Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: Facebook (Page 2 of 4)

What I’ve Been Doing for the Last Month and a Half…

…because I sure haven't been posting here.  Wow, I can't believe it's been 45 days!  My last post was soon after I got home from Defrag.  It's a long story.  First, I got sick right after I did that last post, coughing and hacking and generally feeling lousy, which went on for — I kid you not — four weeks!  Never had anything like that.  I think it was something I picked up on the plane.  Then, to top it off, I was really busy with new client work during this time … for BusinessCard2, VISI.com's ReliaCloud, three Skyya Communications clients, and others yet to be named — so, I was basically hunkered down at home, trying like mad to keep things moving forward. (We self-employed don't get no stinking sick days!)

Anyway, I just noticed that, although I didn't post here on my Typepad blog in those 45 days, I did post, count' em, 19 times on my Posterous blog! … pictured here in all its (semi)glorious splendor.

Posterous-GT


I remember doing a post about a year ago here explaining that I'd been gone so long because I was micro-blogging (Twittering).  You see, for us long-time bloggers, there's these huge guilt feelings we get for not blogging more often on our main blog.  So that was my excuse last year.  This year, it's Posterous that's to blame.  For me, it's a site I subtitle "somewhere in the vast expanse between his micro and macro blogging."  So, first it was short-form blogging (Twitter) that was taking me away from my long-form blogging.  Now it's, what, "medium-length" blogging?  Anyway, I find it pretty easy and non-time-consuming to post to Posterous (which I do fairly effortlessly via email). I actually use it more as a quick social-bookmarking service of sorts, when I find a valuable link — as I used to do with Delicious.

So, now you know I haven't been ignoring my contributions to the cause of online content and knowledge-sharing.  I just have too damn many places to do it!  And I've hardly backed down on my participation on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, and LinkedIn, either.  Oh, and I wrote two posts and participated in four weekly podcasts on Minnov8, too, with my colleagues there.

So, please keep following me here, there… or how about everywhere?  :-) 

Thanks, and Happy 2010!

Headed to “Graphing Social Patterns” and ETech ’08

Tomorrow morning early, I’m jumping on the 5 here in San Clemente and driving south an hour to downtown San Diego for O’Reilly’s Graphing Social Patterns conference. I’m looking forward to a great two-day program. Gspwestlogo
Here’s the main page for the Facebook Group, which 200 people for far have joined saying they’re attending, and 81 more are "maybes." The event is being held in conjunction with O’Reilly’s ETech conference, which draws an even larger crowd. It also starts tomorrow (Monday, March 3), but it goes through Thursday. This will be about the third or fourth ETech I’ve atended, including the 2007 edition, for which I wrote this Conferenza review.  It’s a geekfest of the highest order, and I’ll be attending through end of day Wednesday. So, two days GSP and one day ETech, and the evening events are common for both conferences. If you’re attending either one, I look forward to meeting.

LinkedIn’s Growth Beats Facebook’s

So you think Facebook’s growing rapidly, huh?  Well, check this out. Nielsen just released its latest ranking of the top social networks (for the month of October 2007), and it shows LinkedIn grew at a significantly faster clip than any of the top ten — even oh-so-hip darling Facebook. Of course, these numbers reflect usage at both home and work, and the latter is the traditional stronghold of professional network LinkedIn. Socntwksgrowth
But Facebook’s made no secret about expanding its user base into the adult working world, too — not just college kids passing around party pix.

What’s surprising is that, even with all the rapid — and rabid — Facebook adoption lately by us professionals (yes, I’m hooked, too), LinkedIn is growing even faster. Hipness is not everything, it seems — functionality matters, too. And LinkedIn has built up a pretty good stronghold in the professional networking/recruiting/job search space. (And you have to love founder Reid Hoffman also having a nice stake in Facebook as an early investor.)

Another reason LinkedIn may be scoring bigger growth: I’m not aware of companies banning it at work, but I certainly have heard that to be the case with Facebook inside some firms.
What’s your experience?  Should either of these sites be banned at work?  [The nerve of these employers, thinking people shouldn’t be searching for new jobs or sharing party invites when they’re supposed to be working…  :-)]

UPDATE (Thanksgiving Day, 11/22): Oh, this is too funny. GigaOM just posted Giving Thanks for…Facebook?

UPDATE (11/23): You have to love this juicy tidbit via TechCrunch UK…. Rumour: NewsCorp to Buy LinkedIn.  I think it could very well be true — I agree with one of the commenters that LinkedIn + the WSJ could be a great combo.

