Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Developer Analytics
This site is an excellent collection of statistics on Facebook applications. The top 4 apps in terms of active users (Top Friends, FunWall, Super Wall and Bumper Sticker) have 1.2 to 2.2 active users. By the time you're down to #50 (Scramble), it's 106,000 users.
These numbers are still big, but sometimes the numbers for the most popular apps overshadow the vast number of really interesting apps with devoted audiences.
Facebook may be a mass market phenomenon, but it's also a mass of nice markets with a remarkably low barrier to entry.
These numbers are still big, but sometimes the numbers for the most popular apps overshadow the vast number of really interesting apps with devoted audiences.
Facebook may be a mass market phenomenon, but it's also a mass of nice markets with a remarkably low barrier to entry.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Social Networking Developer Economics
The development environment for apps in the social networking world has a lot of pieces of different technologies, but, overall, the process is not complicated. The biggest issues are what the app does, not how it does it. And that is borne out by postings on the Facebook want ads for develoopers, as in "We are looking to build and launch a simple application over the weekend..." (link above). This is far from an unusual posting.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
NYT Editorial on Facebook
Titled One Friend Facebook Hasn't Made Yet: Privacy Rights, this editorial from 2/18 makes a number of absolutely legitimate points, but in two areas, The Times got it wrong.
First to the right. Recently it became apparent that deleting a Facebook account didn't delete all traces of it. In two areas, information remained. One, over which Facebook has no control, is the result of Google (and other searches) that find the public version of a Facebook user's profile. It shouldn't be news to anyone by now that Google caches images of the Web pages that it searches. Long after the Web page has disappeared, you can still often view an image of what it looked like. (The safest way of minimizing this situation appears to be not to remove Web pages you don't want to be visible but rather to revise them--even to a blank page, so that Google will cache a new image.) Facebook users can control if their public profile can be shown in search engines, but it's an opt-out feature. The Times suggests more opt-in features, and that's not unreasonable.
Although not mentioned in The Times editorial, reports seem to indicate some loose ends of user information floating around Facebook after account deletion. My guess is that it may be records in the join table that matches two users as friends. Someone may have assumed that if an account is closed, nothing will be shown for a now-deleted account of a friend, but we know now (see Iran-Contra, the Nixon Tape Gap, the millions of possibly missing White House email messages) that these little traces can often be put back together again.
On these points, The Times is right.
On the bigger point, The Times quotes Erving Goffman on the concept of "identity management," and suggests that online sites such as MySpace and Facebook should "give users as much control over their identities online as they have offline." Good idea. Excellent idea. But then, The Times continues: "Users should be asked if they want information to be viewable by others, and by whom: Their friends? Everyone in the world? Privacy settings, which allow for this kind of screening, should be prominent, clear and easily managed."
Sorry Times, that's not how it works in the offline world. We think we have a lot more control than we do. The hunky TV star who made the cover of a supermarket tabloid on a security camera in a porn store and, on the inside, a copy of his itemized receipt for what would appear to be the ingredients of a gay adventure made an assumption of privacy that didn't exist. Sure, that's a TV star, but local media (not to mention) blogs exist for The Rest of Us. Unless you hide in a cave, you will present yourself to the public in ways that you think you can control.
Yes, providing opt-in privacy settings is a great idea. Many Web sites are loathe to do so, because it drastically cuts down on the amount of information that they can publish. But when a social networking site lets users control their visibility, the same social graph that enables so many interactions can come into play. If my friend X says she has come up with some privacy settings that make sense to her, I may adopt them for myself. The Social Web is largely about control--and that control does live with users to a greater extent than ever before.
But control of one's public image--online or off--is a tough thing to pull off. To a greater or lesser extent, we are all Paris Hilton.
