There is little doubt that a small company’s success in the Web 2.0 world depends on the quality of the solutions it builds. Bring a sub-par solution to market and chances are you’ll quickly find yourself back at the drawing board trying to come up with a new idea. If you need proof, just have a look at all the solutions that ended up in the TechCrunch Deadpool.

Of course there are other success factors at work beyond solution quality, and one of them is name/brand recognition. It’s a timeless marketing question that existed long before Web 2.0 – how do I get my name and my solution out there for the world to see? (After all, one could argue that ending up in the Deadpool isn’t so bad because at least you got to TechCrunch in the first place.)

Recently CoreBlox made a concerted effort to let people know about our I Have Kids Facebook application. We started donating money to charity on behalf of our user base; we launched a campaign on the Facebook ad network; we launched a support site on GetSatisfaction.com; we even created a Twitter account where you can follow our application and some of the interesting kid-focused news articles we find. The results have been very positive, as our user base has grown to over 40,000 users from all over the world who have rewarded us with a 5-star application rating. In a Facebook application world where often the most popular applications allow you to Superpoke your friends or turn them into zombies, we’ve manged to find a niche with our “serious” app.

But sometimes the best kind of publicity is the stuff you don’t expect. Take what happened to us yesterday when a friend who was attending Facebook’s f8 event happened to notice a familiar logo on the presentation screen during Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote address. We were fortunate in that photographer Brian Solis was able to get an excellent capture of the moment:

(CC) Brian Solis, www.briansolis.com and bub.blicio.us.

Take a look just to the left of the pink ribbon near the center of the screen and you’ll see our bright blue & white CoreBlox logo.

Zuckerberg’s keynote emphasized that Facebook will reward applications that provide the most value, so we’re confident that our I Have Kids community will continue to grow in the coming months. In the meantime, thanks to all our 40,000+ users who helped CoreBlox to play a role in the f8 event!