This is really a little more about Google than Facebook, but it's fun to try anyway.
In honor of their 10th anniversary, Google is allowing you to search the web as if it was 2001: Click here to search the web (circa 2001)
A search for Facebook yields just the really old Harvard Facebook sites.
Now for those of you complaining about the new facebook: look at this ugly thing and maybe you will not push too hard for a reversion (maybe Facebook will take you waaaay back).
More fun searches (feel free t0 post some of your own):
YouTube: Domain name looks like it's still available
Webvan: Still "The online grocery store that delivers when you want"...but you better order REALLY fast
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Argh: it's Pirate day and we're changing our name!
Sorry about the long delay in follow-up posts to our last post with the complete list of Facebook viral integration points.
Before getting back to that subject and giving more details for developers on how to maximize your viral growth, two quick items today:
(1) We are changing our name! We are longer going to be known as Face It! ... from now on, we will be Apps-O-Rama! So watch for branding changes for the new name.
Of course this means that our Free developer analytics is now called....Analytics-O-Rama. If you are developer, check it out today. Let us know how we can make it better (if you are not a developer, you will find this boring, so check out something like Spy v. Spy instead).
(2) Today is national talk-like-a-pirate day, me hearties. You can quickly set up your entire Facebook profile to be in "Pirate", arggh. Here's how:
Step 1: log in to facebook and go to the bottom of your home/profile page. It looks like this (click on English):
Step 2: Select "English - Pirate" ... Have fun
Before getting back to that subject and giving more details for developers on how to maximize your viral growth, two quick items today:
(1) We are changing our name! We are longer going to be known as Face It! ... from now on, we will be Apps-O-Rama! So watch for branding changes for the new name.
Of course this means that our Free developer analytics is now called....Analytics-O-Rama. If you are developer, check it out today. Let us know how we can make it better (if you are not a developer, you will find this boring, so check out something like Spy v. Spy instead).
(2) Today is national talk-like-a-pirate day, me hearties. You can quickly set up your entire Facebook profile to be in "Pirate", arggh. Here's how:
Step 1: log in to facebook and go to the bottom of your home/profile page. It looks like this (click on English):
Step 2: Select "English - Pirate" ... Have fun
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Is your application doing all these? The list of Facebook integration points
By our count, there are 18 integration points (and 4 semi-integration points) for applications trying to achieve (or improve) their viral growth on Facebook.
The question is: is your application using all of these? If not, you might consider how to use them.
Over the coming weeks, we'll show you more about each of these in individual blogs, so you can do your best at implementing them. Of course, as you implement them you need to include a good analytic package to track how they are performing and how to improve them in detail.
Integration points for viral growth in Facebook (no particular order):
(Semi-) Integration points for viral growth on Facebook (no particular order):
You might consider using this as a checklist. It may not always be worth using all these points, but it's worth spending some time every now and then to just go through and think about how these points might help your application.
The question is: is your application using all of these? If not, you might consider how to use them.
Over the coming weeks, we'll show you more about each of these in individual blogs, so you can do your best at implementing them. Of course, as you implement them you need to include a good analytic package to track how they are performing and how to improve them in detail.
Integration points for viral growth in Facebook (no particular order):
- Facebook Application Directory
- Profile Boxes (Main page)
- Profile Boxes (Boxes page)
- News feed stories (including mini-feed in old facebook)
- Notifications (User-to-user)
- Notifications (Application-to-user)
- Email notifications (User-to-user equivalent)
- Email promotions (Application-to-user equivalent)
- Application tab
- Application Info sections
- Invitations
- The publisher
- Updating the user's status
- Feed Forms
- Left side navigation link (old Facebook) / Bookmark (new Facebook)
- Pre-populated messages
- Message attachment
- Share button
(Semi-) Integration points for viral growth on Facebook (no particular order):
- Fan pages
- Facebook Connect
- Social Ads (Advertising on Facebook, with targeting)
- Platform ad networks and other application APIs
You might consider using this as a checklist. It may not always be worth using all these points, but it's worth spending some time every now and then to just go through and think about how these points might help your application.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Why we believe in Social Networking
Over the course of the last year, Facebook has had ups (Platform launch, Facebook Connect) and downs (Beacon, developer relations) in the evolution of the Platform.
