Archive for the ‘Business’ Category
Find Developers and Consultants on the Facebook Platform Marketplace
Friday, February 1st, 2008
Lately my friends in marketing and advertising have been asking me more and more about Facebook. Everybody knows they’re supposed to be using it, and a lot of people don’t know where to look to find consultants and developers. Their bosses ask them, and they ask me, and I recommend myself.. of course.
Facebook has solved this problem while sharing a piece of the pie with its devoted developers. They have set up a special marketplace for Facebook Platform developers to advertise their services, and they have pledged to send all potential development clients in that direction.
To be clear, this is no small opportunity for developers. It’s a massive market.
According to Dave Morin, Senior Platform Manager at Facebook, “Everyday the team here at Facebook talks with thousands of people, businesses, and some of the biggest brands worldwide who are looking to find contract development services, or developers to join their team. We’re planning on sending every single one of them to the Facebook Platform Marketplace, so the opportunity is huge!”
Those who realize just how important it is for brands to have a presence on Facebook will understand just how incredible it is that Facebook has setup an area for anybody to post ads for free, and that it plans to send customers there.
It will be very exciting for developers and potential clients alike, as it was pretty difficult to find a reputable coder if you were new to the game before. I would really like to see some sort of rating system and some requirements of legitimacy. I would absolutely hate to see it turn into a free, unregulated, unorganized freelance site with no individual accountability.
The only problem so far is that people looking for work seem to be posting in both categories (”developers wanted”, and “developers available”). Come on people.. play fair.
Kudos to Morin and the Facebook team. I’m sure I speak for the whole development community when I say “thanks!”
Why Facebook won’t steal your App
Saturday, July 21st, 2007Building a successful Facebook App is tough enough without having to worry about plagiarism and idea theft. Indeed, it is not unreasonable to consider why any sufficiently successful application would not simply be amalgamated by Facebook. A brief exploration of the business mechanics behind Facebook, however, put these fears largely to rest.
The Facebook business model is neither new nor particularly complicated: generate as many users as possible and keep them engaged. Revenue comes primarily from local and online advertising, which appears at the lower left and bottom sections of the pages. The bulk of Facebook’s expenses come from development and hosting costs.
This is why the opening up the Facebook Platform works so well for Facebook. On one hand, third-party applications make Facebook more useful, keeping users spending more time and becoming more dependent on Facebook for all sorts of needs. On the other hand, an additional third party application costs next to nothing to produce, considering that the bulk of the original investment, developing the platform, was largely a one-time expense. Furthermore, third-party apps have to be hosted externally, saving Facebook relatively considerable hosting costs, especially with rich-media applications.
For this reason Facebook is highly unlikely to copy a third party application. Why pay for internal development and hosting when the same advertising revenue can be generated for you by somebody else, gratis?
The one concern here lies with Applications which stand directly in the way of Facebook’s future expansion plans, such as its rumored email system or a Web OS. In this way Facebook is like a charging elephant – as long as you don’t get in its way, you’re more than welcome to come along for the ride.
Alexey Komissarouk is a Technology and Business Consultant who has literally months of experience with the Facebook F8 Platform. He is available at AlexeyMK[at]gmail.com
Get Continous App Stats
Thursday, July 5th, 2007
Attentionsoft Inc. has made a pretty slick application that gives statistics on the growth of Facebook applications. This application is a necessity for anyone monitoring the virality of Facebook apps. It displays some pretty cool graphs displaying the number of users per hour and the total number of users for any given application. One pretty cool statistic is that the Top Friends application is growing at anywhere from 1000 to 7000 users per hour. Pretty impressive! Soon enough they will cross the 8 million users level. It would be pretty cool to turn this into a virtual stock market that trades applications as virtual assets. Mashable has already covered a few things you can bet on legally on the net, but it would be cool to add Facebook applications to the portfolio. If you want to track the growth of Facebook applications, go grab the Appsaholic application.
Stock Pick Competition for Facebook Users
Tuesday, June 5th, 2007As a prior Finance club member, I remember playing stock picking games as a useful tool for becoming accustomed to trading stocks. Thanks to Ryan Price, you can now play against your friends and other Facebook members. While there are a few quirks in the system, this seems to be a step in the right direction. If the profile view gets smoothed out, I am willing to bet that this becomes a pretty popular application, especially among finance enthusiasts. If you are into finance or just trading stocks in general, go check out the Stock Pick Competition application.
As a side note, I am noticing a common occurrence on Facebook recently. Not necessarily with the stock pick competition application but in general. Developers have begun adding non-functional applications. I can sympathize given that after launching my own social networking site, I was receiving non-stop complaints from users that were finding bugs. While it is difficult to catch all bugs while developing an applications, all developers should both externally and internally test and iron out as many bugs as possible prior to launching.
Stocks Application Drives Traffic to Forbes
Sunday, June 3rd, 2007 
Forbes recently released a new Stocks application that allows you to add stocks that you are watching to your profile. All in all it is practically useless. Features include the ability to see which of your friends are tracking the same stocks and links to Forbes. If you want to get news, quotes, or earnings information for any stock you add then you will have to follow a link to Forbes. Honestly, it’s not a very clever way of driving traffic to their site, but apparently 7,000 users found the application intriguing enough to add it to their profile. I’m still waiting on an application that displays a ticker on your profile before I place my stock wish list on the site. If you are interested in using the Forbes Stocks application then go check out the application page.
Amazon to Sell Books and Music on Facebook
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007One of the partnerships announced at Facebook’s news conference last week was a partnership with Amazon. Currently users can make a list of their favorite books and music. Imagine what will happen when users will not only see their friends that like the same music but will also be able to view the current price on their favorite products. This will be the first major introduction of commerce into social networking. Strong relationships have always been a source of referral sales, and now much of that can take place online. Soon enough we will see add-ons that allow you to:
- Make custom wardrobes (e.g. “My Closet”) with links directly to a purchase page
- Make recommendations on books
- Recommend songs
- General wish lists with links to products
- More!
This is truly a revolution in online marketing. I am willing to bet that as a result of this integration of e-commerce and social networking, Facebook will account for a major percentage of all online transactions by the end of next year. Imagine when they decide to take a cut of all sales. They are looking at some serious revenue potential. This is only the forefront.
