SocialMedia Blog

The New York Times printed an article today about Facebook’s growing Facebook Connect initiative. For those who don’t know, Facebook Connect is an API third party sites can use to access a users data from Facebook, as well as push data back to Facebook. Techcrunch has an excellent article enumerating the efforts of MySpace and Google along those lines.

The article listed no new information, but instead highlights the massive shift in the way we will interact with the web. Unlike other web applications, social networks are not simply destination for another form of media we consume (i.e. I go to Youtube for video, and the New York Times for news). They are another essential layer bringing context to the web the way hyperlinking has since 1965. Hyperlinking connects content around the context of a document. Social linking connects content around the user. The chief example has been services like Facebook’s news feed or Friendfeed, which deliver content relevant to your social connections.

We still have a ways to go.

Social networks and content networks are still separated. As a hack, we’re using ad hoc social networks, or underpowered networks to connect content through active sharing. These are the “share this” and “mybloglogs” of the world that leverage social connections around a specific task.

But what we really need is to have social linkages “baked in” to the website’s programming. Connect and Friend Connect are part of reprogramming the web for social connections. It will happen because social aspects push engagement and discovery, which will be attractive counterparts to attention driven through active interest on search engines like Google or Yahoo. Publishers understand that they need to reprogram.

Unfortunately, we in the advertising industry are behind. Advertising has been slow to reprogram for the social web. We’re still hung up on hyperlinking in a content connected world. This is the reason marketers don’t understand why just 57 percent of social net users report clicking on an ad over the past year versus 79 percent of all users (according to IDC). Although, clicks can be a misguided success metric for brand advertisers. Optimizing around clicks is a very different goal from optimizing around brand loyalty.

The problem is that we’re not respecting the context of the medium. On social networks, it’s social connections that make content relevant, not hyperlinks. And we’re only in the beginning stages of reprogramming advertising around this concept.

After a year as effectively a “free market”, Facebook has finally launched it’s “verified app” program, which will give Facebook’s blessing to apps that meet their quality standards.

It will cost $375 to apply ($175 for students and non-profits) and must be renewed each year to stay in the program. Verified apps will have a few cosmetic advantages (seal of approval) and some TBA benefits rolled out over time, but the real difference will be in how much Facebook aids verified apps and/or punishes unverified apps. Facebook has several knobs they can turn, from how often your users can invite each other, notify, and where those messages show up in a user’s activity stream. Wrapped in the new redesign was a tightening of these quotas. It has yet to be seen whether Facebook will simply reward the winners, or also punish the apps they don’t like.

The New Bureacracy

Theoretically none of this regulation should be needed. The “best” apps should be the one’s user’s share with friends the most. However, this kind of popularity contest led developers to focus on optimizing traffic flow. Apps focused on sending messages instead of building functionality.

So Facebook has had to step in to shape where they think the platform should go. Facebook would say app verification aligns incentives away from generating more messages to users, and toward pleasing Facebook’s usability goals.

However, the problems of spammy apps was largely cleared up with the Facebook redesign. The new verification program just creates an undue burden on small developers. Developers will have to provide an itemized list of how their application functions, as well as screen shot storyboards of their apps. Even still, they need to make sure their apps abide by a laundry list of functional requirements.

This is antithetical to the way applications are launched. Developers are used to prototyping quickly, finding out what works, and investing in the successes. If Facebook squeezes too tightly on unverified apps, the cost of applying for verification to get the reach they need to test an app, will simply be too great.

Toward A Better Platform

While the verification program will create problems for small developers, incumbent developers will see a boost if they get verified. Verification provides advertisers with a greater level of quality assurance, making advertisers more comfortable with advertising on this cohort of applications.

VentureBeat ran a story couple days ago talking about Facebook integrating some new social features into their ad units. The article cited a test with Facebook’s new “video ad units”, but the Facebook “video ad unit” featured in the story was actually SocialMedia’s. I featured the widget in an earlier post. DreamWorks ran the campaign with SocialMedia in an effort to get at the movie’s key demographics on social networks.

Applications are fun, but the most effective ones are also finely tuned machines. Well developed applications are not only focused on helping users complete a task, but also have the users complete tasks for the application, such as contributing content or sharing it with friends. The problem is how do you do it?