Today, I thought that I would briefly reflect on why we are still so excited about the fundamental nature of Social networking. In future posts, I’ll try to foresee a little where it is going and how to take advantage of it as Facebook prepares to move the general public to their new site structure.
It is very hard to get discovered on the web! In the old days of the web, I remember people putting up a web cam showing the surf in San Diego to help people determine if they should head to the beach or not. Sites like that could get found just by people browsing around. And more importantly, people would come back day after day to that little surf-cam as a destination.
It’s not so easy any more on the web, as users have become more and more skeptical of marketing and, more important, so inundated with options that they readily forget all but the top sites. People will still visit Google, Yahoo, YouTube and other top sites, directly and out of interest, but trying to get YOUR site to be one that they come to routinely…it’s practically impossible. It’s certainly very expensive.
Here is why social networking is such a big deal: you can focus on building great content and a great experience and you don’t have to do the (nearly) impossible job of getting users to regularly return to your site. Facebook, and social networking more generally, has turned the experience of growth on it's head: start with users, build your idea and application:
I think that these example illustrate the point. OK, so YouTube got it done on the web without Facebook. But how many people reading this remember MetaCafe, Revver, Grouper or the literally hundreds of other video sites that launched at the same time?
There is something like a 0% chance that a Hugs application could have succeeded on the web and while Flixster existed and had a healthy following pre-Facebook, Facebook helped it in two important ways: first, first time user growth of Flixster shot up with Flixster being a Facebook platform launch partner; second, engagement remains significantly higher with the Facebook viral components keeping Flixster in front of customers that might otherwise have drifted away.
Probably my favorite example of this phenomenon is Scrabulous. The now defunct Facebook application used to just be a website. In fact, it's been a web site for years. In theory, it could have had the same 500,000+ daily users that it had on Facebook as a website, but it didn't have it after years of operations. The exact same game, in Facebook, exploded in success, both with finding new users and with repeat engagement.
Rarely does one have such a great control for testing a theory like we have with Scrabulous. Without Facebook it is a nice site with a niche following; with Facebook, it's a phenomenon with huge growth engagement and success.
As Facebook moves beyond the first wave of applications the "Pokegiftwall" generation, it will be interesting to see if this theory proves out. I am curious to see what other web sites/applications, that have struggled for adoption, will launch of Facebook to more rousing success.
Today, I thought that I would briefly reflect on why we are still so excited about the fundamental nature of Social networking. In future posts, I’ll try to foresee a little where it is going and how to take advantage of it as Facebook prepares to move the general public to their new site structure.
It is very hard to get discovered on the web! In the old days of the web, I remember people putting up a web cam showing the surf in San Diego to help people determine if they should head to the beach or not. Sites like that could get found just by people browsing around. And more importantly, people would come back day after day to that little surf-cam as a destination.
It’s not so easy any more on the web, as users have become more and more skeptical of marketing and, more important, so inundated with options that they readily forget all but the top sites. People will still visit Google, Yahoo, YouTube and other top sites, directly and out of interest, but trying to get YOUR site to be one that they come to routinely…it’s practically impossible. It’s certainly very expensive.
Here is why social networking is such a big deal: you can focus on building great content and a great experience and you don’t have to do the (nearly) impossible job of getting users to regularly return to your site. Facebook, and social networking more generally, has turned the experience of growth on it's head: start with users, build your idea and application:
I think that these example illustrate the point. OK, so YouTube got it done on the web without Facebook. But how many people reading this remember MetaCafe, Revver, Grouper or the literally hundreds of other video sites that launched at the same time?
