This morning one of my readers sent me an email alerting me to a new Facebook video on YouTube. I wasn’t initially going to post anything but this video has attracted over 20,000 views and I have a feeling that it may just go viral. While it’s nowhere near as good as the bubble video, it is definitely interesting. I just wonder if this is an accurate portrayal of the majority or if it’s a select few. Are you tired of Facebook?

This morning one of my readers sent me an email alerting me to a new Facebook video on YouTube. I wasn’t initially going to post anything but this video has attracted over 20,000 views and I have a feeling that it may just go viral. While it’s nowhere near as good as the bubble video, it is definitely interesting. I just wonder if this is an accurate portrayal of the majority or if it’s a select few. Are you tired of Facebook?

The much hyped UADA which has attracted a significant amount of buzz launched today with very little fanfare. So what happened with the UADA and who are the partners? As of now there are no partners that have been stated for this “alliance” and according to sources I have spoken with, most people have chosen not to join the alliance.

What is the UADA?
Since the announcement of the UADA, Lee has been contacting a number of developers and potential investors. To the developers he is offering an 80/20 revenue split and is asking for 10 percent of each application’s pageviews to be dedicated to him. In turn, The UADA will be leveraging an engine to optimize each application’s advertising. Each time a page is loaded, the UADA’s custom engine will determine which ad to display in order to maximize revenue.

This solution is a great proposal for a number of developers currently but unfortunately the largest networks won’t be signing on, at least not until The UADA can wrap up a large user base. In the long-run I think this is highly risky especially since the engine is based on unproven ad networks. The current statistic on the homepage of the UADA having the largest user base is completely inaccurate given that the massive inventory being claimed is a projected number if absolutely everything goes according to plan.

It’s a really nice position to be in: the owner of the company and the person placing a value on the company. Conflict of interest anybody?

Future of the UADA
From what it appears, Lee Lorenzen had hoped to attract a number of larger developers based on the buzz circulating about the UADA. So far, there have been no confirmed partners and all large application developers (top 40 companies) appear to be absent from the alliance. The concept of creating an engine that optimizes advertising for application developers makes a lot of sense but I disagree that this is the best environment for generating a long-term solution.

Following all of the negative buzz generated by Techcrunch, I have a feeling that this alliance may have been dead on arrival. Perhaps Lee Lorenzen can comment further on this.

Last night Facebook finally turned on the invite restrictions that they have been speaking about for the past few weeks. I went and checked out a few of my apps all of which had now been limited to 12 invites per day. This drastic decrease in invitation limits is strangling the virality of applications and may soon kill much of what attracted developers to Facebook: the ability to quickly grab a large user base.

Without investing in advertising campaigns, new applications will find it increasingly difficult to experience much growth at all. Facebook argues that good applications will naturally spread and will in turn be rewarded. That nobody has come forward and suggested that their application has invite limits greater than 12 may suggest that there are no applications that have effectively leveraged the social graph.

One of two things will occur: (1) Facebook will end up killing all the virality of applications, or (2) better applications will begin to launch that offer users much more value and enable significant viral opportunity. The real test at this point is to find the first application that succeeds at this. Additionally, it would be great if Facebook provides developers with a little bit of advice on how to best optimize for the platform.

Has your app been placed in a good bucket? Have you seen any highly effective applications that enable you to invite more than 12 people at a time?

Yesterday when I released my March events list, I failed to include one other event that will have a significant social media presence: Community Next. The Community Next conference will have some great speakers including:

• Josh Berman – Co-Founder of Myspace
• Robert Scoble
• Veronica Belmont
• Scott Rafer (Lookery)
• Martin Green (Meebo)
• and more!

If you want to take a weekend trip out to LA, the weekend of March 29th is when you will want to be there. Community Next is also partnering with Twiistup to host a free happy hour. Twiistup has also been attracting a lot of buzz so I’m sure these two together will produce an event to remember.

