Archives: January 2008

Late last night I got to wondering where the web has gone in the past fifteen years. I am one those that grew up interacting with the web. While it began with bulletin board systems for me, followed by Compuserve and then AOL, the way that I and millions of others were connecting was forever changed. Then when Friendster launched in 2002, social networking was brought to the forefront. Something else was also taking place behind the scenes of online networking.

Email had gone mainstream over a decade prior to the rise of social networking. As many began to realize, email was broken but social network messaging systems were nothing better. As we register for one site after the other, we search for new ways to interact with the goal of easing the burden of excess connections. There is no way I can possibly get through my daily routine and filter through all my email and still manage to maintain a living. Then again, I am also over-ambitious and perhaps bite off more than I can chew on a regular basis.

Whatever the reason is for the messaging burdens within my life, I know that millions of others are now experiencing the exact same thing. Last night I began to wonder, how on earth can I devise a more effective system for filtering all of my messages. My conclusion involved Facebook’s recently added friend grouping feature. If you have read the book “Never Eat Alone” by Keith Ferrazzi, you will most definitely remember Keith’s obssession with prioritizing the various contacts in his life.

Even his family members had a rating of importance on a scale of 1 to 10 (I’d imagine his family members ranked as a 10). If you think about it, you could rank absolutely all of your social connections based on their level of personal importance just as Keith did. This is where Facebook’s friend grouping feature becomes so useful. If you could automatically assign a level of importance to each of your friend groups, you could theoretically generate a simple messaging filter that groups your messages more effectively.

Once you read through all of your high priority messages (from high priority individuals) you can postpone responding to lower-priority messages until a later date. Perhaps you could outsource these messages to an offshore virtual assistant just as Tim Ferris does. This is just one solution but ultimately most of you will eventually face the same challenges that I am discussing if you aren’t facing it already. Someone is going to have to come up with a better solution for filtering my messages and doing so based on the strength of my connection with a person would surely be an efficient way to do it.

What do you think? Is it possible to leverage your custom ranked social graph for filtering email? Will Facebook upgrade their messaging system to make filtering more efficient? I could see Facebook serving as a sort of intermediary that filters and redirects all of my email based on my connections.

Today, Facebook announced a partnership with Amazon to provide instant scalable solutions to Facebook application developers. The new partnership appears to be nothing more than a marketing agreement. In addition to receiving scalable solutions, developers also have access to tutorials and preloaded S3 files that make it easy for them to learn how to integrate with the new services.

The primary scalable solutions competitor in the market right now is Joyent who is currently offering free hosting for applicaition developers. This is in hopes that once their application grows beyond a certain size they will upgrade to a premium service. Aside from that there are few options for scalable solutions and instead developers must opt for traditional hosting resources and scale as needed.

When a Facebook application gains significant traction it can be challenging for developers to rapidly adapt and shift hosting resources while also making improvements to their application. As a result, Amazon’s S3 service combined with their EC2 service provide an excellent solution so developers can focus on application development rather then be concerned with the issue of overloading their servers.

Have you found any other scalable hosting solutions for your applications?

Seriously, I have spent countless hours over the past few days trying to find cool applications as one email after the other comes into my inbox asking for an application review. I have also spent time browsing through the application directory. Just yesterday I checked out two applications in particular expecting to write a story about them but once I installed the applications I was thoroughly disappointed.

The first offender was the OnTrack application. This application press releases states the application is “a highly effective goal and project management Facebook application, is publicly launching today in an attempt to make the social operating system as useful as the computer operating system.” Wow! This sounds like it may just be that golden application that I have long spoken of. Unfortunately, it is not. You add the application and try to create a project and are immediately prompted with “You have no more credits and don’t have at least 20 friends to invite, so you can buy a credit for $0.99.”

What?!?!? The most useful application on Facebook is trying to force me to invite users before using the application. While I understand why the application developers thought that this would be useful for getting more users, it is definitely not something that I suggest high quality applications use when launching their app. This one had the potential to be good but it ended up flopping

For those of you interested in more discussion about forced invites there has been a pretty active discussion on the Facebook developer forum over the past few days. The second offender that ended up being the catalyst for this post was the blogonize application. At first glance, this application appears to be the first effective blogging application that I have seen so far.

