It makes a lot of sense that the company would begin displaying more ads considering that users are scrolling further down the page on many applications and on profiles that contain more content. This is a pretty good way for the company to try increasing click-thru rates. While it’s not definite that this will accomplish their goal of generating more clicks, common logic would suggest it will.

The company has been doing an increasing number of ad tests over the past couple months including the addition of video ads which have shown up on the homepage with increasing regularity. It’s a small change but it has the potential to boost their revenue. Unfortunately we can’t yet take a look at the company’s quarterly earnings report since they aren’t public, once they are, we will definitely enjoy looking forward to how these changes impact the company’s bottom line.

New account creation lets you make a new account directly from your BlackBerry, and you can also access and manage your Facebook phone book. This includes the ability to view your friends’ phone numbers, publish your phone number, and request phone numbers. This is an important feature as it allows users to tie in phone numbers from Facebook straight into their BlackBerry contact lists.

As birthday reminders have proven to be one of the most useful applications of a Facebook account, it’s no surprise that the new version 1.5 has a birthday and BlackBerry calendar link, automatically importing and linking your friends’ big day to your phone’s calendar. This useful calendar integration goes for Facebook events as well, with multi-color differentiation for both birthday and event markings on the calendar. Need an additional reminder for birthdays and events? This can be set up as well.

With a major highlight of Facebook for BlackBerry version 1.5 being the furthered integration into the Facebook network and BlackBerry mobile device, there are some concerns that come to mind, considering the initial issues that arose for the first Facebook for BlackBerry release last year. Too much integration in an un-modified manner led to some overrun applications on the BlackBerry, as Nick experienced on his own handheld device.

Yet given Facebook’s involvement with the development of the BlackBerry version of the popular social network, as well as previous experience and the seemingly minimal leaps that the new version 1.5 features will offer in comparison to the first version, such BlackBerry malfunctions seem to be an unlikely occurrence. It’s also important to note that Facebook for BlackBerry version 2.0 is also reported to be in the works. According to crackberry.com, Facebook for BlackBerry version 2.0 is slotted for release later on next year.

Once you’re able to add content, however, the process is fairly simple. Videos can be uploaded directly, and images can be imported from your Facebook albums. While the image import is convenient, having an image upload would broaden the amount of photos that could be shared to the application.  And the lack of a video import option appears to be part of CheckMyCampus’ business model, as original content is requested, and ads are placed on the CheckMyCampus video player.

Aside from the various features on CheckMyCampus, the only major concern I have is the type of content that could be shared through this application. Could there be a downside to college students showing videos of beer pong, and talking about getting hammered while watching the game? Though most college students hit the legal drinking age while in school, there are those that may concerned about the underage students in college, as well as the high school students viewing content on this app.

Nevertheless, a first-hand perspective of college life wrapped nicely in a Facebook application is actually quite helpful, as the real-life ramifications of a given campus are often the true deciding factors for a high school student picking a college.  Having a physical extension of CheckMyCampus, such as organized groups on various campuses for setting up interviews and tours, could become a potential avenue for growth as well.

If you enjoy the application, go vote for Check My Campus.

This morning I had the privilege to sit in on a panel for the Washington, D.C. Economic Partnership, in which everybody in the room was excited about two things: the new administration’s full embrace of technology, and how social technology is transforming the political realm. It is no longer required for a group of people to get together in a room and make change happen.

Instead individuals can now create groups on social networks (especially Facebook) and the ideas of those groups spread virally. In a globally interconnected world, we all learn from each other and in the case of Oscar Morales, who created the group which led to the protest against the FARC, we have no doubt learned some valuable lessons.

Inspired by this change, “Facebook, Access 360 Media, Columbia Law School, Google, Howcast, MTV, YouTube, and the U.S. Department of State are bringing leaders of 17 pioneering organizations from 15 countries together with technology experts next month for the first-ever conclave to empower youth against violence and oppression through the use of the latest online tools. ” The event is called the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit.

We are in the midst of a tectonic shift as the barriers between government and citizens are eliminated, and this new administration will be part of leading the charge. Check out the video below to learn more about the FARC protest via Facebook, or go learn more about the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit.

