DISQUS

Voracious appetite for researched and intellectual information = not mainstream.

William, I just got that same message myself! 13,647,15cm³.

How about explaining to you seven reasons why Live Messenger sucks?

Shameless.
http://www.facebookinsight.com/2008/04/19/dear-...

Great idea. Good luck with it, we'll do what we can up North.

Great interview, great visionary. I had the pleasure of having a thirty minute chat with Mark a few weeks ago, and was really enamored with his "open fields" view of game design. "Infinite space" was another term he threw around. Very cool!

This really gives a face to what the public sees as a series of bothersome invitations and tech-speak.

This open environment gives us a voice!

This is genius... I was disappointed in you, jealous of you, and amazed at the same time.

If they had a special application devoted to people uploading their resume, CareerBuilder would have access to some of the user's personal information (well, as much as the Application API releases). Perhaps they plan on using that information to give recruiters a little 'extra info' at a price.

I am not sure if the profile revamp is a deliberate play by Facebook to attack their own developers, as much as a response to the cry of users. Profiles have grown out of control, and I think that their first priority is preventing the "MySpace"-ing of Facebook.

As for IM, it's just too sweet a service to hold back on. It's a fine line, but it's the same fine line as Walmart busting into a small community. The mom & pops / app devs need to become creative to compete.

Does that SGN Traffic chart include the traffic from affiliate games like Jetman?

You sure have changed your tone about the possible benefits of FriendFeed! lol. In seriousness though, the next iteration of profiles allows user to 'approve' what appears in their feed, so I imagine that the ones that ARE approved will have a higher 'value' in the algorithm, and we'll start seeing more entries about what people WANT to show off to their friends.

Which is good.

Intense, such a great truth. Our culture very much promotes a 'good' way of being, which is incredible in itself.

That said, don't be surprised if we start to see social networks dedicated to being 'bad'. Ever heard of AshleyMadison.com? Maybe not quite the same, but definitely along those lines.

This is definitely something to watch as it grows. If FriendFeed introduces a usable friend-list and messaging service, then it will be able to attract a large market. If they then theoretically tie in with Orkut or somehow get a photo application running, it will be an open version of Facebook. Instead of applications, people will just create websites based on the FriendFeed API.

Still a long way to go, but FF is moving at such a rapid pace that everyone should keep an eye open for them.

That's great stuff. I find friends that dive in and have no idea what's going on in their friends' profiles. Off the top of my head, this could be used to collect statistics on conversation-generators on the web. Right now we have blogs, but through Twitter we get a little closer to the people, and see who really generates a forum in their everyday, off-the-cuff observations.

I think that they're gearing up to 'relaunch' their whole service. Rolling out the new profiles may seem like a small technical change to us, but from the perspective of the users (and combined with the right marketing), it will be an opportunity for Facebook to reinvent itself. Combine that with the great buzz they still have, and the 60,000,000 and growing user-base, and I would say calling them 'doomed' is just unfounded sensationalism.

What did anybody expect? The company is still trying to secure funding, and although I'll probably get whacked on the head for this, I think that having a few Applications that truly demonstrate the community potential will be good for all Application Developers in the long run.

I mean, invites alone aren't enough to seal the deal. If you want to take on the big boys at CBS, come up with a better idea, a better marketing scheme, and face the music: the social web isn't going to be fair for a while.

Maybe until Google's "do no evil" mantra comes into play, and OpenSocial/FriendFeed rules the web.

Although I'm a proponent of the long-term possibilities of Facebook Applications, I love this article. I think a lot needs to be demystified before any real progress can be made.

Specifically, you mentioned the social graph. Once Facebook cleans up the application directory (which it seems like they're going to with the next generation of tabbed user profiles), we're going to see far fewer popular applications. I imagine this will lead to a few applications becoming as indispensable as say, Photos or Video. Then we'll see a golden application and hopefully something other than "How many vampires kissed my top friends".

Although I'm a proponent of the long-term possibilities of Facebook Applications, I love this article. I think a lot needs to be demystified before any real progress can be made.

Specifically, you mentioned the social graph. Once Facebook cleans up the application directory (which it seems like they're going to with the next generation of tabbed user profiles), we're going to see far fewer popular applications. I imagine this will lead to a few applications becoming as indispensable as say, Photos or Video. Then we'll see a golden application and hopefully something other than "How many vampires kissed my top friends".

Great post.

Clearly you've mapped the short lifecycle of most Facebook applications at this point. This kind of theory would hold for any sort of engaging application online. The anomalies do exist though, like Top Friends or Compare People, where constant innovation keeps users coming back for more. I imagine this is what we'll see after Facebook shakes down existing applications with the new Profile setup.

Great work Nick. I like the hard-hitting, and I'm sure your knowledge went through. Virality, messaging and the future of the social web. Thanks for another source of great insight into the future of this market.