TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook is opening up their mini-feed to third party services. What does this mean?

Let’s say you’re a Del.ico.us user, and you just added a new bookmark. If you choose to, that news will now show up in your news feed and your friends will be able to see it. The web just got a whole lot smaller.

This also marks Facebook’s first move outside of Facebook, and it could even have been urged forward by new COO Sheryl Sandberg (read Fortune’s report on her moves to make Facebook profitable here).

More on the move soon.

Tags: Advertising, Facebook, Marketing, Social Network, Usability // Add Comment »

The article is a year old, but senior editor David Kirkpatrick hits all the right notes in trying to understand the significance of Facebook as a communication and business tool.

“It’s not all rosy for business, though. You think we’ve had transparency on the Internet so far? The ramifications for marketers could be frightening if someone builds tools that enable Facebook users to get more efficient at communicating among themselves about products and services they use. It could become just as easy to learn if someone you know was overcharged by a credit card as to find out what concerts they are attending. Up until now most online sources of product information have been unreliable. But if it’s your friend telling you not to buy that shampoo, you’re likely to listen.”

Full article here: Facebook’s plan to hook up the world - May. 24, 2007

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If you’re a Facebook developer, user, or even an avid reader of this site, you probably know that Facebook is gearing up to revamp the visual and functional design of the basic Facebook profile. I evangelize about it daily, but this post isn’t about how widespread of an effect it’s going to have (it will be watercooler talk for days). Rather, it’s about how Facebook’s approach to this change demonstrates the pioneering of the next generation of large web companies.

Just take a look at their latest post: An Update on the State of the Profile Redesign. In short, it’s saying one thing: We’re listening to you. How? They held a few ’roundtables’, where developers and users of all types were able to get together and talk about what they like/don’t like about the upcoming changes. Then, they’ve been posting weekly updates on their design process, and keenly scouring the comments left by the 39,011 fans that have joined the Profile Redesign Fan Page. Finally, they also mention that there will be ample time for application developers to modify their applications before they release the profile to the public.

Say what you will about some of their Beacon moves and default privacy policies, but from the perspective of a user of the Facebook tool, I trust Facebook to make the right decision to enable me to communicate with my friends easiest. From the perspective of a developer, they have been smart and quick to upgrade as long as they’ve had the Platform available.

IMHO, it’s the use of a company’s ears that will enable a company to succeed in Web 2.0, 3.0 and beyond, and Facebook is definitely on the right path. While people are constantly extolling the virtues of a social web, in truth there are only a handful of companies (Digg is another great example) that truly leverage their social feedback. Even the prolific Google doesn’t make it this simple to let them know how you feel about their interfaces. And we won’t start into MySpace.

This goes farther than web businesses. It’s rare for even an individual to listen, but if you look carefully, the ability to consume and utilize feedback is the hallmark of any true success story. And when a service-provider of any type and size can hear and understand the thousands of users that truly love their offerings, they have the key to keep people smiling.

This clearly should have happened long ago, as a capitalist system would dictate. If a company isn’t listening to their consumers, then a company who does have the ears will open up, and produce a better product. However, the resources necessary to support these vast lines of communication feedback are a recent phenomenon, and we’ll feel the effects of this business style more over the next half-decade. While older corporations will stumble to understand the importance of having their ears to the web, young dynamic startups will spark a trend of iterative, evolving creations based on user feedback. Just like any modern day Engineering design must incorporate feedback, any web business expecting to succeed in the future is going to need to structure a social feedback system for their web presence.

Rant over.

Tags: Advertising, Applications, Facebook, Marketing, Social Network, Usability // Add Comment »

Nick O’Neill just posted about the future of entertainment, and how he views Social Networking as the next television. Specifically, that reinforces what I am constantly saying about advertising, which Tim mentioned here as well.

Read it here: http://www.socialtimes.com/2008/04/people-are-the-next-tv/

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Todd Bishop throws out a short, sweet summary of the big players in what’s becoming a Web-Wide War for control of Yahoo’s online presence.

Check it out here: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/136233.asp

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Facebook Chat, already unrolled in selected Universities in America, is being unrolled over the next few weeks.

I think that while it will seem ‘neat’ at first, I believe some users are going to migrate to this IM in the same way they migrate messaging from external email to Facebook messaging (despite the horrendous FB messaging interface). It’s convenient, and when a person is online at FB IM, you know they are actually sitting there on their profile, versus other IM applications which are ‘online’ all the time.

Not to mention, you’re one click away from a ton of content relating to the person. This is only a cursory examination, and I will write more soon, but I do feel that this IM service will quickly begin to increase daily FB usage.

