Checking In On Facebook Connect: Where Are All The Partners?

Ed: Facebook Platform allows developers to create panels for Facebook users. Facebook moved all third-party panels to a separate tab – one more click away for friends to see. Since the change, panel traffic dropped like a rock.

Facebook Connect allows developers to add Facebook panels to their website. These panels have access to a visitor’s Facebook friend, and report user actions to the Facebook news feed – similar to a beacon. 

Developers are concerned about Facebook’s arbitrary policy changes. Thus, they are slow to deploy Connect.

from TechCrunch by Michael Arrington

Facebook Connect, a product that ties a user’s Facebook account to other sites on the Internet, was first announced on May 9, more than five months ago. Digg was announced as a launch partner.

It’s a strategically important product, with competition from both Google and MySpace. So the big question is, how is it doing?

Facebook Platform Is Dead! Long Live Facebook Platform!

Facebook Platform continues to evolve, which mainly means pushing applications developed by third parties farther and farther away from the home and profile pages. Some Facebook employees have said privately that the platform is dead. Many developers agree.

Facebook’s internal struggle over the role of the Platform going forward may be nearing a conclusion.Facebook’s new music initiative will send a clear signal one way or the other as the company decides to either build it themselves or partner with developers…

But Facebook Connect is the new Facebook Platform. Instead of bringing third party apps into Facebook, Connect brings Facebook functionality into those third party services. Those sites get to leverage Facebook’s social graph to help them connect users. In return, Facebook gets lots of user data and cements its position as the owner of canonical profiles (meaning real users, real data) and their friend list.

So Who’s Adopted Facebook Connect So Far?

In late July more details were given on Facebook Connect, and 25 more launch partners were added. ABC Television Group (plus Disney), Amiando, CBS (including CNET and The Insider), Digg, Disney, Flock, Hulu, IAC (CitySearch, College Humor, Evite, Vimeo), Kongregate, Loopt, Plaxo, Radar, Red Bull, Seesmic, SocialThing (now part of AOL), StumbleUpon, Twitter, Six Apart, Uber and Xobni were all announced as launch partners, along with a statement that the service would go live in the coming months.

Of those partners, two have integrated with Facebook Connect, although data on activities is not yet sent back to Facebook for inclusion in the News Feed: The Insider and Red Bull.

In addition, a few other sites have gone live with Facebook Connect that weren’t in the initial launch group. These include CNN’s The Forum site, MyBarackObama, Indiegogo, GlobalGrind,ConnectedWeddings and Govit…

Facebook is number 2 website among 10 million

Facebook is number 2 website, but the growth of social networks is slowing

Of the 10,583,351 websites visited by UK Internet users in September, Facebook was the second most popular after Google UK. The number one social network in Britain received 3.16% of all UK Internet visits last month, equivalent to one in every 32. For the 4 weeks ending 27/09/08, one in every 50 UK Internet searches was for the single term ‘facebook’,

Facebook’s success in the UK (and many other markets) is undeniable, and – as the chart below illustrates – the growth hasn’t stopped yet. However, it has slowed: traffic to the site increased by 4% between August and September this year, down from 50% over the same period last year. The site’s annual growth rate remains impressive at 88% between September 2007 and 2008, but was significantly less than the 2905% it experienced the previous year.

Another ominous sign is that Facebook’s average session time has flattened out at 20 minutes; both MySpace and Bebo experienced a fall in average session time in tandem with their declining UK market share. So, Facebook has a while to go yet, but there is no doubt that its growth is slowing. Of course, social networking is about more than just one site – we recorded visits to over 7,000 during September – so what about the market as a whole?

Facebook Redesign Succeeds: Widgets Are Dead

Vasanth Sridharan | October 1, 2008 11:27 AM

One of Facebook’s main goals in implementing their redesign was to get rid of the clutter, which really means getting rid of the widgets and badges that sit on a user’s profile but didn’t really do anything.

Nick O’Neill over at All Facebook created one such geegaw – a Bush Countdown Clock – as a joke when the platform first opened last year. Since Facebook overhauled the site’s design, traffic has bottomed out (see graph below). Nick takes this to mean that widgets are dead on Facebook.

Why is this happening? Since the badges now go on the “boxes” tab and not on your main profile page, nobody ever sees them. And since they don’t actually have a way for users to interact with the application outside of the profile, users never see stories about them in their news feeds.

From Facebook’s perspective, this is great news – they want applications to be robust, not just one-off jokes that sit on your profile long after you’re done with them. For many developers, this means they’ll have to find something else to do. The good news? The developers that actually want to build a business are responding to the changes.

