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09/23/11 | Uncategorized

Foodspotting Founder and CEO Alexa Andrzejewski Virtually Only Woman Onstage at Facebook Developer Conference

By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0)
In the space recently occupied by TechCrunch Disrupt, Facebook developer and press conference f8 featured a keynote by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the new Facebook Timeline.

Foodspotting, founded by Alexa Andrzejewski, was prominently featured in Zuckerberg’s keynote onstage at f8.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff tweets no less than five times about the lack of women and diversity onstage at f8. Alexa was virtually the only woman onstage at the day-long f8 conference, having been invited to participate in the mobile + gaming panel alongside executives from EA/Playfish, Zynga and Turntable.fm.

We talked with Alexa after f8 to get the scoop…

Women 2.0: Congrats on being featured so prominently at Facebook’s livestreamed f8 conference! What was your biggest takeaway from the day?
Alexa Andrzejewski: The biggest thing was that Mark Zuckerberg used Foodspotting’s integration in his keynote. A handful of startups were selected to test out the new Facebook timeline integration and early features, so Shelley, Ted and I participated in hack days leading up to the event. Out of these integrations, Mark chose the ones that he wanted to use to demonstrate how the new Facebook lets you interact with things beyond your friends, like food and music.

Women 2.0: Was it a surprise to see Foodspotting featured in Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote?
Alexa Andrzejewski: Yes, we were really surprised! We had no idea how it would actually pan out, or how much press or attention we’d get out of it — it was really an honor we couldn’t plan for.

Women 2.0: Awesome to hear! How was your panel talk at f8?
Alexa Andrzejewski: I was on a panel about mobile and social and it was really great — I thought about what are some lessons I learned, and made sure to call out those things for people trying to develop social or mobile apps.

I believe people don’t trust algorithms, people trust people. People don’t want to know what the Foodspotting algorithm recommends, they want to know what their friends recommend, so it’s about making things more social.

Women 2.0: Isn’t it a chicken and egg problem, as your friends need to be on it as well?
Alexa Andrzejewski: The great thing about Facebook is that your friends graph is already there, so you can build on top of that — your friends are already there. For Foodspotting, you can automatically follow all of your Facebook friends on Foodspotting, and then add Foodspotting to your Facebook timeline. This means all of your Facebook friends will see all the things you like and you want on Foodspotting.

Women 2.0: And did you hear about Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff tweeting about no women onstage at f8?
Alexa Andrzejewski: Someone tweeted “I’m glad there is a woman onstage finally”. Also, the lead developer on our Facebook integration at Foodspotting is a woman, Shelley Roche, and we’re really proud of her.

Women 2.0: Awesome. Any last comments on the new Facebook Timeline or f8?
Alexa Andrzejewski: Everyone can definitely look into the new Facebook functionality because people would be able to discover a person’s Facebook profile in a way that they couldn’t before… so now there are a lot more ways to share, and a lot more ways to get your Facebook app discovered.

Editor’s note: Check out Foodspotting’s blog post about adding Foodspotting to your Facebook timeline!

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