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"Stay" Updated on All my Guest Posts via FriendFeed

Posted on October 8, 2008 by jessestay

For those of you unaware, Stay N’ Alive isn’t the only place I blog these days. I actually have 3 blogs of my own, this being the most active and my home base. In addition to that, I at least weekly guest-blog on both LouisGray.com and InsideFacebook.com. I also occasionally guest-blog on AllFacebook.com. Add to that the posts that I write at the new i.TV blog and there’s a lot to keep track of! I’ve created a nifty way for you to keep track of my writing using FriendFeed to make it easy.

Since FriendFeed does not offer ability to filter by more than one service at a time, I made a hack. Now, you can go to the “Jesse Stay” room on Friend Feed at http://friendfeed.com/rooms/jesse-stay. Once you’re there you’ll see all my writing. Go ahead and like entries you like, comment on them, share them, and more if you like. Or, if you don’t ever want to visit that page again, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the little RSS icon next to “Other ways to read this feed”. Now, you’ll get every one of my posts in your RSS Feed Reader, free of charge. You can also click here to add to your RSS Feed Reader. This room has only blog feeds so it won’t be cluttered by my Twitter, FriendFeed, Photos, Music, and other stuff I aggregate.

If you’re interested in adding each blog I post on to your RSS Reader individually, here they are, one-by-one:

http://staynalive.local/feed – Stay N’ Alive

http://i.tv/blog/feed – i.TV Blog

http://feeds.feedburner.com/LouisgraycomLive – LouisGray.com

http://feeds.feedburner.com/InsideFacebook – InsideFacebook.com

http://facebookadvice.com/feed – Facebook Advice

http://opensocialnow.com/feed – OpensocialNow

http://allfacebook.com/feed – All Facebook

i.TV Launches Live in the Apple App Store

Posted on October 7, 2008 by jessestay

I’m proud to announce that our previously announced Entertainment, TV, and Movies application for the iPhone, i.TV is now available for all to download in the Apple App store. We’re proud to say that we’ve been able to even add in a few social components since we last announced it.

Our slogan at i.TV is “Media. My way.” We truly intend to change the way you watch television by truly socializing the experience, making it personalized to the individual. We’re starting that with a personalized TV and Movies guide on your iPhone. From our CEO, Brad Pelo, “i.TV makes it easy to discover television and movie programming options, share entertainment information with friends, and access media anywhere you can take an iPhone or iPod touch.”

With our Guide you can see what’s on, where you are, review the shows you are watching, see what others think of the shows you watch, search for what you want, or even filter by Genre, sort by most popular, and even more. In addition, you can add parental controls, send yourself a reminder by e-mail when a show is on, preview movies right on your iPhone, or share your favorite shows with a friend! Not just that but you can see theaters in your area, and preview the movies at those theaters before you watch them. If you’re a TV or Movie buff like me you’ll really like this app.

I covered this before when we thought we were close to going live, and you can see screenshots there – stay tuned for some even more impressive features to come. Again, I mentioned earlier my position is Chief Community Officer. I’m in charge of building community into our products – stay tuned to the i.TV blog later on today and I’ll share with you some of the efforts we’re starting out with to make it a more social experience.

You can download the App here. Also, you can read more about it on our blog, and Louis Gray and TUAW both have great posts.

Facebook Developers See 20-50% Drop From URL Change

Posted on October 5, 2008 by jessestay

Facebook developers are reporting 20-50% drops in their Application traffic due to an unannounced deprecation of the old apps.new.facebook.com URL by Facebook. Over the weekend, Facebook appears to have deprecated the apps.new.facebook.com domain, but some developers are reporting that users aren’t recognizing the new domain, apps.facebook.com, causing the drop in traffic.

The apps.facebook.com domain is the central location for all applications on Facebook. Developers are given a unique suffix to the apps.facebook.com domain, giving apps.facebook.com/appname a unique location for every application on the Facebook platform. Facebook created the domain, apps.new.facebook.com to accommodate apps trying to test in the new design as it was in the process of being released. Now that all users should be transitioned to the new design, it appears that Facebook has decided that the two URLs are no longer necessary.

