CEOs Of BranchOut and Top Ad Agency AKQA Will Drop Knowledge On You At Friday’s Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp

Facebook moves pretty fast. If you don’t attend the Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp, you could misunderstand it. To give us the lowdown on how well Facebook’s ad business is doing and what it’s like to ride the Facebook traffic roller coaster, we’ve got two big new additions to the day’s panels.

Rick Marini– founder and CEO of BranchOut, the most popular Facebook-based professional networking tool.

Tom Bedecarré – CEO of AKQA one of the world’s leading ad agencies that helps brands spend millions on Facebook.

Get your tickets to see them and Facebook’s heads of product, platform, and engineering outline the company’s philosophy of the answer the tough questions about Facebook’s future.

With 25 million users, BranchOut wants to disrupt LinkedIn by saving you from rebuilding your network. It lets you see where friends work, and shows you off to recruiters. Recently, though, changes to how Facebook promotes apps have seen BranchOut’s traffic dip. Marini will give CrunchUp attendees a first-hand account of navigating the shifting seas of the Facebook platform, joining the panel with Facebook’s director of developer products Doug Purdy to discuss how BranchOut is refocusing on getting users engaged, not just visiting.

Everyone wants to know how Facebook’s going to make enough money to satisfy its new investors. Bedecarré sees that money come through, as his agency sits between Facebook and the brands like Nike and Xbox that buy multimillion dollar campaigns. He’ll sit down for a fireside chat with me and Greg Badros, Facebook’s director of engineering for ads, to analyze whether social advertising has what it takes to draw spend away from TV, print, and search.

Our Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp and 7th Annual Summer Party at August Capital are this Friday. Get your ticket to the CrunchUp, which will get you into the summer party, here!

Tom Bedecarré
CEO, AKQA

Tom Bedecarré is CEO of AKQA, a top global digital marketing firm that uses innovative ideas and technology to deliver results for the world’s leading brands – including Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Nike, Visa and Xbox. AKQA has more than 750 employees in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York, Washington DC, London, Shanghai and Amsterdam. Recognized numerous times as “Digital Agency of the Year,” AKQA was recently named one of the “World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies” by Fast Company magazine. The Wall Street Journal featured Tom as an “Admaker to Watch.” Tom holds a BA degree from Stanford and an MBA degree from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

An enthusiastic entrepreneur, Tom was a founder and CEO of Citron Haligman Bedecarré, San Francisco’s largest independent advertising agency and a leader in launching Internet brands. Tom started his career in advertising at Ogilvy & Mather New York and later returned home to San Francisco where he was a Vice President at Hal Riney & Partners.

Tom holds a BA degree from Stanford University and an MBA degree from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University where he has served on the Kellogg Alumni Advisory Board. In 2009, Tom joined the IAB’s Advertising Agency Advisory Board to foster dialogue between agencies, publishers, marketers and technology providers.

Rick Marini
Founder & CEO, BranchOut.com

Founder & CEO of BranchOut.com. Rick Marini has been a pioneer in online social media and serial entrepreneur for the past 13 years. Rick is the Founder & CEO of BranchOut.

BranchOut is the largest professional network on Facebook, with over 25 million registered users. BranchOut users leverage their Facebook friend network to find jobs, recruit talent, source sales leads, and strengthen relationships with professional contacts. BranchOut also operates the largest job board on Facebook with over 3 million jobs and internships. BranchOut has raised $49 million from Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Mayfield Fund, Norwest Venture Partners and a dozen of the top angel investors in Silicon Valley.

Prior to founding BranchOut, Rick was the Founder & CEO of SuperFan, a profitable social entertainment site that produced social games for clients including CBS, MTV, Universal Music, Warner Music, NBA stars Dwight Howard and LeBron James, etc.

Prior to founding SuperFan, Rick was the Co-Founder, CFO & Chief Strategist for Tickle.com. Tickle was one of the largest social media sites on the Internet and the first site to successfully leverage viral marketing through personality tests, photo-sharing and matchmaking products. Under his leadership, Tickle operated as a profitable company with close to $40 million of annual revenue. In 2002, Tickle won the “Rising Star” Webby Award as the fastest growing site on the Web and became a top 20 global Internet site with 200 million registered users. In 2004, Tickle was acquired by Monster Worldwide for over $100 million.

The agenda can be found below.