Read more here: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=12811122130

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One of my favourite tools on the web is StumbleUpon. In short, SU is a toolbar which allows you to easily give a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to any site on the web. As long as it has a web address, you can give it your approval. These lists of your favourite sites/movies/mp3s are aggregated into a page at the StumbleUpon.com website, where you can share with 4,493,158 other websurfers, according to the SU site.  I believe that SU’s structure as an entertainment-driven social network may enable it to compete with traditional Social Networks in the years to come.

The basic elements of SU aren’t exactly revolutionary for the web (see Digg or Del.ico.us). However, what really separates StumbleUpon from the bunch is its “Stumble!” button, which, based on your likes and dislikes, presents you with a targeted-but-random web page from its massive archives of over 12 million pages.  Looking through your preferred categories, ‘liked’ sites, and combining that with user-based content tags and reviews, SU provides you with something you probably like: an mp3, a blog, a mainstream news article or a short video.  And it often hits the right note.  It seems as if the algorithm is very sensitive to your tastes, and also looks to your friends to detect their tastes too.

The idea may or may not be intriguing on paper, but it’s in that moment of boredom where this tool comes to life. Instead of hanging around my favourite blogs for the 15th time today, Stumble! takes me to the University of East Tennesse’s Philosophy Games club, where I can engage in their newest hit, battleground God.  I believe that the market of people seeking this brand of alternative entertainment will grow wildly in the coming years, as a new generation of young folk grow up completely ensconced in web culture. These users may prefer a social network which focuses on its open collection of “fun stuff”.

SU is growing.  StumbleUpon has had a steady growth from 600,000 users in 2005 to 4.5 million users today.  According to Phil Butler, its slowly mounting success is due to “the methodology and ease with which content is collected and displayed”. This, I feel is the essential long-term benefit of SU over traditional social networks:

As opposed to Facebook or MySpace, where we connect to our friends, SU is a site which prioritizes our friends’ interests above their relationship to us.

So while it may still be a bit clunky for people to get used to the interface, eventually, SU holds a database of what people have enjoyed the most on the web, and a fantastic way of delivering that content for small hits of fun. And by connecting people together based on that information, SU has the potential to bloom into a social network that will facilitate conversations of the most pertinent entertainment to people, and this could make a big impact on social networking and perhaps, social living.

–

Ramblings:

The image to my left is SU’s initial forays into friend recommendations, and I found that a few of these people had interests so similar to me, we could likely talk for hours.

This isn’t unlike what Last.FM ventures to do, or what Facebook does when it tries to match you with content, but the point I’m really making,  is that it isn’t the interface or number of users that’s really going to determine our social future, but rather, an algorithm that can understand us.

Another point is that if there is a social networking shakeup, and an OpenID begins to surface, the entire web will become social (see Tim’s pontifications on Web 3.0).  At that point, people will need a strong reason to devote their social time to a given site.  Free, plentiful entertainment is always a good reason.

Miguel Helft from the New York Times referred to SU’s activity as “channel-surfing the Internet”, and the guys at SU label this paradigm of web interaction as “Web Discovery”.

Tags: Applications, Facebook, Social Network, Usability, stumbleupon // Add Comment »

I just ran across one of the most interesting blog posts I’ve read lately speculating on Web 3.0 over at Master of 500 Hats.

Not to steal Dave’s thunder, but there are a couple points I want to highlight.  The Microsoft bid to buy Yahoo is primarily to shore up it’s dominance in the Email/Instant Messaging online sectors.  Sure there are side benefits like buying up Yahoo’s advertising, search and traffic, but the winner of the Internet will be he who controls the user.

But with the battle to own the user comes the battle to own the user’s social graph, currently controlled by Facebook/MySpace/Bebo/hi5/could continue to list ad nauseum.  I keep referring to it, but all future web advertising will be contextually driven by your social graph, where brands are providing social relevance to users.  Ie. “Your friend Katie just saw (insert cookie-cutter Will Ferrell movie) and rated it 5 stars!” (ok I kid, it will be impossible for a Will Ferrell movie to be rated as excellent again… the days of Old School and Anchorman are over).

I think it’s also highly important to note the fact that we as users on the Internet now have hundreds of logins/passwords for every individual site on the net.  This is a problem that needs to be solved, and while attempts have been made (Microsoft Passport or the community driven OpenID), nothing will happen until one company owns enough of the user’s Internet life to make it beneficial for the user (really, what’s the difference in consolidating your logins from 60 to 50?).  Alternatively, if the smaller communities can build enough momentum around the OpenID concept, it could be viable, but whether that is a possibility remains to be seen.

The final piece of the puzzle are the e-commerce/payment conglomerates.  Look for the Microsoft/Google duopoly to put pressure on eBay (and their very valuable PayPal) and Amazon for merger/acquisitions in the next few years.