Image of FARC Protest taken by AP and provided by the BBC

One of the biggest challenges for Facebook has been the proliferation of what could be subjectively described as less than useful applications. For example, the platform still continues to have an issue with simple quizzes such as “What kind of person do you attract?” Also there has been a revival of last year’s successful Snowball Fight! application. There is arguably not much value to throwing snowballs at other users but over 314,000 active users in the past month have participated in the fun.

So what exactly makes for a good application? According to Facebook’s integration point checklist, there are 12 important components:

1. Applications should not surprise or deceive users.
2. Email should be used to notify users of time-sensitive or user-requested application activity in their off-Facebook email inbox.
3. Requests should only trigger action if a user responds.
4. User-to-user notifications should be social, include both the sender and recipient, and should not request users to take action.
5. Application-to-user notifications should be relevant to and targeted toward a user.
6. News Feed stories should accurately describe a user’s action and full stories should come from high-user investment activities.
7. Publisher is leveraged to provide rich content to user profiles and reflects the user’s intent and expectations.
8. For tabs, Facebook has been a bit more broad and suggests tabs should “prominently and predominantly show information about the user”. Instead of using the tab as an alternative to the application, let the user share information about themselves.
9. The application information section should only show information directly related to the user.
10. Profile boxes should be compelling given that the user has entered enough information for it to be displayed.
11. Message attachment button text should begin with a verb and make it clear what the attachment will be.
12. Application should enable users to report inappropriate user-generated content and the application owner should respond to reports of inappropriate content.

One interesting component about the application verification program is that developers must have their application reevaluated every 12 months. The benefits of becoming a verified application have not been articulated by Facebook yet aside from a promotional badge and “increased visibility”. Specifics have not been provided in regards to what exactly increased visibility means.

Students and non-profits can receive a discount on the verification program fee and being accepted to the program will also result in discounts to the f8 developer conference. If you’d like more information regarding the program, you can go read about it here.

One downfall for Socialfly’s current system is that it still requires a level of self-initiated updating to the Socialfly system.  Who’s going to remind me to do that? Offering remote input options, such as email or SMS submission, would allow users to send Socialfly a friend-specific reminder request if I’m not logged into Facebook, or even if I’m on the go.

Another upcoming Socialfly feature will be a ratings-like ability to mark the priority level for tracked friends, which, if automated to any degree, could be somewhat similar to Skydeck’s “real social network” concept that determines importance based on the levels of ongoing communication.  Socialfly will also layer in a Timer addon, which will allow you to indicate how often you’d like to be reminded to get in touch with particular friends.

As Facebook has been adding more functionality to the news feed, such as the option to see varying amounts of information pertaining to one friend or application, I imagine many of Socialfly’s features can be layered into Facebook’s native news feed.  Being a potential winner of the fbFund makes me think that Socialfly and its useful relationship maintenance tools would make an attractive acquisition for Facebook, should Facebook ever decide to acquire an application.  Otherwise, any duplication of Socialfly’s features that Facebook does add to the news feed could eventually render Socialfly an unused application, which is becoming a real fear for apps like BirthdayAlert.

If you are a fan of the Socialfly application, go vote for Socialfly via the fbFund application.

FriendFeed, the popular activity aggregation tool, makes sure to publish all of your activities and then provides a filter of your network’s activities based on a number of factors. Facebook performs a similar service and when you view your main news feed on the Facebook home page, this is a highly filtered set of news stories. The reason that Facebook limits application feed activity makes sense, they want to filter out application spam.

Facebook already filters out hundreds of stories daily and display the ones that they believe are most important based on their custom algorithm. The news feed filter is what’s of most value for Facebook and as such they should accept as many stories as possible so that they can improve their story filtering algorithm. This would also benefit applications as they get to publish all of a user’s activities.

How would Facebook be able to verify that a user took an action? Easy, Facebook simply needs to verify that some sort of request variable has been posted from the previous page. I believe they already do this for many of the API calls which currently have restrictions. Do you have any problems with news feed spam? Would you benefit from having more stories published about your activities?

As Caroline Waxler points out, Garfield starts the article with “I was told not to expect a human whirlwind, but when Mark Zuckerberg walks into the room there is barely a breeze.” That’s only the beginning. The reporter drops little insults about Zuckerberg throughout the article. Rather than rehashing each insult, I’ll let you read the article but suffice it to say, Garfield isn’t too kind in his take on Zuckerberg and Facebook.

