Archive for the ‘General’ Category
Facebook Gets Its Share of Spam
Monday, October 15th, 2007
Over the weekend, I questioned if applications were Facebook’s version of spam. Last night, I was browsing around Facebook and came upon the ad that you see on the left. The ad is for the opportunity to “Work at Home and Make $200+ per Day.” Not a bad offer although it doesn’t seem to pertain to the picture that is directly to the right of the job description. The person posting the advertisement had also posted links on the Washington, D.C. network wall. Her profile was interesting as well (I have posted a screenshot below).
So, it looks like an number of more aggressive spam techniques are now being used on Facebook. The real question is if they are sending spam messages. I haven’t received any spam messages yet, have you? Do you think Facebook will experience the same fate as MySpace, who experienced severe spam problems?
Make Your Blog Look Like Facebook
Thursday, October 4th, 2007No, I don’t mean make your blog look like this one. Justin Tadlock, an Allfacebook.com reader, sent me an email yesterday of a pretty interesting wordpress theme that he designed. Honestly, I have absolutely no idea why on earth you would want your blog to look like a Facebook profile. If for some odd reason you do, then check out the Facebooked wordpress theme.
This theme includes a feed of your flickr images, a spot for links and your RSS feed. The search looks a little misplaced but this is a great first start. Justin has even been kind enough to include banner ads on the left. I’m not sure if you’ll get paid for those ads though. You will have to talk to Justin about that. Anyways, head on over and check out his theme if you are interested.
Facebook Pays for Advertising on Facebook?
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007
I realize that Facebook has an opportunity cost for their space on Facebook but I never though I would ever see Facebook paying for advertising on their own site! One of my readers sent me a screenshot of advertising placed with within one of the applications. Facebook has paid for google ads promoting their flyer system. Is this an accident or is Facebook genuinely trying to cross promote their advertising within Facebook?
Next we will see Facebook paying RockYou, SocialMedia and the other Facebook advertising platforms to promote their own services. Wouldn’t that be ironic? While this isn’t a huge mistake by Facebook it is definitely interesting to see them doing this. Facebook said that the platform would be free for developers but I definitely didn’t think they would pay you to develop applications (aside from the fbfund). It will be interesting to see if Facebook continues to promote across Google’s networks in general or if they decide to narrow it down to just search due to slipups like this.
Valleywag Gets it Wrong
Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007Valleywag has posted an article suggesting that the I Am Hungry application auction that I broke the news about a couple days ago, was a set up. I admit that the auction looks like there were significant jumps but when people post high bids, the auction can begin to look suspicious. I was able to get a hold of the buyer who informed me that they did indeed purchase the application.
A new company, AppStars, has been formed and they plan on launching a number of applications in the coming months. Apparently they already have an existing portfolio as well but I have no information regarding their other applications. The funny thing is that Doug Caverly of WebProNews decided to publish an article and stated that Dan Penguine penguine did not respond to a request for comment. As I’ve been told, that request never happened and all Doug is doing is furthering the rumor.
Let me say that I have spoken with both parties involved in this auction and everything has checked out. Dan also pointed out to me that the finalvalue of the application with a rebate ended up being $15,600 plus great payment terms. The bottom line is that this was a legitimate transaction. Honestly, Valleywag hasn’t always been a reliable source so I shouldn’t be surprised. I am on the other hand a little surprised that WebProNews would post an article based on something that was alluded to on Valleywag. Oh well!
Facebook: Minimize Application Requests!
Monday, October 1st, 2007
One of my co-authors, Rory Marinich, pointed out to me a serious problem on Facebook. There is an overload of application requests showing up on my homepage sidebar. It would be much easier for Facebook to minimize all all of these requests into one thing that says “25 application requests.” Take a look at the scaled down version of my sidebar on the left. It makes my homepage much more cluttered and almost overwhelming. When I login I am asked to respond to way too many requests. While I realize that this is not a standard issue, I have heard similar complaints even from less frequent users of Facebook.
So how about it Facebook, can you simply minimize this for us to make the homepage a little more aesthetically pleasing? Does anyone else reading this have a similar issue? Honestly, application requests may have become the new Facebook spam. Even my mother who uses Facebook to check up only on a few friends has complained to me about receiving misleading application alerts. While this is not an identical issue, I think something honestly needs to be done to ensure a more enjoyable, less spammy experience for users. Any suggestions?
Revolution Money on Facebook?
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 
I was sent a link to an unreleased Money Exchange application last night. Happened to be perfect timing given the announcement of Revolution Money. While the application doesn’t seem to do much currently, it is intended to transfer money for free over Facebook.
The concept of transferring money for free on the internet is definitely a revolutionary one. Once they launch the product I am confident that they will be successful as long as they can deliver. It will be interesting to see how soon they launch their product. Once launched, this will be the first (and only) free money transfer product on Facebook. My guess is that Facebook’s future e-commerce system will also tie into this as a back end given the extremely discounted fees for merchants. You can go check out the non-functioning Money Exchange application if you’d really like but it isn’t worth the time given that it doesn’t work. Enjoy!
Calculate the Value of a Facebook Application
Saturday, September 22nd, 2007Yesterday afternoon, Lee Lorenzen posted a comment on my blog about a new feature of Adonomics. Adonomics provides analytics tool comparable to SocialMedia’s Appsaholic. As of a couple days ago though, Adonomics has added a valuation feature which is simlar to dnScoop’s website valuation tool.