Where do the small players stand in this heated battle?  Well, I sort of compare it to the open source community who has not only weathered giants like Microsoft’s attempts to push them out, but actually blossomed in the modern Internet era.  If the small guys can provide real value to users, by churning out innovations while being completely flexible to quickly capitalize on new ideas, they will have a direct line to sink their (small) teeth into the necks of Google and Microsoft.  And instead of a one-sided parasitic relationship, Microsoft and Google will leverage these small-time players to come up with new innovations and either partner or swallow them up for big money when it makes sense.  And sometimes these guys will have such momentum that they will swim past these sharks to potentially become a shark themselves (could Facebook be this shark?  That question requires an entirely new post) (and one more side point - I’m not sure whether I should perhaps be calling Microsoft and Google ‘whales’ instead).

The Internet and Web 2.0 is a playground for innovation due to the extremely low barriers to entry and it’s massive channel to instantly reach all users around the globe.  It’s an exciting time to see all the fish in the sea battle (and work symbiotically) to control the Internet.

Tags: Advertising, Facebook, Google, Marketing, MySpace, Social Network // 1 Comment »

I was responding to one of my many application invites when I noticed something new in my invitation to Mob Wars: A new option labeled “Stop These Invites”.

It seems that with every upgrade and iteration, Facebook is moving to slowly optimize the user’s Application experience. A big part of this is eliminating these spam-like invites, but another big part is emphasizing Application quality. Facebook has been moving with that initiative by assigning each Application an invitation quality rating, which either increases or decreases based on how many people respond positively to the invitation. This allows Applications with legitimate content to proliferate faster, and thereby increase the overall quality of the popular Application pool.

Furthermore, with the upcoming profile upheaval, we’ll see less room for Applications. This is certainly going to encourage developers to increase the aesthetic and functional appeal of their Applications, because real-estate will be at a premium. This also means that fewer applications will have the chance to become popular, and developers with multiple failed Applications will have no reason to jump in and create “Kiss Me Part VII”.

Eventually, the new profile page will facilitate Applications in a more organized way, with tabs enabling users to have precise control over groups of applications they’d like to display. This way, the most popular applications will reside in a tab right beside Photos, and to stay there, they’ll need to be as useful and usable as Photos itself.

I paint a somewhat ideal picture, and there will be a lot of bumps before Applications can jump to that level, but I do believe that eventually, Facebook will enable intelligent and creative third-party developers to generate software that is truly useful to the whole of Facebook.

[Edit: It's off-topic, but great reading relating to the business of Social Networks as mentioned in Tim's previous post.  This one is about the Profitability of Asian Social Networks vs. Facebook. ]

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According to the Newspaper Association of America and referenced over at Editor&Publisher and TechCrunch,  Newspaper revenues fell 9.4% to $42 billion in the past year compared to 2006 in the US.  For reference, online ad revenues grew 19% to $3.2 billion over 2006.  What does this signal?  Well, for starters, the looming US recession has and will continue to have a definite impact on advertising revenues, as one of the first things to be cut during tight times are marketing budgets.  But is there more to it?

It’s no secret that traditional print media like newspapers are falling on hard times.  Marketing executives are being given more options with where to spend their marketing dollars, and while I don’t believe that Internet ad revenues have totally lived up to their potential, innovations in the online space are arriving that will present credible options for said Marketing execs when they determine how to optimally allocate their ad budgets.

First of all, the static ad banner on the side of every web page is starting to be replaced with interactive and engaging multimedia.  Online video ads and flash-based multimedia are becoming more and more common, attracting the user’s attention and creating a much more solid impression over and above the typical static classmates.com banner you traditionally see.

But more importantly, online ads are beginning to take advantage of demographics and eventually will leverage individual user preferences, as I alluded to earlier this month, to provide much more relevant and contextual ads that are targeted to every individual.

Finally, combine these new contextual online ads with a solid metrics and reporting system that can track every user’s interaction with the ad, and you can create an objective sales presentation to the aforementioned Marketing executive, giving him or her direct insight into how each penny spent online translates into brand impressions/interactions, and eventually, sales.  This gives the online ad realm a tremendous advantage over traditional media, because the feedback reporting mechanisms can objectively indicate the success rate of an online marketing campaign .  A complete return-on-investment can be calculated along with with every reportable stat you can imagine, so that the Marketing exec can easily gauge how to optimally allocate their online marketing spending.

Newspaper and traditional media are a one-way street.  You can get indirect feedback based on general sales lift, but nothing near what can be done through online metrics.  This gives online advertising the advantage, and with innovations still to come to provide even more creative as well as socially relevant ads to users, it appears as though online advertising is destined for continued growth.

On another note - Duncan Riley at TechCrunch wrote an interesting post last November about the need for consolidation in the Newspaper industry to improve their chances of survival in the face of increased competition for advertising dollars.

Tags: Advertising, Facebook, Marketing // 1 Comment »