First to the right. Recently it became apparent that deleting a Facebook account didn't delete all traces of it. In two areas, information remained. One, over which Facebook has no control, is the result of Google (and other searches) that find the public version of a Facebook user's profile. It shouldn't be news to anyone by now that Google caches images of the Web pages that it searches. Long after the Web page has disappeared, you can still often view an image of what it looked like. (The safest way of minimizing this situation appears to be not to remove Web pages you don't want to be visible but rather to revise them--even to a blank page, so that Google will cache a new image.) Facebook users can control if their public profile can be shown in search engines, but it's an opt-out feature. The Times suggests more opt-in features, and that's not unreasonable.
Although not mentioned in The Times editorial, reports seem to indicate some loose ends of user information floating around Facebook after account deletion. My guess is that it may be records in the join table that matches two users as friends. Someone may have assumed that if an account is closed, nothing will be shown for a now-deleted account of a friend, but we know now (see Iran-Contra, the Nixon Tape Gap, the millions of possibly missing White House email messages) that these little traces can often be put back together again.
On these points, The Times is right.
On the bigger point, The Times quotes Erving Goffman on the concept of "identity management," and suggests that online sites such as MySpace and Facebook should "give users as much control over their identities online as they have offline." Good idea. Excellent idea. But then, The Times continues: "Users should be asked if they want information to be viewable by others, and by whom: Their friends? Everyone in the world? Privacy settings, which allow for this kind of screening, should be prominent, clear and easily managed."
Sorry Times, that's not how it works in the offline world. We think we have a lot more control than we do. The hunky TV star who made the cover of a supermarket tabloid on a security camera in a porn store and, on the inside, a copy of his itemized receipt for what would appear to be the ingredients of a gay adventure made an assumption of privacy that didn't exist. Sure, that's a TV star, but local media (not to mention) blogs exist for The Rest of Us. Unless you hide in a cave, you will present yourself to the public in ways that you think you can control.
Yes, providing opt-in privacy settings is a great idea. Many Web sites are loathe to do so, because it drastically cuts down on the amount of information that they can publish. But when a social networking site lets users control their visibility, the same social graph that enables so many interactions can come into play. If my friend X says she has come up with some privacy settings that make sense to her, I may adopt them for myself. The Social Web is largely about control--and that control does live with users to a greater extent than ever before.
But control of one's public image--online or off--is a tough thing to pull off. To a greater or lesser extent, we are all Paris Hilton.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Facebook Refines Interactions
After Facebook opened the Platform to third-party developers in September 2006, developers, Facebook, and users started to learn how these new opportunities would play out. Two sets of applications emerged fairly quickly (and, in fact, these two categories existed even before the Platform was opened).
The first set of apps consisted of entertainment, games, quizzes, and the like. They can be satisfying in and of themselves, but they are even more interesting when a variety of people are using them--particularly one's friends. The second set consisted of apps that had intrinsic content either on Facebook or in external databases such as Flixster, GoodReads, and the like. (And, of course, here are cross-over apps: is US Politics a game or something more serious....the question goes beyond Facebook and is not a topic we'll discuss here.)
In the first set, driving adds of the app are important, because many Facebook features are available only to users who have added the app. More important, many of these apps provide a benefit to users but earn money for their developers through ads, and ads depend on traffic.
The viral features of Facebook or any social networking site work in many ways. A number of developers and users have pointed out that techniques such as forced-invitations to friends to add the apps in order to use them or sudden interruptions requiring adds can be distracting (polite word). Facebook has responded (at the link above) by forbidding some techniques:
1. If a user tries to use an app and gets a dead-end page requiring sending invitations to friends in order to continue, that is no longer allowed. This applies at the beginning as well as during the use of the app when a dead-end may prevent a user from continuing a process that has already been started.
2. If a user declines to invite friends, the app must never (as in "til the end of time") prompt again.
This should make a much better user experience, but the howls from some developers are loud.
In addition, Facebook has been refining the News Feed. Beginning with publishTemplatizedAction, the News Feed and Mini Feed have moved to more structured storied. Instead of the app just sending text to the News Feed, now we're constructing stories with some syntax as in {actor} did something to {target}. This enables Facebook to aggregate disparate stories (X and Y and Z did that to A). (This is described in my book.)
