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Facebook marketers and developers should check out two upcoming conferences happening in San Francisco over the next couple weeks.

The 3rd annual Widget Summit is happening Nov 3-4 at Hotel Nikito in San Francisco. Sandra Liu Huang from Facebook will be part of one panel discussion Facebook’s App Verification and Great Apps programs, as well as […]

Facebook marketers and developers should check out two upcoming conferences happening in San Francisco over the next couple weeks.

The 3rd annual Widget Summit is happening Nov 3-4 at Hotel Nikito in San Francisco. Sandra Liu Huang from Facebook will be part of one panel discussion Facebook’s App Verification and Great Apps programs, as well as “other ways Facebook applications can stand out from the crowd in the directory interface.” Several ad networks serving Facebook app developers will be present as well, including Social Media and AOL’s Platform-A. Inside Facebook users receive 10% off using discount code insidefacebook or registering here.

The 3rd SNAP Summit is happening Oct 28 at the Parc55 Hotel in San Francisco. Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga, Siqi Chen, CEO of Serious Business, Seth Goldstein, CEO of Social Media, Anu Shokla, CEO of Offerpal, Ian Swandon, CEO of Sometrics, and Andrew Chen will be presenting. Topics will focus on measuring and monetizing social media audiences. Inside Facebook readers will receive a 10% discount using discount code InsideFacebook or registering here.

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Last week Inside Facebook reported with live notes from Mark Zuckerberg’s Q&A with Ryan Carson at FOWA in London. The video has now been posted below (click here to view if you can’t see it in your feed reader).
Mark discusses Facebook’s vision for Connect, payments, changes in user behavior over the years, and more. Check […]

Last week Inside Facebook reported with live notes from Mark Zuckerberg’s Q&A with Ryan Carson at FOWA in London. The video has now been posted below (click here to view if you can’t see it in your feed reader).

Mark discusses Facebook’s vision for Connect, payments, changes in user behavior over the years, and more. Check it out.

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Mark Zuckerberg spoke here at the Future of Web Apps Expo in London earlier today in his first visit to the city in 10 years. As is usual for these PR-controlled events, there were no startling revelations today, but there were a few interesting hints. Generally, the theme of “enabling people to share” ran through […]

Mark Zuckerberg spoke here at the Future of Web Apps Expo in London earlier today in his first visit to the city in 10 years. As is usual for these PR-controlled events, there were no startling revelations today, but there were a few interesting hints. Generally, the theme of “enabling people to share” ran through most of the answers.

Here are a few highlights from Zuckerberg’s comments:

• The vision of Facebook Connect is to enable people to do on the rest of the web what they currently do on Facebook.
• There’s no firm launch date for Connect, but it’s expected to be within the next few months.
• As everyone already knows, Facebook does not want to encourage third party applications that are only interested in occupying profile space. The recent redesign has been specifically developed to encourage applications that enable sharing between users. Part of this is the prioritisation of feeds over profile boxes.
• Talk of the payment system was downplayed, and was even referred to as “the rumoured payment system.” (It’s more than a rumour, given the solicitation for developers to sign up for a beta programme last year, but obviously there’s nothing to be announced imminently.)
• Mark talked about his loose theory of a “Moore’s Law” for content sharing: the amount of sharing that goes on is growing exponentially over time.
• Asked about Open Auth, Open ID and other standards initiatives, the view expressed was very much along the lines of not having done it yet as opposed to not wanting to follow open standards at all. Mark’s view of Facebook as it stands was that “It’s more closed than we want it to be.” However, he believes Facebook’s implementation of things such as the Platform APIs and FBML are more developed than their open standard equivalents.
• Asked if he would build Facebook (or any web application) the same today as he did four years ago he said no, especially given advances in cloud computing and the availability of other sites-as-platforms.
• Despite running a multi-billion dollar company, he still goes into the code base and fixes bugs from time-to-time as a way to keep in touch with how the site is being developed and abstracted.