Yesterday, Facebook made an announcement that they have updated the notification and request metrics. I initially didn’t think much of this announcement and figured it was just a standard Facebook update. According to Justin Smith, most developers have now been limited to 8-12 invitations per day. It appears that more “buckets” have been added. By default applications are now limited to 10 notifications and 8 invites per user per day.

This is yet another change that will have adverse effects on application growth. Facebook continues to restrict applications while encouraging them to build more engaging applications. While I agree with Facebook on building engaging applications, restricting applications significantly by default is not a good strategy. When users can only invite 8 people to an application per day, applications now need to have a 12.5 percent conversion rate up from 5 percent (1 out of 20).

I’ve heard that a 10 percent conversion rate is relatively reasonable for a good application on Facebook but it appears that they have just crossed the threshold. Conversely, Facebook has access to their internal statistics and my guess is that they won’t make changes that force the developers to move to other platforms. While viral strategies have become even more important I hope that viral growth isn’t eventually eliminated.

One of my readers sent me an email pointing out a change to the Facebook German domain. The web URL http://facebook.de now displays a page that says “We’re upgrading” whereas http://www.facebook.de automatically redirects to Facebook.com. When the Spanish version of Facebook launched, they stated that German would be following up soon after so it comes as no surprise that there appears to be DNS changes taking place on the Facebook German site.

Most of the growth available to Facebook currently is abroad as it is beginning to max out on domestic growth as well as growth in a few other popular countries. ComScore statistics from the other day stated that the U.K. traffic was diminishing. While I suggested that it was a seasonal issue, the fact still remains that many of the existing countries appear to be experiencing slowing growth. As such, Facebook’s expansion timing could not be better.

My guess is that we will see the German version of Facebook launch in the next week or two and we will start seeing a number of other languages roll out soon after. For now, it appears to only be DNS issues but this may just be a sign of things to come. While I don’t speak German, I can appreciate the international appeal of Facebook as this represents their ability to become of the largest social networks on the web.

There have been rumors circulating for over a year now that Facebook will launch a music feature. Today, Facebook announced that they will be entering the film and music business, competing directly with MySpace’s movies and MySpace’s music features. Both of these new features will be showcased at the SXSW conference next week in Austin Texas. They have also provided a new feature that enables musicians to sell their music on the site.

This new service is direct competition to MySpace and is similar to the service that I had previously announced that they would be revealing. There is no word on whether or not there will be a directory of music and film pages but my guess is that we will see the directory launched in the coming months. Facebook is rapidly launching one service after another that competes directly with MySpace while at the same time maintaining design integrity within the profiles as I announced yesterday.

Eric Eldon suggests that this film feature is an extension for Facebook beyond the alternative news platform that they’ve already generated. This is a launch into new forms of media and I would guess that we will begin seeing widespread adoption. I can see film pages and music pages becoming an integral component of profiles. I would also guess that we will see this addition within the new profile features being rolled out over the coming weeks.

Facebook has partnered with MusicToday, LLC to enable artists to sell there music, something that MySpace has been frequently criticized for. This is big news for Facebook and it will be interesting to see if these pages gain widespread adoption. To see samples of these pages check out the Facebook Film page and the Facebook Music Page.

Update
Facebook’s PR has contacted me and has said that many of these assertions are false. Ultimately Facebook made sample film and band pages. I think that their decision to publish the film and music pages and state that they would be presenting the services at South by Southwest implied that they were announcing the service. Also, they wanted me to clarify that there is no formal partnership with MusicToday, LLC and instead they were simply promoting the application created by them.

A Facebook spokeswoman stated “the pages you see are an education/marketing effort to offer resources to filmakers and musicians and not a new Facebook product.” I guess the rumors snowballed into a large story. I think Facebook’s music pages have been somewhat misleading as well.

March is an extremely busy month for events. I will be speaking at as well as attending a few events around the country. There are also some Facebook oriented events that I won’t have the fortune of attending.

