allfacebook - the unofficial facebook blog

Are you addicted to Facebook? I know I am. It starts of with a simple exploration of your friends on the site and suddently you are logging on 10 times a day to see if any of your friends have made updates to their profile, changed their relationship status or have posted new videos or articles. Suddnely you are glued to your computer monitor and the only thing on the screen is Facebook. So maybe your addiction isn’t that bad but apparently enough people are addicted that wikiHow has published an article entitled “How to Quite Facebook.” WikiHow suggests a 6-step solution:

1. Admit you have a problem - This sounds like the first step to any other addiction. WikiHow suggests that you ask yourself “What did I just accomplish by checking Facebook?” Ha! If only I had that much self-control over my Facebook addiction. Well, at least I admit to it!
2. Define your goals on Facebook - Hmm … I never really had any goals with Facebook. Although maybe my goal should be to reach 5,000 friends. That surely would get me to login more frequently. WikiHow suggests just logging in to check on friends’ birthdays, keep track of old friends, etc. Once you catch yourself going off track, log off. If only it was that easy!
3. Make a Facebook Schedule - Seriously? If you find yourself scheduling Facebook into your daily schedule, this should be a serious warning sign. WikiHow suggests that “after each Facebook goal, write down how much time and at what frequency you’ll need to be on Facebook to achieve that goal.” Are they serious? Based on the calculations they suggested, you end up using Facebook for 6 hours and 20 minutes a week. I think this is still a relatively significant amount of time, although I spend much more time on the site.
4. Think of other things you could be doing - Duh! This is a no brainer. I could be at the gym, socializing in the real world or a million other things but there is a reason I logged on in the first place. I’m starting to think that these suggestions are totally useless!
5. Leave Facebook - This should have been number one! If you are spending way too much time on Facebook, quit cold turkey. It’s like having your cell phone turned off for 24 hours. Once you do it, you will realize how dependent you have become and think twice about your usage.
6. Find a substitute - This one is good. Facebook taking up too much time? Find another site that isn’t as good! WikiHow says “if you find you’re at a computer during critical relapse time, find another website to log onto and read instead of Facebook.” Facebook relapse? This is a little crazy.

So how much time do you spend on Facebook? Has Facebook become an addiction for you?

Chris Vincent has developed an interesting application that is in the same vein as 43 Things. The Before I Die application provides users with a forum for discussing things that they want to do before they die. It’s pretty straight forward. I spoke with Chris Vincent who said that he is adding a way to export your Before I Die goals as well video and photo attachments to goals. Additionally, I talked Chris into integrating with 43 Things so that you can import your goals rather than re-entering them.

43 Things has been successful at sparking conversation and it looks like this application is already doing a pretty good job as well. Popular goals as of now include “swim with dolphins,” “send a message in a bottle,” “have children,” “see the northern lights” and “make a significant difference in someone’s life.” It’s nice to see an application where at least some positive conversation is being started rather than being bitten by a vampire. If you are passionate about accomplishing some goals or are curious about other people’s, share it with the world with the Before I Die application.

Quick tip for those that want to make a successful application: take a web 2.0 site that offers an API and simply integrate their core features into Facebook. If the site is popular, you’ll have a relatively high chance of being successful!

Before I Die Homepage

David McCandless, Pier Gibbon and Toby Slater have published a pretty entertaining parody of Facebook. According to the Crackbook homepage, “Crackbook is an addictive social utility that makes you feel that you’re connecting with people when actually you’re just not.” I like that they called it crackbook because it really is. In addition to my Crackberry that I’m looking at every 5 minutes, I have to login to Facebook every so often to see what my friends are up to. It’s addictive!

Crackbook has a number of entertaining applications including “top Top TOP!!!! Friends,” “Super Advanced Deluxe Wall 2,” “End of the World Clock” and “Paranoia Plus.” Paranoia plus is pretty sweet:

A superhot plugin that allows you to track: who looked at your profiles and for how long; what pictures they looked at and how many times; profiles they looked at before, after and simultaneously; whether they showed your profile to other people and laughed; whether they’ve read the messages you’ve sent and if not, why not, i mean you added them as a friend nearly three days ago. Why haven’t they added you back? Do they not like you? Have you gotten too old? Too fat? Should you have used that photo of you from six years ago? Oh oh when will you be happy? Those kinds of things.

You definitely have to check out the crackbook newsfeed. Pretty funny!

Earlier this morning I posted about how the best ad networks will be able to target ads based on user intentions. If any application was a test of intentions, the Likeness UNRATED application surely is. The first quiz you are given states “List the crimes you are MOST likely to commit first.” This is hillarious! Does my response express my intention to do so? Is the FBI tracking this? I’m not quite sure but this application definitely is entertaining. The options for the first quiz that you are asked to sort are:

• Buy drugs
• Drive drunk
• Shoot cheating lover
• Sex for money
• Shoplift
• Arson
• Rob a bank
• Sell drugs
• Cheat on taxes
• Steal a car

I won’t disclose what order I placed these in but this is definitely a risqué app. The other quizzes that are available are “Excuses to have sex,” “Truth or dare,” “Excuses for No Sex,” “Places to Make Out,” “Misadventures in Sex,” and “Inner Criminal.” See a pattern here? It looks like RockYou intends to add quiz creation capabilities to this application in the near future. One great feature of this application is it tells you how closely your other friends were in answering these truly insignificant questions. If you want to have fun answering unrated and uncensored questions, go grab the Likeness UNRATED application.