Facebook (perhaps not as often as Twitter) is known for changes like this. While it’s been awhile, the early days of the Facebook Platform were prone to frequent changes by Facebook with little notification by the company. For this reason, Facebook implemented a beta testing ground before pushing changes so bugs like this would be revealed, but it appears Facebook is not using this testing ground in all cases. As one developer put it, “I was planning to go on a sailing trip today, but when I noticed all the problems had to cancel that to fix all the absolute urls I had.” Unannounced changes like this, with little testing, are bound to cause developer frustration and angst as we’re seeing now.

Facebook has put in place a Status Feed to announce such things, and just last week announced that over the weekend the new “api.new.facebook.com” would point to the same place as “api.facebook.com”. Being a backend process, Facebook mentioned nothing about a deprecation of the apps.new.facebook.com domain. Also, any user that previously had an apps.new.facebook.com domain bookmarked will now be sent to a 404 not found page.

We have yet to hear an announcement by Facebook on this matter.

UPDATE: For some reason the link to the forums above has been removed and the post is gone. The text of the main link is below (written by crimson), followed by a long list of other developers seeing the same thing:

I’ve been doing some testing with the recent DNS errors and it seems that for most users, apps.new.facebook is broken. It’s sporadic though, and only affects certain user accounts at random times. I haven’t heard any complaints about apps.facebook.com being broken though, so I would suggest putting a message on your about pages asking users to go to apps.facebook.com instead of apps.new.facebook.com. If you have any absolute links to apps.new especially in notifications, newsfeeds, or notifications, you should also get rid of those immediately since it will cause your users to end up on the new domain, which will rewrite all urls from apps.facebook.com to apps.new.facebook.com, and can lead to further problems.

It’s so annoying that Facebook decided to do this over the weekend, which means we have to work also on the weekends. I was planning to go on a sailing trip today, but when I noticed all the problems had to cancel that to fix all the absolute urls I had. I found I’m losing anywhere from 20-50% of new users simply because of this issue. It also seems that at times only apps.new.facebook is broken, and not www.new.facebook. Hmm, talk about double-standards.

UPDATE 2: Facebook appears to have fixed the problem – when I checked today, apps.new.facebook.com was again correctly redirecting to apps.facebook.com

UPDATE 3: It appears other developers are still seeing the issue, still no word from Facebook: http://staynalive.local/articles/2008/10/06/facebook-dns-blunders-take-down-obama-app/

Stay N’ Alive Now on Your iPhone!

Posted on October 4, 2008 by jessestay

This morning I installed the WPTouch plugin by Dale Mugford & Duane Storey onto this blog, enabling all mobile viewers to have a nice, very fast loading version of this blog on your iPhone. Loading http://staynalive.local in Safari on the iPhone gives you a nice, iPhone-formatted version of the blog that you can easily click through articles, read them in a very plain and simple format, share with friends, and more.

In addition, I also created a nicely formatted icon with my “Social” Geek logo which you can add to your Home Screen. Just click on the “+” sign in Safari, select “Add to Home Screen”, and it will add it to your home page. If you want the full version of the site, scroll down to the bottom and there will be a link to get the original formatting back.

This should be the beginning of a long line of changes for this site. As you can see, I’ve gone naked and listed my Reader count on the right of the blog, showing we’re quickly approaching 500 readers and growing. Because of that I want to do some things that will make this much more professional looking, while at the same time maintains the personal and open nature you have always gotten from me. Stay tuned, and you can follow redesign progress at http://new.staynalive.com.

If anyone has any connections to help get me the “StayinAlive.com” with the “i” before the “n”, it would make a really nice Christmas present!

TechCrunch Loses #1 Spot on Technorati

Posted on October 4, 2008 by jessestay

Picture 3.png It appears TechCrunch isn’t the number one blog on the block any more, at least during election season. As I was researching a recent post it became evident that TechCrunch recently has been surpassed by Huffington Post in Technorati rankings.

Huffington Post is known for continually having front page stories on sites such as Digg.com, which could explain why the increase in rankings. With recent layoff announcements at Valleywag, another top 100 site, this can’t be a comforting thing for a site as large and dominant as TechCrunch. Let’s hope the drop to second place is simply a drop due to the elections and not an ongoing thing for the site.

LDS Church Switches to MoveNetworks in Time for Annual Conference

Posted on October 4, 2008 by jessestay

Just in time for its Semi-Annual General Conference, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently switched all of its video for the conference to MoveNetworks. The Church will be streaming the conference live throughout the weekend using the service, and has started its broadcast with a stream of the Annual General Relief Society conference, a worldwide meeting for women of the Church (the Church houses the worlds largest volunteer womens organization, called “The Relief Society”). MoveNetworks powers video for popular sites such as CW, Fox, and ABC.