The views that Mark Zuckerberg expressed are very much those of a technology-focused entrepreneur, especially his vision for changing the world through developing better web applications. To some of us this may seem somewhat idealistic but it’s hard to knock the aspiration.

Moves towards more open standards and the growth of Facebook as a platform all bode well for the development community too, although I get the feeling it will remain more of an aspiration than a reality for some time to come. Whether he’d go as far as ever signing Facebook up to Open Social is probably doubtful.

As Facebook grows and, inevitably, starts needing to make money it will be interesting to see when his technical and ideological approach will yield to commercial forces within the company.

A video of the Mark Zuckerberg interview should be appearing on the FOWA video page over the next couple of days and there’s also an interview with the BBC available here.

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With all the new changes to the Facebook layout, some previously simple actions such as deleting an application became just a bit more complicated.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30922087@N05/2928015503/
On your Facebook homepage go to the bottom left-hand corner of the page where it says “Applications.” When you click on it a list of all your applications will […]

With all the new changes to the Facebook layout, some previously simple actions such as deleting an application became just a bit more complicated.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30922087@N05/2928015503/

On your Facebook homepage go to the bottom left-hand corner of the page where it says “Applications.” When you click on it a list of all your applications will pop up. Near the top of the list you have the option to ‘Edit.’

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30922087@N05/2928015515/

Once you click on ‘Edit’ you will be shown a list of all your applications. Next to each application are a set of options, Edit, About, and Remove. Click on the little ‘x’ next to ‘Remove’

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30922087@N05/2928875414/

A window will appear offering you the option to remove or block an application. If you choose ‘Remove’ it will remove the applications access to your information.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30922087@N05/2928015531/

If you choose to ‘Block’ an application it will not appear in your profile but you will still be able to access the application and the application will continue to access to your information.If you want to remove the application entirely, just click on ‘Remove’ in the pop up window. You can also click on ‘Remove’ on the Edit page and remove an application that way.

Once you have removed an application it will no longer appear on your profile, boxes, or your application list.  It’s still a fairly simple process but it takes a couple more steps than deleting an application in the old Facebook.

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For Facebook application developers also building for other social platforms, Hi5 announced today that is has officially launched OpenSocial 0.8 on the Hi5 developer platform. This marks the first major launch of OpenSocial 0.8, which has been in the making for many months.
The most interesting part of 0.8 is the addition of a RESTful API, […]

For Facebook application developers also building for other social platforms, Hi5 announced today that is has officially launched OpenSocial 0.8 on the Hi5 developer platform. This marks the first major launch of OpenSocial 0.8, which has been in the making for many months.

The most interesting part of 0.8 is the addition of a RESTful API, which will make it easier to write OpenSocial apps (this is also more similar to the way Facebook apps are built). Developers can find the full release notes here.

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This morning Venturebeat published a story about a new application being promoted by Facebook. According to Eldon, the application “invites people to pay tribute to those who have used Facebook to influence social change and contribute to a more open and connected world.” What appeared most controversial was that the application was launched […]

This morning Venturebeat published a story about a new application being promoted by Facebook. According to Eldon, the application “invites people to pay tribute to those who have used Facebook to influence social change and contribute to a more open and connected world.” What appeared most controversial was that the application was launched in German.

This, according to Eldon, suggests that Facebook is heavily invested in defeating its German counterpart, StudiVZ, which it previously failed at acquiring. I took a look at the application after reading Eldon’s post and it appears that there is no longer a German version of the application. I’m not sure what to interpret from that exactly but it definitely is a little bit odd.

The contests asks participants to submit a story 150 to 250 words in length “telling a true, compelling story about how you have used Facebook to better your life, and/or your community, and/or the lives of those around you.” Users are also encouraged to submit two or three photographs which support the story. Not quite sure that 150 to 250 words is exactly an essay but that’s neither here nor there.

“Finalists from each country will be given a Flip video camera to create a one to three minute video telling your Facebook story and supporting your initial entry.” Users from Facebook will then vote on the submissions. Facebook has yet to start promoting the application but I’d assume some sort of promotion via their blog in the coming days.

