Socialsama

Michael Stelzner interviews Jesse Stay to great effect.  Essentially, I agree with Jesse about the benefits of FB connect.  An important point that often is hidden is the impact FB connect can have on existing web sites – it can really obviate the need for adding tools for social networking to a corporate site.  I can see an argument for them, but I think it really threatens the business of say Kick Apps or Leverage Software.

More at the link – check it out!

Well, Facebook, it’s about time.  ‘Course this is the usual type of action with Facebook. Introduce some poor interface along with a major change(s), receive massive dissatisfaction from the user base, probably sell some stuff to advertisers, then roll back a fraction of the major changes with some new functionality.

Amazing to me that Facebook keeps getting away with this.  Do they ever stop?

Will FB get $2B in rev in 2010?  That would be something like 4-5x growth over the past year.  Unless it is mostly Zynga and by extension the text spam companies paying it (and by extension you Farmville players), I am not seeing it.  But the WSJ says its possible (from TechCrunch).

Oh and Kincaid reports on this other nugget:

Well how about that.  Good for CoTweet.

I think this combo actually makes perfect sense.  I could also have seen a DemandMedia or Adobe or Yahoo scooping them up.  I wonder what other companies are like CoTweet running around…

Facebook money… facebook’s way of making money.  Annoyed by Facebook applications?  Hoping FB does something to curb their ubiquity on your stream?  Well, don’t look now but Facebook’s incentives just got twisted.  By taking a cut of the applications through Facebook Credits, FB will have every reason to make sure high performing apps make it in front of the most people.  And this revenue stream I understand.  So is Facebook ultimately a massively multiplayer online game system?  I’d say yep.

Seems the past few days I have been hounded by Facebook spam, and not just the type from Farmville or Mafia wars requiring more manure or glocks (am I even saying that right).  Back in the day, MySpace and Friendster both didn’t have any of this… then it was all they had (but I sure thought all those friendly ladies were really interested in me, especially when my only photo was a picture of the earth from space).  In my view, the spambots were the start of the end for those sites.  Now, Facebook seems to be catching them relatively quickly, so maybe they can prevent the takeover.  But I wonder how much of their growth is real and what the spambots will do to the current user base.

Oh and sorry for the spotty posting.

So InsideFacebook and Allfacebook.com are continuing to tout facebook’s growth and in some cases the relative stability of monthly active users for social applications as evidence that the new redesign has only meant good things for app developers, facebook, and the world in general. However, as I have mentioned before, the only applications which have benefitted from these changes are the quiz apps which I guess were already making great use of the feed forms and LivingSocial which keeps making people fill out little lists (not actually all that different from the chain letter demanding 25 things about me). Great. Those apps are just wonderful.

Meanwhile, I have searched high and low for comment about app/widget developers Slide and RockYou and I haven’t seen anything since this latest redesign. The AllFacebook blog actually had a post that does mention that their apps have declined significantly in monthly active users (MAU), but then they go on to claim that since MAU across all apps are flat since the redesign, then the redesign didn’t really hurt app developers. But come on – how many more lists can I make on Facebook and give a damn? I’ll say it, since no one else seems to on the internets these days: Slide and RockYou are screwed. Kiss the $100M+ VC money in them good bye.

Facebook’s recent redesign also resulted in a number of changes to the ways applications interact with the Stream and how Fan Pages are now Pages (who does this product marketing? Dave Morin? Sorry, but this nomenclature is really difficult for the rest of the world. You know what the first thing people see when they go to www.socialagency.com? Our home PAGE. Then they navigate to other PAGES. Interestingly, the web had this system of calling everything PAGES for a few years before Facebook came along and started calling business profile listings in their system PAGES. OK – end rant. Jackasses. OK – really end rant). Now applications can’t put items into the Stream (which used to be the newsfeed which kind of exists but no one sees it…uh-oh, feel another rant coming on…holding back) without direct user interaction. E.g. to put a story on the Stream, the app must pop up a dialog which specifically asks the user to place the story. Now some might think this is better b/c now every user action that makes it to the Stream has been explicitly authorized to be there by the user. But from an application developer’s perspective, it is miserable. In the past, an application could post to the newsfeed after the user took some sort of interesting action on the app, but did not have to put a glaring popup in the user’s face. Those actions could have occurred in a variety of places in the use of the app. In my view, this change will result in 1) a gradual decline in the number of apps able to make use of forcing users to send messages to the stream, 2) more users blocking more apps from their stream entirely, 3) a reduction in meaningful app usage overall on Facebook. If the only apps that are successful are the ones that constantly exhort the user to post to their stream, and those are largely characterized as list builders and quiz apps, then fewer and fewer people will take them over time – they will just get boring (at least I hope so, b/c I really don’t care what rock band from the eighties you are – no, really I don’t – don’t do it, don’t post the results of that quiz to your stream – don’t). Ah, this post is too long now, so I don’t have room or time at the moment to get into all my thoughts on the Fan Pages -> PAGES (I have more than the screaming above), so I’ll post again shortly.

We haven’t said much about the Facebook redesign and the other changes in functionality. In short, I don’t care for the redesign. I get Twitter and the need for people to broadcast inanities at all hours of the day (I know, Twitter can be used for much more than that). But I just don’t/didn’t use Facebook in that way. Seeing what an acquaintance ate for breakfast this morning simply doesn’t start my day off the right way. I forget where I saw it, but Facebook makes a very good CRM for your friends. Great way to keep up, see the major events in people’s lives, offer condolences when warranted. And I would be willing to stay on all day to occasionally stumble upon such info. But I always found the statuses to be the least compelling aspect of the site. Now they are the most prominent. I know that Facebook has introduced all sorts of filters to block unwanted Stream spam, but frankly, since they introduced the spam to me (unlike Twitter where I have done it to myself) I am a little pissed that I have to go create a whole bunch of filters – which will likely mean that I will eventually miss one of those big life events that I was using Facebook to stay abreast of in the first place.

I think it is great for Facebook to move fast and innovate – they have to in order to make sure they don’t get eclipsed by some other service just as they overtook MySpace. But as nature shows us, not every evolutionary change is a positive one. This one is bad.

I am not the only one who has reacted this way. The following sites had plenty to say:
Facebook Haters reach a million strong

Top 10 Missing features of facebook redesign

Facebook goof cripples controversial homepage poll
There were many, many more where those came from.

As many of you know, I am a huge fan of the University of Texas Longhorns Football team.  Recently, the Longhorn’s sophomore backup center, Buck Burnette, was dismissed from the team.  Burnette posted a racial slur on his Facebook profile page about President-elect Barack Obama.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Burnette apologized and said he made a “terrible decision” to post a text message he received about Obama’s victory that contained a racial slur.

It’s an unfortunate incident for all parties involved but I not only agree with the decision to dismiss Burnette from the team but also the swiftness and process in which the decision was made. Longhorns head coach Mack Brown immediately kicked Burnette off the team for “unspecified violations of team rules”.

With the emergence of social media and its many forms of communication, controlling the message about your organization both from within and from outside your organization has become difficult. Establishing rules and business processes around your organization’s social media is essential.  Here are a few suggestions:

1. Today’s corporations and organizations need a rigorous social media engagement policy.
2. All organizations must regularly educate staff (and players in this instance) about acceptable use of social media.
3. Effective online monitoring systems must be engaged to alert organizations as to the conversations taking place about them.