Yesterday morning I said that Facebook chat would be open for all within a matter of weeks. It appears as though it happened within hours of my post as it now appears that everyone has access to chat. I have received 20 IMs in the past hour. Considering that I had only received a few IMs previously, it definitely appears that the chat is live for all.

The full launch of chat appears to have coincided with the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco which kicked off this morning. Chat will surely keep a lot more users engaged on the site and will most likely contribute to continued growth in the Facebook user base. Currently, MySpace is the only other competitor to have an instant messaging client, but MySpace has been known to have plenty of issues with chat server downtime and a less useful interface.

So far I have found the Facebook chat application to be useful and easy to interact with. Considering that I typically have over 100 friends online at any given moment, there is always someone to talk with. If you are my friend on Facebook definitely feel free to IM me, just don’t use it as a way to pitch me on stories. I now have about 10 different ways that people can contact me and the only way to send pitches should be via email.

Anyways, feel free to post your feedback about the Facebook chat application in the comments. We are interested to hear what users think about it.

The Telegraph posted an article earlier this morning stating that “Facebook has been accused of encouraging online bullying.” This is claimed to be a result of the Honesty Box application which enables users to post anonymous messages on each others’ walls. The application has been at the center controversy since its launch with thousands of people receiving hate messages but no way to find out who they received it from.

I asked Dan Peguine, creator of the Honesty Box application to comment on the complaints. He said, “When someone installs Honesty Box it’s their choice. They can choose to add or remove their application any time. It is against our terms of use to use Honesty Box for harassment. Additionally, we let users block people that bother them. We also keep away abusers and spammers by banning users that have been blocked by multiple users. Hence we argue that Honesty Box is safer than sketchy anonymous notes people get in their bags or on their lockers.”

The Telegraph article is clearly one-sided and also attempts to accuse Facebook, not Honesty Box of the problem. The article quotes Richard Rubin who argues on ComfortZone.com that users should be worried about the Honesty Box application. He claims that this app is the cause of cyber bullying. This is clearly different than traditional bullying in that as Dan Peguine points out, users can chose to block users that are blocking them.

What do you think? Is this a case of online bullying? Are these complaints grounded?

Yesterday SNAP Interactive (stock ticker: STVI), the company behind a number of popular dating Facebook applications, released the unaudited earnings for the first quarter. In comparison to 4th quarter, when they earned $388,000, the company posted revenues in excess of $518,000. We wrote about SNAP interactive back in January when Adam Ostrow had deduced that the average user was valued at $1.40.

The company attracted over 11 million new application installations and over 1 million visits a day during the first quarter. Their most popular application, Are YOU Interested?, is the 10th most popular application on Facebook based on the number of active daily users (based on data from Adonomics.com). Over the past few months the company has been actively expanding their reach by launching on other platforms including MySpace and hi5.

SNAP Interactive is currently the only publicly traded company in this industry. Taking a look at the company’s traffic charts over the past month, it appears as though the company has been able to earn around $1.00 per active user for the quarter. These are estimates though as I’m basing this on approximate traffic according to Adonomics.com. As the company moves into less monetized platforms, I would expect the company to begin focusing on increasing their earnings per active user.

If you’d like to learn more about the company check out the SNAP Interactive website.

Yesterday Mike Arrington posted about a guide that was sent out to all Facebook pages users. According to the document (which is included below), there are 5 keys to harnessing the power of Facebook:

1. Make business personal
2. Update your Facebook Page frequently
3. Harness the power of news feed
4. Choose applications to display on your page, and
5. Use Facbook Social Ads

I’m not so sure about a company’s control over their Facebook page showing up in user newsfeeds but apparently spending money on Social Ads is the primary way to attract users to your page. The primary benefit of leveraging Facebook Social Ads is their demographic targeting capability. Recently I’ve received a number of complaints from users saying that Facebook’s targeting doesn’t work to well. Some users have contacted me stating that they’ve been receiving ads in the wrong language.

Other people have reached out to say that the advertisements being displayed on Facebook are targeted at the opposite gender or that they are complete spam. If Facebook plans on generating a substantial amount of business from their Social Ads program they are going to need to improve the system’s targeting. Ultimately the guide distributed by Facebook is a self-promotional tool rather than an actual guide to viral marketing. If you are interested in reading it, I have included the document below.

Over the weekend chat finally turned on for me. I’ve been playing around with it some and have found it to be a useful tool so far. I reached out to Facebook to find out how many networks now have access and while they could comment on existing networks they said that Facebook will be open for all within a few weeks. While I don’t have an exact date, I know it will be soon.

Many have complained that they aren’t able to access chat yet. I provided a quick hack the other day to get a sneak peak but unfortunately it wasn’t a good solution if you wanted to use the tool on a regular basis. After using chat for a while, the one thing that I’ve found a little challenging is the lack of notifications of new messages.

While a the title of the page changes via a tab in my browser, there is no sound made to alert me to the new message. By the time I get to messages, the person who contacted me is typically gone. Then again, I could theoretically use chat in a separate window. For now, I’m going to stick with my current chat solutions. There is enough noise in my life for one person to deal with. Have you been provided access to chat yet? What network are you in?