However the contest unfolds, it’s interesting to see Eldon’s interpretation of Facebook trying to compete with StudiVZ in Germany. I’m a little bit skeptical of this analysis though given that the contest did anything but single out Germany as the primary location for this contest. Just last week I wrote about Facebook promoting parties in Germany to try to increase growth.

Honestly, I think the real story here is a simple one: Facebook is launching a new campaign to promote how the site can be used globally for good. It’s a great idea and I’m interested to see the types of results produced. If you are interested in participating, check out the Facebook for Good application.

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Appssavvy, a direct sales team for Facebook and other social media app developers, announced yesterday that it has closed a $3.1 million round of funding led by True Ventures. Jon Callaghan led the investment for True. Scott Kurnit, founder of About.com, also participated in the round.
Appssavvy has built its business to date by acting as […]

Appssavvy, a direct sales team for Facebook and other social media app developers, announced yesterday that it has closed a $3.1 million round of funding led by True Ventures. Jon Callaghan led the investment for True. Scott Kurnit, founder of About.com, also participated in the round.

Appssavvy has built its business to date by acting as direct sales reps for many of the largest Facebook app developers to major brands. The company has matched up the likes of 42 Friends, Bantr, Flixster, FrozenBear, MesmoTV, Playfish and SGN with brands like adidas, Clorox, and Sony, and agencies like Carat, Horizon Interactive, Moxie Interactive, Palisades Media and Universal McCann.

Appssavvy founder and CEO Chris Cunningham says the company will use the funds to continue to grow its core business. “We have and will continue to focus on the core assets to our business model of building-out a world class sales and marketing team; establishing relationships with social media application developers and publishers, and brands and agencies; and leveraging and developing tools and technologies specific to furthering the success of social media application marketing,” he said.

As the Facebook Platforum matures, many large app developers are either building sales teams in house or hiring reps like Appssavvy to match them up with large brands. “The importance of third party applications on usage patterns is an important trend, akin to the video market a few years ago ─ we believe connecting application developers with advertisers is the next, inevitable, step for this emerging space,” Callaghan said.

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Facebook launched Microsoft Live Search integration on the public site today, showing off how users will be able to access Live Search within Facebook.
(Update: Facebook Web Search powered by Microsoft Live Search is now live again. Earlier, the push appeared to have only been temporary - Live Search integration was pulled down from the site […]

Facebook launched Microsoft Live Search integration on the public site today, showing off how users will be able to access Live Search within Facebook.

(Update: Facebook Web Search powered by Microsoft Live Search is now live again. Earlier, the push appeared to have only been temporary - Live Search integration was pulled down from the site after only a few minutes. A company blog post on the Live Search launch was also temporarily taken down.)

Here’s How It Works

When users enter queries into Facebook search, if Facebook’s look-ahead doesn’t find any matching friends, groups, pages, events, or applications, an option to “search the web” appears. The search results page shows Live Search results. As part of Microsoft’s partnership with Facebook (which includes the software giant’s $240 million investment in the company last year), Microsoft will sell the search ad inventory for Facebook Web Search.

Part of a Larger Integration?

It’s not clear if this integration is merely part of an overall integration. As Sebastian Gard of Microsoft commented last week,

Facebook is taking a very thorough approach to how they’re putting Live Search in, however - they’re not just plugging web search in like we’ve seen other social networks do.

Facebook’s Leah Pearlman said about the release,

We think there is the potential for much more and we’re working on a number of other new ways to leverage all the web has to offer.

So it looks like there is much more to come.

A New Battlefront in the Social Platform Wars

Facebook’s launch of Microsoft Live Search integration marks a new phase of the company’s increasing battle with Google. As the Facebook Platform vs OpenSocial and Facebook Connect vs Google Friend Connect platform wars evolve, so now a new battlefront is forming around search. In the very least, the Facebook integration should boost Live Search’s query volume and share of searches over time - and provide a nice boost to Facebook’s bottom line.