The move to MoveNetworks continues a long legacy of technology improvements, giving the church high-quality, live video over the internet to its membership of 12 million plus people worldwide. Each talk, prayer, and musical number (the world-renowned Mormon Tabernacle Choir performs at each conference) will be clipped and available in segments via the MoveNetworks player.

The LDS (or Mormon, as it is called) Church is well known for its technology efforts, in particular in the areas of Family History, and has websites at LDS.org, Mormon.org, and FamilySearch.org. It has recently built a presence on Facebook, its CIO is on Twitter and FriendFeed, and you can now even chat with missionaries via their site online. Looking at their news site (which you can subscribe to via RSS), they even have links to Digg, Delicious, Facebook, Reddit, Stumble, and more. The Church is the largest centrally-US based church founded in the United States and continues to be one of the fastest growing churches worldwide.

You can watch the conference live online via their website in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and American Sign Language. You can also watch it in select areas on Cable and Satellite television, all starting tomorrow morning at 10:00 am Mountain Standard Time. Sessions will be recorded and available on the site afterwards.

Disclaimer: I am a practicing, believing member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and ascribe to its teachings. Although I avoid preaching on this blog, as I would any other church or organization, I enjoy sharing technology related stories about large organizations such as this.

Please Don’t Vote!

Posted on October 2, 2008 by jessestay

You’ve probably already seen this, but I feel a responsibility to continue the Meme. Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or Independent like me, with the looming credit crisis, no matter what your position, we have an even stronger responsibility to vote. While in many states it may not matter your Presidential candidate of choice, there are also congressional seats up for grabs, many of those who voted (or didn’t vote) on the bailout bill recently. We have a responsibility to vote, my friends – please register to vote! You (my readers) are my 5 friends – have you shared this with yours?

You can register to vote right here!

Erick Schonfeld Misses the Point – It’s About Quality, Not Quantity!

Posted on October 1, 2008 by jessestay

Last week Erick Shonfeld, a writer for TechCrunch, posted a rather uninspiring article after Technorati released their “State of the Blogosphere” stating that “The More [bloggers] Post, the Higher [they] Rank”. In it, he argued that because a majority of the Top 100 blogs tracked by Technorati post more than 5 times a day, and 43 percent of those post more than 10 times a day, that the quantity of those posts is the reason for those blogs entering the top 100 of Technorati. While perhaps true for some, I argue it may be the means, but definitely not the reason the top 100 are where they are.

On Technorati, Quality Trumps Quantity

Let’s face it – every site in the top 100 in Technorati is there because they have put time into their posts. Sites like TechCrunch and Mashable and ReadWriteWeb employ bloggers to professionally blog for them, giving those bloggers the time and motivation to put effort into the posts they write. They have editors which look over the posts each author writes and those editors add an additional level of quality to the posts that they write. They all started small and have grown to the level they are, enabling them to keep the spots they are at.

Because more time is spent on each post, and these sites are able to crank out many of those quality posts, yes, they get more links in a short amount of time. More people are interested in them. They get the breaking news first because startups and other PR firms know that they generate traffic and buzz. This keeps them interesting.

Quantity Plays a Very Small Part

However, I argue that quantity is not the reason most of these people are in the top 100. The problem with quantity is people get bored of you. When you’re cranking out so many posts a day that people can’t keep up they begin to tune out. Sure, they may still subscribe to your feeds, but they start to reduce your importance in their minds. You get links only because you’re cranking out so many posts in a short amount of time. In fact, I suggest this isn’t healthy for the blogosphere. The blogosphere thrives on being personal and unique, not robotic.

Therefore these blogs may have gotten to where they are because of quality, but that does not mean they are invincible. Posts like Erick’s seem to imply that they are and that the little guy has no way of getting “into the blogging elite”.

It is Possible to Get in the Top 100 and Not Post Every Day!

I was reminded of this point when Chris Brogan very humbly made mention on his blog that he had broken the top 100 blogs on Technorati. While Chris does post almost every day and sometimes more than once, he also skips days at times, and I can tell you that blogging is by far his top priority! Chris writes quality, well-thought out posts that make you think and teach you things. He’s not a news breaker, unless he thinks you can learn from it. People like this, so they link to him. He has become more than just a “blogger”, but a “thought-leader” and example.