There is something like a 0% chance that a Hugs application could have succeeded on the web and while Flixster existed and had a healthy following pre-Facebook, Facebook helped it in two important ways: first, first time user growth of Flixster shot up with Flixster being a Facebook platform launch partner; second, engagement remains significantly higher with the Facebook viral components keeping Flixster in front of customers that might otherwise have drifted away.
Probably my favorite example of this phenomenon is Scrabulous. The now defunct Facebook application used to just be a website. In fact, it's been a web site for years. In theory, it could have had the same 500,000+ daily users that it had on Facebook as a website, but it didn't have it after years of operations. The exact same game, in Facebook, exploded in success, both with finding new users and with repeat engagement.
Rarely does one have such a great control for testing a theory like we have with Scrabulous. Without Facebook it is a nice site with a niche following; with Facebook, it's a phenomenon with huge growth engagement and success.
As Facebook moves beyond the first wave of applications the "Pokegiftwall" generation, it will be interesting to see if this theory proves out. I am curious to see what other web sites/applications, that have struggled for adoption, will launch of Facebook to more rousing success.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Facebook's Involvement in the Scrabulous v. Scrabble battle
A few days ago, I was checking out the new, Hasbro version of Scrabble on Facebook, which has now infamously resulted in the shuttering of much loved Scrabulous, when a series of observations got me wondering. Has Facebook itself had played a role in helping get Hasbro's Scrabble off the ground and off to a start? Why might Facebook help out EA/Hasbro and how Facebook is handling situations where they clearly know that a small time developer has made something huge, but a big company will buy advertising from them (and not sue them under DMCA) if Facebook gives said big company a little helping hand.
I'll get to why these observations left me scratching my head shortly, but first the observations just to be clear on where I got my facts.
When a developer releases an application, they have the choice of listing either the individual developers (e.g., Mob Wars) or a Company (e.g., The VISA application or any of our applications) or nothing (e.g., Parking Wars by A&E). Somewhat oddly, in the case of Hasbro and EA, they chose to leave the actual developers listed rather than EA or Hasbro or some other brand-associated name. The developers are Eric Bourget and Dany Savard.
I looked at Eric Bourget and clicked on his friends list (which is publicly available) and saw the list shown here. There are 10 friends. People that develop Facebook applications are usually a lot more into Facebook and would have many more friends, so this is almost certainly a fake account for development (my guess, based on name and networks, is that his real account is this one).
Using a fake account like this is common (even though it is a TOS violation: fake account). It lets developers isolate a group of people onto an application development project like Scrabble, so that they
can more easily test and manage the application. By doing this, the developer can leave news feeds and notifications on for testing without accidentally spreading the application beyond a test group, or more easily add the working group to the list of "Developers" for testing in developer mode. The fake account is basically the EA folks and Bourget's colleagues' accounts, so that's probably the case here, but interestingly, it also has Jackie Chang listed as a friend.
According to Linked In, Jackie Chang works in sales at Facebook, which is what got me thinking. Why is a Facebook sales person helping test and manage a Facebook application develop by a third party like Scrabble?
This account is a short list of the people involved in creating the new account with a total of only 10 people, all of whom seem to have a reason to be there at the table. Why Facebook itself?
My guess is this was either the result of a carrot or a stick from EA/Hasbro, or both. With the huge success of Scrabulous, it goes without saying that it was only a matter of time before Hasbro/EA wanted a piece of the pie. Seems like Facebook saw a way into some of that pie, too.
On the stick front: perhaps Facebook got threatened with a suit by EA/Hasbro under The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, and as part of a settlement process, they agreed to help launch the new application. The DMCA provides for pretty hefty damages for companies that take part in willful copyright infringement. Since Facebook has known about this application (rumor has it that it was one of the top applications within Facebook itself) and did nothing to remove it, EA/Hasbro could sue claiming violation of the DMCA. Hasbro/EA could have used this for leverage to get free launch support from Facebook. Frankly, that seems unlikely, but it's not inconceivable.
