Inside Facebook speculates that Facebook may be in the process of adding Friend Lists, aka Buddy Lists aka Contact Groups to a future release of the platform:

The two new API methods are:

friends.getLists
friends.getListsMembers

Based on these method names, “Friend Lists� could be buddy lists that you might use to organize your friends. For example, “Work Friends� or, say… “Top Friends�.

If these are indeed upcoming features of the Facebook Platform, I think this has two major implications:

1. This could dramatically simplify privacy controls. Right now, users manage privacy settings per-feature or by managing their Limited Profile list. The addition of Friend Lists means one can now much more flexibly and powerfully manage privacy settings per List. Work friends see one portion of your profile, personal friends see another, best friends see yet another.

This will be a welcome change for everyone whose LinkedIn networks have migrated to Facebook. Consequently, this could mean accelerated LinkedIn attrition: per-Friend-List privacy settings could substantially decrease the need of many to actively maintain their LinkedIn accounts as well.

2. More significant, this would mark the first time Facebook has moved to directly compete with a top Platform application.

Source: Inside Facebook, “Speculation: Facebook adding Friend Lists; implications for Top Friends, LinkedIn?”

I’ll take the second part first, since I think it matters less. Anyone who has been paying attention to Facebook should have known that it:

1. has always had the option to make whatever it wants, even if inspired by an app on the platform
2. was probably on the long-term roadmap for Facebook for some time
3. should not be a surprise to anyone

In contrast, the first point about privacy and security is much more interesting to me, probably since I’ve been talking about it for years now (at least since March 2004) and it’s nice to see it making it into the usable, at scale realm:

SNS 1.0 is at risk from another powerful force, however. Although the feature sets of these tools will often fail to accommodate user’s needs, a far more fundamental problem may exist in the very foundations. As mentioned we all interact within different social zones and contexts. As mentioned, our circles are interconnected and often linear (although promotions and demotions can be accelerated for any arbitrary reason). I call this the Social Context Continuum. Relationships evolve, or devolve, over time. As more information is exchanged, the bonds change based on a number of criterion — trust being near the top of that list.

The dilemma is two-fold. One the one hand, there are not enough “shades” for tinting relationships in the current systems. Degree-based systems are meaningful only in term of understanding graphs. However, they do nothing to indicate affinity or opportunity. Graduated scales, going from Enemy to Friend only serve to collapse the value of categories as a whole — much like the junk drawer in most everyone’s kitchen which becomes a convenient catch-all for hard to place items.

On the other hand, the positioning of SNS is problematic to its long-term unevolved survival. For some users, SNS provides a unique social environment that encourages and develops new relationships. For others, the potential of SNS to create business opportunities provides significant value. Unfortunately, the quest for ubiquity at the same level as e-mail or cell phone address books is extremely difficult to pass, at least by current standards.

In the end, these two forces will come together and result in a growing sense of frustration for users. This frustration will stem from the inability to manage more of their network from a single location. The result will be that users will be forced to maintain identities in numerous locations without the ability to easily leverage previously efforts. Some may argue this will prove to be a much smaller problem than it seems, however, we live in a culture of consolidation and where time and other pressures continuously drive us towards new forms of “efficiency”.

Source: SocialTwister, “The SNS Differentiation Challenge”

Interestingly enough, Facebook could have the requisite level of engagement and momentum to materialize the “Social Context Continuum” for a large part of the internet populous.

Technorati Tags: f8, facebook, facebook+applications, social+architecture, social+networking, socialcontextcontinuum

Facebook applications are experiencing tremendous growth, for better or worst. It’s not often we get to look at a set of truly astonishing numbers compressed into such a short period of time. InsideFacebook, a blog that has grown to be near the center of this emerging world, has a summary on the growth in the past month.

We’ve gathered data from all the top apps on Facebook now that we’re one month into Platform, and one thing’s clear: Facebook applications have taken off like wildfire. In fact, to the tune of 65 million net application installs over the course of the past 30 days. That’s an average of 2.5 installed applications per every registered Facebook user. And I may even be missing some.

20 applications now sport over 1 million Facebook users. 35 more have over 100,000.