Seth Godin is another example. Currently Seth is number 17 on the top 100 of Technorati. He’ll never let you know that, by the way. Seth posts short, thoughtful posts, once a day, which make you think. You feel inspired after reading just the short paragraph or two that he writes. Seth too is considered a thought leader because of this. He could care less about quantity. His quality is what has made his blog.

Robert Scoble is another example. There are days and even weeks he goes without blogging, but when he speaks, he speaks with passion. He tries to inspire, and show you by his actions what the upcoming technologies are. Because of this, lots of people link to him.

Then there’s Guy Kawasaki. Guy’s last post was 2 days ago. He blogs because it’s fun. He blogs because he has something to share, not because of a duty to blog. Guy got in the top 100 naturally, not because of an army of bloggers working for him.

You Can Do it Too!

I’ll be first to admit that I’m not there. True, it would be cool to be there, but frankly, it’s not important. What’s important is that you stop focusing on the robotic nature of blogging just to blog, and blog because you care. Blog because you have something to say, and blog because it makes sense.

It doesn’t matter if you blog 5 times a day, once a day, or even once a week. If you write quality posts, lead in your thoughts and actions, and show that in your writing, others will link to you. Despite what Erick Shonfeld says, don’t listen to him – quality trumps quantity any day, especially with Technorati.

(Image courtesy http://manonl.edublogs.org/2008/04/22/blogging-away/)

Facebook Applications See Success On the New Platform

Posted on September 25, 2008 by jessestay

Regardless of any complaints from developers surrounding the new Facebook platform redesign, many developers are seeing success. Looking at various statistics from sites such as Adonomics and the Facebook Developers Forum, it appears that those apps that are truly integrating the new Integration points that the Facebook Platform provides are truly seeing success with it. Those apps that remain stagnant will see a decline in behavior.

Apps That are Seeing a Decline

Reviewing the apps complaining of the new design and showing declines in their numbers, it appears that many of them aren’t integrating into the new design where they are supposed to. I’ll use my own app as an example. “We’re Catholic!”, one of the religious apps I wrote and run (I also run “We’re Baptist”, “We’re Protestant”, and wrote the app, “The LDS App”) at one point was getting up to 1,000 visits per day (DAU’s, or Daily Active Users) as it was taking off (it is still currently the largest single group of organized Catholics on Facebook). Users began to get used to the Facebook platform, and that leveled it off to about 2-300 DAU’s per day. At launch of the new design, that number has gone down 1-200 DAU’s per day. What’s not being told in this picture is that I have done absolutely nothing to integrate it with the new design due to lack of time. I have no doubt that with a little integration into the user’s profile with a tab, and maybe info section, along with some Feed Forms to give users the option for larger stories to share with their friends from the app, I could very well see my app stats increase to even more than they were before.

Pieces of Flair

This seems to be the issue with some of the apps developers are complaining about. One example pointed out in the Facebook developer forums is the Pieces of Flair app, by RockYou. Looking at Adonomics statistics, it appears on September 4, the week the new design was put in place, Pieces of Flair took a dramatic turn from near 660,000 Daily Active Users down to around 350,000 DAU’s in just a matter of a day. They were stuck there until September 16, where their DAU’s went up to 570,000 in just a day, still far short from the 660,000 DAU’s they used to have. Then, on Sept 18, the DAU’s went back down to around 400,000. Looking at this statistic, it would appear that Pieces of Flair isn’t doing very well, and that the new Facebook Platform redesign is to blame. To know for sure though, you have to look at the timeline of events related to the App.

Facebook Platform Timeline

September 4th, 2008 – New design launches to all

Looking at the history of the new design rollout, the new Facebook redesign was rolled out right on the week of September 4th, which would make the sharp downturn very understandable. At that point users were getting used to the new design and learning where things were.

September 10th, 2008 – Applications link moves

Right around September 10th or 11th it seems Facebook moved the “Applications” menu from the top down to the lower-left panel on Facebook. In addition, users could “bookmark” their favorite apps. Could Pieces of Flair have been one of those users were bookmarking? Other apps were bound to have seen a decrease because of this change.

