp.org/BarCampNOLA
• What: Saturday will be a series of presenations and conversations about technology, entrepreneurship, and New Orleans. Sunday is “hack day” and we’ve found several organziations (non-profits and small businesses) that we’ll be building something cool for.

If this is your first BarCamp: http://www.barcamp.org/WhatToExpect

Coffee, Ms. Linda’s soul food lunch, and beer will be provided thanks to our wonderful sponsors. Planned sessions include:

• Open Social Media Networks with Brian Oberkirch
• A “How To” Guide to Raising VC with Richard Montgomery
• Install a WordPress Blog with Gerard Ramos
• Bootstrapping a Web App with Chris Schultz
• And whatever you want to learn about or lead

BarCamp is what we all make together. See you tomorrow!

BarCamp NOLA is this weekend!  We hope everyone can make it, thanks to all the support we’ve been receiving.  We got some great sponsors on board who will be supporting BarCamp NOLA by providing FREE for all attendees:

• Coffee & danishes to get our creative juices flowing
• Soul Food Lunch on Sat catered by Ms Linda with jambalaya, shrimp pasta, greens, and bread pudding for desert (we’ll need a nap after lunch)
• Lunch on Sun will be po-boys for everyone who shows up for hack day
• A keg of Abita Amber and plenty of soft drinks to keep us fueled through the afternoon and into the evening.

We’ve got several great organizations who we’ll be doing work for over the weekend:

• Offbeat.com – New Orleans music bible wants us to work our magic on their website
• The Bayou Boogaloo – is a non-profit music festival benefiting Mid City, they want some web help too
• And more… depending on how many people come, we’ll take on another non-profit project

Check out the awesome t-shirts that are being printed for us by New Orleans’ own Dirty Coast.  Show up and you’ll get one!

Come one come all.  Sign up to attend BarCamp NOLA today for a great weekend!

Well, with a flurry of activity last week, we pulled in some great sponsorships for BarCamp NOLA. Brian Oberkirch was working Gmail and Twitter like a champ and getting people to support our efforts. So, here’s the rundown:

• Dirty Coast has us donning killer New Olreans themed t-shirts
• Automattic keeps us all running on WordPress, need I say more
• An Event Apart is hosting its first New Orleans conference around Jazz Fest. You should go.
• Voodoo Ventures is a New Orleans based idea incubator
• TechCrunch keeps us all up to speed on the lastest startups and the inside dirt on MSFT – YHOO
• Flatsourcing does outsourced web development for some of the top industry professionals
• Bluetique develops software for the calling card industry, again here in NOLA
• Advantage Capital supports and funds entreprenuers. Look ‘em up with your next big idea
• Joyent is the cloud with hosting and collaboration software
• Annunciation Interactive is a great NOLA-based development and design firm
• Simulagent is the next generation real estate industry publish platform

Thanks to all the sponsors. We are please to reveal the official BarCamp NOLA t-shirt. The Flambeaux was voted the offical BarCamp NOLA design. Just one more reason to come to BarCamp NOLA. Must be present to win!

The posting around here has been light since Christmas, and I wanted to take a moment on a relaxed Saturday morning to review what I’ve been doing this year, and share some of the exciting things that have been going on.  So without further ado, here’s whats up at Voodoo:

• In case you haven’t noticed, BarCamp NOLA is next weekend. I’ve been spending a lot of time planning for that.
• I’m working some consulting gigs into the rotation.  This is part of an effort to do more business locally.  It also comes out of a desire to have a balance between projects we own (and take the risk on) and projects we don’t.
• I’ve been working on getting Villeamie.com, a stealth mode rewards network, connected GRS, a project that has been going on since September and has a lot of cool New Orleanians behind it.
• In addition, we’re wrapping up an SEO project for Tim Bright and his Cashiers NC mountain home properties called The Preserve at Rock Creek.
• We hired Will Donaldson, a Tulane MBA student who interned with siteMighty this summer to do business development for Flatsourcing.
• We also have been working on redesigning the identity and relaunching the site.  We are focusing on our niche of web development for industry professionals. We are live blogging about the site redesign and the logo updating in order to share with our clients the process flow for our collaboration.
• siteMighty has some exciting things happening.  We just signed a major new rev share agreement.  And some things that I can reveal yet are in the works but you’ll be seeing us get a lot bigger over the next month if all goes well. We are going to move into a new development phase on the site to enhance features for our users.
• In between all this, I traveled to beautiful Isla Holbox, Mexico for vacation and we celebrated Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
• Over the next 3 weeks, I have BarCamp NOLA here, Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas, Future of Web Apps in Miami, and SXSW in Austin.  I would love to meet you at any one of those events.  Drop me a line if you’ll be there.

That’s it for the update.  You’ll see things picking back up on the blog here now that I am back in full swing.