The media’s fascination with Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook is not surprising. Microsoft invested in the company at a $15 billion valuation and the company continues to have a soaring user base which has surpassed 120 million users. The tone of the article is pretty clear: how can this less than intimidating 24-year-old be running one of the largest and rapidly online media sites in the world?

One thing that Garfield highlights that I partially sympathize with is Zuckerberg’s fascination with “sharing”. If you’ve heard Mark speak at conferences around the country (and world), you would have heard about Facebook’s mission of helping the world share with each other. After you hear it enough, you realize that sharing is caring and Facebook is all about it.

Why is message so simple? Well do you think Zuckerberg is going to tell you about all the internal monetization tests the company is running or about usage trends? Definitely not and if I was running a company like Facebook I’d spend a ton of time playing with all the data which rests at my fingertips. I would guess that many people working at the company are the same way and while it may be one of Zuckerberg’s favorite things to do, he can’t talk about it with journalists.

As such the message is always the same: “Facebook is about making it easier for people to share information with their friends.” Sounds good to me! Now we have to wait and see what monetization solution the company comes up with. Hopefully that comes along soon.

Mark Zuckerberg photo by Phil Fisk for The Guardian

I hadn’t even noticed this application until it showed up on my radar for being one of the fastest growing applications on Facebook (as pictured below). I went to check it out and I’m surprised that the application currently has less than 4,000 monthly active users. Then again, the application doesn’t really leverage many of Facebook’s social features.

While the application doesn’t leverage all Facebook’s social features, there is at least a wall for each video that lets users have a conversation. One thing about this application which was slightly annoying is that the songs are censored to remove curse words. That makes sense though considering you can embed the videos anywhere on the web.

One thing lacking from this application is the ability to post videos to your friends profiles. That would be a pretty amazing feature and would instantly make this a viral application. While they are missing a few features, a pretty slick feature is the application’s playlist. Rather than clicking on each individual video you can add your favorite videos to a playlist and play them in one stream.

This is similar to MySpace music which gives users a custom playlist. The only thing left for this application to add is a link to purchase the song you are listening to and it would be a great MySpace Music substitute. If you’d like to go browse MTV’s library of more than 16,000 music videos, go check out the MTV music videos application.

Recently there has been a continued drive toward finding the right solution online. Causecast.org and numerous other sites are all taking a shot at changing the world through social networks but Causes is the only one that has experienced massive growth and has grown to levels previously unreached by sites looking to do good.

Conspiracy Theories and Controversy

If you’ve been following the impact of the new design on Facebook and the rapid growth of Causes to be come the leading application, you’d probably also know about the controversy surrounding the application. Causes and iLike have been the only applications selected to be part of Facebook’s “Great Apps” program which grants both applications access to additional viral channels and an increased number of daily invites for users.

The result was massive growth (as pictured below). On September 16, the application had just over 3 million monthly active users but within just two months, the application ballooned to over 18.2 million active users and the growth doesn’t appear to be slowing. If you are looking for conspiracy theories, Causes would be a great place to search.

Sean Parker, co-founder of Causes as well as numerous other infamous startups (Napster, Plaxo, etc) has had a historically tight relationship with Mark Zuckerberg. He even served as President of the company until he supposedly got in trouble for a drug incident. Whatever took place, there is clearly a benefit to having friends in high places.

Causes is honestly working to do good though regardless of how they got to be so successful. When I spoke with Sean Parker at f8 earlier this year, he emphasized the company’s commitment to finding the best way to incentivize users to contribute to Causes for good. Even if you are into conspiracy theories, there is no doubt that doing good is a naturally viral activity and Parker’s tight relationship with Facebook is not the only reason for their success.

Doing Good Online is Still Unsolved

Even for Causes, generating money or action for causes is a substantial challenge. The top cause on the application, “Support The O Campaign for Cancer Prevention”, has almost 4 million members but has raised just over $75,000. While $75k is nothing to sneeze at, one would imagine that raising millions of dollars with millions of active users shouldn’t be so hard.

Other sites like Kiva.org have developed creative models for generating money for causes but it’s still extremely difficult despite the countless attempts at generating more money. Perhaps raising money shouldn’t be the only goal, perhaps inspiring others into action is a better model. The only problem with that is there is no accountability.

What creative solutions have you seen for doing good online? What are the most successful ones you’ve seen?