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My Facebook Connect Wishlist (for WordPress)

Posted on September 9, 2009 by jessestay

Today everyone seems to be wishing me a Happy Birthday – it’s not really, but it is @jessemccartney’s birthday on Twitter, so I get all the “ZOMG Happy Birthday @jesse mccartney” Tweets from uber-excited fans. Some times I throw them a bone and tell them how much I love them as well. It’s fun to celebrate your birthday twice a year, so hey, why not? So I thought I’d celebrate @jesse mccartney’s birthday on Twitter with a wishlist of my own. Take it as you may, but my hope is that maybe it inspires you just a little bit to go out and create something, especially if you’re a Facebook developer. And if you don’t do it, I will. Eventually.

Here’s my wishlist. All of these are ways I can see Wordpess could be used to integrate Facebook, but no one has written a plugin yet to do what I want – please check out the documentation at http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Facebook_Connect for an overview on what you can do (it’s actually quite easy!):

1. A single, standalone “Connect with Facebook” button plugin – so many Facebook plugins for WordPress try to do too many things in one plugin. I want to be able to build my own Facebook integration. Add a little component here. Add a little component there. Nothing more. So, do do this, I need, at the very basic level a “Connect with Facebook” button that shows up somewhere on my blog just by installing a WordPress plugin.

You could take this further though. What if you also provided a script that reads the e-mail addresses of commenters and automatically registered them with Facebook so that if I ever wanted to do a to encourage my readers to invite their friends, they could very easily? The button could appear as an overlay that appears once for each user, and if they opt not to log in, never appears again. When the user logs in via Facebook you automatically register them with a Facebook ID.

That’s all the plugin will do. Its focus is simply login and registration and loading the basic Facebook Connect libraries, nothing more. If you want it to do more, use another plugin that builds on top of it.

2. TweetMeme for Facebook plugin – if you haven’t had the chance yet, go look at Mashable.com, now. See their Facebook share button underneath the retweet button? That’s what I want, but I want more. Here’s how I see it:

A reader reads an article. They want to share it with their Facebook friends, so they click on the share button.

WordPress, via a plugin, calls the stream.publish() to enable the reader to publish the article to their own stream.

Your plugin tracks the ID of that particular share, maybe even prompting the user for read permissions, and adds it to an array of shared IDs in an options storage in WordPress.

On every load of that particular article, each share’s likes are read, counted, and updated in another stored variable in WordPress.

The sum of all those likes is displayed in the share button, and other readers can also share to their friends and contribute to the number of likes for that article.

Of course, this would rely on the blog owner installing the Facebook authentication plugin above in #1

3. A “publish to Facebook” plugin that works – there are already lots of publish to Facebook plugins for WordPress. None of them fully utilize Facebook Connect though, especially the stream methods. What if I could publish a blog post, have it automatically also post into my Facebook stream, and at the same time, track every comment and like of that specific post and then post comments to the share button above, while listing comments of the particular post down below my blog post comments? Or, let’s take that further. If one of my friends on Facebook comments on the blog post itself, I also want that friend’s same comment to show up under the published stream item on Facebook as well. I think that would be incredibly useful.

4. A “leave a comment” plugin that works – I think the same could happen with comments. TechCrunch is doing this somewhat. A user that comments should have the option of publishing that comment to Facebook in the user’s stream. What also should happen though is that comment ought to be tracked. Now, when any of a user’s friends that are also previous commenters on that blog comment on Facebook, they also appear threaded underneath that specific blog comment on the blog. Or vice-versa.

5. A standalone friends widget – I want a friends widget just like the Google FriendConnect widget you see over to the right. It ought to come with a “subscribe” button, or “join my community”. When a reader subscribes, they automatically (unless they opt-out) get new blog posts for your blog added to their stream on publish, real-time. This would also work great if you develop RSS reader software, as you could also automatically subscribe the user to the blog in your reader. Again, it should be standalone though – people should be able to mix-and-match, and this would also rely on #1 above being installed.

6. An activity streams plugin – I would put this top on my list if I could (even though it’s at the bottom, because it’s the most code to develop). If you haven’t had the chance to yet, regardless of your political preference, go check out what HuffingtonPost.com has done with Facebook Connect. Log in with Facebook Connect there and you’ll see one of the coolest implementations of Facebook Connect I’ve ever seen. I wish they would release that to the open source community as a Facebook plugin for WordPress.