 

Andreessen: Any Site Can Now Be a ‘Social App’

You say you’re feeling down, bunky, because everyone seems to have a Facebook app but you?  Well, got a web site?  Then, perk up, son!  Because you are well on your way to having a social app — one that’ll actually run on a whole bunch of social networking sites that have at least as much traffic as Facebook — and maybe even on Facebook itself soon. At least that’s what Marc Andreessen, founder of social-networking platform Ning, has to say on his blog post today.

It’s all thanks to the "Open Social" spec set to be announced tomorrow by Google, which says it already has about a dozen partners, including Hi5, LinkedIn, Ning,
Friendster, Salesforce.com, and Oracle. See this Wall Street Journal story (actually dated tomorrow!) and this one in the New York Times, which was published today.

So, how can you transform your web site into an "Open Social" app?  Andreessen says it’s even easier than developing a Facebook app. He says you "just take your current HTML and Javascript front-end pages and create a version of those pages that use the Open Social API."

Andreessen believes web site owners will soon begin maintaining multiple sets of front-end pages for their web sites, in order to get "maximum distribution across the largest number of users." And he says it’s easy. They’ll have a single back-end, but multiple sets of front-end pages.  Here’s how he defines what those multiple sets will be:

• One set of standard HTML and Javascript pages for consumption by normal web browser.
• Another set of HTML and Javascript pages that use the Open Social API’s Javascript calls for consumption with Open Social containers/social networks.
• A third set of pages in FBML (Facebook Markup Language) that use Facebook’s proprietary APIs for consumption within Facebook as a Facebook app.
• Perhaps a fourth set of pages adapted for the Apple iPhone and/or other mobile devices.

"The overwhelming good news here," said Andreessen in his blog post, "is that these pages can all be served and serviced by the same back end code."

I think this "Open Social" spec is big news.  It’s something I know a lot of insiders have been been thinking about, at least in the back of their minds, since the Facebook juggernaut took off some five months ago.  Walled gardens — proprietary platforms — just don’t last on the Internet. Like my buddy PXLated said in a previous comment, "The Internet just routes around ’em."  Indeed.  Let the party begin….

UPDATE (11/1):  Marc Andreessen did another very informative blog post with a screen cast and screenshots showing how the Open Social spec can be implemented, using three actual Ning social networks as examples.

 

 

Widget Summit, Day 2: Platform Mania

So, how many platforms do we need for widget development, anyway?  And how many will survive, or thrive?  That’s surely an open question — one that will likely get answered in the next year or two. And then there’s the question of what is a widget, really?  Or "mini web app" … "social media app" … "gadget" … or whatever we call them. Or does the name really matter?

This post is my final coverage of the Widget Summit conference — specifically, the last five breakout sessions, which extended through end of day Tuesday. (All the rest of my Widget Summit coverage is here.) I thought the best sessions to catch on the second day would be those devoted to widget/web-app platforms from the majors. So, two sessions I attended were about development on (guess what?) Facebook, while the other three were on Apple’s iPhone, Microsoft’s new Popfly platform, and Google Gadgets. Here’s the way the rest of Day 2 played out, in the order of appearance:

Redmond Wants a Piece
Popfly is a new plug-in for Silverlight, Microsoft’s new Flash competitor. It’s now available on the web in private beta — and, according to Dan Fernandez, Popfly product manager and evangelist, the goal is to "democratize development." He said there’s a huge world of non-professionals using MySpace and other sites and doing some amount of HTML and Javascript to build web apps or widgets. "There are 7 million ‘pros’, but 107 million ‘non-pros’," he said.  MIcrosoft wants a piece of that. [Like they want a piece of everything else in the Web 2.0 world if they can get it, no?]  Popflyslide
"Users are the stars," said Fernandez, noting that it’s all about "embracing expression."  He mentioned a recent study that found people spend more than an hour a week changing their online profile. He showed how, with Popfly, non-pro developers can snap together different "blocks" to build an app. They’ll be able to make what he called "Popfly gadgets" for Windows Live Spaces. In the audience questions following, someone asked when the product will actually be released, but Fernandez indicated he had no idea. Another obvious question came next: "What about Adobe AIR?" To which Fernandez said, "That’s a different audience."  As in real developers. He did say that Microsoft is looking at the possibility of going open with Popfly. He also said that cross-platform support is being addressed. "Support for Mac is in the Silverlight runtime," and Linux support is (or is coming), too. [By the way, here’s some coverage of the Popfly demo at Web 2.0 Summit, which Steve Ballmer did a day or two afterwards — with Fernandez at the keyboard; he told me that morning at The Palace Hotel he was hoping his demo would work so he didn’t get shot…  🙂 ]