September 16th, 2008 – Pieces of Flair makes changes

September 16th took some research to figure out. Looking at the forums on the Pieces of Flair About Page, several users started commenting about how it was now possible to add the app’s profile box to their “wall tab”. It’s unclear if they added a specific application tab at that point or not, but there was definitely an increase at that point, and it looks like it may be because of a change put in place to adapt to the new design by Pieces of Flair.

September 17, 2008 – One-line feed stories consolidated

On September 17, Facebook consolidated one-line feed stories that happened frequently for a single user in a day into one item in a user’s news feed. This would have reduced the visibility of some apps that updated frequently, perhaps explaining the slight decrease on the 18th.

Is it a Facebook Problem?

So, analyzing by date, it would appear that the biggest drops for Pieces of Flair may just be that Pieces of Flair wasn’t yet built for the new design when it was rolled out to members. Perhaps the new design isn’t to blame, but rather unpreparedness by developers of apps that are to blame for the decrease in traffic. Facebook announced the new design back in May, and developers have had since then to prepare – it would seem that this is a developer, not Facebook problem.

Apps Seeing an Increase

Regardless of the complaints, there are apps seeing an increase. While names weren’t mentioned, several developers in the Facebook developer forums posted stats that show such. Even Pieces of Flair we see is starting to show a gradual increase since feed stories were implemented.

We’re Related

Some have shown significant increase though. One of the most significant is We’re Related, which went from 180,000 DAU’s to 460,000 DAU’s when the Applications menu was moved, an all-time high for them. It seems the only decrease they ever saw was right after the redesign was launched. Some developers are claiming they’re spammy, but based on the stats in association with the time-line it appears regardless of spammy measures or not, they’re increasing because users like them and are bookmarking them as a favorite – they shot up more than any other on the date Facebook implemented bookmarking. (disclaimer: they were a client of mine and I trained some of their developers and helped design their initial release, so there is some bias there, but the stats do coincide with what I’m saying. I hold no equity in the company.)

Texas HoldEm Poker

Also of note is the Texas HoldEm Poker game. One of the most popular apps on Facebook, it would seem they too have never seen much of a decrease in usage. They too saw a slight drop after the redesign, but, while not as significant as We’re Related, they are definitely higher in DAU’s than ever before.

WaterCooler, Inc. and (lil) Green Patch

Some other Apps to look at are WaterCooler, Inc. (a conglomeration of many smaller apps), and (lil) Green Patch, all which have continued to show an increase, even after the new design. Of course, Facebook’s native apps have also shown significant increase after the new design, but they may be the exception in the fact that they get special promotion by Facebook in areas developers do not have access to, and are default for many people on Facebook.

Reasons for the Increase

As “DesignerMichael” put it in the Developer Forums, “The golden days will return in about a month though by my estimate. Users will finally start getting used to the new platform again by around then… So all is well. smile Just no more ridiculous changes please… Changing the location of bookmarks once a week is not good for apps. lol…”. It appears, based on the common drop amongst all the apps, that the major issue for developers is that users just haven’t gotten used to the new design yet. Assuming Facebook does not put any more changes in place, things will get back to normal.

In a communication via e-mail with Facebook, I was given the following message about the current state of the platform:

“We’ve seen a number of areas with greater engagement and sharing across the site, both on our own applications and on Facebook Platform. Daily and weekly active usage for applications have been on a healthy growth track for the past six months. Since the cut over began, aggregate Platform usage has continued to increase. The apps that have made the greatest effort to take advantage of the new integration opportunities are starting to see the results.”

Facebook is monitoring this. Without their developers, Facebook is not nearly as powerful as they are now. Currently developers are doing the marketing for Facebook and I’m sure Facebook recognizes that. However, it appears that in the end, as we see with the success of those apps that are seeing an increase, that it involves some work on behalf of the developer to happen. Some areas Facebook suggests are bringing more traffic to apps, or have the potential to do so are:

Deeper integration into the profile

Greater distribution through feeds

Easier for users to discover new apps

More meaningful user engagement

Customized application tabs

For developers of apps, you can bring your application to even higher Daily Active Users than before by simply finding new ways to integrate with the different points mentioned above. It is very possible to be successful on the new design, and now is the opportunity for new developers to come forth. We’re in a new race for popularity, and those apps that embrace the new features most will see the most success.

In FBML Essentials (O’Reilly), I cover some of the points of the Facebook platform new design components. You can purchase and review it here on Amazon.