All the activity streams plugin needs to do is track activity of readers on a blog. A new view of the blog would appear, showing all of your friends who are also readers of the blog, and a historical news feed or timeline of what they’ve just read, what they’re commenting on, along with any other cool activity that may be pertinent. The idea is to help a blog’s readers discover new content on your blog. This plugin could track the most popular blog items, most commented, etc. and display those on the side for readers to discover. Each stream would be custom to that reader and their Facebook friends that read the blog. It could also have options to invite friends to come check out the blog.

This specific plugin could also integrate with #5 above and enable a reader to click on one of their friends, and see only the activity of that specific friend. Or, when inviting their Facebook friends to check out the blog, it could provide a way for each of those friends to subscribe and automatically receive new blog updates for the blog in Facebook.

The possibilities are endless, but I think you catch my drift. You can even package all the above into a single plugin, but I also want separate plugins. This stuff, to my knowledge, has not been developed yet, but it should. I want you to go out and build it before I’m forced to – these are free ideas and a great way to show your talent, get some free exposure here (I’ll write about each one that does this effectively), and a great amount of traffic from both Facebook’s plugin directory and WordPress’s plugin directory when you’re finished.

Let me know if you’ve written one of these – either let me know in the comments, e-mail me, send me a “Happy Birthday @jesse mccartney” or whatever. I hope I’ve started your brain juices flowing – I’m salivating at the thought! (mmm…brain juices)

Hey Businesses, You’re Using Facebook Wrong

Posted on August 30, 2009 by jessestay

Robert Scoble just finished a great blog post on why he thinks Twitter is worth much more than people give it credit for. He cites its ease of use for businesses and open nature as an easy way for businesses to target customers. He and I had a conversation about this on FriendFeed, and while I still feel Facebook has the upper-hand here, it definitely has to open up a little more in order to be completely on par with Twitter. However, there is a side of Facebook businesses aren’t yet fully utilizing and they need to start – it’s a wealth of information and user connections at their hands if they just embrace it. The part of Facebook businesses are completely missing is Facebook Connect.

In my conversation with Robert we were discussing whether Facebook or Twitter had a better UI. I think our conversation may have been moot, since in the end the part of Twitter most people see is via a desktop client of some sort. Many of us are seeing trends via TweetDeck, or friend lists via Seesmic and similar. Or perhaps we’re searching via PeopleBrowsr. There is a majority group of people out there that simply aren’t aware of the basic UI Twitter has on its own Twitter.com website. Yet at the same time I don’t think developers are coming anywhere near close enough to what they could be embracing with the Facebook API for desktop clients – there is so much developers are missing when it comes to Facebook!

Regardless, even if you take the plain-Jane websites and compare them with each other, Twitter, while much more open and easier to find archives than Facebook out of the box, pales in comparison to Facebook when you compare UIs. Facebook has threaded conversations. Facebook has friend lists, and you can sort your feeds by friend lists. You can completely control who sees what you post on Facebook. You can’t do any of that with Twitter. Facebook has likes. While Twitter has favorites, I can always do the same on Facebook and “share” a link or similar to my profile and anyone can always reference it later under my links. I can separate my links, videos, and photos (which appear in-line, not via 3rd-party service) from my main status update stream if I want to. You can view just my links, just my videos, or just my photos, and for links even download the stream as RSS. You can do real groups in Facebook – on Twitter you have to hack it with hashtags. You can organize true events in Facebook, and store a full profile about yourself or even your business. Keep in mind that most of this is also available to your business as well. It seems to me that the ONLY thing Facebook lacks is a decent way to search (while they do have that too, it’s still limited), and a fully open version of the site that businesses can easily embrace like they do Twitter. It would seem Twitter still has a lot to catch up to. Yes, that’s a big thing, but much more simple to put in place than all the other things I mentioned above.

