facebook application development

Facebook Questions Absent in Search Engines – Facebook launched its Questions service this week but so far the results are not available in search results. Search Engine Land reported that a Facebook spokesperson tells them, “Currently, search engines cannot access questions and answers through our Questions product. That may be something we consider for the future but have no current plans to allow it.” Also, searches on Yahoo, Bing and Google yielded no results for Questions.

Facebook to Add Delete Option – Facebook has released a “delete account” option, which would allow users to streamline the deletion of their accounts from the social network. Currently, the process of doing so is cumbersome and drawn-out with several steps. Facebook is testing the option with some users, which says it will “permanently delete your account and all information you have shared.”

Bump Releases Redesign – Bump has overhauled its iPhone app by changing its look, adding new features, allowing Twitter and LinkedIn integrations, chat function, a calendar feature and also allowing unlimited photo and contact sharing.

Info From 100M Facebook Users ‘Leaked’ – Much ado has been made this week about the “leaking” of information from 100 million Facebook users’ accounts. This information was downloaded by security researcher Ron Bowes from Facebook’s user directory, or index of public profile Pages. Which is to say that the “leaked” info was already public, including names, profile pictures and a few of the users’ friends.

‘Owner’ of Facebook Busted for Shrooms – Paul Ceglia is the man alleging he’s contractually entitled to 84% of Facebook per a contract he signed with Mark Zuckerberg in 2003. He seems to have a somewhat checkered past. In 2009 Ceglia was accused of defrauding customers in the amount of $200,000 for not delivering ordered merchandise and he also apparently enjoyed the effects of hallucinogenic mushrooms in 1997 while in Texas.

WaPo Further Integrates Facebook, Web Site – The Washington Post announced an expansion this week of its Network News tool, which incorporates social media feedback such as Likes and the Recommend button. Now users may see what’s been recommended across the site, by section; also the Like button is being replaced by the Recommend button. Users may deactivate the Network News box by clicking the red X at the top of the box to manage their preferences. Similar updates were also made to the site’s Twitter integration.

LiveWorld Releases LiveConnect - LiveWorld released a new product this week aimed at helping brands better engage in conversations with fans. Facebook LiveConnect allows brands to unify moderation/administration across Pages and web sites into one system.

iGoDigital Provides Shopping Help, Facebook Integration – This week iGoDigital announced new Facebook integrations for its product recommendation platform. Essentially consumers are presented with direct and indirect product suggesitons from their network after logging in with Facebook via web or mobile, these sugestions take Likes, recommendations and interests into account. The integration also allows for Facebook users to post products on their profiles to solicit or provide advice to their network.

Appssavvy Makes Six More Hires – Appssavvy announced this week that it hired six people who are set to help the company focus on social and mobile media marketing, taking the company’s total employee count past 40. Talent includes: Human Resources Manager Holly Ettenger, Marketing Coordinator Mattan Griffel, Senior Account Executive-Midwest Meghan Kludt, Product Manager Yolanda Ladia, Senior Account Executive Magali Merat and Senior Director of Ad Operations Robin Wilson.

New Facebook Ads Promotions – Facebook has started some new promotions for Page administrators that includes free ad trials and credit promotions, following similar efforts over the years.

Nigerian President Shines on Facebook – Social Times highlighted Nigerian President Goodluck Johnson’s use of his recently set up Facebook Page, noting that the president posts at least once daily and has earnestly tried to engage Nigerians about the intricacies of government policy.

Facebook in Windows Messenger - Windows Messenger incorporated some Facebook integrations this week allowing users to see their contacts’ social network activity. In Messenger, with a new brower plugin, users can see what contacts have shared online and comment on them via Messenger Companion notifications in the upper right-hand corner of the browser window.

Become a Star with Facebook Connect – An interesting Facebook Connect integration allows users and their Facebook friends to star in a movie trailer. The reason seems to be promoting Swiss television shows.

Facebook, NPR and the Media – Facebook launched a Page specifically for media properties this week and some insight as to how media properties use Facebook came from an interview with one of NPR’s social media strategists Andy Carvin. Among the insights was that NPR’s Page was created by a fan and eventually handed over to NPR, the Page now has more than 1 million Likes and provides tips, allows for surveys and pretty basic demographic insights (60% are women, for example). Facebook accounts for 7% of NPR’s traffic, just behind Google, and comments on Facebook are much more common than on NPR’s web site.

Sit on My Facebook, the Video - An interesting mix of social media metaphors roll into one in a new, mildly NSFW music video, “Sit On My Facebook“ by The Scribes. The video was produced by the Pantless Knights.

The Week in Bugs – Facebook experienced an array of relatively minor technical issues this week, that were more notable for how they were perceived. Facebook was preventing people from using the word “Palestinian” in creating Pages, apparently due to an automated filtering system. Also blocked were mentions of Power.com in status updates. However, this latter issue was attributable to the fact that, after Facebook debuted Questions and changed its publisher interface, people were having problems using the tagging option (using @ in front of a name in a status update). This has since been fixed.

Finally, there was a bit of obscenity on Facebook for users who chose the Spanish language option this week. Not only was there explicit curse words, but there were also allusions to sex acts and genitalia. There’s a Facebook Page with about 5,700 people who said they saw the same problems. Gawker attributed the problems to a Turkish web site.

Sugar CRM’s new customer relationship management web software Sugar6 includes strengthened social network integrations, allowing users to view Facebook profiles from within the product. Facebook vanity URLs or user IDs can be pinned to contact files or added as dashboard feeds, allowing previews of activity on the site. There is no social authorization system within Sugar6, though, so users must log in on Facebook.com on the same web browser and can only see profiles they usually have access to, such as public profiles and friends.

Sugar is one of a number of social CRM software providers, all of whom are trying to help businesses to figure out sales leads and other relationships from existing social data.

Sugar says it is slowly building the infrastructure for a more social CRM tool. In future releases of Sugar, it hope to include automatic syncing of social network data into contacts, data-centric social media monitoring, and the ability to track actions like wall posts and messages to contacts the way they currently track email.

Sugar6 provides a web-based, customizable, open source CRM platform for approximately $30/month/user. While some CRM services like Siebel and Microsoft Dynamics are more rigid, and Salesforce charges for simple customizations after a certain limit, it is free to use Sugar6’s Sugar Studio to create coding-free customizations. Those with PHP skills can even alter the source code to make more drastic changes to the platform. This makes Sugar6 a good choice for users who frequently need to adapt to changes, or whose requirements don’t match that of traditional CRM software.

Contact pages on Sugar6 can be customized to include Facebook Page and profile URLs, as well as Twitter and LinkedIn links. If the user has logged in to Facebook on the same browser, and have access to that contact’s Facebook content —because they are friends, the profile is public, or they have relaxed privacy settings— a custom tab allows a user to view that profile from within Sugar6. This could help a user monitor updates from a business partner’s Page, or see that a lead has left a status update saying they are preparing to make a purchase.

Sugar6’s goal is to eliminate the need for using multiple windows simultaneously to manage relationships. The lack of a native authorization system make this a bit clumsy, but usable. A future release that integrates authorization, auto-syncing, and the ability to interact with Facebook, not just watch it, will finally bridge the gap between the wealth of contact and behavior information available on the social network and the software meant to take advantage of it.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is using Facebook to promote the government’s humanitarian efforts around the world. The Page has about 5,000 Likes and incorporates Notes, videos, photos and discussions to share its message; posts usually only receive several dozen comments or Likes.

We’ve already written about several ways governments are using Facebook to conduct business. The U.S. Census Bureau created an application to help spread the word about filling out census forms, some governments use Facebook to distribute information about elections or promote parks, mayors use Facebook to communicate with their constituents and police may receive crime tips via Facebook.

USAID posts daily, sometimes more than daily, about its mission and work around the world. This often includes government videos, photos, web sites and blogs, but also news stories about global health and development, but also issues like family planning, Haiti and HIV.

The Notes section includes what appear to be press releases and blog posts from USAID’s web site. A Travel tab includes a Where I’ve Been app integration and a travel question of the day. There are also some discussions, photos and videos on the Page pertaining to USAID’s work.

USAID’s aim seems to be spreading the word about the positive projects the U.S. government provides around the world; the department also has a Twitter account.

Facebook Faces Another Ownership Lawsuit – Facebook came under a temporary asset restraining order this week after yet another person claimed to have had a stake in the company. Paul D. Ceglia filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of Allegany County in New York alleging that he owns 84% of Facebook per a 2003 contract he signed with Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook has requested the case be moved to federal court.

Ceglia claims he and Zuckerberg signed a contract stipulating that Zuckerberg would design a web site for a $1,000 fee and Ceglia would retain a 50% stake, with an additional 1% stake every business day until Jan. 1, 2004 until the site was completed. The site was to offer Harvard University students access to a live functioning yearbook called The Face Book.

New Facebook Publisher Revealed – A screen shot of the new Facebook publisher was seen on Twitpic this week. It looks like the new publisher is more simplified, including status updates, links and photos, but not videos.

Facebook Set to Announce 500M Users – TechCrunch reported this week that Facebook is set to announce the 500 million user mark with an interesting gimmick. Apparently, Facebook employees have been asked to upload photos of themselves thanking users; these photos were being hosted on a Drop.io account.

Facebook and White Flight – Danah Boyd has released another piece of scholarship on the racial composition of Facebook this week. The book chapter, “White Flight in Networked Publics — How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook” details this topic and comes from her yet-to-be-published book “Digital Race Anthology.”

Previously Boyd noted that teenagers’ preference for MySpace or Facebook seemed to fall along racial lines, with more affluent white and Asian teens preferring Facebook and working class blacks and Latinos preferring MySpace. This latest chapter notes that MySpace has become a “digital ghetto” to many teens causing “white [and asian] flight” to Facebook.

One caveat is that the two companies don’t normally release racial demographic data about their user bases, although in late 2009 Facebook released some states showing that its US user base reflects the general population. Boyd’s statistical support for her thesis is derived from third parties.

For more see the story or the book chapter.

SocialSenseFB Filters Facebook for Brands – Networked Insights introduced its new Facebook Page application this week, SocialSenseFB. The app analyzes a brand’s Facebook fans, what their conversations consist of, how those conversations are impacting the brand and any issues to be addressed.

Involver Launches Tracking Tool – Involver launched a new program this week, AMP (audience management platform), aimed at helping brands track the ways their fan base grows, partially with frequently updated analytics. AMP consists of a dashboard where brand managers can see Twitter and Facebook followers, schedule content and track interaction. Pricing is tied to the number of Pages or fans to be managed.

DeHood Launches Facebook Integration – Location-based service focusing on hyper-local communities DeHood launched a Facebook integration this week at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat conference. The company also has an iPhone service and iPad app. On Facebook DeHood allows users to invite friends to their DeHood community, find friends already in those communities and post their DeHood-related activities on their Walls.

Govts Get Creative with Facebook – A few foreign governments did some interesting things with Facebook recently. In Ireland, input from Facebook users was taken into account over budget cuts, according to the Department of Finance there. And in the Philippines the government is using Facebook and Twitter to boost revenue by searching from tax evaders online.

Controversial Indian App ‘Whitens’ Skin – Vaseline has introduced a curious Facebook application in India that has caused quite a stir. The App is for a skin lightening cream for men and on Facebook takes a users’ photo divides the face into darker and fairer halves on Facebook to illustrate product effectiveness. Skin lightening products are popular in India and Vaseline’s parent company, Unilever, responded by saying the app was “created for the Indian market as a culturally relevant and engaging way for Indian men to interact with this product.” According to Inside Facebook Gold, India currently has 10.5 million users.

Buddy Media is a New York-based company that’s been helping brands take advantage of their social media presence since Facebook opened the platform in 2007.

The idea was to assist companies with establishing themselves on Facebook. “We didn’t know how we were going to do it, but we wanted to participate,” founder and chief executive Mike Lazerow tells us. “You basically could build on top of Facebook and reach consumers directly, rather than dealing with the traditional gatekeepers of the web.”

At the time, Facebook had about 30 million monthly active users — 470 million or so later, Buddy Media has a solid and growing business. Check out our interview with Lazerow, below, for lots of key details on its experiences to date, and its plans for the future.

Note that the company also does work on Twitter, MySpace and iPhone platforms, but has focused its energies on Facebook by offering primarily larger companies, brands and agencies a content management system that includes an application library, as well as publishing and analytics tools. Some notable clients include Anheuser Busch, Southwest Airlines, the NHL, L’Oreal and TJ Maxx.

It has raised $10 million from a variety of investors, including Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Mark Pincus, Softbank Capital and the European Founders Fund, among several others.

Inside Facebook: What products and services does your company provide to clients using Facebook? What types of clients are you aiming to reach?

Mike Lazerow: The business is a software as a service platform, any company can subscribe or license it to help them manage their Facebook presence. Buddy Media is more of an enterprise player, versus custom app shops or the small business players. Our strongest categories are CPG (consumer packaged goods), travel (Four Seasons, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines), tech (Samsung) and fashion (L’Oreal, Diane Von Furstenberg, TJ Maxx, Marshall’s).

IFB: Can you share some highlights of how your company has helped clients meet their goals using Facebook?

ML: Summit Entertainment (“Twilight”) is a company that we started with that had very few fans. Through Wall posts and managing of very creative ad promotions on our platform they’ve gone from 4.5 milllion to about 7 million Likes since January — which has been one of our biggest fan growths. On the retail side, Redbox, we started working with them in January and they had about 400,000 Likes, or fans. They are now one of the largest in their space with 1.1 million Likes without a lot of marketing, mostly just content management. +Global (more here) lets companies scale their Facebook presence by geo-targeting by language or country, whether it’s one Page in one country or 1,000 Pages in 100 countries. According to our clients we’ve cut over 80% of the cost out of the equation.

IFB: Overall, can you share metrics on the scope of your business?

ML: Across the platform we have 80-90 million total connections, fans, Likers. It’s not unusual for our clients to have 10% of all their Facebook fans engage them on a monthly basis. We now have 75 agencies, primarily advertising agencies and public relations firms, that actually use a white label version of our platform; we let (them) do most of the creative work. Buddy Media is growing by over 50% quarter-by-quarter in terms of revenue. We’re on track to do probably over $20 million this year. We have 85 employees in New York, New York.

IFB: What metrics do you use to determine the success of a given campaign?

ML: Typically we look at client success through APIs that we can set up on our platform, which lets you track fan growth, user engagement and activation. It’s very hard ROI metrics tied to their campaign: How many people signed up for a sweepstakes, we got 300,000 people to redeem the coupons, how many people bought from a retailer, how many people signed up for a test drive? So, if you set up the dashboard correctly, everyone can be on the same page in terms of what they’re trying to accomplish.

IFB: What have been your biggest challenges building on Facebook platform? What mistakes have you made and learned from there?

ML: I think the biggest challenge for everyone working on the platform is keeping up with the changes Facebook is making. Every week there are minor changes — things open up, things close down, how you handle notifications, how you handle publishing, how you handle user data. Facebook is basically building the airplane as they’re flying it. You realize that you can’t have projects that last three months and then launch, because the platform changed. The mistakes that we’ve made have been in building things that we’ve had to rebuild because Facebook has changed. So, now the way we build our products is very open, very modular because, now we don’t need to change our entire platform — we just have to change a part of it. The changes also pose the biggest opportunities.

IFB: Beyond your own efforts, what Facebook changes have noticeably helped your company?

ML: The number one change was the opening up of Facebook Pages. That was an important change that sent our company into orbit because every company, all of a sudden, needed to manage those Pages and they didn’t have people sitting around, necessarily, who knew FBML and Javascript. The change that has recently really helped our clients and our business is the introduction of the Open Graph. The idea that a company’s web site can also be social is enormous. It’s what I call a branded viral loop, it’s basically free traffic. The other major change I think that Facebook has made is they’ve recommitted to the user experience by cleaning up the ecosystem a lot, and ultimately, that helps everyone but it also helps brand that want to be in a clean environment.

IFB: On the other hand, has Facebook made any recent changes that have noticeably hurt your company?

ML: We’ve been in the business long enough with Facebook that changes aren’t good or bad, they just are changes and we basically evolve and make changes.

IFB: If you could ask Facebook to make a single change, what would it be?

ML: I think the ability to geo-target your Wall posts through third-party platforms would be amazing. The ability to target content on a more granular level through Facebook Pages would be great, whether it’s by interest or by profile data so if someone comes into a Facebook Page it would be great to show local offers on the tab. The one thing they shouldn’t change is the commitment to the user experience.

IFB: How does your work on Facebook relate to your work on other platforms?

ML: There’s no other property other than Facebook that has the scale, the reach, the stickiness globally that Facebook has (so it) ties into a lot of different stuff that you’re doing digitally. We integrate with Twitter so if you’re doing stuff on Twitter, you could very easily link to your Facebook Pages. If you’re on YouTube, you can use that content on your Facebook Wall and Facebook tabs. Most importantly, Buddy Media has been very active in linking your web site to Facebook, and Facebook to your web site. And then the last kind of area which I think it’s really important for our clients is, how does their email system and their current CRM (customer relationship management) system interface with Facebook. So, having it all work together in a way that works for the company is much more important than, “What’s your Twitter strategy?”

IFB: Do you have any specific plans that you can share?

ML: One of the areas we are most excited about right now is social commerce. We’re going to continue to roll out our +Global offering, which includes more granular targeting of content. Starwood hotels is a great example, (the company) doesn’t care about China as just one country, they care about China as a series of cities they do business in. +Global is a Facebook management system right now at its core, but as Facebook goes to 1 billion users, it’s really a web-wide content management system. There’s no reason why it just stays within Facebook. As Facebook infuses itself to other websites, we will also be able to control third-party web sites and other microsites. We’re going to broaden our reach significantly there.