Finally, the notifications/invitations/requests that people can send via Facebook are no longer subject to hard-and-fast daily limits. The limits are computed dynamically and are shown to developers on their app's statistics page. The limits reflect user reactions to these notifications.
What's really interesting about Facebook is that all of these changes have been predictable. The API changes in the last few months are what have allowed the policy changes to take place, and it seems to be going well.
For Facebook guidelines to morph into rules is scarcely a burden for developers. However, developers who look for ways around the guidelines (or even the rules), have helped Facebook codify those guidelines and enforce the rules. Users win because the experience is better and more predictable; developers who play by the rules win because they can focus on providing more value to users.
The first set of apps consisted of entertainment, games, quizzes, and the like. They can be satisfying in and of themselves, but they are even more interesting when a variety of people are using them--particularly one's friends. The second set consisted of apps that had intrinsic content either on Facebook or in external databases such as Flixster, GoodReads, and the like. (And, of course, here are cross-over apps: is US Politics a game or something more serious....the question goes beyond Facebook and is not a topic we'll discuss here.)
In the first set, driving adds of the app are important, because many Facebook features are available only to users who have added the app. More important, many of these apps provide a benefit to users but earn money for their developers through ads, and ads depend on traffic.
The viral features of Facebook or any social networking site work in many ways. A number of developers and users have pointed out that techniques such as forced-invitations to friends to add the apps in order to use them or sudden interruptions requiring adds can be distracting (polite word). Facebook has responded (at the link above) by forbidding some techniques:
1. If a user tries to use an app and gets a dead-end page requiring sending invitations to friends in order to continue, that is no longer allowed. This applies at the beginning as well as during the use of the app when a dead-end may prevent a user from continuing a process that has already been started.
2. If a user declines to invite friends, the app must never (as in "til the end of time") prompt again.
This should make a much better user experience, but the howls from some developers are loud.
In addition, Facebook has been refining the News Feed. Beginning with publishTemplatizedAction, the News Feed and Mini Feed have moved to more structured storied. Instead of the app just sending text to the News Feed, now we're constructing stories with some syntax as in {actor} did something to {target}. This enables Facebook to aggregate disparate stories (X and Y and Z did that to A). (This is described in my book.)
Finally, the notifications/invitations/requests that people can send via Facebook are no longer subject to hard-and-fast daily limits. The limits are computed dynamically and are shown to developers on their app's statistics page. The limits reflect user reactions to these notifications.
What's really interesting about Facebook is that all of these changes have been predictable. The API changes in the last few months are what have allowed the policy changes to take place, and it seems to be going well.
For Facebook guidelines to morph into rules is scarcely a burden for developers. However, developers who look for ways around the guidelines (or even the rules), have helped Facebook codify those guidelines and enforce the rules. Users win because the experience is better and more predictable; developers who play by the rules win because they can focus on providing more value to users.
Labels: facebook
Monday, February 11, 2008
Where Social Networking Came From
Back in 1999, Andrew L. Shapiro wrote a book called The Control Revolution: How the Internet is Putting Individuals in Charge and Changing the World We Know. In it he talked a good deal about disintermediation--how the Internet and particularly the Web was getting rid of the middle man.
When the Shapiro book came out, some of us starting thinking about the next step in intermediation. It seemed as if the world was changing and that it wasn't so much disintermediation as it was about reintermediation with a new cast of characters (Amazon, anyone?). And, in addition to the new cast of characters, we threw some new technologies into the stew (basically what are referred to as Web 2.0) and stirred briskly to come up with automated reintermediation.
All that automated reintermediation means is that, for example, when someone clicks an event (or idea, song, brand of shoes) from a list and adds it to a favorites list, everything then flows automatically from that mouse click. Depending on the site, you may wind up with a Facebook news feed story, an addition to your friends' lists of their friends' favorites, and even some kind of interaction (invitation/request/notification).
The entire intermediation process is now automated. And that's where Social Networking came from.