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This afternoon Facebook launched the web search tool that’s powered by Microsoft Live. When you search for items within Facebook’s global search box at the top of the site, you receive the option to “Search the Web” if no results show up immediately for contacts in your contact list. This is a big […]

This afternoon Facebook launched the web search tool that’s powered by Microsoft Live. When you search for items within Facebook’s global search box at the top of the site, you receive the option to “Search the Web” if no results show up immediately for contacts in your contact list. This is a big moment for Facebook. One thing I noticed is that the ads displayed are relevant to the keywords entered and not to your profile data.

I assume that’s because the advertisements in search are being powered by Microsoft. I’ve been writing consistently about how search is the future of Facebook. This is a huge step in that direction. While the search doesn’t appear to integrate Facebook and general web results, at least you can now search the web from withing Facebook.

I have a feeling that Facebook’s revenue just got a serious boost from this new search integration. I think the tool will need some refining over the coming days but this is a huge step forward for Facebook. Hat tip to Harshil Karia for giving us a heads up.

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According to a new report out from Cloudmark, 20 to 40 percent of new profiles on Facebook could be fake. Neil Cook, the European head of technology services at Cloudmark stated “once set up with a portfolio of fake profiles, virus writers encourage users to click on links to malicious sites by including them […]

According to a new report out from Cloudmark, 20 to 40 percent of new profiles on Facebook could be fake. Neil Cook, the European head of technology services at Cloudmark stated “once set up with a portfolio of fake profiles, virus writers encourage users to click on links to malicious sites by including them on postings on other users’ walls or blogs.”

This highlights the increasingly challenging battle that Facebook is facing with spammers. Facebook has been heavily invested in fighting spam since early on. There are also reports that viruses previously found on Facebook are reappearing. MySpace had serious issues with spam early on which ended up driving many users away from the sight. Bogus friend requests and messages from spammers became unmanageable for many.

Facebook is now suffering from the same challenges that plagued MySpace. This will continue to be one of Facebooks most important focuses over the coming months.

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With the US presidential elections now only four weeks away, candidates are stepping up the usual mudslinging soundbites for replay on the evening news. While that type of back and forth has traditionally alienated many voters, Facebook is doing its best to encourage civic participation by launching a voter registration campaign and enabling candidates to […]

With the US presidential elections now only four weeks away, candidates are stepping up the usual mudslinging soundbites for replay on the evening news. While that type of back and forth has traditionally alienated many voters, Facebook is doing its best to encourage civic participation by launching a voter registration campaign and enabling candidates to build Facebook pages and Facebook applications to spread their message virally through the site.

A Facebook representative told us today that the Facebook voter registration drive has signed up nearly 40,000 new voters since it launched just 10 days ago. It would take a lot of phone calls and street teams to get that many sign-ups in that short period of time!

However, perhaps more powerfully, the official campaigns, political parties and PACs are using the Facebook Platform as a way to engage hundreds of thousands more voters. Here’s a complete list of all the major political applications on Facebook, along with their usage numbers and descriptions, sorted by who authorized them.

(For those interested in digging deeper statistically, check out Inside Facebook’s 2008 Facebook Statistics on American Politics.)

McCain/Palin Campaign

• Phonebank - 3,519 monthly active users - Links to the McCain website to allow users to phonebank, or call voters, on behalf of McCain/Palin 08.
• Governor Palin - 16,618 monthly active users - Puts an image of Palin on users’ profiles and directs them to Palin’s Facebook Page.
• Yardsigns - 4,717 monthly active users - Allows you to put an image of a McCain/Palin yardsign on your profile.
• Live Events with John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin - 24,914 monthly active users - Streams videos from McCain/Palin events.
• Absentee Ballots and Early Voting - 3,557 monthly active users - Links to the McCain/Palin absentee and early voting information page.
• Pork Invaders - 18,745 monthly active users - A simple video game (similar to Asteroids) which allows players to shoot at “pork” (wasteful government spending).
• Campaign Cribs - 2,515 monthly active users - The first McCain campaign app - shows a video of the McCain campaign bus the “Straight Talk Express.”

