Archives: January 2009

That’s what Kara Swisher suggests this morning. I’ve been saying for weeks now that Facebook needs to hurry up and open their status API so they can put an end to Twitter’s growth but many people are skeptical of such a situation. The second best option would of course be to acquire the company. If you put two extremely hyped companies together do you create a lot of value though?
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Just as we suspected, more scams have begun to arrive on Facebook. The latest have appeared via chat, where the scammer hacks into a friend’s account and initiates a chat conversation begging for money. The situation is always similar enough–they’re stranded in some foreign land and need money wired into their account so that they can get a return flight home.

While the channel for the scam is on the newer side, a little bit unsettling given its occurrence on Facebook, the scam’s motif is nothing new at all. And it’s Facebook’s response time that has many worried about the social network’s ability to readily handle the situation.
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After launching our updated Facebook application statistics tool, it become apparent who the real leaders of the Facebook platform are: social gaming networks. Both Playfish and Zynga dominate the platform in terms of engagement by a wide margin. While Slide and RockYou have a wider reach, the top two social gaming networks have a much higher level of engagement.
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According to a new book written by Wall Street Journal editor Julia Angwin called “Stealing MySpace”, MySpace failed to acquire Facebook for $75 million back in February of 2005. Mike Arrington, who has access to a draft copy of the book also states that toward the end of 2005, the two companies met again, at which time Mark Zuckerberg requested $750 million, nearly ten times what he previously asked for only a few months earlier.
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I’ve been playing around with our updated Facebook application statistics tool today and I noticed that Ms. Pacman has experienced a surge in popularity over the past couple days. I decided to poke around further and noticed that a number of other Pacman related applications have experienced a surge in traffic. So what explains the sudden rise in Pacman related traffic?

Well, my guess is that it isn’t related to a sudden worldwide obsession with Ms. Pacman or the original Pacman. Instead, the developers of some of these applications appear to be funneling users from other applications. When I finished playing a relatively easy version Pacman via the Pacman 2.0 application, I was immediately redirected to the Pac-man application which has also not surprisingly experienced a surge in traffic over the past couple days.
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When Facebook and CNN partnered for inauguration coverage it was a historic moment for both CNN and Facebook. CNN for the first time had tens of millions of users stream a historic moment online rather than tune into their television. For Facebook, this was the largest implementation of Facebook Connect ever. According to and article posted by Randi Zuckerberg yesterday afternoon, the site received over 2 million status updates through the CNN.com live Facebook feed.
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With millions of unemployed people out there, many are turning to social networks to assist in finding their next job position. LinkedIn has experienced a surge in traffic as people begin hunting for jobs while Facebook continues to grow, regardless of economic climate. Last night I began brainstorming and realized the potential opportunity for a large Facebook jobs application that tightly integrates into the social graph.

Every day I’ve been getting inquiries from friends who have been laid off or have expiring contracts that will not be renewed. It’s a tough time for many and Facebook has the potential to assist many of those seeking a job through the power of referrals. Theoretically a jobs application could actually reward influencers by paying them for each referred applicant, or rewarding them with successful job placements.
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A couple months ago I launched the Facebook application statistics tracker which lets you view the monthly active users of pretty much any application on Facebook. Over the past few weeks, the numbers have begun to display errors and there were a few problems. I went ahead and fixed the problems but also upgraded the application statistics tool all together.
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The Pope himself has given a blessing, of sorts, to online social networking. Pope Benedict XVI has made a statement regarding social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace as ways to foster friendships and understanding in his annual message today for the World Day of Communications. According to the Associated Press, Benedict welcomes as a “gift” new technologies like social networking sites, as they respond to a “fundamental desire” of people to communicate.

Yes, that’s one of the great things about online social networks. It enhances individuals’ ability to communicate, and all of the features offered through such social networking is a direct result of their fundamental desire to do so. The way in which social networking has manifested online very much reflects the way in which we communicate in the offline world.
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We already knew that Facebook was larger than MySpace globally, but according to new comScore numbers published by Techcrunch, Facebook is now double the size of MySpace. MySpace doesn’t seem to mind though. Quotes provided to both Techcrunch and CNet emphasize the company’s focus on monetization over growth. Facebook in contrast is infamous for their continued focus on growth despite a breakthrough revenue model.
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