Much more likely is the carrot scenario: Facebook helped launch Scrabble by EA/Hasbro to make money through advertising. Nothing new in Facebook running ads for a new application, since advertising is how Facebook makes a living. It's more interesting to see that Facebook appears to have gone as far as to help test out and give advice on the application development.
Of course, one assumes (despite numerous reports to the contrary) that Facebook was also the judge and jury in shutting off one application in favor of another. I realize that the claim is that Scrabulous did this themselves, but two thing suggest otherwise:
Facebook has long known that the Scrabulous application violated Hasbro and EA's rights. If they want to feign lack of knowledge over the course of the last year, they certainly know it now. Last week, Facebook forced Scrabulous off the air in the US and Canada, apparently as the result of a DMCA takedown request from EA/Hasbro. That certainly would remove any veil of ignorance on the part of Facebook. But curiously, Facebook left Scrabulous up outside the US (overseas rights rest with Mattel's Scrabble, not Hasbro, so I suppose Facebook could say that they didn't know that Mattel wanted to protect their rights like Hasbro).
So, now I kept wondering: if it is not a copyright issue, then why is Scrabulous shut down at all? If this is a copyright issue, why is Scrabulous still up on a US website (albeit only to people "outside" the US)? Seems like Facebook would have shut them down, if it was a copyright issue.
It's one thing for Facebook to accept advertising from a party like EA/Hasbro. Of course they should do that: it is their business and fair, as long as everyone has a shot. While frustrating, it is also understandable that EA/Hasbro would want to protect their rights under DMCA.
What is worth note and comment is the role that Facebook may have played. Facebook should be careful to avoid the impression when wielding control of the Platform, however, not to appear to crush one developer at the expense of another in exchange for advertising dollars or other unfair compensation. Having ad sales people on fake developer/tester accounts sends a discouraging signal to the development community.
We want to see a healthy Platform development community. It won't be healthy for the ecosystem that they have recently touted so strongly and that they are trying to build, if they are taking sides in competitions in exchange for ad dollars.
I'll get to why these observations left me scratching my head shortly, but first the observations just to be clear on where I got my facts.
When a developer releases an application, they have the choice of listing either the individual developers (e.g., Mob Wars) or a Company (e.g., The VISA application or any of our applications) or nothing (e.g., Parking Wars by A&E). Somewhat oddly, in the case of Hasbro and EA, they chose to leave the actual developers listed rather than EA or Hasbro or some other brand-associated name. The developers are Eric Bourget and Dany Savard.
I looked at Eric Bourget and clicked on his friends list (which is publicly available) and saw the list shown here. There are 10 friends. People that develop Facebook applications are usually a lot more into Facebook and would have many more friends, so this is almost certainly a fake account for development (my guess, based on name and networks, is that his real account is this one).
Using a fake account like this is common (even though it is a TOS violation: fake account). It lets developers isolate a group of people onto an application development project like Scrabble, so that they
can more easily test and manage the application. By doing this, the developer can leave news feeds and notifications on for testing without accidentally spreading the application beyond a test group, or more easily add the working group to the list of "Developers" for testing in developer mode. The fake account is basically the EA folks and Bourget's colleagues' accounts, so that's probably the case here, but interestingly, it also has Jackie Chang listed as a friend.According to Linked In, Jackie Chang works in sales at Facebook, which is what got me thinking. Why is a Facebook sales person helping test and manage a Facebook application develop by a third party like Scrabble?
This account is a short list of the people involved in creating the new account with a total of only 10 people, all of whom seem to have a reason to be there at the table. Why Facebook itself?
My guess is this was either the result of a carrot or a stick from EA/Hasbro, or both. With the huge success of Scrabulous, it goes without saying that it was only a matter of time before Hasbro/EA wanted a piece of the pie. Seems like Facebook saw a way into some of that pie, too.
