Archives: June 2007

According to VentureBeat, Friendster experienced a 40 percent page view boost in May resulting in a whopping 9 billion page views. This is pretty impressive given the massive competition created by Facebook. This provides a little bit of support to any argument suggesting that Facebook will not be the sole social graph of the future. Do all social networks need to open their platform to become competitive in the current environment? Maybe not. Personally I think so but given the growth of last month it may not be necessary. I will be interested in seeing what takes place in coming months. According to the VentureBeat article, Friendster is still not profitable. That is pretty pathetic given the amount of time that they have been around. I guess in the world of social networking it is a first mover disadvantage. Below are the traffic statistics for the top social-networks on the web:

While Friendster has had some incredible growth check out Facebook’s growth. Between April and May Facebook grew over 20 percent. I have a feeling this past month was significantly higher. It will be interesting to see once the June statistics come out. One thing is for sure, social networking is still experiencing rapid growth years after it begun.

In the 1980s shopping malls were all the rage. They were the “big thing” in consumer marketing because for the first time, many stores were aggregated in one spot. Stores are obviously cheaper to implement in clusters when they can share infrastructure and utilities like air-conditioning. However, while malls succeeded for many years, that train has sailed. Malls are now the realms of teenyboppers; inferior places to shop. Why?

Two observations come to mind:

1. Malls are limited in the physical space and customizations they can offer a store. Many of the most successful stores in today’s market succeed because they provide a customer experience. Malls are not conducive to this type of marketing as their allotted “box dimensions” are limiting. If you have ever been to The LL Bean flagship store, consider the experience there versus if LL Bean was located in a mall.
2. Customers transitioned to window shoppers. Prior to malls, if someone traveled to an individual store location, that trip had a purpose: to make a purchase. However, with malls people began to enjoy brands and stores without feeling the need to actually make a purchase. For store owners this meant they could have 1000 people in the store in a single day, but only make 25 sales.

So what? Well consider what Facebook has done by opening itself up; essentially its become a mall. While there is a ton of hype about the open platform, and some apps are certainly getting great numbers of users, I see two problems. They are the very problems I listed above. First, applications are limited in the amount of interaction they can offer a user. Sure, the hope is that die-hard Facebook app users will ultimately go to that app’s own website, but will they? Will apps remain content staying tiny little widgets and having their dimensions dictated by the mighty mall of Facebook?

Second, there is a huge difference between window shoppers and customers. A quick glance at your feed will likely reinforce that Facebook users are a fickle crowd. In terms of app loyalty, they are much more like window shoppers – they will try it on, but likely return it to the racks. Will Facebook ultimately suffer the same fate as the once fabled Mall? Only time will tell.

*This post was written by Sam Huleatt. Sam is a soon-to-be MBA graduate and social media guru. He writes about things that interest him at LeveragingIdeas.

For those that came to the site and weren’t able to access it yesterday evening I apologize. My existing hosting company has provided me with some horrendous service. I am in the process of switching hosting providers and will have it up and running withing the next 24 hours. If you experience shoddy service I am extremely sorry but it is a fact of life at this point. All I can say is if you plan on launching your own blog that will experience heavy traffic, do not go with 1 & 1 as a hosting solution. Their support staff is outsourced and horrible. Rather than providing a backup solution, they simply will take down your server and leave you empty handed. So if you have any future plans to launch your own blog do not choose 1&1. That’s all I can say. I intend to continue my full coverage of Facebook and social network news but if there are any delays in the next 36 hours please help me out with a little bit of understanding. I have made the decision to go with u2-web.com. If you have a better hosting provider, let me know.

The now deceased Google Answers has been resurrected by Tom Tenaglia under a new name on Facebook, fbAsk. Just like Google Answers did, fbAsk pays experts to answer questions. Users that want to ask a question place the bid amount, an amount they are willing to pay for an answer, and then an expert stumbles across the question and writes up an answer. Payments on the system are made through Paypal. While the application is a bare minimum version currently, by expanding their feature set and improving the design a little this application could be pretty useful. Ultimately it is a copycat of Google Answers. Try it out! If you have questions and want answers, go grab the fbAsk application.

Many have been speculating about whether or not other social networks and websites would start opening up as a result of Facebook’s actions. Yesterday I discussed LinkedIn opening up their platform and now Freewebs has as well. While this is not identical to what Facebook has done, it is in the same open-source spirit. Through agreements with Widgetbox, RockYou!, Picnik, Photobucket and Gizmoz, Freewebs will share its API. I have a feeling that all the social networks are working rapidly to follow suit. If Facebook’s decision to open their platform creates a domino effect in the industry, there is going to be a new golden age on the net resulting from a new wave of development shops that will cater to social network development.

Not only did Freewebs open up their API today but they also have developed a new application on the Facebook platform. This application is called “Family” and it enables users to keep in touch with their family. I went ahead and added the application and am not quite sure what value the application adds. Apparently it gives you one click access to your family from your profile. I also had some issues when browsing through my friends to pick out family members given that they aren’t displayed in alphabetical order. If you want to show off who your family members are then this application is for you. Otherwise I don’t see much point. If you are big on family and want to give them some real estate on your profile go grab the Family application. Overall, congrats to Freewebs for jumping on the Facebook train.