At least that’s what the fake Steve Jobs says. I figured I’d have a little fun given that it’s Friday. No break for me this weekend but for those readers with a regular work schedule, I figure I’d give you something to end the week on. While this obviously isn’t true, it would be interesting if it was! The best part of the post reads as follows:

Also, IBM Global Services has created a Facebook consulting practice to help big companies develop strategies for moving onto Facebook, teaching them how to use Facebook to gain competitive advantage over the other companies that IBM is also assisting with Facebook-related engagements. Ad copy says the practice will be “aimed at achieving synergies, unlocking value and leveraging assets across multiple brands and platforms with an emphasis on growth, cost containment and unleashing a plan of action that can identify and solve real business pain points.”

You gotta love some of the top tier consulting nonsense. I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of larger companies instructed their employees to join Facebook. Conversely, I’m starting to realize that there are some serious issues with Facebook having as much power as they do. As I wrote in my last post, Facebook doesn’t exactly have a clean record when it comes to censoring users on the site. One can only hope that this will start to open up more as they grow in size. At the same time though, they are going to need some serious spam filters.

I’m kind of going off on a tangent there. Oh well, it’s Friday! Thanks to Joe Grossberg for the heads up on the post.

Over the past week, two new applications have launched that are the beginning of talent competitions on Facebook. Facebook is definitely a great platform to host such competitions. The two applications are “U Got Talent?” and “Facebook Idol.” While not original names, these applications prove to be relatively addictive.

Currently, the U Got Talent application has less users but has many more submissions. Additionally, the U Got Talent application is better organized in terms of navigation. There is a leaderboard that displays the most popular submissions as well as a browse page. The Facebook Idol application does not have many of these features and simply displays random contestants on the homepage.

I found quite a few talented people on the U Got Talent application whereas the Facebook Idol application had a young and attractive people who simply thought their looks were enough to qualify them for a talent competition. I’m not so sure about that! If you want to participate in the Facebook popularity contests, I suggest checking out the U Got Talent application. If you don’t want to take my advice and want to choose for yourself which application is better, check out the Facebook Idol competition.

While not a revolutionary applicatoin, GridView provides users with a pretty cool way of viewing their friends. It is extremely straight forward. Add the application, and watch the application crop each of your friends’ profile picture and place it into a grid. That grid is then displayed on your profile. It is as simple as that. Why am I covering this application? That’s a great question! The only reason I’m covering it is that it is currently one of the most viral applications. Additionally, I like the concept of automatically generating a unique picture of my friends. It would be pretty cool if an application is created that automatically generates a collage of your friends. For now, you will have to stick with a grid. This is a simple application that has the potential to become adopted by a large number of Facebook users. This just goes to show that you don’t need to come up with the most robust application. If you want to have a grid of your friends on your profile, go grab the GridView application.

I have to be honest, I had never used Voki until they launched their Facebook application yesterday. I had seen Voki on Fred Wilson’s blog previously but didn’t get any further than the surface. Then last night I was reading Charlie’s blog and was thoroughly entertained by his Voki widget. The Voki widget is the most robust flash application to date on Facebook. So how does it work? After adding the Voki application you can either log in with your existing account to load your existing Voki avatars or start from scratch. I started from scratch since I don’t already have an account. Next you select one of seemingly hundreds of avatars ranging from the devil (pictured left) to anime characters to animals and a whole lot more. After customizing your avatar you can record your own message and the avatar’s mouth moves with your voice. It’s pretty slick! This application also has a viral component to it. In order to leave a message on the person’s profile you need to create your own Voki account (for free of course). The application creators definitely built in all the Facebook promotional features possible including a link which allows you to broadcast your Voki to your newsfeed. Congrats to the Voki team on launching this application! If you want your own talking avatar on your Facebook profile, go grab the Voki application.

Remember poke wars? A similar application called “Social Climber” has just launched. The app is a simple one. Once you add the application you simply invite your friends and then try to be the first to “climb on” them. Once you have climbed on someone, they cannot climb on you for a 24 hour period. After the 24 hour period, the restrictions are gone and it’s back to a free for all. This is extremely similar to the poke wars application but instead of having to check the application on an extremely frequent basis, you only need to check every 24 hours. The about page of the application describes the app as “a true measurement of your popularity.” Instead this shows how much time you have sitting at your computer. If you spend as much time as I do then chances are you will quickly rise to the top. Thus this is not the most accurate portrayal of your popularity. This is another one of those “social games” on Facebook. If you want a way to get your friends involved in another form of poking go grab the Social Climber application.

When discussing the features that will contribute to an application’s success, you often refer to the “sticky features” that will make people continue to use it. The Stick Notes application takes sticky to a whole new level. When I tried out the application, I tested using it as a promotional tool. I attempted making a note which said “Check out AllFacebook.com.” The only problem was that the line with the domain URL overextended the sticky note. So if you want to write notes on your friends’ profiles with words that are 15 letters or longer, you are pretty much out of luck. Good thing I don’t typically use long words. But what if I want to write “supercalifragilisticexpialadocious” on my friend’s profile, you ask? You are out of luck my friend. I am sorry. If you like to write with shorter words, go check out the Sticky Notes application because this may just be the app for you. Almost 750,000 people seem to be enjoying it.

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