On the stick front: perhaps Facebook got threatened with a suit by EA/Hasbro under The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, and as part of a settlement process, they agreed to help launch the new application. The DMCA provides for pretty hefty damages for companies that take part in willful copyright infringement. Since Facebook has known about this application (rumor has it that it was one of the top applications within Facebook itself) and did nothing to remove it, EA/Hasbro could sue claiming violation of the DMCA. Hasbro/EA could have used this for leverage to get free launch support from Facebook. Frankly, that seems unlikely, but it's not inconceivable.
Much more likely is the carrot scenario: Facebook helped launch Scrabble by EA/Hasbro to make money through advertising. Nothing new in Facebook running ads for a new application, since advertising is how Facebook makes a living. It's more interesting to see that Facebook appears to have gone as far as to help test out and give advice on the application development.
Of course, one assumes (despite numerous reports to the contrary) that Facebook was also the judge and jury in shutting off one application in favor of another. I realize that the claim is that Scrabulous did this themselves, but two thing suggest otherwise:
- Basic logic: why in the world would an application making this much money and beyond the reach of US law in India voluntarily shut itself off? In order to defend their rights, EA/Hasbro relied on Facebook as enforcer.
- Early this morning, Facebook appears to have formally revoked Scrabulous application key and the application is not longer findable in the Facebook directory, the links don't work, the about page is gone....it appears that even the international version is gone. It might just be that Facebook has done this to me, because I am in the US, but the total removal of the application within Facebook (US) was clearly a Facebook and not a Scrabulous move.
Facebook has long known that the Scrabulous application violated Hasbro and EA's rights. If they want to feign lack of knowledge over the course of the last year, they certainly know it now. Last week, Facebook forced Scrabulous off the air in the US and Canada, apparently as the result of a DMCA takedown request from EA/Hasbro. That certainly would remove any veil of ignorance on the part of Facebook. But curiously, Facebook left Scrabulous up outside the US (overseas rights rest with Mattel's Scrabble, not Hasbro, so I suppose Facebook could say that they didn't know that Mattel wanted to protect their rights like Hasbro).
So, now I kept wondering: if it is not a copyright issue, then why is Scrabulous shut down at all? If this is a copyright issue, why is Scrabulous still up on a US website (albeit only to people "outside" the US)? Seems like Facebook would have shut them down, if it was a copyright issue.
It's one thing for Facebook to accept advertising from a party like EA/Hasbro. Of course they should do that: it is their business and fair, as long as everyone has a shot. While frustrating, it is also understandable that EA/Hasbro would want to protect their rights under DMCA.
What is worth note and comment is the role that Facebook may have played. Facebook should be careful to avoid the impression when wielding control of the Platform, however, not to appear to crush one developer at the expense of another in exchange for advertising dollars or other unfair compensation. Having ad sales people on fake developer/tester accounts sends a discouraging signal to the development community.
We want to see a healthy Platform development community. It won't be healthy for the ecosystem that they have recently touted so strongly and that they are trying to build, if they are taking sides in competitions in exchange for ad dollars.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
f8 Conference
We are still trying to sort through the implications of yesterday's f8 Facebook Developer Conference, but I wanted to give all of you a couple of key points that might impact you, based on announcements and discussions with Facebook yesterday.
First off, Facebook is making a concerted effort to clean up the quality of their applications. Notice I did not say "clear" effort, I said concerted effort. It's not clear.
They are making changes to their TOS; they are publicly stating that even if an application does not technically violate the TOS, it might get removed for just not being polite and respectful; they are starting to clarify what they feel makes a good application; they are deleting more and more applications that are not helpful to the overall Platform; and, most positively, I think, they have created a couple of programs to reward applications that are trustworthy and high quality.
Summary of key announcements:
- Facebook Connect: Think of this as single sign-on for YOUR website with access to Facebook API data. For a user, you can now allow them to authenticate into your website with nothing more than a Facebook account and you get to know that you have a real authenticated user. Then you can use the Facebook data and API for information and publishing social behavior rather than start from scratch building your own. I think that this has enormous potential for many of you to reduce the registration barrier for your site and to make it easier for users to use your site. Plus you get the ability to publish to their newsfeed, etc., so you can have Facebook viral features (i.e., things that go right to the Facebook community) operated from your website. For those of you that want information that Facebook does not provide, you might consider how using Facebook Connect would give users a simple clean first time user experience, while later, once they are engaged, you can collect more information (i.e., their email address) and convert them to a true site user.
