This afternoon I was reading a New York Times article about improving Netflix’s Cinematch video suggestion algorithm. The article is a great overview about the benefits of using consumer activity data for commercial purposes. The more data we have about consumer activity, the more likely we are able to predict their purchase behavior. One thing that is missing from the equation, as the New York Times points out, is the ability to track consumer emotion when they are browsing the web.
In one sense, collaborative filtering is less personalized than a store clerk. The clerk, in theory anyway, knows a lot about you, like your age and profession and what sort of things you enjoy; she can even read your current mood. (Are you feeling lousy? Maybe it’s not the day for “Apocalypse Now.”) A collaborative-filtering program, in contrast, knows very little about you – only what you’ve bought at a Web site and whether you rated it highly or not.
So can’t Facebook or someone on the platform develop an application for judging your emotion based on your Facebook status? Someone once jokingly told me that Facebook can predict whether or not you will break up with your significant other in the near future based on your Facebook activity. With all that data, can’t Facebook also likely tell you what sort of emotional state you are in?
Read more
Following the actions of U.S. Facebook users isn’t a good idea in other countries, especially Croatia. Niksa Klecak, a Croatian Facebook user decided to create a group protesting the country’s Prime Minister, Ivo Sanader, after seeing the group, “
Today at 11:59 AM Pacific Time, Facebook will end voting for the second round of fbFund applications. For this pool of applications, the top five applications will win $250,000 in “non-recourse grants” to continue building upon their ideas. So far we have only had the opportunity to review 10 of the 25 applications, but there are many more great applications.
I’m not much of a hiker, but if I ever had the guts to walk on a trail, I might check out an app like 
Just earlier this week we reviewed fbFund competitor 
For the past few months Google has been filling ad inventory on Facebook applications and according to individuals on the team behind the ad sales, things have been going well. When Facebook launched their platform last year, a whole slew of new startups emerged around the social advertising space. Companies like SocialMedia, Cubics (later acquired by Adknowledge), AdParlor.com, Lookery, and others each fought for a piece of the social advertising pie. Small startups are rapidly finding that it’s not a good place to play though.
