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Random Posts from Blogs about Facebook
Running a small business? Why not run your operation on Facebook? Maybe not totally but a new application has made it easier to run at least one portion of your business on Facebook: conference calls. The Free Conference Calls application makes it easy to set up conference calls. All that you need to do is create the conference, add the attendees and finalize the call.
The application utilizes your phone number as the identifier when calling in. One of the coolest features of the application is an AJAX box within the conference event page which displays callers that are present. You are also able to invite users based on their email address not just your Facebook friends. I tested it out and it worked flawlessly.
The Free Conference Call application is highly useful and leverages the standard Facebook interface design. One other cool feature of the application is the ability to host public events that anybody else on Facebook can participate in. I guess you can view it as a party line. If you make conference calls for your small business or for personal reasons, I highly recommend checking out the Free Conference Call application.
ScreamingSports, a fantasy sports network that lets you manage all your fantasy teams from a central location, has launched a Facebook Application for Fantasy Football.
This is in conjunction with the RockYou and My Fantasy League fantasy sports service. With the ScreamingSports Fantasy Football game, you can use you $100 million salary cap to manage your team and compete with other players on Facebook. This uses the My Fantasy League salary cap engine, which has become a staple in online fantasy sports games. Keep track of your team, check out the leader board, see who the top performers are, and keep up with players’ stats.
This salary cap game is another way to enjoy the ongoing fantasy sports peak season. ArmchairGM is another network that has recently added upgrades just in time for the season.
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Over the past week, two new applications have launched that are the beginning of talent competitions on Facebook. Facebook is definitely a great platform to host such competitions. The two applications are “U Got Talent?” and “Facebook Idol.” While not original names, these applications prove to be relatively addictive.
Currently, the U Got Talent application has lest users but has many more submissions. Additionally, the U Got Talent application is better organized in terms of navigation. There is a leaderboard that displays the most popular submissions as well as a browse page. The Facebook Idol application does not have many of these features and simply displays random contestants on the homepage.
I found quite a few talented people on the U Got Talent application whereas the Facebook Idol application had a young and attractive people who simply thought their looks were enough to qualify them for a talent competition. I’m not so sure about that! If you want to participate in the Facebook popularity contests, I suggest checking out the U Got Talent application. If you don’t want to take my advice and want to choose for yourself which application is better, check out the Facebook Idol competition.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak with my friend Jason Beckerman. Jason is the creator of the Lotto application and TeachThePeople.com. Jason had the unfortunate experience of having is application taken down by the Facebook legal team after being approved and running for a week and a half. Jason had to reach out directly to Mark Zuckerberg and Dave Morin.
While his application was back up and running within a matter of days, a valuable lesson was learned. Facebook is going to start having an increasing number of support requests. Without a formal system for handling issues, Facebook will probably face an increasing number of requests causing strain on their existing infrastructure. Conversely, Facebook can choose to allow developers to fend for themselves.
Jason seemed to think that if Facebook chooses the latter method, many larger companies will be hesitant to join the Facebook platform. I disagree based on the number of Fortune 100 companies that I personally know are working on building Facebook applications. For larger applications though, companies will definitely want assurances that their application will be up and running consistently. Do you think Facebook needs better support to encourage larger companies to join the platform?
We are honored to have been in a recent Wall Street Journal article about facebook applications in the Enterprise Section: “Why So Many Want to Create Facebook Applications”. The article is about why businesses want to create facebook applications and what is to be gained by such an endeavor.
A short excerpt from the article: “This is a watershed event that is going to affect business and technology for many years,” much the way Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system did, says Rodney Rumford, editor and publisher of FaceReviews.com, a Solana Beach, Calif., company that reviews Facebook applications online and provides consulting and application-development services. “It’s a tool for people to discover [businesses] in a way they couldn’t be discovered before.”
I would like to expound in greater detail about the value of facebook applications for use as a business, branding, marketing, lead generation and customer retention & engagement tool.
The value to businesses that want to increase their touch points in any of these areas and the potential ways that they can use facebook to engage users is quite amazing. Facebook has close to 38 Million active users. They are adding ~150K new users per day.
The fastest growing segment of their audience is users that are over 26 years old. Recently referred to as “old people” in a presentation at a facebook developers garage. I had to chuckle as I am far older than that. The demographic of new users that are coming in are professionals and what one might easily refer to as “people that used to use Linked In”.
Useful facebook applications that leverage the social graph of facebook and add value and facilitate connections on facebook will be the long-term winners. Engagement with users on facebook canvas pages within applications is where businesses have a huge upside opportunity. Businesses have the opportunity to engage, and provide data and experience that is useful to the users.