One of the conferences that I’m most excited about is next week’s Graphing Social Patterns conference in San Diego. The conference has an all-star list of speakers from the social technology space including Charlene Li, Amit Kapur of Myspace, Benjamin Ling of Facebook, David Glazer of Google, Seth Goldstein of SocialMedia, Mark Pincus of Zynga, David Recordon of Six Apart, myself and many many more! This conference is a must attend for anybody in the social technology space. For those east coast social technology people that won’t be able to make the trip out to California next week, there will be an exciting announcement of a local conference coming in the next week so stay tuned! If you are interested in attending, check out the Graphing Social Patterns website and use the discount code gspw08spbl for a 30 percent discount.

I can’t believe it’s already here! Next week is the beginning of the South by Southwest Interactive festival. This event is when practically everybody from the interactive field converges on the town of Austin for one week of non-stop partying and networking. Mark Zuckerberg will be keynoting the event. I will be sure to post the video of his talk on this site as soon as it takes place. There are panels taking place throughout the entire event as well as a trade show and exhibition of the latest products to come out of the interactive industry. Take a look at the hundreds of speakers attending the event and you’ll immediately realize this is a who’s who of the entire industry. If you will be attending shoot me an email or add me on Twitter and say hello! If you want to learn more about the event check out the SXSW Interactive website.

The second SNAP Summit will be held on March 25th in San Francisco. I had the fortune to speak on a panel at the first SNAP Summit. While I won’t be attending this one there is a great list of speakers including Dave Morin of Facebook, Aber Whitcomb the CTO of Myspace, Jia Shen of RockYou, Dave McClure, Naval Ravikant, Jeremiah Owyang and many more! If you want to learn more about the event, please check out the Snap Summit website.

I will be speaking on a panel March 26th at the What’s Next Boomer Business Summit. One of the keynotes will be from the Wall Street Journal journalist, Walt Mossberg. The event’s purpose is to bring together those organizations that are leaders in the baby boomer market. While I am not a member of this market, there is a panel on leveraging social networking for business that I will be speaking on. If you are in D.C. and aren’t booked on March 26th, I highly recommend checking out the What’s Next Boomer Business Summit.

An over the top ad campaign for the upcoming Universal Pictures produced “Untraceable” has been removed from Facebook after concerns were expressed about excessive violent content. I’m fortunate not to have seen the content because it sounds pretty gruesome. According to the Guardian, the agency had launched a Facebook page called “Kill With Me”. The more people that joined the page, the more gruesome the content.

The page included the following text: “”This guy is going to die. You want to see his stinking flesh burn and bleed and blacken? Until he’s some twisted dead thing? This is what you want. And I’ve filmed it especially for you. The more fans I get, the more I’ll show …” An equally controversial campaign was posted on Seesmic which included a series of videos ending in the users being tortured and murdered. A community moderator ended up calling police after failing to be notified of the campaign.

According to one of the agency representatives “There’s that interesting question of whether people are desensitised to things on screen … They will watch these things, but won’t say they watched them.” I’m not sure what they were going for but the campaign has since been pulled. They frequently say that all press is good press but this over the top campaign was truly a test of that theory. Imagine if you stumbled upon someone being murdered while browsing through Seesmic. It would have a serious emotional impact.

Facebook just sent me over screenshots of their new profile design. There are some very significant changes. They have decided to go with a tabbed version of your profile. It also appears that all of the applications will now display in your left hand column. This is a huge change from before. I also would imagine that applications can now potentially add a new tab to a user’s profile presenting more opportunity for interaction. There are no screenshots of how those applications would be displayed though. Check out the photos below:

Tabbed Profiles

About Tab

Wall Tab

Update
After taking a look at a note that was posted on the Facebook Profiles Preview page, it appears that application will now have the opportunity to be featured as a tab within a user’s profile. Being added to this tab will create significantly more space for applications to provide interactive experiences and further engage users visiting their friends’ profiles. Those applications that engage profile visitors will be rewarded while those that simply function as badges will become less popular.

One other interesting change is that mini-feeds and walls will now be combined to make the content more relevant. I’m excited to see what other changes are announced in the coming weeks!