Now, back to my original point about Facebook Connect. On FriendFeed Robert said to me, “I’ve talked with dozens of businesses and they all say Facebook isn’t working as well for them.” I believe he’s seeing that. I think the majority of businesses are using Facebook wrong though. Even though I say that I also know, consult, and talk to dozens of businesses in which Facebook is working for them. Some businesses are using it right. Ask Digg how they’ve done since integrating Facebook. Ask Huffington Post how well they’re doing now that they’ve integrated Facebook. What about FriendFeed’s integration? Heck, even my SocialToo saw a huge spike since we integrated SocialToo Status into our product line, utilizing Facebook. Or what about Geni, or iLike, or Flixter? All these businesses were still businesses before Facebook. Facebook is what has given them an incredible boost since their integration though.

Businesses aren’t integrating Facebook Connect as they should. Here’s what Facebook Connect is – with just about 3 lines of HTML-like code (it’s called XFBML in Facebook terms) and a small snippet of Javascript that you can basically just copy and paste, you can have your site’s users logging into your website (didn’t have a log in before? Well now you do, along with your very own social network of 300 million people.) with hardly any effort whatsoever.

Now, let’s get a little deeper. Facebook Connect, with the help and just a few hours time of one of your own coders, can take your existing database of users and find out how many of them are already Facebook users. My bet is most of them are (remember, there are near 300 million Facebook users on the planet!). Now you can prompt those users to begin telling their friends about your brand to their closest friends and relatives, using just the tools Facebook provides, ALL ON YOUR OWN WEBSITE. Oh, and even better – unlike Twitter, your users never, ever, leave your website when authenticating with Facebook. You simply won’t get that intimacy between your brand and customers on Twitter.

Have social features already on your website? Look at what Digg is doing with Facebook Connect. Every single user that joins Digg through Facebook Connect, or associates their account with a Facebook account for the first time through Facebook Connect, AUTOMATICALLY has their Facebook Friends who have also done the same added as friends on Digg.com as well. Automatically, with no work on your users’ part, you can associate your users with their already existing social graph on Facebook, let them communicate, send stuff to their wall, their friends’ walls, and more, all simply via the Facebook API, ON YOUR OWN WEBSITE.

Twitter pales in comparison to what Facebook can do for businesses. The majority of businesses are just using Facebook wrong. If you manage a business’s marketing or brand management campaign and only have a Facebook Page, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG. The power of Facebook isn’t about Facebook itself, but about the vast set of APIs Facebook is providing to you and your business to get your brand into the most valuable place of all – that intimate setting between a customer and their close friends and family. You can’t do that with Twitter. You can with Facebook. This is why if Twitter is worth $5 billion, Facebook is worth at least 2 or 3 or more times that. Your business needs to get in and use Facebook right if you’re going to stay ahead of the game.

Robert Scoble is giving Mark Zuckerberg free consulting (his points of which I agree with) – I hope this bit of free consulting for your business was helpful too. If your business is to see even more value than they are on Twitter, you MUST be using Facebook Connect. That is the way you embrace Facebook as a business. Contact me if you need any more help than this. As a software developer on both networks, this is why I got into Facebook – it’s why I’m still bullish about the network.

Now to get back to coding…

When Did Facebook Remove RSS for Friends’ Status Updates?

Posted on August 28, 2009 by jessestay

Yesterday it was mentioned in an interview with Facebook iPhone developer, Joe Hewitt, on Dave Winer and Marshall Kirkpatrick’s podcast, “Bad Hair Day”, that Facebook did not have the ability to retrieve your friends’ status updates via RSS. I was taken by this, as this was something I wrote about back in January, and it was indeed possible, with a special key only known to the profile owner, to get an RSS feed of your Facebook Friends’ status updates. So I tweeted out the link last night thinking it would be useful.

I tested out the link today, and it turns out that Facebook some time in the last several months seems to have removed the Friends’ RSS updates feature. Joe Hewitt, who works for Facebook, seemed to be surprised by it yesterday as well, as he too had seemed to think it was possible until looking for it.

My hope is that this was just overlooked and Facebook in the near future will release the Friends’ status RSS feed again. Facebook has made many changes to their News Feed and Wall lately, and my assumption is that it just got overlooked at some point. Having that available via RSS, and a user-controlled level should be no problem so long as it is only displaying status updates marked with the privacy control “everyone”. Maybe that was the problem and they’re fixing it.