Slideshare, one of the leaders in presentation hosting has launched their official application. This is as powerful of an application as Scribd, the document sharing application that I previously reviewed. While Scribd has not been as wildly popular as I would have expected (close to 12,000 users so far), I don’t think the power of the application has been realized yet by students on Facebook. Additionally, given that school is not in session for most students, I have a feeling that mass adoption will occur later on. The Slideshare application builds on Scribds feature set, enabling individuals to share their powerpoint presentations. Students will now have a complete resource on Facebook for sharing their notes, quizzes, tests, and presentations. Soon enough Facebook will become one of the primary educational resources for students. Imagine having a record of all the reports you wrote back in college, or all of the presentations that you made. Facebook will be your own personal time capsule. This is also a great application for people that want to document presentations (those that are not confidential) at previous employers or at conferences. This redefines the concept of a resume. It will be interesting to see how many people take advantage of these new resources. If you would like a simple way to store your presentations on your Facebook profile, go grab the Slideshare application.

Since the launch of the new Facebook platform a month ago, thousands of new applications have popped up. The majority of these applications have been extremely simple applications that will provide a short period of entertainment value. This is like when the internet first came about. Back when Geocities was popular I remember people (myself included) used to go grab random widgets from around the web such as small slot machines, blinking lights, page counters and all sorts of items that made your page look “cool.”

The same phenomenon is currently happening on Facebook. This is going to continue for a few months, but once users become used to the presence of applications we will see a slow down in the rapid adoption of applications that we are currently experiencing. The current environment is, as my uncle puts it, a new Oklahoma landgrab. As we all know, this can’t last forever. While there will be some big winners, this is not a good long-term strategy. In the short-term, it’s great if you are willing to gamble or have the development capacity to churn out new applications on a regular basis. There will be very few large companies that succeed with a strategy of building the initial applications. It is very similar to the first dot-com boom and investors are very weary this time around. Venture Beat has reported on recent acquisitions, and I myself know of others that I am not yet able to disclose (there will be more information coming soon). The most recent acquisition values each Facebook user 4.6 cents, only a fraction of the value of each user when MySpace was acquired.

The coming wave of Facebook includes robust applications that are highly scalable. These applications will be composed of many features and have more value than trivial personality quizzes or magic 8-balls. These applications will provide more interaction and have a greater community focus. The current wave will continue for a few more months but looks for truly valuable applications to appear in the near future. I have a feeling that applications such as the iLike music player are going to start facing heavier competition given that their existing feature set is relatively minimal.

Want to create and manage your own virtual hedge fund? The Tipping Monkey Hedge Fund Simulator gives you total control over your own mock hedge fund. This is the most robust trading application that I have seen yet. I previously reviewed a stock picker application that is well made but not as robust since it was created by a single developer. It appears as though Tipping Monkey has been around for a while given that they have an existing site and community dedicated to mock hedge fund management. The application allows you to go long or short on stocks, options, mutual funds, and exchange traded funds (ETFs). If you want to learn more about investing or want to test your skill level against others, go grab the Tipping Monkey Hedge Fund simulatory. This will surely become one of the more popular trading applications. The only problem with the application is that there is a registration process to proceed. Aside from that this application is top tier. So check it out and start trading!

Update
Looks like there is a similar application called “Fantasy Stock Exchange.” If you would prefer trying out another branded mock hedge fund, check out the Fantasy Stock Exchange application.

Aryeh Goldsmith is pumping out applications like it’s his job. This application is a quick and easy way to put wishes on your profile. You can also view what wishes other people are making. I guess the intention of this application is to make a wish and it’ll bring good luck? Some of the wishes that other people made include “I wish I knew what I really wanted,” and, “I wish I could walk through walls.” Nora MacDonald wishes that she “wasn’t so damn horny.” Ok so maybe all the wishes aren’t that proper, but what did you expect on Facebook? I have a feeling that this application isn’t going to be as big as the Matches application that I previously covered. Conversely it is not a bad application to add when your application portfolio already includes 6 other applications and each application is highly scalable. At this rate, Aryeh will have a pretty large portfolio of Facebook applications in a couple months. If you want to make a wish with other facebook users, go grab the Wishes application.

Upcoming, Yahoo’s social event site, launched their official application on Facebook yesterday. For those that don’t know what Upcoming is, it is a community for discovering and sharing events. It provides a simple way for finding events through your friends and interests. Since writing this article almost 500 people have registered for the application, but I have a feeling that this will increase given Upcoming’s popularity. The application enables users to display a list of events they are already registered to attend. While extremely simple, the implication was developed well (as you would expect from Yahoo) and integrates well with the Facebook platform. The fact that Yahoo is now developing applications for the Facebook platform is pretty interesting. Will Google decide to create their own applications such as Gmail for Facebook? While that seems highly unlikely since Facebook is now a competitor to Google, there is always the possibility. It will be interesting to see how many Facebook applications come out of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and AOL. If you want an effective way for maintaining your events on your Facebook profile, go grab the Upcoming application.