See Also:
Facebook Users: You Get Until Next Week To Complain About The New Design
Is The Redesign Killing Facebook Apps?
Mark Zuckerberg To Facebook Redesign Complainers: Get Over It

LinkedIn Rolls Out Enhanced Groups Features; Facebook adds Live Feed

Ed: Myspace, Facebook, and LinkedIn have taken dramatically different approaches to social networking, communications.

• Myspace is a free-for-all with their founding as social circles for groupies to touch their favorite musicians. Unfortunately, this has expanded to include hookers and other undesirable audiences. 
• Facebook started with the top universities. Although, they have lost universities like Stanford, users prefer them over the new Affinity Circle. Facebook has grown to attract high school students and boomers. International growth makes them number one. The networking feature is primarily wall posts (quick comments) on news feed items like photos, videos, or status reports (i.e. what am I doing now) Today, Facebook released Live Feed, a tab from the home page that shows real changes without clicking. Cool.
• LinkedIn has cleaned up their cluttered interface and added the discussion boards for groups. They recently opened groups for any user; and now adds the discussion board as a group feature. Structurally, it is similar to the question, answer feature. It is integrated into the newsfeed like feature on the home page. On it’s first day, the discussions have been immediately popular.

The pace of change is astounding. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo look like slow moving dinosaurs by comparison.

LinkedIn Rolls Out Enhanced Groups Features

Last week, we wrote about LinkedIn’s recent issues with its Groups – as part of a new platform rollout, a number of management features were apparently buggy, while others had been removed entirely.

Tonight sees the release of a number of new features on the platform that should quell some of these concerns. Among the new features are a centralized hub page for every group, where group members can come together and converse with each other in one place. The release also introduces enhanced group and user management features, including a searchable roster.

While it’s nice to see LinkedIn enhancing its groups functionality, its surprising to see that the company has taken this long to introduce them – most of them seem to be fairly basic. That said, the added community features should be a boon to the site’s professional user base as they look to enhance their connections with their peers.

Understanding Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace for Boomers

In the short life of this blog, the post about Facebook for web 1.0 users has zoomed past hundreds to become number 3 on Google – just behind Techcrunch. It’s time to update the post.

Understanding Facebook Basics

Understanding Facebook Basics. August 30, 2007. OK, after a couple of posts which discuss the impact of Facebook on the web, let’s get down to “brass tacks” …
www.davidrisley.com/2007/ 08/30/understanding-facebook-basics/ – 40k 

Facebook Users Revolt, Facebook Replies

Sep 6, 2006 … I applaud you for clearly not understanding Facebook. If you look again, you’ll realize that this feature is a long list of teasers that …
www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/ 06/facebook-users-revolt-facebook-replies/ – 145k 

New Economics of Advertising: HOW-TO: Understanding Facebook for …

Feb 18, 2008 … HOW-TO: Understanding Facebook for Web 1.0 Users. Facebook is the second largest social network, and growing fast. In Web 1.0 terms, …
adecon101.blogspot.com/ 2008/02/understanding-facebook.html – 97k -Cached - Similar pages

Why Social Networks – the Simple Value Proposition

I’ve encouraged hundreds of boomers to open Facebook or LinkedIn accounts. Most have the impression that they are too old. Social networks are for the young.

One feature may be enough to convince boomers that social networks are for everyone. 

Eliminate menial email and address maintenance

Like mailing lists, email lists change rapidly. At 2-3% change per month, the list is useless after one year without maintenance. 

Using social networks, we link to our contacts. From then on, each party maintains their own contact information. This saves time.

Getting Social

Without connections, social networks seem meaningless. The new user wonders why millions make much ado about nothing. 

1. Import: Start by importing your current address list from Yahoo mail, Google mail, Hotmail, AOL mail, Outlook, or other mail programs. Social networks often automate the access. If all methods fail, export contacts and import.
2. Invite: After import, use supplied tools to invite friends to connect. It’s a few clicks. No invitation to write. Most networks already tell you which contacts have active accounts. Active friends will accept your invitation without question.
3. Share: Once you have a few dozen connections, it’s time to act socialably.

Becoming Social

Your personal homepage shows a summarized feed of news (i.e. news feed) containing updates from your connections. This includes photos, address changes, blog postings, videos, and current status (i.e. what am I doing now.)

With the new Facebook, you can scan the feed, read an item, and comment immediately. This commenting replaces the wall feature – a nice change for the better. LinkedIn has a formal method to write recommendation for friends, but no informal feature for personal exchange.

In a few months, friends from 30 years ago have found and connected with me. Getting caught up, maintaining touch, and exchanging ideas has changed my world for the better.

Beyond commenting on friends, you can proactively manage your feed of information to friends. This is your mini-feed. When combined with the mini-feeds of other friends, it provides the personalized news feed for each friend.

You can post articles from the web, videos from Youtube, or write articles to solicit comment or argument. The original post contains a detailed list of actions.

Fear of change should not stop us. Enjoy the new world.