- The Great Apps program: This is part of an overall program to increase the quality of Facebook applications. The whole thing seems very "qualitative" as a program, to use a good pun, but the general thrust of the program is this: applications will be tiered. The worst will get deleted, most will just be out there in the directory, and applications that are high-quality will get access to more and more promotion and features in the "Verification" and "Great Apps" programs. I'm sure you are wondering what those programs are, but the details were just sort of lacking at the conference. I'll write more about this, when we get more details. Here's the shot from the conference (Source: TechCrunch).
- Internationalizing your application: more complicated than it sounds. Probably not useful to most of you, but for those of you that are running ad networks or otherwise truly wanting to be international, you might want to learn more about this and make it happen. Facebook has made it about as simple as possible, but you are going to have to write code that tags things in your text as "verb" or "noun"...so simple copy changes in your application will result in a bit of overhead. Unless you really want/need to be international, this is probably not worth it as a top priority.
- There is a redesign of the site, that most of you have seen. If there is any one thing that requires action, it is to know how this redesign (including TOS changes) impacts your site. You should focus on the new "allow" instead of "install", creating a tab (not the usual box) as soon as possible (there will be a rush to get users to install these, while most apps have not yet created one...after a month or two, you will have a hard time and high barrier to getting a user to install your tab, but on week 1, it will be relatively easy). If your application gives points to users in exchange for invites (a best practice until FB changed their TOS on Monday)...you need to stop that by the 28th.
I wish that the news was so clear that I could say: Do XYZ now! I think, however, that a little time will need to pass to see how these changes really impact user and application behavior. In a big way, the announcements are minor course corrections. This is a company that is growing up and playing it increasingly conservative to protect what they have and not risk anything with major changes. Fuzzy concepts like "applications that are trustworthy will get special access" sound great, but leave application developers wondering "OK, so exactly what do I change in my code to get access to whatever special thing you have in mind." Here is the shot of the 10 criteria for a great app (you become "trusted" when you do the middle "Trustworthy" three). (Source: TechCrunch)
Now, who reading this blog doesn't think that their code is "clean" "fast" and "useful" among all the other stuff? I'm sure you are thinking, we do all that! Why aren't we with iLike and Causes as Facebook Great Apps today? I have to say, the vagueness of it all made me think that Facebook was a little unprepared and their concepts incomplete and not very well thought out.
One thing that was not announced was a payment system. Too bad on that, but there are several popular services out there and I'll try to write a summary of those soon, for those of you wondering what to do to monetize. I'll also forward out some other fun Facebook stuff, so keep tuned.
Introduction: First Post
Face It! is a client-focused, Facebook Platform development company. As of today, we are the largest company in the world completely focused on development of Facebook applications for clients. Our applications, and the applications on which we have provided development assistance, are among the top applications on Facebook, and are some of the most advanced and best designed applications written for the platform. As part of our client-relationship process, we have, from time to time, written to our clients about what's happening as it relates to them, their companies and their applications, so that they are informed about the constant changes at Facebook and so that they can focus on their businesses, of which a Facebook application is often only a small part.
Starting today, we are going to start publishing insights about the Platform, what's happening at Facebook and other fun tidbits and gossip.
This first post is a repeat of the last letter that we wrote following the f8 conference last week. Please add this blog to your RSS reader and become a fan of ours here. We promise to make it worthwhile reading and to keep you informed as well.
Starting today, we are going to start publishing insights about the Platform, what's happening at Facebook and other fun tidbits and gossip.
This first post is a repeat of the last letter that we wrote following the f8 conference last week. Please add this blog to your RSS reader and become a fan of ours here. We promise to make it worthwhile reading and to keep you informed as well.
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