The Facebook Gurus Speak
Tyler Ballance of Slide is the developer of some of the most popular apps on Facebook — including Top Friends, Fun Wall, Fortune Cookie, and Famous Quotes.  He of course talked about FB’s favorite term of late — the "Social Graph" — and about the concept of "Social Utility."  Slidestats
Tylertitleslide
To develop a successful Facebook app, you need "real social interactions," Tyler said. "Helping users interact is what makes a good app."  But how about what we commonly know as widgets, other than Facebook apps?  "Little biddy things you drop on a page," as Tyler called them. Socialgraph
He said using those on Facebook "isn’t too brilliant…they might work on Facebook — some do — but it’s probably not the way you want to go." On the other hand, he was happy to tell us that his Fun Wall app is "the best implementation of the widget idea on Facebook." [How humble of him.] He also said that "just porting apps to Facebook doesn’t work" and "just putting an RSS feed on your profile, for example, isn’t that interesting."  The point is that FB users use this platform differently — "it’s unique." He talked about a new app he’s working on (or has just completed?) called "Why Are You Awesome?"  He said it let’s you tell your friends why you are and — a key point he stressed — "it gives them a reason to check back."  A couple of other key points Tyler made were these: "Notifications" are important, because people "crave these updates"….and the "Feed" is the "highway on Facebook — put things there that are interesting and relevant."  He talked about the pros and cons of FBML (Facebook’s own markup language). It gives you the native look and feel, making the app "indistinguishable from the platform," he said. On the negative side, FB’s bugs become your bugs, "and you’ll always be the one to get blamed." The other option for developers is the "embedded iFrame" approach. On the plus side, it gives you "near complete control — you’re only constrained by space and the terms of service."  However, you must call the Facebook API "lots"….and if an iFrame app is done wrong, "user experience suffers." So, what do you do? "Pick the one that you’re most comfortable with, and what you can ship the fastest. If it’s more than three days, forget it." Perhaps the most interesting insight was this: "Figure out how users interact with your app. And don’t take things so seriously. Facebook users don’t sign on to do work."  [I’m not so sure FB’s leaders would agree with him there, as they try to make the platform attractive to more adults — meaning those active in the workaday world, concerned about things like, oh, productivity, business networking, and the like?  Employers are already cutting off Facebook from their corporate networks because it’s perceived to be all about screwing off. So, the notion that FB users don’t care about work can’t be something FB’s investors like to hear.]  The audience questions began with "What about useful and fun apps — are there any"?"  I didn’t hear a good answer. "Is there any way to link to several pages within an iFrame app?" Tyler said it would be better and easier to use FBML in this instance. [He did note, in passing, that Top Friends is an iFrame app. And, later, he noted he works on this app "all day long."] Another general tip Tyler gave was to make an effort to stay on top of Facebook changes. "They’re definitely building out the platform." He also said metrics of what what people do inside the app are very important — "not so much their whole social map."  But be careful you don’t violate FB’s terms of service: "You can only hash someone’s data for 24 hours."

Dave Fetterman is the creator, lead engineer, and a founding member of the Facebook Platform project.  He was formerly with Microsoft and has a master’s in computer science from Harvard. He opened his talk by telling us how many Facebook developers there are now. Davefetterman
Are you ready?
It’s more than 50,000! He also said the site gets 54 billion page views a month. Yes, that’s a "b." 

Fetterman launched into his advice for aspiring Facebook developers — the first and most obvious being "Make your app social." To be quite blunt about it, he said this: "Your content’s not interesting unless it’s interesting to your friends — or my friends." He also stressed the benefits of privacy. "It’s not a burden — it’s an asset."  So, how does one get viral distribution?

