Facebook Adds More Ads
Posted by Nick O'Neill on November 18th, 2008 9:21 PM
Who said Facebook isn’t working on generating more money? This afternoon Facebook began testing out the display of three ads on the side rather than two. Previously ads were limited to either two Facebook ads, one Facebook ad and a banner, or just a banner. Now the company is testing out displaying one more.
It makes a lot of sense that the company would begin displaying more ads considering that users are scrolling further down the page on many applications and on profiles that contain more content. This is a pretty good way for the company to try increasing click-thru rates. While it’s not definite that this will accomplish their goal of generating more clicks, common logic would suggest it will.
The company has been doing an increasing number of ad tests over the past couple months including the addition of video ads which have shown up on the homepage with increasing regularity. It’s a small change but it has the potential to boost their revenue. Unfortunately we can’t yet take a look at the company’s quarterly earnings report since they aren’t public, once they are, we will definitely enjoy looking forward to how these changes impact the company’s bottom line.
New Facebook for BlackBerry Coming Early 09
Posted by Kristen Nicole on November 18th, 2008 7:30 PM
The new Facebook for BlackBerry, version 1.5, is scheduled for release in January 2009, according to crackberry.com. The latest version of the BlackBerry-specific mobile site hosts a few new features that you may find helpful.
New account creation lets you make a new account directly from your BlackBerry, and you can also access and manage your Facebook phone book. This includes the ability to view your friends’ phone numbers, publish your phone number, and request phone numbers. This is an important feature as it allows users to tie in phone numbers from Facebook straight into their BlackBerry contact lists.
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fbFund Review: CheckMyCampus
Posted by Kristen Nicole on November 18th, 2008 1:45 PM
I don’t know many high school students other than those in my immediate family, but the high school students I do know are often able to get a good idea about what college life is all about based on the photos shared by their college-age friends on Facebook. But if this isn’t enough, the CheckMyCampus application could shed some light on what really goes down during those formidable college years. A finalist in the fbFund competitive round, CheckMyCampus offers a media “viewing station” to provide first hand accounts of how awesome college life is across the nation. Facebook users can upload videos and images to show their own perspective of college life. The ultimate goal of CheckMyCampus is to give high school students a realistic portrayal of life on a college campus.
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(5 votes, average: 3 out of 5)
Loading ...Facebook And the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit
Posted by Nick O'Neill on November 18th, 2008 12:18 PM
This morning Jared Cohen, a member of the U.S. Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, posted an article on Facebook’s blog. In it he covers something which I covered back in March, the creation of a group on Facebook to protest the FARC. This movement, that was created on Facebook, has been used as a case study for how social technology can impact the world. It also highlights the destruction of bureaucratic barriers between governments and citizens. As Cohen writes, “This really was a new wave of civil society in which there were no offices, government grants, or forms that needed to be filled out and filed for the establishment.”
This morning I had the privilege to sit in on a panel for the Washington, D.C. Economic Partnership, in which everybody in the room was excited about two things: the new administration’s full embrace of technology, and how social technology is transforming the political realm. It is no longer required for a group of people to get together in a room and make change happen.
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Facebook Launches Registration for Application Verification Program
Posted by Nick O'Neill on November 17th, 2008 7:00 PM
Want better distribution and visibility of your Facebook application? Today, Facebook launched the registration process for their previously announced “Applicatoin Verficiation Program”. How do you submit your application to be part of the program? Well, go fill out the Registration of Interest form for the Application Verification Program and you will be contacted shortly. Once you are contacted, you will have to pay a non-refundable $375 fee so that Facebook can review your application to ensure it follows the company’s guiding principles.
One of the biggest challenges for Facebook has been the proliferation of what could be subjectively described as less than useful applications. For example, the platform still continues to have an issue with simple quizzes such as “What kind of person do you attract?” Also there has been a revival of last year’s successful Snowball Fight! application. There is arguably not much value to throwing snowballs at other users but over 314,000 active users in the past month have participated in the fun.
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fbFund Review: Socialfly
Posted by Kristen Nicole on November 17th, 2008 4:41 PM
It’s true, Facebook makes it pretty easy to connect with friends online. But what happens after you’ve mutually agreed to be friends with someone? The Facebook news feed does a good amount to inform you as to what’s going on with those in your friends list. But beyond the Birthday reminders, there’s not a whole lot that Facebook does to help you manage your online relationships. If you feel like your friends are falling through the cracks and you just can’t keep up with all the things you need to do for relationship maintenance, Socialfly is here to help.
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(3 votes, average: 3.33 out of 5) Loading ...Facebook Should Remove Limits on Application Feed Stories
Posted by Nick O'Neill on November 17th, 2008 10:56 AMCurrently, Facebook has limited the use of profile feeds by developers to 10 stories per day. Yesterday while testing out a few applications I realized how completely flawed this is. For example, I was using the MTV Music Videos application and realized that everytime I listen to a video, that is an activity that my friends should be notified of.
FriendFeed, the popular activity aggregation tool, makes sure to publish all of your activities and then provides a filter of your network’s activities based on a number of factors. Facebook performs a similar service and when you view your main news feed on the Facebook home page, this is a highly filtered set of news stories. The reason that Facebook limits application feed activity makes sense, they want to filter out application spam.
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Simon Garfield Loses Future Interview Opportunities With Zuckerberg
Posted by Nick O'Neill on November 17th, 2008 9:00 AM
Any good journalist knows that in order to get close to a company and its executives, there is a fine line when managing your relationship and you need to be careful about just how critical you are publicly. Somebody should of taught that to Simon Garfield who interviews Mark Zuckerberg in an article for the Guardian. Perhaps Simon Garfield doesn’t want to interview Mark Zuckerberg again but if he did, there’s a pretty good chance he lost his second chance.
As Caroline Waxler points out, Garfield starts the article with “I was told not to expect a human whirlwind, but when Mark Zuckerberg walks into the room there is barely a breeze.” That’s only the beginning. The reporter drops little insults about Zuckerberg throughout the article. Rather than rehashing each insult, I’ll let you read the article but suffice it to say, Garfield isn’t too kind in his take on Zuckerberg and Facebook.
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MTV Puts Music Library on Facebook
Posted by Nick O'Neill on November 16th, 2008 6:47 PM
A couple weeks ago I wrote about MTVMusic.com on Social Times. The service makes MTV’s entire music video library available for the general public. It’s an impressive site and best of all, you can take the videos and embed them anywhere. If you didn’t think mainstream media would ever embrace new media, this will prove you wrong.
(2 votes, average: 3 out of 5) Loading ...Causes: The Leading Way to Change the World Online
Posted by Nick O'Neill on November 15th, 2008 5:36 PM
For the past few years there has been a movement of entrepreneurs trying to leverage the power of the web to spread good throughout the world, Causes is the only application to experience massive success. One of the biggest challenges facing the movement is that most services until recently were unable to grow beyond a certain level. Change.org, Idealist, Zaadz (later converted to Gaia.com), Razoo, and countless others have struggle to get beyond a certain level.