Given the popularity of MySpace blogs, I figured this could have a significant impact on Facebook profiles. In theory, blogs could be publicly accessible. I installed the application and the first thing I was prompted with was to enter my Blogonize login. What?!?!? I seriously had high hopes for this application and yet again I am disappointed. Honestly, the Bloggonize people have a pretty slick looking website and they may have a really nice platform but unfortunately this is one restriction that I won’t get past.

Word to the wise: don’t place restrictions on applications that prevent people from using it. I wish there were people that could argue against this that will post on my blog but I have a feeling those that this model is working for will choose to remain silent.

A very smiley futures trader, Jérôme Kerviel, got his 30-seconds of fame today on the homepage of the Wall Street Journal earlier today. Jérôme was able to pull off one of the largest cases of trader fraud ever, amount to a whopping $7.2 billion loss for Société Générale SA. Rather than focusing on the details of what went down I’ll instead point out that the rogue trader has a Facebook profile that may provide clues.

While the profile is relatively empty, it does include a few of his friends at the firm that would be good to approach. Then again for $7.2 billion I’m sure the bank has an entire army of investigators looking into the accusations. Want to find someone’s associates and help bring an end to a case? Go view their Facebook profile or in some cases their MySpace profile. While profiles can be used to determine information about a criminal after they committed a crime, they can also be used to predict future actions.

After viewing the Frontline documentary, “Growing up online” yesterday, I began to wonder if one day we will have automated algorithms for analyzing Facebook profiles and determining if those individuals are likely to participate in self-destructive or criminal behavior in the near future. Following a slew of suicides related to online bullying, one would imagine that there may eventually be tools that can be used to predict the behavior of individuals on the site.

This walks a fine line though and makes me think of the movie Minority Report and the concept of arresting individuals prior to them engaging in future behavior. While it isn’t currently happening, there is technology that has been developed to perform these types of activities and those technologies are improving daily. Do you think it’s a good idea to use social network profiles to predict future behavior?

Application pages got a serious upgrade last night. Now, not only can you add an application but you can also become a fan of that application enabling you to post reviews and join the discussion board for that application. It is now possible to also add application to your application about page (yes … you can put applications within applications). The new changes are significant for application developers.

Suddenly application about pages have become increasingly promotional and you can customize your pages beyond an image and text about your application. In addition to receiving an upgrade to the about page, applications will now have improved statistical information. The new statistics resemble the Facebook pages statistical information but provide even more detailed data regarding ads, removes and blocks of your application.

By default, the reviews application is now added to your application about page and cannot be removed. I have a funny feeling that Facebook may eventually use these reviews as a method for displaying “highest rated applications.” This will make the application directory even more efficient for browsing. Facebook is rapidly improving upon their platform and have defined themselves as the leader in social platforms. There are definitely changes that still need to be made and it appears as though Facebook is dedicated to making those changes.

Are you an application developer? How will the changes effect your applications?

As Caroline McCarthy has posted, Facebook is in the process of translating their site into multiple languages. The first site screenshot of Facebook in Spanish is displayed below. Don’t expect to see the new versions right away though. As Caroline points out, Facebook is holding off on switching on the new versions until they have gone through the voting process. This will prevent the site from having spammers or other virtual misfits from playing games with the Facebook translation process.

As has been reported elsewhere, Facebook is using a crowdsourcing model for site translation opting to let the users translate it rather than paying translators. Is there really that much to translate on Facebook? Apparently. Perhaps Facebook is just lazy though. They do let people program on their own platform rather than program all the applications themself. Facebook could have taken the time to build a sheep throwing application but they have avoided the childs play for the time being.

The first translations will be available by the end of the first quarter hopefully and then Facebook is well on its way to world domination! Leveraging the crowdsourced translation model is extremely smart though because if all goes well with the first few languages, Facebook will be able to immediately translate into all the other languages in an extremely short amount of time.

While I won’t be spending much time on the German version of Facebook (or any other language for the most part), Facebook is hoping that millions of users worldwide continue to flock to their site once it has been transalted. Facebook may be able to take on a number of other social networks in a relatively short amount of time if all goes well.

