We’re excited to announce today that Socialfly has been chosen as one of 25 recipients of Facebook’s Round I fbFund grant. We look forward to developing a great partnership with Facebook to provide the best user experience possible for Socialfly users.

We chose to participate in the fbFund competition because we think Facebook is the ideal platform for Socialfly’s coming launch. Over the past year we’ve seen both an incredible rise in the capability of the Facebook platform, and an evolving user dynamic that shows Facebook has become not just a mainstream success, but a leader in redefining how everybody, everywhere communicates.

Social is Changing

Have you noticed something recently? Lines are blurring between personal and professional, between casual acquaintances and close friends or family, and between nearly every other possible distinction we draw among our connections. They’re all starting to appear side by side, even while social norms are still highly ambiguous. What’s happening?

Social networks are changing

Facebook has become the mainstream social network. Your parents, coworkers, old friends, and the local barista may all be on it right now. However, while the social graph has widened to include this huge quantity of connections, an expanding social graph dilutes what it means to be connected. The role of applications may very well be to simply make sense of these connections - defining what it means to be connected, and the implicit and explicit rules of interaction.

People are changing

We who enter the workforce today are expected to change our jobs 7 to 10 times in our careers.  As young professionals, we can no longer rely on pre-defined social circles to tap into, because we relocate and switch jobs so frequently. A greater burden is now on all of us to build our own networks, because we wind up meeting a greater number of people for a shorter amount of time.

Where Socialfly Comes In

We’re building Socialfly to fill in what we see as a crucial missing piece in this redefinition of social. While changes in social networks and social conditions are driving a greater quantity of connections, Socialfly is about increasing the quality of connections. We believe true relationships are measured by the times you spend and interests you share together: the ideas you bond over, the details you share in common, and your regular interactions. We want to do this with all the people we like, and we think you do too.

What Next?

The Socialfly team is working hard for our first release in November. In the mean time, take a look at the Socialfly preview application, which will keep you up to date and help you set yourself up for our launch. You can also follow us on twitter, and subscribe to our blog’s RSS feed.

Thanks,

The Socialfly Team

We’re looking for a talented front end AJAX developer to work on our Facebook product. Come work in the funky Socialfly garage and live the startup life!

Interested? Send your resume, along with a story of a time you embarrassed yourself while socializing, to jobs@socialflyinc.com. We’ll post all the responses.

Welcome to the Official Socialfly Blog! We’ll be updating this periodically with product updates, fun startup stories, and the like as time goes on.

In the meantime, you probably have some questions, so here’s a quick FAQ:

What is Socialfly?

Socialfly simplifies the process of keeping up with people, by tracking your social activity, letting you store all the notes of your interactions, and intelligently reminding you to talk to people. Socialfly will soon be available on both Facebook and the iPhone, letting you instantly access your social data where you need it.

When will Socialfly be available?

Socialfly is still in private beta but we’re working hard to get it out as soon as possible. We anticipate a November release, but we want to make sure it gets done right.

Where are you located?

Right in the beating heart of Silicon Valley in Menlo Park, CA! We’re about a mile from all the VCs on Sand Hill Road, and a two minute walk to lots of tasty food joints.

Who are you?

Co-founders Dick and Nick are two guys who realized we had the same problem - it’s hard to keep up with people! We started brainstorming and before we knew it we had discovered some really cool ways to solve that problem, with Dick taking on coding responsibilities and Nick taking on design. Prior to Socialfly, we did some other fun things too. For instance, Dick once ran a jazz orchestra, and Nick used to make video games.

I love the idea! I’m a talented engineer! Are you hiring?

Yep. Send us your resumes to jobs@socialflyinc.com, and be sure to include an embarassing story of when you forgot something important about somebody. We’ll put up all the responses.