Archives: April 2009

It was only a matter of time before ad networks began popping up for Facebook public profiles. Earlier today a commenter notified us of a new ad network: Status Plug. The service lets advertisers promote their product or service through targeted public profiles. Best of all, the published content can be video, audio, images, and links. If Facebook completely opens up their public profiles API, this ad network could theoretically become a direct competitor to Facebook’s internal ad network.
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Today Facebook will officially announce the opening of their stream API. According to the soon to be published blog post, “In addition to the Activity Streams interface, the Open Stream API includes robust new APIs called stream.get and stream.publish and new FQL tables that enable you to directly access the stream.” The new services leverage the emerging Activity Streams standard.
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Last week Katie Couric decided to ask Facebook users about their thoughts on Obama’s first 100 days in office. The reward for users? The possibility of having their video clip used in a live webcast on Wednesday. There has been a decent response so far, with around 20 – 25 submissions in the past day. I took the time to watch some of the responses, many of which are pretty entertaining (I’ve included a video of the responses below).

This isn’t the first time that internet users have been asked to voice their political opinions. Back in 2007, the first YouTube debates were held and in 2008 the first ever Facebook Debates took place. Both events were a step toward real-time interaction with the audience although there is still a filtering process to ensure offensive content doesn’t get on air.
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We’ve been saying that Facebook is expected to open up access to the feed for a while now and it appears that tomorrow is the day. Last week we were invited to a Monday afternoon developer cocktail hour at Facebook during which the announcement is expected to take place. This evening Jessica Vascellaro wrote about the expected announcement stating core parts would be opened, “namely the information that appears in the stream of updates on users’ homepages and profiles.”
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Earlier today Facebook turned on a feature to let users receive text updates from public profiles, the same way that Twitter users can receive mobile updates from specified profiles. It’s a small change but for brands it adds a lot of potential. Mobile broadcasting is a huge feature for companies that are looking to reach out to fans directly.
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A new app powered by Buddy Media is for the Sports Illustrated Golf Group. It’s called SI GOLFNation. The application is a way for golfers to track their own progress and connect with each other. SI GOLFNation is also designed as a way for the Sports Illustrated Gold Group, which includes Golf Magazine, GOLF.com and SI Golf Plus, to connect with golfers as well.
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Today MySpace has annoucned that Owen Van Natta, the ex-Chief Operating Officer of Facebook has been appointed the role of MySpace Chief Executive Officer. It’s approximately a year and two months after leaving Facebook and one has to wonder, did Owen Van Natta have a non-compete? He clearly has substantial competitive intelligence and while he may not know the latest information from inside Facebook, he at the least has deep insight into the way the organization functions.

The announcement comes as no surprise given that MySpace has been leaking the information for the past few days, but now that it’s confirmed it will be interesting to see what comes of this. MySpace would most likely not hire Van Natta if they expected a costly legal battle with Facebook. At this point it appears to settle many old scores as Mike Arrington writes.
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While Facebook applications are known for flashy ads that will use dirty tricks to get users to click on them, Facebook public profiles have been able to avoid having advertisements placed on them. According to AdAge article yesterday, public profiles are no longer virgin territory for sponsors. Us Weekly has successfully sold sponsorship to State Farm on their public profile.

So is the beginning of a greater trend? Read more

With the new Facebook terms of service ready to be passed, many are practically oblivious to the fact that the Facebook Governance vote ever took place but some of them may become aware once Facebook is no longer available to them. One statement in the latest Facebook terms has a few Iranians concerned, that they may no longer be able to use the site, even though Iran is no longer blocking Facebook.
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Facebook’s Governance vote ends today and it appears as though they will fall short of the 60 million votes they were hoping to attract, attracting around 650,000 votes. Last week I suggested that the odds of the vote working was next to nothing. That doesn’t mean Facebook didn’t make a noble effort to attract the votes. Facebook actually made a substantial investment in attracting users.
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