The Adonomics valuation tool calculates the value of the I Am Hungry application (which was put on eBay two days ago) at $25,789. Apparently the marketplace doesn’t agree given their current maximum bid of $1,000. It will be interesting to see if anybody steps in toward the end of the auction and bids it up. Perhaps Lee would be willing to hop in and pay for the application, providing a discount to his calculated value of $25,789.
While the valuation calculator is simply one method of calculating the value of an application, it is currently the only calculator that does so currently. I also think it provides relatively accurate value based on other applications I have tested out. I also think they may want to adjust their algorithm based on the sale price of the two applications for sale on eBay once the auctions are closed. Ebay is the closest thing to a perfect marketplace so it should provide an accurate representation of value. Just for fun, here are the values of a few randomly selected applications:
- Likeness - $7,629,890
- Nicknames - $1,808,170
- Causes - $4,570,260
- My Bush Countdown Clock - $7,300
Big Launch at Facebook Tonight?
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007Dave McClure has taken note about Blake Ross’ Facebook status. Blake Ross is one of the initial developers of the Firefox browser and was one of the founders of Parakey which was acquired by Facebook not long ago. Blake’s status reads, “Blake Ross is wondering if anything or anyone will survive tonight’s push. It’s been fun working with most of you…” I’m hoping for something big tonight! We will see! Perhaps it will be something related to Facebook’s shift to becoming a Level 3 platform. They’ve pushed Javascript live and launched a storage feature (currently in beta) in a matter of days. Hopefully they are gearing up for something huge!
Update
Facebook’s search has gone down. I guess they have started attempting to push live whatever feature they were working on. Looks like it isn’t going too smoothly.
The Etnofaz Guide to App Design
Monday, September 17th, 2007A few days ago, I was talking with Pete Zafonte, owner of game and proxy designing company Etnofaz, about Facebook’s new activity-monitoring system of application development. His view: that activity is just as misleading a statistic as total number of users. Take the Vampire and Werewolve applications: while both encourage daily usage, both still rely entirely on drawing in new users without providing any sort of new functionality. Pete presented this (admittedly rough) metric for determining application value:
Clean interface
There are many well-designed Facebook applications that fail because users can’t understand quite how to use it. Every application should be clean enough for users to be able to figure things out. Look at Facebook’s own applications as guiding points: each presents current goings-on in their systems on the front page, but on the top-right of each application is a quick way to utilize each app: Write Note, Upload Photos, Share an Item. It’s easy, and it gets used a lot. If things are too hard to use, they won’t get used.
Object-oriented
By object-oriented, this guide refers to applications that are based around objects that the applications itself creates, not simply user profiles. This is another guideline that most current popular applications use: iLike’s application creates separate pages for individual artists with discussion walls and songs, and Flixter’s movie application creates pages for movies. Less favorable by this system would be add-on walls or systems like X Me, which go directly from user to user without any center meeting point in between: while applications like this are good for friend-to-friend interaction, there’s not much chance that users can extend their networks and find new people using applications like this.
Innovation (of new ideas or existing ideas)
This one’s really just an attack on some of the copycat applications that have been springing up. Users don’t need four extra walls, two more poking systems, and five music players. It’s usually a better idea for applications to develop new, unmarketed concepts in Facebook than it is for them to just rip off old ideas and hope things turn out okay.
Interoperates with Facebook or other Applications
Interoperating with Facebook right now means one of a few things: allowing for user tags (like Notes, Photos and Videos), allowing Wall Posts (Box.net’s Files application, for instance, makes sharing files via messaging a snap: yet another thing I’ve noticed is done more and more on Facebook and less via emailing), or through broadcasting useful Notifications (using Flixter’s app, for instance, I get quite a lot of nice feedback on ongoing movies).
There’s not much interapplication work going on right now, which is unfortunate. If applications ever figure out how to communicate back-and-forth with one another efficiently, the possibilities for a truly broad application network could be enormous.
Broad Audience (as much as possible at least)
If Facebook is promoting applications, it only makes sense that they promote ones that are the most useful to the most people. Facebook’s current system does this quite well, but this is on the list as a reminder that very efficient applications don’t make for the best applications if they’re very obscure.
The Etnofaz application guide will probably never be anything that Facebook could base a system off of: it’s too hard to measure through statistics, and it’s too slow to really encompass all the applications that are out there. It is, however, of enormous benefit to application developers: each of these guidelines is extremely useful for people trying to create the next big application out there.
Facebook Adds In-Line Editing For Profiles
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007In the last week or so, Facebook gave its users the ability to edit basic profile information from within their own profiles, making users’ profiles even more accessible as a basic Facebook “control panel.”
Currently, only personal information is handled this way. Editing fields show up fairly quickly, and saved changes appear on the profile in seconds. It’s interesting that Facebook doesn’t even add a Save button to the mix; it fits in perfectly, however, with the site’s uncluttered design.
Is this a groundbreaking feature on Facebook? Not really. But it goes to show that Facebook is not slacking off on the job: they’re constantly tweaking their site design to make it more intuitive for their users.
(A similar little tweak, albeit one that has been around for a while, is this: hover your mouse over the “more” link for your applications, and it will expand your menu without a click. Click outside the box, and it will vanish again. Not extremely useful, but still a neat little bit.)