Jonathan Zittrain, a Professor of Internet Governance and Regulations, at Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, has just posted an interesting piece on the dangers of Facebook. This isn’t your typical piece about the woes of information security but instead how application development on sites like Facebook are really hurting the future of software development.

Jonathan writes how many young developers are moving away from creating code and programs that run on stand alone computes and developing widgets or web applications. We all know the value of a good widget and the inherent value of combining them with social networks. But have we thought about the consequences.

Think about it like this: You create an application that somehow connects people over the internet and their cell phone. This application uses Facebook as a springboard to launch your widget on a computer. For some reason Facebook feels your program takes away from their market share and they shut you down.

All of your work, all of your contacts, all of the connections you have made are now completely locked up with no way of retrieving them. Your application, with all of its functionality and purpose, is at the mercy of a large corporation that you have no real connection with.

What if Facebook suddenly closed their doors and said ‘No More Apps!” I am just as certain as you that Facebook would crumble, but you see the point don’t you. All of your development, marketing and connections are at the mercy of a privately held company and they can do what they want.

As social platforms continue to change developers and application users are going to have to find a way to balance their wants and needs with the simple fact that all of their efforts fall under the control of a company that can change the rules as it goes along.

Is anyone else out there worried that our development efforts are actually in the hands of people that we have little to know interaction with? I know big brother is a representation of the government, but I think the headline drives the point home. Who really is in control of your applications?

If you hadn’t noticed, there have been a number of people investing in Facebook since they were given a $15 billion valuation by Facebook. This could potentially include a significant investment by Nokia as was reported earlier this week. So why on earth are all these companies and wealthy individuals trying to invest in Facebook at such ridiculous valuations? Hooman Radfar, CEO of Clearspring, has shared his thoughts on this and a lot of it makes sense.

Part of Hooman’s master plan is for Facebook to purchase Powerset or Hakia, both early-stage search engines that are trying to master the natural language search market. For the most part, the plan appears to be how to build the next Google. Creating the “people search engine” would generate a lot of press but I’m not sure how much value there is for placing ads next to people’s names versus ads next to targeted keywords.

Regardless, of search, I think Facebook is going to really turn up the revenue dial with the launch of their upcoming payment platform. Rather than focusing simply on search, Facebook can put a lot of effort into building the social shopping platform that many have dreamed of. Facebook would get most of their value out of having the most accurate representation of the real-world social graph. I would argue that Facebook and LinkedIn are the current leaders in that space.

While it wouldn’t necessarily increase Facebook’s revenue, one thing I would like to see done in the near future is the addition of a search feature within the Facebook inbox. Right now I have absolutely no way to sort through my messages and it is becoming increasingly ridiculous to manage. In regards to valuation I think Hooman outlines one route that Facebook could take. For the time being, I don’t think acquiring search engine is anywhere on the horizon.

Do you think Facebook will eventually start to rake in billions of dollars?

Marshall Kirkpatrick has posted that Microsoft will be joining the Data Portability work group. Marshall and the Read/Write/Web team appear to be huge advocates of this work group. I am a huge advocate myself even though there are more questions then answers. It appears that 2008 is rapidly shaping up to be a ground-shifting year in regards to data portability. Just last week Yahoo announced that they would begin supporting OpenId as a login standard.

Read more on the Social Times

A new Facebook application called Fuser lets you view all of your MySpace comments and messages from within Facebook. I previously reviewed a similar application that imports your Myspace profile and this one isn’t much different. The application loads a java application that automatically logs in to MySpace and scrapes all of your content. The main problem is that I can’t send my messages from within this app.

I have to be honest though, I don’t have any messages to send on MySpace but I’m sure there are Facebook users that do. For those individuals that would have a need to send MySpace messages, this application is not for you. This appears to be one of those applications that have a great idea but don’t go through the effort to complete the task. I know that it’s programatically possible to create an application that sends messages via other social networks but this company chose not to.

Then again, sending messages through various social networks from an external application is most likely a violation of the terms of service. As was the case when Robert Scoble got kicked off of Facebook for testing out the Plaxo contact import tool. Whatever the case, Fuser lets you take a look at your MySpace messages and wall posts but not respond. I think this application does not reach its full potential. If for some reason you would like to view but not respond to Myspace messages, go grab the Fuser application.