When the Shapiro book came out, some of us starting thinking about the next step in intermediation. It seemed as if the world was changing and that it wasn't so much disintermediation as it was about reintermediation with a new cast of characters (Amazon, anyone?). And, in addition to the new cast of characters, we threw some new technologies into the stew (basically what are referred to as Web 2.0) and stirred briskly to come up with automated reintermediation.
All that automated reintermediation means is that, for example, when someone clicks an event (or idea, song, brand of shoes) from a list and adds it to a favorites list, everything then flows automatically from that mouse click. Depending on the site, you may wind up with a Facebook news feed story, an addition to your friends' lists of their friends' favorites, and even some kind of interaction (invitation/request/notification).
The entire intermediation process is now automated. And that's where Social Networking came from.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Viewing American Class Divisions through Facebook and MySpace
Danah Boyd wrote this paper last summer about the apparent differences in the American teens who use the two leading social networking sites. It got a lot of press and stirred a lot of controversy. This is the link to the original paper which also contains links to the response to critiques.
The original paper is worth reading because, although it is actually limited to American teens, the apparent class distinctions between the two sites are worth thinking about. For all we know, in other countries and other age ranges the usage patterns may differ or even be reversed. Still, the overall notion that a social networking site might wind up with its own distinct demographics is scarcely a radical idea.
The question I have is that as the sites continue to grow, will these distinctions deepen or become less distinct.
The original paper is worth reading because, although it is actually limited to American teens, the apparent class distinctions between the two sites are worth thinking about. For all we know, in other countries and other age ranges the usage patterns may differ or even be reversed. Still, the overall notion that a social networking site might wind up with its own distinct demographics is scarcely a radical idea.
The question I have is that as the sites continue to grow, will these distinctions deepen or become less distinct.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Social Networking and Politics
Much of the attention to social networking focuses on two points: the vast numbers of people participating (over 100 million on MySpace, getting up to 70 million on Facebook) and the ways in which their interactions with the sites and with one another can spread to their friends. On Facebook, developers of games and generic sites (what flower/car/geological era are you, send a virtual cocktail/toy/hug/piece of furniture, etc.) collect thousands and tens of thousands of visitors to their sites which lets them monetize their work by placing ads on them. The numbers can be staggering.
But there's more than just raw numbers. When the substance of the app is something that people care about, the interaction with the app and friends becomes much more potent. When your News Feed reports that a friend has sent a virtual gift, that's very different from seeing that a friend now supports Barack Obama or Mike Huckabee--at least if you're a political junkie.
It all feeds on itself. People who are interested in politics are likely to have friends who are also interested in politics, and the News Feed items and friend recommendations are all the more potent. When you look at cause-related Facebook Pages, some of them are sort of generic socializing pages. But others get it. Substance is magnified by the social interaction. The power of the social graph is not just the big numbers but also this potent interaction.
We all know this, of course, but sometimes the big numbers and the entertainment distract us.
But there's more than just raw numbers. When the substance of the app is something that people care about, the interaction with the app and friends becomes much more potent. When your News Feed reports that a friend has sent a virtual gift, that's very different from seeing that a friend now supports Barack Obama or Mike Huckabee--at least if you're a political junkie.
It all feeds on itself. People who are interested in politics are likely to have friends who are also interested in politics, and the News Feed items and friend recommendations are all the more potent. When you look at cause-related Facebook Pages, some of them are sort of generic socializing pages. But others get it. Substance is magnified by the social interaction. The power of the social graph is not just the big numbers but also this potent interaction.
We all know this, of course, but sometimes the big numbers and the entertainment distract us.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Books have shipped
Books have now shipped. Order from the link at the left and visit the book's Facebook Page.
The downloadable files are uploading now and should be available by the end of today.
The downloadable files are uploading now and should be available by the end of today.