RNC

• BarackBook - 770 monthly active users - A satricial take-off on Facebook that ties Obama to several “friends” with opposition research.

Obama/Biden Campaign

• Obama - 135,248 monthly active users - The Obama application launched at F8 and has been revised multiple times since.  It is integrated into the campaign’s back-end systems, which allows users to submit contact information, see Obama video content, and invite friends.

Catalist

• iCanvass - Catalist is a voter file company that has built several applications in conjunction with Nico Networks (which built apps for Hillary Clinton) that allow you to check your voter registration, register to vote, check your friend’s registration, etc.  The tool has been used by the Bus Project and Rock the Vote.

MoveOn

• VotePoke - 267 monthly active users - Allows users to check their voter registration status using Catalist and/or register to vote.  MoveOn made the mistake of launching this in the summer, when interest in voter registration is lowest.

Rock the Vote

• Action Center - 683 monthly active users - Uses the Catalist iCanvass app framework.
• Online Precinct - 7,945 monthly active users - Allows users to pledge to vote, invite their friends to pledge, and run an online precinct to ensure they vote.

DSCC (Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee)

• Stick it to the GOP – 446 monthly users - Allows you to make custom bumper stickers to support Democratic candidates.

It’s clear that although the McCain campaign has tried hard and created several different applications, nothing has gained traction in the same way the Obama app has. Ultimately, as we observed last week,

It’s been well documented at this point that Sen. Barack Obama is much more popular amongst Facebook users than Sen. John McCain.  As of this morning, Sen. Obama’s official Facebook page had 1.9 million supporters, compared to Sen McCain’s 540,000.

By contrast, however, Gov. Sarah Palin has a much bigger Facebook following than Sen. Joe Biden. Palin’s Page has over 400,000 supporters on Facebook, compared to Biden’s paltry 150,000. Could Palin be helping McCain eat away at Obama’s dominating lead amongst the Facebook generation?

Ultimately, given Obama’s Facebook popularity thus far, Facebook’s voter drive will register many more Obama voters than McCain voters.

…And as everyone learned in Florida, every vote counts!

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Yesterday I wrote about how brands can succeed on Facebook.  At the time I suggested that success for me personally is having an application within the leaderboard.  Commenters immediately suggested that this position was a flawed one and after thinking about it further, I agree.  The first step in launching a social media campaign or […]

Yesterday I wrote about how brands can succeed on Facebook.  At the time I suggested that success for me personally is having an application within the leaderboard.  Commenters immediately suggested that this position was a flawed one and after thinking about it further, I agree.  The first step in launching a social media campaign or an individual campaign on Facebook is defining your objectives.

Is Brand Building Important for All?

One of the primary objectives of many branded campaigns on Facebook is to simply build brand awareness. Just this morning I read about the 14 new campaigns launched by ContextOptional over the past two weeks. Yesterday I posted about Buddy Media’s strategy of appvertisements. Mike Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media, posted a response in the comments which points out the flaw in my thinking:

The applications we build for our clients are marketing programs. The applications built by the top Facebook and MySpace developers are uber-funded entertainment properties that are continually cared for, improved, tweaked and refreshed with new content and features. This takes significant resources and talent.

I agree with Mike that branded applications aren’t the same as products that development companies are building out. This doesn’t mean that branded applications are right for everybody though. Does People magazine really need to build more brand awareness? While readership is going down, I would argue that piling money into Facebook applications would not necessarily increase their avid fan base.

The challenge for the media companies is not how they make consumers more aware of their brand but how to attract the attention of consumers to their content in an attention deprived economy.

How Do You Define Success?

If we are to assume that brand building is not the only thing to be accomplished through Facebook application campaigns, what should brands use when judging success? One commenter yesterday suggested that it’s the combination of strategies (external site, Facebook application, and advertisements) which is most effective.

