Inside Network is the first company dedicated to providing news and market research to the Facebook platform and social gaming ecosystem.
Inside Network serves developers, marketers, and analysts through its industry-leading blogs, Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games, research services, including the Inside Virtual Goods and Facebook Marketing Bible series, and data services, AppData and PageData.
Inside Network is based in Palo Alto, CA, and was founded by Justin Smith in 2006.
Justin Smith
Founder, Inside Network
Justin Smith is the founder of Inside Network, the first and only service dedicated to providing news and market research to the Facebook platform and social gaming ecosystem. Justin leads Inside Network's analyst services, and serves as Editor of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games. He is the author of the industry leading Facebook Marketing Bible and co-author of the Inside Virtual Goods reports on the US virtual goods and social gaming market.
From 2007 to 2009, Justin served as Head of Product for Watercooler, a venture-backed startup based in Mountain View, California, and one of the leading developers of applications on Facebook and other major social platforms. Under Justin's leadership, Watercooler's Facebook applications reached well over 30 million Facebook users, and Watercooler established itself as the leading network of sports and television entertainment applications. Justin remains an advisor to Watercooler today.
Prior to Inside Facebook, Justin was an early employee at Xfire, the largest social utility for gamers, which was sold to Viacom for $102 million in 2006. Prior to Xfire, Justin earned a degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford University, where he was a Mayfield Fellow and a recipient of the Terman Award in Engineering.
Prior to Stanford, Justin co-founded the MyDesktop Network, an early internet media company, in 1996. MyDesktop was later acquired by Jupitermedia/Internet.com in 1999. Justin grew up in South Carolina and currently lives in Palo Alto, California.
Eric Eldon
Co-Editor, Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games
Eric Eldon is the Co-Editor of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games. Prior to Inside Network, Eric was the first employee at VentureBeat, a leading Silicon Valley technology publication, starting in 2007. There, he became an editor and the lead writer for social networking.
Prior to VentureBeat, Eric co-founded WriteWith, a writing software startup. Eric graduated from Stanford University with a degree in International Relations in 2005, where he reported and edited news for The Stanford Daily, and ran its business for a year.