Source: InsideFacebook, “Facebook users add 65 million apps in first month - average of 2.5 per person”

While most are intrigued by the opportunity, it’s not entirely clear if the universe of applications will ultimately serve as a platform for doing business. Some companies, however, aren’t waiting to find out. So far, there have already been 2 acquisitions for Facebook applications. ReadWriteWeb outlines these purchases noting that, so far, the cited reasons are largely to acquire users or talent. The conclusion puts a finger on the pulse of this matter:

So will Facebook acquisitions continue? I think that’s probably highly likely. With more than 38,000 developers already using the Facebook Developer app (which helps you create applications for the platform), buying popular apps is a good way for companies looking to get into the Facebook ecosystem to screen developers. And with the Facebook platform continuing to grow in popularity among its rapidly expanding user base, it seems inevitable that companies will try to buy their way to the top, especially given the relatively cheap price of purchasing Facebook apps (Favorite Peeps, for example, was had for only just over US 4 cents per user).

Source: ReadWriteWeb, “Facebook Acquisitions: Fad or Proof of Platform Success?”

I’m not sure that I would expect the valuation for users to remain consistently low. If anything, would estimate that as the nature of applications evolve into, well, more traditional applications, and developers loose their stage fright regarding monetizing their actions, that the lifetime value of a user will increase significantly. I can say for sure we’re making that bet.

Technorati Tags: f8, facebook, facebook applications, facebook+applications, ilike, monetization, slide

Just a short month ago, Facebook made its new development platform, F8, open to the public and with it came the beginnings of a cottage industry of micro application development. The success stories are quite amazing, no matter what scale you consider it at. On the one hand, there are a dozen or so apps with 1M+ users already and growing. On the other hand, there are hundreds of applications that have been adopted by many thousand users. As an application developer, the notion of launching an application built in just a few weeks and seeing huge adoption is both exciting and frightening at the same time.

Of course, getting that many “users” in that short a period of time is somewhat suspect, no matter how you count it. We’re more accustomed to this type of growth in things are are either highly fashionable (think Tamagachi, ipods) or highly utilitarian (think vaccines, technologies). In certain circles, software, services, and the combination of the two) are often trumpeted by waves of early adopters. It’s this particular pocket that’s most curious.

Paul Kedrosky raises the specter of this in his recent post, “Option F and the Facebook 500,000″:

Around this time last year Josh Kopelman came up with the idea of the Techcrunch chasm. The root idea is/was that too many companies were targeting the then-53,651 readers of Mike A’s popular Techcrunch blog. A good review in Techcrunch, as Josh pointed out, gets you 5-25k beta users, and then you’re stuck.

I’m wondering if something similar isn’t happening in Facebook. I keep hearing about companies that are exercising “Option F” and launching a Facebook version of their app, only to suddenly have 500,000 users. But for how long? I’m betting, pace the Techcrunch chasm, that those people are an ephemeral crew, and that they try pretty much anything, and then drop it again.

I see that behavior quite clearly in my Facebook news feed. People all add one app; people all drop that app. Repeat, repeat, repeat. This is not a mainstream audience, nor does it seem to have much permanence. It’s just tire-kickers and try-ers.

Source: Paul Kedrosky, “Option F and the Facebook 500,000″

Indeed, there probably is a great deal of tire-kicking going on with loads of applications, but the rate of decay is not clear. While it’s not a bad bet that something which grows with meteoric rates will burn back down to something much smaller over time, the unique circumstances of Facebook applications may work to preserve the scale. Specifically, while other applications build their audiences, they require that we, the user, go to a variety of different destinations to participate. With Facebook, we largely broadcast our usage and the stream of incidents that define our involvement. This town-sqaure, gossip-oriented model seem to create a different set of wrappers on how we approach our usage:

• You can be an early adopter by discovering and app first amongst your network of friends (a network you don’t need to invite over and over to prove you made a discovery).
• Your usage is not only informative, but competitive. When everyone sees as you do, they can learn quickly about what drives you. When groups of friends emulate, there’s often a bit of one-upsmanship to see who can find the more interesting resources to lasso into the mix or who can most cleverly make use of something already assigned a “purpose.”

• Your interest in a subject matter is perpetuated by your peers’ involvement and usage

I think with time we will know quite a bit more about the usage patterns and the usage intervals, but for now, it’s an interesting new pasture that we’ve been given to graze in.

Technorati Tags: f8, facebook, paul kedrosky

I know I am late to the conversation with this one, but Josh Kopelman has a great post discussing the differences in various business models in today’s flow of entrepreneurship.

Josh takes a look at the models that social networking sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, and YouTube are built upon. He breaks this down into two categories: “Catch and Keep” vs “Catch and Release”. Describing them, he notes:

But what all of the most successful social networks have in common is that they’ve perfected what I like to call a “catch and keep” model. From the first time a user signs up for a MySpace, or a Facebook, they find themselves sucked into spending hours on the site, and feel compelled to both return on a regular basis, and drag their friends into their network. As recent data demonstrates, the top social networks are among the highest trafficked and stickiest sites on the web.

In sharp contrast, most social networks out there have what I call a “catch and release” model. They can generate buzz, get written up in the blogosphere, and even get 53,651 beta testers, but few of those initial users ever return to the site.

Source: “Redeye VC: “Catch and Release” Business Models”

What I find most intriguing about this, however, is not the math but the focus on the user throughout the cases studied. The empirical means of looking at this data is driven by the User Acquisition Costs. The social means of looking at this is driven by the user’s needs.

As Josh notes, the problem often with these Catch and Release models is that they put together a series of features and functions that impose on the user a suite of actions that are potentially uninteresting, unusable, or unimportant. There are a number of reasons that seem to drive this type of situation:

• Undifferentiated Advice - Many startups base their foundations on an initial itch they have. The excitement about that specific problem often leads to a myopic view of the landscape they are preparing to bridge. Without a variety in voice at the planning table, there is the all-to-easy trap of defining a problem space too narrowly.
• Business-First Mentality - Many companies choose to deal with their business model motivations first and foremost. In this case, you’ll often see a company trying to leverage an untapped opportunity - but they can only look at how to funnel people towards the opportunity. Unfortunately, people don’t like being funneled and they know when they are in one.
• Shifted Goals - Startup life is filled with rapid changes - it’s part of the excitement. At the same time, it often feels difficult, if not impossible, to make changes. Of all the entrepreneurs I’ve ever spoken to, most have one of these moments in the history of their company and almost all have some regret the didn’t “set things right” when they knew it was the time to do it.

If there’s a recurring theme here, it’s surely that a focus on your customer’s needs is tantamount to your success. It’s an obvious truth that’s often difficult to stay true to.

Technorati Tags: business+models, josh+kopelman, social networking, social+networking, trends

Dan Farber has run an interesting “State of the”-like post about the new crop of Social Networking applications that are spawning everywhere. He notes that there are many new sites, offering increasingly similar services and features with expanding and contracting audiences.Towards the end, Dan makes an interesting observation:

But something deeper inside the wave is forming beyond social networking infused products multiplying like mice.Some of this gelled for me during a meeting with Fred Krueger and Evan Rifkin of TagWorld. The startup is building a comprehensive communications and media platform, not just a social networking site with profiles, buddy lists and photo sharing. Krueger says his goal is to allow users to easily build complex Web sites with sharing and a social network as the underlying fabric.The so-called architecture of participation is slowly gestating in the bellies of hundreds of startups and established players, and the social Web, made by humans for humans, is taking shape on top of the grid. Sharing and collaboration is not an afterthought bolted onto email or deployed in a separate server for workflow.

» Less than six degrees of social networking and Web 2.0 goodness | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

It brings me back to 2004, when I was addressing some of these same issues with the first crop of Social Networking applications. I’ve previously, in what now seems like a past life, discussed these issues in detail. Here’s a flashback:

One thing remains clear, they all CAN’T survive and consolidation is inevitable. I’m going to skip any attempt to explain the financial motivations for this upcoming aggregation, but I do think that the user perspective is particularly telling. The most influential source of change, and eventually consolidation, will be users’ attitudes towards the various SNS applications. In a widely public race, the SNS with the most USABLE features will come to rule, not necessarily the one with the “best�.

Socialtwister 2.0 » Blog Archive » The SNS Differentiaion Challenge

So I would have to agree. There’s barely the sliver of differentiation these days. What will make the difference?

With choice comes evaluation and comparison. With experience comes knowledge. Both of these forces are working against the current crop of SNS applications. It is, purely from an economic point of view, simpler to build bigger and better when someone has done the research, development, testing, and education. Programmatically, its often easier to write new code while refactoring existing code than to mend an existing infrastructure. With users more informed, their ability to discern the good from the bad grows.

Socialtwister 2.0 » Blog Archive » The SNS Differentiaion Challenge

I’ve argued the ability to switch between social contexts with ease and ultimately usability will be the key differentiators between the survivors and the vanquished. It’s already starting to look that way - but we’ll find out more soon enough.

technorati tags:sns, social+networking, dan+farber

I use tech.memeorandum.com almost daily lately. There are times when it’s a great way to find something new to read. Today, however, is not one of those days.

If you take a look at the home page you’ll see something, well, stupid. What is it? It’s a river of news about Google Finance. Now, I love the chance to bash on Google when given the opportunity, but this is insane.

You have to scoll down all the way to the end to find something different. Should I be led to believe that all that’s going on with tech today is about Google? Is everyone that impressed, depressed, or repressed about Google Finance that no other topic is worth discussing?

Hence, the problem with the secret sauce. Quick, add some more spices and stir that pot.

This has been a public service announcement. *beeeeep*

Sometimes, I think I must read all the same sites as Pete Caputa (though I am sure he reads lots more than me). Yesterday, he made and interesting post about the Long Tail and where the value will fall:

However, the aggregators, unless they are bought by AGILEAMY, will not have enough clout to be bigger than the transaction platform players, Amazon, Ebay, Google, AzoogleAds, etc, the ones that pay affiliates. So, the transaction platform players/the affiliate program owners, stand to make the most cash from the Long Tail. As more and more content is created for free, and aggregated so that the sum is valuable, advertising inventory becomes a lot cheaper.

Source: pc4media, “Where’s the Money to Be Made from the Long Tail?”

I have to agree entirely, well almost. Pete cites another post I came across that I wanted to comment on. it was written by David Hornick. Here’s a relevant excerpt:

… I have come to the conclusion that there are essentially two general classes of technology the will benefit economically from the Long Tail — aggregators and filterers. And while both aggregators and filterers rely upon the increasing volume and diversity of content to assure their value in the ecosystem, that growth of content will not have a material impact upon the value of any one piece of content floating somewhere in the Tail. The value will all inure to the benefit of the aggregators and filterers.

Source: , VentureBlog, “Where’s The Money In The Long Tail?”

I guess my only point of contention with the argument that only the “platforms” can win is what really separates a vertical from a platform exactly. In some cases, it seems that verticals have grown and grown, to the point that the platform emerges from its existence. As companies get attracted to more and more opportunities to reach the long tail audiences, they’ll naturally seek out those networks with the greatest reach, right? Sounds like the long tail all over ;)

I can see lots of circumstances where there’s enough abstraction in any one vertical that expansion is both natural and desired. I have a hard time believing that the big 3 or 5 or whatever it is now are where the plays are - naturally, there’s going to be another Google, right? Can shear size launch one from a vertical to a horizontal?

I use this analogy frequently, so I’ll repeat it here. Consumers don’t care nearly as much about horizontals (infrastructure) as they do about verticals (applications). Why should they? I don’t care how my electricity (infrastructure) works, so long as I can plug in my computer (application). Businesses fall into two categories (super generalization) - platforms and applications/services. We tend to call something niche when it’s focused on a vertical (another super generalization).

I guess I am trying to come up with the characteristics of a vertical that can actually make the transition. That’s, of course, a much longer conversation that I’ll save for another day when the sky isn’t falling!

I guess it was yesterday that Marc Canter dropped the newest, shiniest version of the Structured Blogging initiative. For anyone that’s not aware, Structured Blogging is essentially an effort to make blog data (reviews, events, etc.) more machine-readable, and, presumably, more human-readable as well. The approach is to deliver a customized posting experience on the server side and microformat-enabled output on the display side. OK. Fine. I’ve commented on this already.

Reactions have varied. There was great praise for this from a number of different parties (naturally, many serve to benefit from this). Of course, though, there were many rejections and questions as well. These were far more interesting, IMHO.

On the one hand, Stowe raises a question about the psychology of the blogger, recognizing that part of the treasure of blogging is that it is indeed “Messy, Messy, Messy”:

But I don’t buy it, as I said in this recent post (see Microformats v Structured Blogging: A Small War With Big Consequences ). My bet is that Structured Blogging will fail, not because people wouldn’t like some of the consequences — such as an easy way to compare blog posts about concrete things like record reviews, and so on — but because of the inherent, and wonderful messiness of the world of blogging.

Because blog posts don’t have to conform to any structural standards, they can be used to do anything: nothing is out of bounds, because we haven’t created the boundaries. The messiness of the world we are living in is one of the reasons that it is such a rich and rewarding experience.

Source: GetReal, “Structured Blogging versus Messy, Messy, Messy”

I largely agree with Stowe. Of course, I know Stowe really well. He’s definitely more of a hacker type than I am. I tend to prefer the strucutre, often wishing I had better templates for my blogging needs. I think there’s room for the structured approach, especially if I value the results of having my data ready in this format and prepped to be sent out into the ether and discovered by people in far off lands (ok maybe not).

However, the much more interesting gripe that I have followed relating to this announcement (and it’s not a new gripe, in fact it’s been given new attention since the whole Web 2 Dot Oh No thing started) is that the consumers want their paycheck, heck they deserve it. This line of reasoning rightly stems from the simple fact that, although we are the consumers, we are more so the publishers in this new arrangement. The value of structured blogging is seemingly unfairly weighted in the direction of those with the means and intentions of aggregating that data together to create a collection that has value in excess of the individual nuggets.

Pete commented on this:

But, like Greg Yardley, I want to know “Where the money is?” If pubsub or other Broadband Mechanic’s customers like GoingOn are going to be making cash (somehow) by aggregating my content, I want a piece of it.

And I don’t think that’s paranoid, Biatch. That’s called getting a paycheck for the value you bring to the table. I think the companies behind this are certainly aware of what’s in it for them, if they can get a bunch of bloggers to start adding structure to posts. But, sales training always taught me to start with the value to the customer (and the distributor). In this case, someone like Myspace, Typepad or Blogger would be the distributor and the rest of us lowly users are the customer. How do they and we benefit?

Source: pc4media, “Structured Blogging is Finally Here. Who will Benefit?”

And just what did Greg Yardley say, well, it’s a gem:

“Profiting off user-generated content is Web 2.0 colonialism.”* … Which is what irks me. Structured user-generated content, especially aggregated reviews, is very valuable. Case in point - the del.icio.us purchase. Since del.icio.us’ functionality is easily replicable, the deal was all about the value of user-generated content. You’d think with content being worth so much, the Structured Blogging initiative would contain a way for the content providers to indicate, in a machine-readable fashion, just how they would like to be reimbursed for the commercial use of the content they’re providing. Not so - at least not anywhere I can see.

Source: yardley.ca, “Structured blogging as Web 2.0 colonialism”

So where does this leave us? Well, we know three things. First, we’re doing all the work. Second, we stand to be leveraged to the hilt. Third, our payment is soft (traffic, recognition, warm-and-fuzzy feelings, Google-derivatives). What we don’t know is 1) how much we really deserve from the aggregator (if anything) and 2) how we should receive that payment. I affectionately refer to this as the Pul-and-Pay Dilemma.

Some of the vendors will claim that they actually don’t do anything with your content except expand the audience and match it to the right people. Fair enough. Of course, they derive value from having large databases and the ability to access that data in ways that we don’t necessarily see. Still, the exchange seems pretty even, until someone makes a lot of money. We only worry about these things when they are compared or when they offend. For example, we notice the joy of using a tool like delicious. Delicious gets bought - it was because of us right? Now, some porn site comes along and starts aggregating our content as well. Suddenly, we’re not warm and fuzzy, we’re madder than hell. Why? We’re offended. We’re pissed when Flickr gets bought for tens of millions, not because they don’t “deserve it” - it’s because there’s a number for us to appreciate. Or do we?

The thing that sticks in my head more than anything, are all the exceptions to this rule. Let’s think about TV. NBC spent $10M to film an episode of Friends. They sold $30M in advertising during that show. That’s something like $20M in profit. That value exists ONLY because we’re watching the damned show. Where’s my check? How come I never asked for one then?

Here’s another example. Google’s been indexing the living heck out of everything and anything that we do. They made literally billions (via Adwords) off our work. It took them years before they gave us a way to get some back (AdSense). Were we complaining then? Were we excluding them from indexing our site because we weren’t compensated? I wasn’t. Were you?

Update: Thanks for Pete for forcing me to end this properly:

The first point is that we are indeed entitled, seemingly, to some portion of that profit. In the case of of Friends, I think the audience is the a critical part of the show, beyond simply the actors and production value. I was trying to say that we never got paid for watching.

The second point is that I wonder just how many people are thinking about this, i.e. how many will want more beyond the simple soft exchange (the entertainment value, knowledge, recognition, exposure). My reason for point out the examples was to show that we’ve seemingly not been too concerned since the reward seemed like enough.

The real challenge, now, is like negotiating partnership agreements. They always tend to suck and someone feels a little cheated when it’s done. There are ways to create systems to figure out the value. For example, Squidoo’s Lens Rank is an interesting concept and applies the principle well. Of course, Squidoo has quite humble intentions as well - is that true for most sites? The investment is significant to build out an infrastructure to actually reward those that are generating revenue. And there’s a lot of metrics and data points that need to be involved in that process.

Parallel to those developments, of course, has to be a similar development path that allows for better creating a Distributed Creative Bureau for the web that allows me to “own” the things I make in a more substantial manner and that can indeed establish a toll-system of sorts by which these aggregators become resellers of your information, agents if you will, and that makes it quick, simple, and precise the methods by which pricing is attributed and collected.

Are we more connected to this now simply because we’re directly authoring it? What about the whole Attention Trust thing? In theory, because I continue to breathe I am creating more and more value. I read just today Steve Gillmor’s post “Now that we’ve got your attention”. He says I’m paying with my Attention. The truth? I’ve always been paying with my attention. It’s only cuz we’ve got a fancy new sticker (it used to be called satisfaction, loyalty, value), that suddenly the whole world looks different. For me, the fight is KEEPING someone’s attention, not just getting it.

OK enough ranting :)

Yesterday, the Squidoo team released the application into the wild. It’s in beta, naturally, and there are some wrinkles that still need ironing, but all in all, it’s quite a nice experience.

For me, the launch is doubly interesting. It seems like ages ago, but in reality, it was something more like 6 months, that I was beginning my internship with Seth and finding out what Squidoo was and what it was supposed to do. Things have come a long way. It’s interesting to see where the design has diverged from what we originally planned and also to see how some things that we left open ended have been closed.

My best of luck to Seth and the whole team there - I know they’ve been working hard at it.

I’m often asked what I think will come of it. Most people who now know I was on the team are always interested in picking my brain about how effective I think it will be. I always tell them it’s surely got a fighting chance. I think there are four reasons primarily:

• Squidoo lets us be experts, much like blogs do, but without the unwieldy committment
• Squidoo spans all areas of expertise which support better revenues from Google and other affiliates (many, if not most, topics, aren’t connected to high-value clicks)
• Squidoo has good intentions and makes it possible for us to do good for others with “minimal” effort
• Squidoo is backed by Seth and a great team - they will fight the good fight

There’s lots of other reasons, surely, and I am sure many have their own list for why it WON’T. I’m still a supporter.

Consumption > Participation > Dedication > Contribution

One of the band members posted the numbers:

• number of times their music was played: around 20,000
• number of MySpace friend requests: 1200
• number of mailing list signups: over 100
• number of CDs sold: ZERO

[…]

Anyway, it kind of hammers home the lessons I’ve been learning for the past two years, namely that most of the time, exposure is just exposure. It’s one thing to get in front of someone; it’s another thing to keep them interested, and another thing to get them to care. It also gives you an idea of the numbers game the Big Labels have to play in order to make the bucks they need to stay in business.

Source: Scott Andrew via Seth Godin