Archives: July 2007

When discussing the features that will contribute to an application’s success, you often refer to the “sticky features” that will make people continue to use it. The Stick Notes application takes sticky to a whole new level. When I tried out the application, I tested using it as a promotional tool. I attempted making a note which said “Check out AllFacebook.com.” The only problem was that the line with the domain URL overextended the sticky note. So if you want to write notes on your friends’ profiles with words that are 15 letters or longer, you are pretty much out of luck. Good thing I don’t typically use long words. But what if I want to write “supercalifragilisticexpialadocious” on my friend’s profile, you ask? You are out of luck my friend. I am sorry. If you like to write with shorter words, go check out the Sticky Notes application because this may just be the app for you. Almost 750,000 people seem to be enjoying it.

The judge from today’s Facebook trial have asked the ConnectU founders to revise their complaints and have given them two weeks to to respond. The judge is quoted:

“You’re really going to have to do this with particularity,” Woodlock said to ConnectU’s counsel, “because this is a most evanescent of explanations.”

Facebook is calling this a win as this case moves closer to dismissal. Apparently the judge was also quoted as saying “Dorm room chit-chat does not make a contract.” This is definitely a good sign for Facebook. I have a feeling that this case will be dismissed at the next hearing. If there was any damning evidence against Facebook this would have been the hearing to have it at. Oh well! We will see what happens in two weeks.

While sending messages this afternoon I noticed a new feature that Facebook has added. When you type a URL in a message it crawls the URL that you entered and looks for the first 4 images that it can find. I’m assuming that the point of this feature is to attach the image to your message. Currently it doesn’t work. Additionally, in Internet Explorer 7 the images from the site that you entered don’t even display. Facebook has been accused of launching a number of faulty features. This is another one to add to the list. I have always had high standards for Facebook but this new feature does not hold up to those standards. You would imagine that they would have tested this out on a beta site prior to launching it. Oh well! I have a feeling that this is connected to Facebook’s decision to add images and videos to wall postings. Pete Cashmore argued that this will make the site more like MySpace. I have to agree. What are they thinking? Conversely, as I covered previously the Super Wall application adds the ability to post other media to people’s walls and has become extremely popular (over 2.5 million users have added it making it the 12th most popular Facebook application). Do you think this will add a lot of value to the Facebook experience or that it will just pollute the site?

Update
So apparently this feature isn’t new. I was just slow to recognize this. Given that it isn’t new, it is even worse that it still doesn’t work!

I have been reading a lot of bloggers that are speaking about their horrible return on investment for their Facebook advertising campaigns. As I mentioned previously, there were reports of advertisers getting a 0.04% click through rate on average for their campaigns. Even if their ads were not effectively targeted, this is pretty bad. So how do you increase the ROI on Facebook advertising? Three words: develop an application. Facebook application development has become the most cost-effective form of advertising. An interesting statistic shows that close to half of all Facebook applications have less than 500 users. So how can I say that Facebook applications are an effective medium of advertising when close to 50% are having nominal results? There are two reasons that those applications are failing to reach the critical user base to experience exponential growth: their application sucks and they are not marketing their applications effectively.

I have seen way too many applications that aren’t good or don’t provide a great value proposition to the users. If you want to experience amazing results from your Facebook application, you better work to develop an amazing application. Secondly, once you develop that application you better market the hell out of it. There are a number of techniques for marketing your application that I won’t delve into now (I don’t want to give away my trade secrets), but you need to market the app. If you expect that simply adding your application to the Facebook application directory will provide you with exponential growth, you are in for a surprise. The days of every application getting hundreds of thousands of users are long gone. By effectively reaching out to targeted users within Facebook you can experience exponential growth within a matter of days and maintain that growth for weeks. Prior to adding the application to the directory you can expect 20 – 50 percent daily growth with close to 10 percent of those users visiting your own website (if you are using this as a marketing tool). After you add your application to the directory you can expect an increase in growth for a period of time. While the growth rates vary from one application to the next, they are still phenomenal rates of return on your investment. So for all those that are saying that Facebook is a horrible place to advertise, go develop your Facebook application and tell me if you still think that’s the case.

Have you joined so many groups that it is hard to sort through them from your profile? Thanks to the new Top Groups application visitors to your profile can now have a cleaner way of viewing your most important groups. The Top Groups application has a clean profile design and a friendly interface for modifying what groups display on your profile. When I was using the application I immediately found a bug while trying to modify my groups. By default there are specific groups that are already checked but not displayed in your top groups. When you go to uncheck ones that you don’t want, instead of removing the groups they ended up being added to my Top Groups. I’m not quite sure why that was happening but it was the only bug that happened. Aside from that everything worked well. This application is extremely simple but provides a much nicer interface for users to view what groups you feel most connected to. It would be awesome if you could remove the original groups box on your profile and replace it with this one. Unfortunately Facebook requires that you keep this module on your profile. Hopefully this will change soon. If you want to show off your favorite groups on your profile, go grab the Top Groups application.

