Yesterday I went through hundreds of startups’ Facebook pages. Why? I built a new list of hundreds of startups. You should subscribe to it. I also added a lot of investors onto my startup investor list. Subscribe to that one, too, and you’ll know what the money in the industry is thinking. Finally I also built a new list for programmers.

Why on Facebook? I’ve noticed a change lately. Facebook is the best place to build lists like these. Why?

1. Everyone is on Facebook. It is very rare that I can’t find a startup. Out of the 72 Y Combinator startups almost all of them were on Facebook.
2. The list-building facility in Facebook is better than Twitter or Google+. Twitter limits me to 500 things on each list. Facebook doesn’t. Plus, if you subscribe to lists they actually put some items from each list onto your main feed. Twitter doesn’t do anything when you follow a list. Finally, I haven’t hit a list limit yet on Facebook, where on Twitter I’m limited to 20 lists.

Anyway, that’s a long way of getting around to some things I’ve noticed that Startups could improve on when launching their companies (I’ll be at Techcrunch Disrupt with our awesome new video studio thanks to New Tek’s Tricaster to meet the latest startups launching. If you have a startup that’s launching there, make sure you email me and get on our calendar. scobleizer@gmail.com. If you want to go I arranged a $100 discount, use the Scobledsf12 code).

1. Get a name that’s searchable on ALL services. It’s amazing that about 10% of startups couldn’t be found on Facebook because they had common names or names that weren’t searchable.
2. Make sure a description of your business is on your Facebook page. Quite a few didn’t have a description.
3. Make sure you link to your website. It’s amazing to me to see how many businesses don’t link back to their main website.
4. Make sure there’s a call to action on your Facebook page “Download our app today and you’ll get $10 off” for instance. Very few startups do this. Ask for the sale! (Or the download or the click).
5. Use photos and videos often. The best startups post lots of imagery and videos. The worst ones? Text only. This is one reason why I take photos, so I’ll have some to use on my posts in the future (the photo above I shot at the iPad 2 launch).

While I’m thinking of Techcrunch Disrupt, here’s some ideas for how you can use your Facebook page to scale out your conference investment (it is expensive).

1. Post photos of your staff uniforms BEFORE the event. You do have a staff T shirt, right? Y Combinator does this so well. Every company at its demo day last week had its employees wearing a company T-shirt.
2. Tease us with what you are going to be doing. For instance, at our booth we’ll be using a new piece of video gear. You all will want to see it. That’s a tease. If you have a new UI, show us a piece of it, and say “you can see more at our booth.”
3. Make a list of competitors who will be disrupted by you. You do have competitors, right? You are better, right? If not, why are you going to Disrupt? Post a blog post about them and what makes you different. Heck, post a blog post about what makes THEM better than YOU! That will get attention and demonstrate you have real passion and credibility about the marketplace you serve.
4. Don’t listen to Techcrunch’s rules. They tell companies not to disclose what they are doing to journalists ahead of time. This is risky, yes. If one of those journalists leak before you get on stage you might get kicked out of the show. So, pick some journalists you trust, and give them a sneak peak, but embargo them. They will have a deeper story to augment the few minutes you get on stage. Companies that don’t take this risk really are lame and really ruin their “coming out” chances for huge and deep coverage. Remember, great companies are built, not launched.
5. Make sure your signage explains what you do quickly and efficiently. It’s amazing when I walk through an expo hall and can’t figure out what a company does just by walking past its booth. On Y Combinator’s brochure every company was described in four words or less. BufferBox simply said “Drop boxes for packages.” Vastrm says “Warby Parker for shirts.” Instacart says “Groceries delivered fast.” Everyday.me says “Personal timeline.” Every company figured out what it was and shrunk it down to four words or less. Everyone. You have no excuses.
6. Have a “schtick” that gets people to engage. Some companies have mini-golf contests. Others have funny people presenting. Others just have a fun contest. But you gotta find a way to stand out above the noise of expo halls.
7. Hand out some awesome swag. Word gets around that your booth is a must visit. Plus, even if they aren’t customers, maybe a few of the influencers will take photos of your swag and post them around.

What about you? Do you have any suggestions for companies launching?

I’m hanging out at Y Combinator‘s Demo Day and I think there’s a real problem here with the latest demo days. Each of 82 companies is getting two minutes and 15 seconds to talk about themselves to the audience. It’s like sitting through an entire day of advertisements about new companies that we have no context upon which to decide which companies are good, which ones to show you, etc. Tomorrow I’ll post my thoughts about the companies and will link to the best reports around the web from the day — unfortunately they aren’t live streaming it. You can watch live tweets on Twitter search here.

It’s very frustrating. It almost makes me want to go home with my list of companies, and just start making interview requests and playing with their products. In fact, that’s probably what I’ll do after lunch. The networking here is off the hook.

I far prefer an expo hall approach like what happens at Techcrunch Disrupt. Why?

