Facebook fbFund Winner Wildfire Launches Promotion App (Beta Invites)

Facebook fbFund winner Wildfire is launching the private beta of its web application, The Wildfire Promotion Builder, which allows companies to create their own branded interactive promotions, including contests, coupons, sweepstakes and giveaways. Using Facebook Connect combined with the power of the application, companies can simultaneously publish promotion campaigns on the designated “promotions tab” on the company’s Facebook page and on the company’s website (campaigns can also be simultaneously run on MySpace, Bebo, and other standalone websites).

Wildfire is giving out beta invites for the first 500 Techcrunch readers who sign up here. To be eligible, TechCrunch readers should write “Techcrunch” in the “How did you hear about us?” field at the bottom of the form.

Wildfire’s Promotion Builder application is a simple way for companies to cross-promote across various social networks while still taking advantage of the viral nature and rising dominance of Facebook as the top social network. The promotions tab could complement the recent Facebook redesign of company pages to look more like profile pages. Wildfire charges a fee of $0.99 per campaign per day for sweepstakes and coupon campaigns and $2.99 per day for user generated video and photo contests. The startup also offers a premium service that includes custom design features.

Coupons, sweepstakes and giveaways are a good way to engage consumers and Facebook seems to think so as well. The social network has used Wildfire’s brand promotion apps to run multiple contests on the site. In fact, the consumer voting application Facebook used to vote on the the fbFund winners was actually created by Wildfire. In December, Wildefire won $250,000 in cash grants from Facebook’s fbFund, a joint venture between Facebook, Accel, and the Founders Fund meant to cultivate and reward innovative applications on the Facebook platform.

Here’s a screenshot that shows the application used in the new Facebook “page more like a profile” format: