This evening Venturebeat published a story which essentially suggests that Facebook is preparing to kill all viral channels. The effect would be dramatic, possibly killing off those developers that don’t invest in large ad campaigns to drive installs. In theory this would also drive up the cost of advertisements and boost Facebook’s revenue to the extent that top developers can afford paying top dollar for installs … the majority can’t though.
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Back when Facebook first released the “live feed” a few months ago, many users noticed that the feed was not really in real-time. Previously, FriendFeed was the only service that could display real-time feed display. However now that Facebook acquired FriendFeed, they’ve also figured out how to actually make the feed real-time. While they may not be using the FriendFeed technology for this, it’s a great upgrade.
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It was only a matter of time. A minority of Facebook users simply hate change and this time around it’s no exception. Over 1 million people have joined the Facebook group “CHANGE FACEBOOK BACK TO NORMAL!” While a joke group “I AUTOMATICALLY HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK HOME PAGE” now has over 19,000 members, it’s clear that the jokesters are among an even smaller minority. I guess that’s how it always goes!
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Over the weekend we started receiving tips about a new hire at Facebook’s D.C. office but as of today, we’ve found out that the new hire is Andrew Noyse, who was most recently at the National Journal. This is the third employee following Adam Conner and Tim Sparapani. While Facebook has a relatively small presence in comparison to Google, the company continues to expand and as the site matures, one would only expect its D.C. presence to expand as well.
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This morning Facebook announced “a new version of the Share button with a live counter, and opened up the analytics associated with sharing on Facebook so that developers can measure engagement and view the number of shares, likes, and comments made on content.” This is a massive announcement from Facebook as it will open up a whole new set of opportunities for developers focused on aggregating social content from around the web.
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Over the past couple days a relatively substantial number of users have been complaining about Facebook’s upgraded suggestions feature for occasionally suggesting they reconnect with dead friends. It’s obviously an extremely touchy subject and something that many users have been flat out offended by. The company is now suggesting that anytime a user receives a suggestion to connect with someone who has passed away, that the user fills out the deceased form.
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Just over a month ago, ex-Facebook platform program manager announced that he was leaving the company to pursue new opportunities. That new opportunity appears to be over at Twitter as he tweeted about the new move earlier this morning. Given Josh’s extensive knowledge of Facebook’s strategy and product development process, this is most definitely a big hire for Twitter.
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Facebook users know how addictive the site is but how has the company been able to continuously attract new users? The primary way Facebook has been so effective at growing is that they enable users to import all of their contacts via email. It’s become the standard tool for instantaneous growth however many companies fail to get it right. Facebook however has mastered the art of the “viral loop” and there is a lot to be learned from the company’s success.
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Last week was another busy week for Facebook. Of most significance was that Facebook rolled out a new homepage toward the end of the week. As I wrote over the weekend, the response has been mixed as users adjust to the automatically filtered News Feed. There are also a number of other stories this week related to Bing, Farmville, an upgraded giftshop and more.
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When the new Facebook homepage launched yesterday, most people immediately noticed the change to the stream however there was another upgraded feature: profile suggestions. For some time now Facebook has included a progress bar which states how much of a user’s profile has been completed. Now whenever you view profile suggestions you’ll also see suggestions for you to encourage your friends to become more engaged.
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