My suggestion is to slightly change the way you think about your application from a functional to a geographical frame of mind. In other words, you’re not trying to make sure your app works, but instead trying to get the user to a destination as fast as possible.

Let’s imagine a case where you’re promoting an application on SocialMedia. You’ve started a campaign linking to your app and you’re interested in getting as many users as possible. Effectively you’ve created what marketers call a funnel trying to get users from point A (origin) to point B (goal).

In this case, it looks something like this:
(A) Views Ad -> … -> (B) Invites another user

Now we need to flesh things out a bit. After all, there are more steps the user needs to take in between.

(A) Views Ad -> Allow access landing page -> Application -> (B) Invites another user

Let’s look at one app advertising right now, “Trade A Favor”. Their app promotion follows this funnel.

At each step of this funnel, some user’s don’t click and follow through to the next step. The largest loss is at the top, where only a fraction of users are interested in the “Trade A Favor” ad. All the following steps generally have less loss because users have signaled a greater interest in completing the goal.

So, if “Trade A Favor” wants to get better organic growth, they’re going to have minimize the drop off at each step. The first thing they can do is make the ad more appealing. Perhaps they can change the ad copy. My suggestion is to run two or three different copies as tests, and kill the two least effective versions.

Next, there’s not much they can do about the allow access page. However, they have a lot of control once the user hits the application. Their app leaves you at a list of favors from other users along with an invite widget at the bottom of the page.

While this keeps the funnel short, it doesn’t provide a great incentive for a user to spread the app. It’s kind of like recommending a restaurant before you tasted the food. A better answer is to let the user taste the app by using it. For instance, the app could suggest favors new users can send to their friends or incentivize invites with virtual points (note: Facebook and MySpace prohibit this).

You can imagine this “funnel” approach being applied even to goals within your application, just follow some general rules.

1. Keep funnel short
2. Keep goal prominent (large text, advertise it)
3. Be honest (misleading ad copy will drive more clicks, but cause greater loss at later steps)
4. Use social pressure (let users interact with their friends)
5. Use incentives (Social Currency helps developers incentivize participating in ads in exchange for currency)

Facebook informally announced a new milestone of over 100 million active users; yet another sign the site is one of the most vibrant social ecosystems again.

However, while crawling around the site, I noticed a lot of apps coming up 0 monthly active users when I know they have thousands (see pic). While I’m sure this is just a delay in reporting, as happens while processing billions of data fields, it throws a monkey wrench into the day to day analysis I like to do on the network and that developers rely on to compare themselves with the competition.

Which brings me to another problem I think monthly active users has, aside from being delayed right now. Monthly Actives, while in sync with standard advertising practices, encourages MAU pumping that was harder with DAUs and Facebook’s crackdown on spam. MAUs mean you only need to get a user to the application once during the month to show activity. This means developers can pump and dump their apps by advertising heavily and then doing business based on that number. Some websites have used this scheme to boost numbers prior to acquisitions or other business deals.

While proper due diligence can avoid the problem, DAUs also showed an apps stickiness better than MAU, giving developers better insights into what’s up on the platform. Facebook, please bring back the DAU.

Ok, the title’s a joke and hopefully this Facebook group, ‘Join the Class Action “Beacon” Law Suit against Facebook’, is too. As some of you already know, Facebook is facing a class action lawsuit for Beacon. Not the opt-in Beacon of today, but instead the more controversial beacon hastily launched back in November (specifically Nov. 7, 2007, through Dec. 5, 2007).

Part of the plaintiff’s claims are that Facebook 1) collected transaction info of non-Facebook users 2) beacon carried out activities not covered by the site’s privacy policy. Plaintiffs want Facebook to delete all data collected through beacon (which I assume applies to the noted time period).

I can’t speak to the legal merit, other than the fact that it appears to be unrelated to Facebook as it stands today. The argument is much more nuanced than the emotional uproar over natural and perceived rights of privacy. However, it does raise some concerns in my mind for the future of the platform outside the container of Facebook, i.e. Facebook connect. Will attempts to socialize the web be met with an endless stream of disclaimers and option clauses?

Read SocialMedia’s privacy statement here.