Many have questioned Facebook’s decision to place users’ faces on ads within the social network. Just last week, their decision to do so resulted in a lawsuit for Blockbuster. Facebook has just taken their policy one step further by leveraging users to promote their own site outside of Facebook. This morning one of my German readers, Ibrahim Evsan sent me a link to his article highlighting how Facebook was now using his name to promote the site on Google.

I immediately went to go see if I was showing up in ads in Google but alas, I was not as fortunate as my friend Ibrahim. The decision by Facebook to place these advertisements on sites outside of Facebook is a substantial one, especially since this isn’t even tied to their Social Ads program. It may even be illegal. I must be clear that the policy to run these ads may not be just one of Facebook but also one of Google’s. I recall seeing similar ads on Google previously but perhaps my memory serves me wrong.

Either way, the real question is if this is legal in Germany. In the U.S. and Canada such practices are definitely illegal. Additionally, for a company based in the U.S. to be using these practices abroad seems counterintuitive. While in Rome do as the Romans do but I’m not so sure that this activity is what most Germans do. Unfortunately I can’t speak to the legality of this practice. Do any readers know anything about this?

A little over a month ago I announced the launch of the Animoto Facebook application. At the time I suggested that this application could easily become a competitor to Slide’s primary application that became popularized via millions of MySpace profiles. Well it looks as though my prediction has come true. Animoto is now the 16th largest application based on daily active users and the application continues to grow.

While Slide has over 10 times the number of active users that Animoto currently has on Facebook, Animoto has destroyed Slide when it comes to their own game: slide shows. A quick look at Slide’s Slide Shows application shows a measly 3,000 active daily users and horrible reviews. Does this mean the end of Slide? Definitely not but it definitely means the beginning of a new leader in the dynamic slideshow space.

Animoto differentiates itself from others (dynamic flash based slideshows) by actually creating a rendered video of your photos intermixed with audio. You can choose to upload your own audio content or you can select from their library. This application is a perfect example of an application that succeeded even with a late entry to the platform. If you spend time developing valuable applications that help users express themselves more effectively, you will surely have a popular application on your hands. If you haven’t had the opportunity to check out Animoto, go install the Animoto Facebook application.

As a sample of what can be produced I have included a video of a Social Times party I threw at the end of last year.

Yesterday Om Malik discussed a conversation he had with Sarik Weber who’s company had developed a free SMS application on Facebook. Om as well as Sarik were surprised with the relatively low success of the application. Additionally, Om noted that the top SMS application on Facebook were only receiving around 500 active daily users. A quick glance at VOIP applications on the site yields similar results.

For Om, the lack of growth in these applications caused him to question the “viability of Facebook as a communications hub.” I disagree with Om in that Facebook is a communications hub but the only difference is that people communicate differently on the platform. While people use the Facebook based mobile site and Blackberry application, users are simply using the applications to send Facebook messages and update their statuses not leverage other applications.

Is the communication going on via Facebook the same conversation going on via email. While much of it is, most of my business communication still takes place outside of the network. As of now there are very few utility based applications that have been successful at doing anything more than building out existing Facebook features. Offering new communication channels have continuously failed on the platform.

So what will succeed? Right now widgets, games and applications that extend Facebook’s functionality appear to be in the lead. We have yet to see the success of enterprise applications on the Facebook platform. Will robust applications that support productivity ever succeed on the site? I doubt it. Facebook is a tool for productivity. What do you think? Are there any highly useful and highly functional applications that you spend a lot of time on?

Facebook appears to be cutting the fat on the website as of late. The most recent item to disappear from the website was Facebook gifts. It has now been hidden and you need to choose to have the application displayed in your sidebar. In the past day or so, Facebook has apparently removed the friend timeline. Will it be missed? Probably not. Apparently not enough users were actively using the feature.

Does that mean Facebook should have deleted it? I’m not sure but I’ve already received at least one or two emails from people asking why this feature has disappeared. I haven’t reached out to Facebook but I can assume that there wasn’t much demand for the feature. Additionally, if you weren’t obsessive about entering the dates that you meet people, it wasn’t really a useful tool. I have been fairly obsessive with grouping friends but I haven’t been really specific with entering the dates I met them.

The other problem is that friend grouping was by year and for many people as they meet more people thanks to social technology, there is not enough order in a yearly timeline. While I won’t be missing the lost feature, I’m sure a number of people will. Did you use this tool frequently?

Following the backlash surrounding Facebook’s misleading mini-feed stories, Facebook has decided to change the message when removing mini-feed items. The previous message on the mini-feed was “Hiding will remove the story from your mini-feed and prevent anyone from seeing it” (as I described earlier this week).

Many thought this was misleading. Well, it looks like Facebook has caved and updated but my question is if this was a large enough step? Ultimately I want to control what stories my friends can and cannot see. That’s basic privacy rights. The concept that once you login to Facebook absolutely everything is public will not benefit the expansion of the Facebook platform. This happened the other day when I was asked to see if I’d like to take a “favorite sex positions quiz” that one of my friends had taken.

Do you really think they wanted me to know that? The developers of that application clearly felt that it was acceptable to share that information with me. Had I been the individual taking that quiz, I most definitely would have wanted to be alerted to the fact that my friends would be notified about this. Currently, Facebook has no effective way currently of preventing sensitive information leaving applications and notifying an individual’s friends.

This will have to change. I’m guessing that this was a quick fix and will eventually be resolved. Would you like to be able to filter news items being broadcasted to your friends about you?

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• Tech Crunch
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