These applications should also foster connections with users real world network of connections. Applications should also embrace all viral carrier mechanisms that facebook allows in order for the application to spread through the social graph in a variety of ways. It is not only about being viral, but being viral and engaging to the people that matter. Facebooks social graph, f8 platform and tools sets coupled with valuable information makes for the greatest chance for success for an application.
Success metrics can be measured in a variety of ways; depending on the specific business application objectives and goals.
One easy way to imagine how facebook works is to visualize “Online Word of Mouth Marketing” with all the traditional friction points removed. Also, imagine people being able to see what their friends saw, said, did, engaged with, and behaviors shared with virtually no effort from the participant that is spreading the message. This might help you to understand how facebook allows increased efficiency of communication in way that we have not really seen before. That is the reason that business want to embrace facebook and create applications for the fast growing website.
Make no mistake about it; facebook is no MySpace (anarchy, chaos and no structured environment). Facebook has staying power and this is not some fad; it is a fundamental shift in how users communicate and data gets shared and discovered. This is great news for all business that choose to embrace facebook properly with an application that is strategically designed to meet business objectives.
Ask around your office today; you will be surprised at how many people in your business are already on facebook. Many Sr. Level Executives are unaware of how many people from within their organization are already on facebook. We have had several clients tell us that after they did some research, they found that thousands of employees from their company were already on facebook. The trend is here to stay and will continue to grow.
Go here to learn more about our facebook consulting, strategy and application development services.
Technorati Tags: facebook, rodney rumford, facebook applications, facebook consulting, wall street journal
Facebook can add Iran to the growing list of entities that have banned the social networking site.
The ban reportedly coincides with the existence of a Facebook group aimed at ending censorship in Iran, but there appears to be no correlation between the two events. It’s also been reported that some users in Iran can still access the site, and this may be due to the lack of consistency in the Iranian system as it’s strained relationship to Syria makes it difficult to enforce laws on both ends.
Nevertheless, Facebook has now joined the ranks of YouTube, MySpace and Flickr in terms of becoming a staple in a list of banned sites. While no further information has been provided, it’s clear that large and popular social networks, as well as blogging platforms and other arenas for personal expression, have limited access in Iran. Perhaps the potential power of Facebook groups is really something to worry about in countries that use this level of censorship as a form of political control?
[via committed to protect bloggers]
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While at the facebook developers garage in Palo Alto I had a chance to catch up with RockYou CEO & Co founder Lance Tokuda. This is the first interview in a 2 part segment. RockYou is a social network widget developer for many social networks; not just facebook.
They happen to have the largest user base portfolio of applications on the facebook platform (well over 12 million).
They own quite a few very popular & viral facebook applications such as X-Me, Slideshows, Superwall, Zombies and Horoscopes.
They have been funded by Sequoia Capital & Lightspeed Ventures. They also have widgets on popular social networking sites such as myspace, bebo, hi5, friendster and xanga.
Some highlights from this interview with Lance
Shift towards engagement
High page views
Network to grow new applications - sell ads
Inventory and selling ads through partners
Building Ad networks is part of focus
$10 per CPM
Technorati Tags: facebook, rockyou, facebook rockyou, widget, facebook interviews, facebook advertising
As promised, I have launched the AllFacebook.com video show. This has been a serious learning experience and we will continue to add features and improve our process. We hit a lot of technical difficulties in the production, editing and uploading of our videos. As a result, this video came out at 11:00 PM on Labor Day when I intended for it to come out in the morning. Such is life! If you have any suggestions, please make them. This is our first run and I will be extending the features. Thanks for your input!
Clearspring, the widget creation and distribution platform, now supports distribution to Facebook.
The application wizard lets you create flash widgets for Facebook applications, along with the other networks like MySpace, Netvibes, etc. As Clearspring is a prominent widget platform used by developers, this is an important addition for Clearspring. It also emphasizes the influence of Facebook as a channel for widget distribution. It’s important for widget creation and distribution platforms to include Facebook as options. We’re seeing the inclusion of Facebook with several widget options as well as networks giving options to send gifts or launch applications on Facebook.
In other Clearspring news, the company has raised another $10 million in funding.
[via allfacebook]
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Clearspring, the dominant widget distribution platform, has just expanded their distribution to Facebook. This is a huge opportunity for widget developers. While Facebook has tried to move away from describing their platform as a new distribution channel for widgets, the reality is that Facebook is a new distribution channel for widgets in addition to being a general platform for developers.
Clearspring has just taken a big step in furthering their already dominant position as the primary widget distribution platform. The new features enable users to easily create flash widgets as Facebook applications within a simple application wizard. While similar in concept to the Dapper platform that I covered last week, the Clearspring offering allows for greater exposure across multiple platforms, not just Facebook’s.
One thing is for sure, Clearspring is taking the Facebook platform seriously. It will be interesting to see how the dynamic between widgets and platform applications changes over the coming weeks and months.