Fettermanslide_5
Fetterman talked about the Facebook News Feed, and also about adding an app from the Profile (he said to develop with FBML for this), and he stressed the importance of Notifications "from granular updates." He said that mass distribution in "now easy."  But he noted that "spreading an app is entirely different from spreading
a widget."  The latter, he said, is like "mailing HTML."  He gave his take on how an app is different from a widget [see his slide here: "Widgets, eh?" you have to forgive Dave — he’s a Canadian  🙂 …] Fettermanslide2_3

Facebook’s goal is to make developers as comfortable building on its platform as on your own site, Fetterman said. He added that FB has its own flavor of Javascript now, called FBJS — "to help you play in our environment." The goal is to give you JS while ensuring that you "remain safe" on Facebook.  He also said they have "MockAJAX."  New solutions he named as being in the works now are: message attachments, fb:mobile, and fb:ref. For more, Dave said to go to developers.facebook.com and wiki.developers.facebook.com.

iPhone Calling
Matt Drance was next up, the "Sharing Technologies Evangelist" at Apple.  How’s that for a title?  He does a bunch of stuff, and one of those is helping third parties develop for the iPhone platform, which was his topic this day. Matt said the iPhone was only 109 days old, and that it’s already had three updates in three months. He reminded us that the iPhone’s Safari browser is the same one for the new iPod Touch. Last week, Matt said a new iPhone web apps directory went live. "Apple is very serious about the web development platform for the the iPhone." [What Matt didn’t let us in on was the news that Uncle Steve was about to drop, the very next morning, that Apple was planning to open up the iPhone to third-party apps. Can’t blame him, I guess — he’d like to keep his job. But, c’mon, Matt — we wouldn’t have told anyone! 🙂 ] Mattdrance

Matt talked about the Safari "WebKit," which is a web development engine. And he gave a bunch of pointers for those who plan to develop for the iPhone: understand the browser prefs (JS can be turned off, popups disabled, etc) … you need to separate your page content (JS, CSS,and HTML), and "be well formed and standard" (he specifically recommended the CSS Zen Garden site for inspiration) … know your resource limits … know your scripting limits … understand windows and dialogs (window.open and target="_new") … use supported content types, including Word, Excel, PDF, Quicktime (no Java, Flash, or SVG for iPhone, at least not yet) … use native fonts … test and bug with Safari 3 … and remember that the iPhone’s input device is a finger — which is a lot different from a mouse! Matt reminded us that the iPhone does not have cut & paste, drag & drop, or selection — at least not yet.  Finally, he advised, even if you don’t yet have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you should get Safari 3 and see how your site or app looks in it.

GOOG Got It Goin’ On (Oh, Really?)
We were lucky to have presenting, in the very final session, Adam Sah, the architect for Google Gadgets. The most common place to find them, said Adam, is on iGoogle start pages. Google Gadgets is a platform for multiple sites, not a plug-in. Adamsah
"The end-user owns the page," said Adam. "Why do they like gadgets? Because they’re just remote HTML, cached by Google."  And why do providers like them? "Because it’s an easy, cheap way to create interactive content," he continued. "You can write one in 30 seconds. And it’s high leverage — write once, run all over. Whataregadgets_2
You get free, effective distribution to tens of millions of users." He showed a slide identifying all the distributors of Google Gadgets. He said Gadgets are "frictionless and scaled…you don’t have to cut a deal with Google." 

Adam also spoke about the newest type of Google Gadget — "Gadget Ads."  He said they’re paid-placement gadgets that reach hundreds of thousands of sites. "A Google Gadget ad is nothing more than buying traffic for your gadget," said Adam. "They’re great for time-sensitive content, like movie openings," he said, " and great for ‘seeding’ viral distribution." What percentage of Gadget Ads get syndicated by others?" someone in the audience asked. Adam said it’s still too early in the game to talk about that. But, speaking of virality, he recommended that "putting an ‘Add to Google’ or ‘Email This’ button inside your gadget will get you free traffic." He said "It’s been hard to get initial virality started, but not so now with Google Gadgets." 

In closing, he said what makes a good Gadget in general (not necessarily the ad type) is a very small or no logo, usefulness or utility, and no registration required. He also put up a slide (shown here) with a whole bunch of resource links. Googgadglinks_3
One link he didn’t mention, which I found on my own, was this one: Google Gadget Ventures, a page that tells you how you can develop new gadgets with the financial support of Google. 

That’s right — yet another company is stepping up with a financing program for widget (gadget) developers.  Life is sure good if you’re an entrepreneurially minded developer these days, wouldn’t you say?

A recent interview of Google’s Adam Sah was just published on this ZDnet blog.  It drills in further to some of the topics I touch on here in this post.

UPDATE (10/23): To make a couple of clarifications regarding Dave Fetterman’s presentation.

UPDATE (10/24): I didn’t mention in this post yet another platform: MySpace. It announced, after Widget Summit ended, that it, too, was opening up its platform to developers.  But I figured most of you had already heard that. For some perspective and links on the topic, however, including developments at Web 2.0 Summit, here’s a recent post from Seth Levine’s blog.

 

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