Update
Steve, the developer of the application, contacted me to notify me that the bug I mentioned has been resolved. Additionally, I was mistaken when I said that you can’t remove Facebook’s groups box from your profile. Simply click the “X” in your profile and click the button that says “Remove Box.” This is an awesome substitute for the existing groups application built by Facebook!

Last night I was reading Megan Berry’s article about how her social and professional lives are beginning to overlap. There has been a sudden influx of Facebook users that are not 20-somethings that are there for business networking. While I openly accept this new reality, I also sympathize with Megan’s situation in which she is having to think about what she writes and what pictures she posts since some of her co-workers may end up seeing the more personal side of her life. Her suggestions (as I have suggested previously as well) is to allow Facebook users to differentiate between social contacts and professional contacts and separate your profile based on that. I fully support this motion but I doubt Facebook will do this anytime soon. If they did, it would officially be the end of LinkedIn. There is also another slightly uncomfortable aspect of this new influx of users that Megan touches on in her article. As the older crowd meshes with the younger crowd, new definitions of social interaction are rapidly being defined. I personally greet most people with open arms (except for those that are either too young to have anything in common or have certain tendencies that suggest they may be crazy). I know many other people are hesitant to build these new connections so freely. Social networking has just crossed generations and those that are involved are rapidly trying to define the new rules of interaction. While it can sometimes be uncomfortable, I think these are very exciting times!

Mark Zuckerberg and his team of lawyers are headed to court today in Boston where a judge will determine the fate of a copyright infringement suit filed by ConnectU. As I mentioned a little over a week ago, the plaintiffs (Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, all Harvard classmates) are asking for Facebook to be shutdown and that full control of the site be granted to ConnectU. While this may be more of a symbolic statement, if the judge decides to hold the case, this could be a serious thorn in Facebook’s side. According to reports I read earlier yesterday, all that the plaintiffs have are over 50 emails that were exchanged between Zuckerberg and the ConnectU team. While I don’t think ConnectU has a great chance of winning this, it seems like the Harvard graduates don’t mind throwing some money at the case. Given that ConnectU stopped developing on their site and decided to follow different paths in their lives, they may simply be looking for a multi-million dollar settlement. This is the most likely outcome of this case but who knows, maybe the ConnectU team really has some seriously incriminating documents. I think this is highly doubtfufl though.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook has just hired a new chief financial officer. Gideon Yu, the prior CFO at YouTube has now found employment at Silicon Valley’s most popular startup. It would be great to be Gideon Yu. He may be getting another great payout once Facebook files for their IPO in a couple years. Facebook has been extremely successful at acquiring top talent from Google, a similar situation that Google experienced with Microsoft prior to their IPO. It is also a little interesting that he has been successfully recruited to work at Facebook after turning down prior offers from Sequoia capital. Whatever the rationale for joining, Facebook will most definitely have a record exit for any Silicon Valley startup in the past decade given their increasingly powerful team of employees. In the past month, Facebook also hired a new vice president of product marketing. One other interesting piece of this story is the person being replaced, Mike Sheridan, was only recently hired. There must have been some internal conflicts that we are unaware of.

Word on the street was that Guy Kawasaki wasn’t interested in getting involved with Facebook applications a few weeks ago. With the launch of the Truemors application it looks like he has changed his mind. Truemors is the highly criticized social network launched a few months ago by Guy Kawasaki. The site allows users to submit rumors and then vote on rumors that they think are entertaining or credible. The site was considered a flop by many in the blogosphere but all the negative publicity helped to drive a lot of traffic to the site which continues to this day. The Truemors application is pretty basic. You can view the rumors that have been posted on the Truemors site as well as post your own. Additionally, you can view what rumors your friends have posted, what are the most recent rumors, and what the most popular rumors are. While I’m not an avid user of Truemors, it appears as if they have a pretty substantial user base. Just like all other companies, they are hoping that their Facebook application will help drive even more users. The application already has over 200 users which is fairly significant given that they launched today. While I probably won’t end up an avid user of the application, you can go grab the Truemors app and try it out for yourself.

Following WineLibrary.tv’s launch of their two Facebook applications a new wine related application has been launched. Mario Da Roza, Derrick Lee, Howard Lu and Graeme English have teamed up to build an application out of their appreciation for fine wine. The WineBeagle application has a database of over 14,000 wines from 12 different countries. So what does the application do? Well, it is pretty straight forward. There are two main components: tastings and your wine cellar. You can use the application to display the wine bottles that you have in your virtual wine cellar. This is either a reflection of your real cellar if you are fortunate enough to have one or your wine wish list. The second feature, tastings, allows you to give your own reviews of wines and assign a score. This application is at a very early stage and should build out a few more features. I would like to see an aggregate rating for each wine, top rated wines, new wines and more. There are a lot of features that could be added to this to make it better but it is definitely a great start. If you are a wine enthusiast then I highly recommend that you go check out the WineBeagle application. Any chance of an acquisition Gary?