Archive for the ‘Rumors’ Category
Facebook to Spawn a Mullet Pandemic?
Friday, November 2nd, 2007Eric Eldon has posted some interesting news about some new projects that Facebook is preparing to launch. According to Eric, Facebook will be removing sponsored groups under a project code-named “pandemic.” Instead of sponsored groups, Facebook will begin to offer sponsored pages on which sponsors can include interactive games or other applications under yet another code name: Mullets.
While I am not quite sure what the impact of pandemic mullets are, I am sure that if Facebook chose to launch this sort of system, there will be a massive backlash from application developers. Facebook will be walking right into a massive P.R. disaster and many of the Facebook application developers may go running for the door. Eric suggests that “large Facebook application developers like Slide, RockYou, iLike and Flixster may have embraced the Google-led OpenSocial movement so fervently earlier this week because they learned of these developments.”
I completely disagree with Eric’s suggestion tha tthis is why iLike, Slide and RockYou embraced Google. These companies simply need to expand their reach and the OpenSocial platform is an obvious way to accomplish their goals. If Facebook is indeed offering alternative applications that they will attempt to monetize using the same model that I suggested to developers at last week’s Snap Summit (I suggested that they approach brands directly to build partnerships), that will mean that Facebook is competing directly with the same developers that they encouraged to attempt to come in an make money.
This model is going to backfire massively if it is indeed true. That may be the reason for the internal debate that Eric suggested is taking place at Facebook. Eric also suggests that Facebook will only be competing with larger, more robust applications rather than simple applications like Zobies and Vampires. This news sounds absolutely ridiculous. If Facebook were to follow through with this, they will loose tens of thousands of developers overnight that don’t have access to the same size of resources as Facebook does. Hey Facebook: don’t do it, this is absolute suicide!
Rumor: Facebook Employees Are Modifying User Profiles
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007According to a Valleywag post from yesterday, a Facebook employee reportedly modified a user’s profile picture to a graphic image after looking up her password and logging into her account. In a follow-up post, Nicholas Carlson has published a copy of his inquiry to the named Facebook employee and the response he received.
If there is any proof of this taking place, the Facebook employee should be fired. Last month I wrote about Facebook employees have unrestricted access to the Facebook database and can modify items within the database freely. Since then, Valleywag posted another article on this topic. Valleywag has alluded to the issue being a company filled with “angsty, hormone-riddled” youngsters having complete access to anybody’s profile.
While that’s a moot point given that this would still be an issue even if all the employees were “mature adults,” the issue remains that Facebook employees have complete access to anyone’s profile. Personally, I don’t want to mention the name of the employee given that I am now completely dependent on Facebook and I might risk having my profile shut down after being accused of a terms of service violation (as the Valleywag reporter did). One thing is for sure: Facebook is going to need to develop more stringent internal policies if they are going to expand into the multi-billion dollar company that many are expecting them too.
Big News At Facebook Today?
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007There is a lot of buzz going around about something happening at Facebook today. It started with a Valleywag post and then yesterday Caroline McCarthy posted about further evidence of impending news. Apparently there is a big meeting taking place today as Facebook employees from around the country are flying into town. Another employee that was supposed to attend a Facebook developer’s garage tomorrow had to cancel due to an important meeting.
Recently, I’ve been publishing gossip and while I hate to continue the trend, I couldn’t resist this one. I did a little poking around myself and was not able to get a response from anybody at Facebook … go figure! Facebook has been slow to make any upgrades to the site since the launch of their platform but the blogosphere has been buzzing about upcoming changes including the release of grouping features, the launch of a developer ad network and an advanced analytics program.
As of now, there are only clues that something may be announced this week but nobody has any idea what it is. I’m sure hoping that something is announced soon!