Labels: facebook
Monday, February 4, 2008
Roundtable Update
We're tentatively planning to follow up our discussion of Facebook with a discussion of new technologies in libraries in early April.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Everyone is 40
On Facebook, they cite a statistic that their fastest-growing demographic is people 25 and over. That's sort of a strange age at which to divide the population. Boomers like to say that 60 is the new 40; you can make a case based on the Facebook stat that, from their perspective (a little younger than the Boomers?), 25 is the new 40.
I guess everyone is 40.
Happy Birthday.
I guess everyone is 40.
Happy Birthday.
Sharing, Privacy and Trust in a Networked World
Note: This is cross-posted from NorthCountryConsulting.com. I'm trying to minimize cross-posts, but this report is so useful that I'm making an exception.
Fascinating and detailed (280 pages) report from OCLC (Online Computer Library Center). It provides information about Internet use in six countries; it is an update to a report from 2005, so it is able to show trends.
Here are the usage rates in the online population from 2005 to 2007 for various technologies:
search engines: 71% to 90%
email: 73% to 97%
blogs: 16% to 46%
Unfortunately, there's another statistic. Visits to library Web sites dropped from 30% of the online population in 2005 to 20%.
Fascinating and detailed (280 pages) report from OCLC (Online Computer Library Center). It provides information about Internet use in six countries; it is an update to a report from 2005, so it is able to show trends.
Here are the usage rates in the online population from 2005 to 2007 for various technologies:
search engines: 71% to 90%
email: 73% to 97%
blogs: 16% to 46%
Unfortunately, there's another statistic. Visits to library Web sites dropped from 30% of the online population in 2005 to 20%.
Rethinking Privacy
Anyone who thinks that privacy is a simple and unchanging concept should read the five-volume A History of Private Life (a total of some 3,250 pages--and that's just for a focus on Western Europe! Privacy moves in fits and starts, often in response to political or technological changes. We've been struggling with privacy on the Internet for some time; social networking sites and the social web in general seem to have brought the issue to a boil.
Where we get into a confused muddle is that our concepts of privacy are very much centered on place. This works out very well for us because our concept of privacy is centered on ourself (and, of course, others' privacy is centered on themselves). Like all physical objects, we can only be on one place at a time, so that if we are in a room and can see no one else in it, we can reasonably assume that we are private and alone.
Much of our privacy centers around two sets of places: public and private We now have a third place, and it's a very different place. It's the Internet, and we can be in several places at once. We can be in a single physical location, such as a room, but we can also be in an Internet chat room, a Web site, or a social networking site. Those are definite presences in virtual space.
Our challenge now is to formulate our expectations for privacy in this very new type of place. The rules of public and private actual spaces don't map exactly to the digital world.
I think that we'll get a bit more confused before things get clearer. However, with something like 40% of the online population using social networking sites, we're going to have to clarify things pretty quickly.
Where we get into a confused muddle is that our concepts of privacy are very much centered on place. This works out very well for us because our concept of privacy is centered on ourself (and, of course, others' privacy is centered on themselves). Like all physical objects, we can only be on one place at a time, so that if we are in a room and can see no one else in it, we can reasonably assume that we are private and alone.
Much of our privacy centers around two sets of places: public and private We now have a third place, and it's a very different place. It's the Internet, and we can be in several places at once. We can be in a single physical location, such as a room, but we can also be in an Internet chat room, a Web site, or a social networking site. Those are definite presences in virtual space.
Our challenge now is to formulate our expectations for privacy in this very new type of place. The rules of public and private actual spaces don't map exactly to the digital world.
I think that we'll get a bit more confused before things get clearer. However, with something like 40% of the online population using social networking sites, we're going to have to clarify things pretty quickly.
Book Update
How to Do Everything: Facebook Applications is due for release on February 6. Pre-orders should ship soon after that; it should be available in bookstores in the US during the last two weeks of February. The links to downloadable code will be updated on the book's Facebook Page as soon as it is released.
The Facebook Page already has some videos, diagrams, a discussion board, and other updates.
The Facebook Page already has some videos, diagrams, a discussion board, and other updates.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