Another commenter suggested that even low engagement levels with their applications is still successful. This means that different companies have different standards for success. This also means that there should at least be some initial questions to answer for determining success. I’ll start it off with 3 questions to answer when determining success, feel free to add to it below:

1. What is your company looking to accomplish from exposure on Facebook? - This could be a increase in traffic to your company’s website or an increase in exposure to your brand.
2. What metrics will you use to judge success? - Is “engagement” based on time spent within a branded environment the best way to measure your success? How about the total number of unique visitors? Are pageviews important to you? How about ROI? Is it possible to increase revenue directly from a Facebook application?
3. Is this Marketing or Advertising? - Is your company looking to simply promote its brand or provide a valuable experience?

What other questions do you think should be answered? Ultimately I can’t effectively define success for all so I’d like to hear your thoughts on what success on Facbeook is to you.

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As a sign of Facebook’s growing international reach, the Facebook crowd-sourced translation tool released earlier this year is now being pushed to an increasing number of users as they log into Facebook. Many people logging in will see the one-time message like this one below:

The tool allows users to translate Facebook and many Facebook applications […]

As a sign of Facebook’s growing international reach, the Facebook crowd-sourced translation tool released earlier this year is now being pushed to an increasing number of users as they log into Facebook. Many people logging in will see the one-time message like this one below:

The tool allows users to translate Facebook and many Facebook applications into their own language through in-place editing, but to-date has not been a feature that most users are aware of.

This should also encourage more Facebook application developers to enable Translations within their applications as the number of users who are translating increases. Although implementing the translation tool within an application is not yet a completely smooth process, it can actually be quite effective. (As a personal anecdote, since building the necessary tags into my Six Degrees application it has been translated into Spanish by a total of 35 different translators, and other languages are almost complete.)

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For users and app developers, the migration from the old to the new Facebook is now complete.
The “www.new.facebook.com” domain is a thing of the past, though not without a hiccup - Facebook temporarily disabled apps.new.facebook.com a few times this weekend without notifying developers ahead of time, causing many app developers to experience drops in traffic. […]

For users and app developers, the migration from the old to the new Facebook is now complete.

The “www.new.facebook.com” domain is a thing of the past, though not without a hiccup - Facebook temporarily disabled apps.new.facebook.com a few times this weekend without notifying developers ahead of time, causing many app developers to experience drops in traffic. The DNS issues have now been resolved (pardon the pun), and everyone is back to using the standard facebook.com domain as of this evening.

The completed migration marks the end of a long saga for Facebook. October 2008 marks the beginning of the next phase in the evolution of Facebook both as a communication platform and as an application platform. I’m sure the next year will definitely be as eventful as the last!

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This evening Facebook stopped redirecting users to the URL www.new.facebook.com and has begun redirecting all users to the default www.facebook.com. The result is that the old design appears to be no longer accessible. The change in URLs has resulted in some applications breaking over the past 24 hours but most of those issues […]

This evening Facebook stopped redirecting users to the URL www.new.facebook.com and has begun redirecting all users to the default www.facebook.com. The result is that the old design appears to be no longer accessible. The change in URLs has resulted in some applications breaking over the past 24 hours but most of those issues appear to be resolved.

While there will most likely continue to be small issues due to the shift, we expect the entire shift to be finalized within the next 24 to 48 hours. While Facebook still has enabled the temporary URLs under the www.new to function as usual, users are now redirected to the default Facebook URL upon login. We are not sure if Facebook will continue to use the www.new prefix for URLs or if they will choose to use a standard 301 redirect and deprecate the prefix in the coming weeks.

While the revolts against the new profile design have amounted to millions, no single group has appeared to surpass the 3 million user mark. While substantial, it still represents less than 2 percent of users on the site. No matter what, Facebook will not let users revert to the old design. I guess this news means it’s time to officially welcome all users to the new Facebook!

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