SocialMedia Blog

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.

So, it’s the big day, F8. For many developers, it’s been a time of doubt as the platform undergoes the most radical retooling since launch. FB tabs, boxes, and new placements for FB’s own ad units have shaken up the natural order devs have become accustomed to on Facebook. After today’s event, developers will finally know where the chips lie.

Early this morning TechCrunch is reporting some new insights into F8. First, they expect a payment system to launch in some form. Second, Facebook connect will launch. Finally, and more importantly, they expect a three tiered app system. As has been speculated by Kara Swisher, Facebook will carve up app inventory into three tiers divided by quality. No word on what the yard stick will be, just that iLike and Causes are the first apps to make it into the top tier.

Depending on the details, Facebook’s new policies could potentially nuke virality for the applications of a lot of smaller developers.

One of the most profound changes in the new Facebook design is the width. I think it’s a net positive, and gives applications a greater control of user experience. However, developers that don’t adjust to the new width are going to miss out.

Facebook has placed new ads in the margin on the right hand side that are harder to ignore than the old placement under the application menu. This means that developers will be faced with the usual problem of having a user leave their app through an ad, but not get paid for it. Instead Facebook’s ads will get the traffic.

I suggest that developers widen their applications to take advantage of the new real estate with our leaderboard and upcoming skyscraper inventory.

Update: Simply checking “Use full canvas width” with push FB’s ads further away from your app while keeping the app the same in the old Facebook setup. The ads also show up sporadically.

Some Facebook users logged in this morning to find the new Facebook redesign as their default. The most notable change is that the site is much wider, but some others in the blogosphere have some more insights.

Facebook adds new ad units - Facebook double dipped their own ad units in the redesign. Canvas pages now have 2 Facebook ads and the sponsored feed item now sits alone on the right hand side of the home page. (InsideFacebook) I don’t know what this means for Microsoft, considering I’m only seeing their ads on search result pages.

Navigation rethought - The page is leaner. There’s no more application navigation bar. Instead app nav duty has been split between the menu bar and the variety of boxes and tabs announced earlier. (InsideFacebook)

Even more focus on feeds - Facebook is looking a lot more like FriendFeed after adding comments and carving out more space for updates (TechCrunch). This goes hand in hand with the platform permissions upgrade, which will let users have finer control over what happens with their actions on applications (InsideFacebook). Nick O’Neil highlights all the new techniques Facebook is using to get users to contribute content through their new app bar for Facebook’s own applications (photos, video, notes, etc.).

The new profile will offer some new advertising opportunities for app developers. Developers will find our leaderboard ad units to be more useful and also have the extra room to squeeze in a television unit. Skyscrapers will also be unlocked.

SocialMedia Network’s CEO, Seth Goldstein, made a rather audacious statement at the IAB Social Media conference today: “Social Media is killing internet advertising”.

While it seems an odd conclusion coming from the eponymic advertising company, it’s true. Since the birth of online advertising, traditional modes of advertising have lost their effectiveness online as users have become less interested in branded content and more interested in each other.

On display was a graph showing just how profound this decline can be:

In response to this problem, Seth proposed that advertising needs to shift from a “shouting” model (one big ad on a content site), to a quieter form of advertising that speaks to users, alluding to a new advertising product to be launched by Social Media Networks in the Fall.

You can see more press on the keynote below:
Seth Goldstein: Beacon Set Industry Back
Exec: Ad industry must think small to tap social sites
Social Network CPMs: A Penny Arcade

The new Facebook profile redesign is coming down the pipeline. The official switch over is TBD, no doubt a lesson learned from pushing new features onto users before they were ready (newsfeed, beacon).

But the new profile is coming, and will have an effect on how applications do business on Facebook. There are a couple of big ideas Facebook is pushing with the new design: tabs, incremental authentication, newsfeed publisher. Overall these changes are adding some new inventory as well as subjecting developers to some new rules.

Try looking at your profile on http://new.facebook.com/profile.php to get an idea of what the changes look like before continuing. Here’s a deeper dive on the changes from Facebook.

New Real Estate

Developers are getting access to some new profile real estate with the addition of tabs, info tabs, and application boxes. Tabs will allow users to elevate an application in importance by giving it’s own tab. There’s a max of 6 total tabs, including Facebook’s own (all other app tabs are accessible on a dropdown menu).

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Last night I was able to stop by the latest Google Campfire around Friend Connect. Despite everyone knowing the news, there was a great showing of bloggers and companies (Joyent, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Hi5) there to see a demo of Friend Connect.

Friend Connect is a collection of standards meant to make low traffic sites more social by harnessing existing social networking user bases. Google’s set of widgets let web developers quickly drop in code for widgets like sign-ups, comments, or really any other application on Open Social. Mussie Shore, a Google Product Manager, showed off what Google cooked up:

The system borrows bits and pieces I’ve seen already. The user login features were distinctly MyBlogLog, although now they supported all OpenID providers. The commenting widgets reminded me of JS-Kit, but now had identities attached to them. They both make a lot more sense together. All in all, if this was a stand alone startup, I’d be enthusiastic. However, it’s Google.

The series of data portability announcements from MySpace, Facebook, and Google are no accident. While Facebook, with its large, robust, base of user accounts has a head start in bringing its network to some of the largest sites on the internet. Google, on the other hand, took a strategy of going after the “long tail” of websites out there. Their “cut-n-paste” social networking solution is designed for even the most inexperienced webmasters, like that of Ingird Michaelson’s fan page.

Given this strategy, the uptake is likely to be slow. Facebook is mainly concerned with integrating into around 100 websites, whereas Google has to reach orders of magnitude more webmasters in order to have the same user base. Google will likely push the value added not only by Friend Connect, but also the value added by its growing library of applications. iLike has a compelling music widget, and Google Friend Connect is the only way you can get it.

Justin Smith has more notes on the speech.

Facebook’s making no secret about changing around their profile pages. The new profile pages are a stab at bringing some order to the degree of chaos brought on by the launch of the Facebook platform. The new profiles will organize a users info around a series of tabs instead of a laundry list of elemental boxes.

As InsideFacebook reports, the release date on the new profiles is expected to get pushed back. I can’t imagine that it’d be held up if tabs were the only new feature release. That got me thinking, “what would I like to see changed for Facebook profiles?”

Here are some of the things I’d like to see:

Quicker load times.
A Netvibes like layout for apps I like on a tab page.
Suggestions for new apps based on the ones my friends have installed.
Wider profiles
Application grouping