In an effort to clean up platform, Facebook established a new set of principles to guide the development of the platform going forward. A less inspiring necessity of the transition has been a laundry list of changes to the Facebook Platform Policy and Escalation Procedures. These new rules came into official effect noon yesterday.

As a side note, the platform policy procedures are the bare minimum rules applications must abide by in order to exist on Facebook. These are by no means the specifications developers should design their applications to. Although there will no doubt be opportunistic developers trying to get ahead by adhering to the letter of the law instead of aiming for the principles of the platform.

Here are some of the new rules that apply to most developers:

Incentivizing activity - This is probably the biggest change with the redesign. You can’t incentivize invitations of publishing to the feed. This means no more inviting friends for extra cash or to unlock new features. I’ve seen the larger applications follow this rule, however, smaller apps are still handing out gobs of virtual dollars to drive signups.

However, some apps are rewarding users for using the applications instead. But for those applications, using the app amounts to sending invites through things like kisses or hugs.

Asking for permission out of turn - The new FB redesign allows for some new points of integration, namely boxes and tabs. Developers can’t simply ask users to add these features all at once (i.e. asking to add boxes and tabs right after a user allows access to an application). It must be contextual, meaning that developers should use these permission forms only when users select the addition of the feature.

Feeds and Notifications - This is perhaps one of the grayest areas on platform. Facebook has described several guidelines for sending notifications and posting feed items. The general rule is that all notifications should be genuine and useful. Apps can’t pose as users and in most cases must reference actions that users took within the last hour. Application-to-user communications must contain aggregate information about multiple users or multiple actions.

This is somewhat gray with respect to notifications about the lack of action taken, such as not feeding your pet on Pokey. It also doesn’t stop trigger happy developers from reporting every action a user takes (some dating apps get really carried away. I even suspect some fake connections to generate activity). However, at least this is opt-in spam that users can shut off.

All in all, these new rules mark a healthy maturing of platform. More rules will likely follow to help clamp down on the opportunists as Facebook handles the hard work of managing the platform. All of these rules should be exceeded by any developer that wants to make application development into a real business.

At F8, Facebook outlined a new paradigm for enhancing user experience on platform. Ben Ling took the stage and outlined a new set of usability principles that would ensure “great apps” succeed on platform. To be quite honest, this has been a long time coming. The economy and investment in platform has strongly supported apps that pushed the envelope on spam. These apps often had more users, which translated into greater revenue and higher valuations (as absurd as Adonomics valuations were, some exits were close).

However, a lot of existing developers have had some difficulty understanding how this applies to their existing applications. How do you follow the guiding principles and adjust your app to meet all the new guidelines? Is unlocking more hugs verboten? What about an app where users grow their army by inviting friends?

That’s why we’re working on a San Francisco developer garage to help apply Facebook’s new principles to developers existing applications and help guide them on designing new applications. I just need some help hashing out the best format. What questions are bugging developers? Please leave a comment or ping me at nick@socialmedia.com.

OpenThread, our gift back to the OpenSocial community, is coming up in two weeks. I’d like to take some time to thank the sponsors of the event: Sun Microsystems, the OpenSocial Team, and SocialMedia.

So attendees can do some pre-event scoping - I’ve listed the names of current attendees below. Unfortunately I didn’t ask for company affiliations.

I would like to thank Lane LiaBraaten from Google for Keynoting the event. I’d also like to thank our great pair of developers David King (Lil Green Patch) and Kenneth Walton (Klicknation) for heading up the panel.

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Image from ToothpasteForDinner

Facebook has done a great job at bringing trusted identity on to the web. Unfortunately it hasn’t carried over to their forum. The forums are the wild west when it comes to commentary and job posting. So, I’m stepping in to help vet job postings for people in the community. The idea isn’t to host the jobs, but rather just link to good ones, like I’ve been doing with many of the headlines on our blog.

We’ve started a job listing page (link) where we will list links to quality jobs. If you are in the social application economy (publisher or advertiser), just send me an email (nick@socialmedia.com) and I’ll post a link to your job listing. The only requirements are that the job must be paid, at least two weeks of work, and have a link to a corporate website, or social networking account (Facebook, LinkedIn) so that applicants can see who they’re dealing with.