Send Free Flowers On Facebook - ‘Flowers & Fun’
Last night, after an enthusiastic exchange of final amends we launched ‘Flowers & Fun’ the Arena Flowers Facebook application. As with all things Arena, Flowers & Fun had always been there in our ‘to do’ list but it wasn’t until last week that Will’s frantic text messages became too much to ignore – the application just had to be built!
We all sat down to work out what we wanted to do with it. Facebook has lots of applications so this had to stand out and most importantly, it had to be fun. Zach, our lead developer was pulled off another project and urgently pointed in the direction of Facebook. Not unfamiliar with Facebook he was quick to breath life into our little app and within a day we had our flowers on Facebook – what a rush that was!
This was quickly followed by rudimentary exchanges of flowers and messages to and from Arena employees as we got our hands dirty testing the application and importantly the experience. Feedback from the ladies in our customer service team (all of whom are experienced Facebook users) was swift, encouraging refinements as each virtual bouquet was sent. With the addition of each new feature we saw this little app grow and grow and it was not long before we realised its potential. When you look at the sheer size of Facebook, with its 30 million users, you have to consider the awesome prospect of hundreds and possibly thousands of people sending our virtual versions of our flowers. What a way to focus the mind!
By Thursday morning we had all the pieces in place on our development version of the app and were sending flowers (and hilarious messages) to our closest friends. Of course it was then that we realised that we were basically ready to go and were in need of a name. We had been through a few iterations all of which were ‘development’ names but none had done the job. The name had to include the word flowers and we wanted the whole thing to be fun, which combined made it very easy to come up with ‘Flowers & Fun’. I fired up Illustrator and sent Zach a logo.With only a few small amends to make we opted to tell a few friends, and 5 users quickly became 14. Friends of friends, but I remember thinking ‘who were these people?’ – I must find out!
Heading home I realised I was completely hooked, I couldn’t wait to get back to see if another virtual bouquet had been sent. We spent the rest of the evening on Skype with small changes to the copy and even enlisted the help of Alex Schultz, an eBay chum of Will’s and experienced Facebook developer (see his Cocktail Recipes). After a few small changes we released Flowers & Fun and watched in awe as it slowly headed off across the big pond and towards American Facebookers. When we went live we had around 20 users, all of whom were friends.
When we got up in the morning we had 238 users and in the time that I have spent writing this we have added 52 more! We were all stunned to see the take up and the excitement in the office was clear to all. Arena had landed on Facebook and we were loving it!
Being the developer Zach has the privilege of sending each new member a bunch or roses and as a result has quickly become a very popular chap. Unwittingly, he has sent out hundreds of virtual bouquets to random strangers and is now receiving many invitations of friendship with women all over the states. Zach we salute you and your new found romantic status.
Go to facebook to send ‘Flowers & Fun‘.
Well done Zach you are officially the man for getting this off the ground in a week and yes Will you were right Facebook was a must :D
Filed under: Flowers, General, Marketing, Matters Webby on July 27th, 2007
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