1. Very quickly people tell me what the interesting companies are anyway. That already happened here at Y Combinator. The companies themselves are good “signalers” of who is hot. This happens at every company. I remember the day when Mint.com found me before its presentation at Techcrunch Disrupt.
2. I can spend a lot of time with those companies and I know where to find them in the expo hall. Here every company is wearing branded T-shirts, but it’s random and chaotic.
3. The folks on stage get questioned by judges, and have enough time to spend with them, so you can really learn something about those companies. Here you just get advertisement after advertisement. Which I guess is really necessary because there are 82 companies. If they took any longer than two or three minutes we’d be here for months. Which shows the value that the press and judges have. Curation is really needed here. But we’re sitting through all these because its Y Combinator.

Anyway, I’ve arranged to have a booth at Techcrunch Disrupt. We’re arranging to interview several companies there. Please email me at scobleizer@gmail.com if you want to get on the calendar. You’ll get more than two minutes to explain yourself, for sure. You can get in with a $100 discount if you use the code: Scobledsf12

UPDATE: during lunch it hit me. What this really needs is that it should be all demos all the time. The fact that they don’t demo their product keeps the focus on the wrong thing.

Six companies. If the other 80 companies that will be born on Tuesday are anything like these six, we are in for quite a week in Silicon Valley startup land.

Here’s a look at the four companies, two of which visited me in my Half Moon Bay, California, house on Friday to talk about Y Combinator and why it continues to be the best incubator and the one that most entrepreneurs hope to gain entry into.

Company One: Grid.

Go read about Grid on Techcrunch. That impressed me enough that I asked Josh to come by and spend some time with me, which is the video here. My only complaint is that Grid isn’t ready for prime time yet. The ideas are killer, but most people won’t be able to use this new kind of spreadsheet until sometime in 2013. I could listen to Josh, the founder, though, for hours. He worked at Microsoft on the Excel team and got stymied there because Microsoft doesn’t want to rethink its products. Heck, I wouldn’t. They are cash cows. But Josh’s ideas are awesome and I can’t wait to use his products.

Company Two: Smart Asset.

CEO Michael Carvin spent a bunch of time with me on Friday. He also was in Techcrunch a few days ago. Already 14,000 people have visited his site, which helps people make major purchase decisions. Like buying a house. His design hit me as being done by Edward Tufte, Carvin told me that his designer loves Tufte. When you enter a few things in his site has lots of sliders so you can adjust up and down your down payment and other details. It is one of the best done sites I’ve seen and I wish I had had this site when I purchased my house.

Company Three: Hipset.

I love anything contextual that uses my Facebook data to bring me personalized experiences. Too many entrepreneurs are listening to the Facebook naysayers. When I was at Disneyland last week it seemed that EVERYONE was on Facebook. Only one guy in the audience of Chase Jarvis’ awesome photography show wasn’t on Facebook. And we’re putting more and more of our data into Facebook every day. Read more about Hipset on Techcrunch here.

Hipset takes that data and makes a music magazine out of it. Since I have more than 5,000 likes on Facebook (go ahead and steal my 300+ music likes to try this magazine out) Hipset really rocked for me. Love it, although it has quite a few things that need improvement. This needs to be an iPad app right now. The mobile experience is janky to say the least.

Company Four: Instacart.

These guys snuck into Y Combinator at beyond the last minute. How? Their product rocked. The story is on Techcrunch. What does it do? It does 1-hour grocery delivery. What we’re witnessing is the “Uberization of everything.” If you haven’t used the Uber car ride app yet, you should. Within a couple of years everything will have an app that looks like Uber and works like it too.

Company Five: Credictive.

When you meet founder Ela Madej, from Poland, she infects you with her passion for starting companies. This is her third company, which will let people give everyone credit for the site you are on. Last time I saw it it was an overlay for the Web that let you see who built that site. I thought it was an innovative competitor for Geekli.st, which lets geeks brag about the products they built or worked on. Why is that important? Well recruiters LOVE sites like these. I know, my neighbor John Poore is a recruiter (I did an audio interview with him a few weeks back).

Company Six: Boosted Boards.

When other entrepreneurs love what you do, you know you’re onto something. These guys take a skateboard and put a little electric motor onto it. I hear it’s quite a kick to ride and is something that will be hot with teenagers in no time.

Here’s a video that PandoDaily did about this company:

Well, there you have it. Six very different Y Combinator companies. I hear there are 82 companies that will be revealed on Tuesday, most for the first time in public. I’ll be there with my video camera looking for more great companies to highlight. Startups, if you want to get together, my phone number is +1-425-205-1921 or my email is scobleizer@gmail.com

Oh, and I also will be filming startups at the Techcrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco September 8-12. I’ve arranged with Techcrunch for a $100 discount. Just use the code: Scobledsf12. Hope to see you there!