So for now it would seem you’ll have to get down and dirty with the API to have any sort of access to a person’s friends status updates. That’s okay in my book, but having a little more standards-controlled ways of retrieving this information would also be useful on a different level. Help me David Recordon, you’re my only hope!

UPDATE: It looks like if you previously had subscribed to your friends via RSS the link is still working. It seems that just the link has been removed – does anyone know how to find it now?

Facebook Takes a Page Out of iTunes With "Credits Enabled" App Directory

Posted on August 28, 2009 by jessestay

What has been speculated for awhile now seems to be out in the open. Facebook is rolling out what appears to be an iTunes-esque version of the Facebook Application directory, in which users can easily find and purchase from “credits-enabled” applications. The feature was recently enabled on my Facebook profile, and after clicking an option titled, “spend credits”, appears to take you to a directory of “credits enabled” applications where you can use your Credits and purchase from applications supporting the method of payment. All users appear to be given a default of 5 Credits to start out with.

Clicking through to the applications, you are required to install them first, and then within the applications that are credits-enabled you can purchase things within the application with your credits. For example, the Social Calendar application enables you to purchase virtual “gifts” to send to your friends for various events. Purchasing the item deducts credits from your account.

Credits cost 10 Credits for $1, and can be purchased either via links in the applications, or via the drop-down at in the header navigation menu of Facebook. Becoming a “credits-enabled” application would appear to be a closed process at the moment, as Facebook has yet to make any announcements to developers yet, nor have they published any documentation on their wiki. It will certainly be interesting to see how developers embrace this when they do make it open, and what types of business models people are able to create through the new model.

Facebook, it would appear, is soon to embrace a new business model on top of their already ad-based system. I’m really excited to see how this plays out, and if we’ll see some of the big e-commerce players begin to embrace it (imagine what Amazon could do with such an integration). Here are some more screenshots:

Will I Jump? Louis Gray and I Talk the Facebook/FriendFeed Acquisition

Posted on August 12, 2009 by jessestay

[audio:http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/jessestay/300064.mp3]

As I was walking over Horseshoe falls at Niagara Falls today, Louis Gray and I chatted a bit over BlogTalkRadio’s Cinch service. In our discussion we talked about the Facebook acquisition of FriendFeed, and I think we both came into agreement that jumping now, while a understandable response, perhaps isn’t the best decision. I cover my knowledge of the Facebook platform and Facebook, while Louis talks about his knowledge of FriendFeed and the FriendFeed team and his thoughts on the matter. I think it was a very interesting conversation, to say the least.

You can listen via the stream above or just download it here. Be sure to follow my Cinch feed for more updates like this! (And add Cinch’s number to your phone book so you can do the same) Let me know what you think!

Facebook Prepares to Compete With Gmail: Launches Messaging API

Posted on August 12, 2009 by jessestay

Facebook is moving too fast this week for me to keep up. On the heels of the Acquisition of Gmail-creator-founded FriendFeed, along with the launch of their new search interface, Facebook just took it one step further today. In an announcement on their blog along with associated documentation on their developers wiki, Facebook released a set of new APIs for developers to begin writing software that enables them to read and display a user’s inbox and messages from Facebook Platform.

While Facebook has offered a rich set of APIs since the launch of their developer platform in 2007, Facebook’s messaging system has remained stagnant and seemingly untouched during the entire period. Developers have been itching to get into the messages of a user on their behalf to help fix this. Not only is Facebook opening this up for developers, but they are also getting ready to launch an entirely new messaging system being tested by a small group of users currently, set to launch “in the coming weeks”. Facebook also launched an interface into their notifications API enabling developers to read and notify users when they receive new notifications. I expect this to be used in Desktop applications such as Seesmic.

While people are speculating the fate of FriendFeed after the new acquisition, there seems to be two things on the mind of Facebook recently: Messaging and Search. With the creator of Gmail on their team and co-founder of one of the best real-time search engines on the internet (that just so happens to have a superior Direct Messaging system as well), you can bet Facebook is already putting him hard at work in helping them on such features. I hope and expect to see this new API implemented into FriendFeed’s own messaging system, as well – hopefully enabling you to import your Facebook inbox into FriendFeed’s own DM box. We’ll wait and see.

It’s no secret that E-mail is an old and out-dated technology. It only goes to say that we’re in a race now for the fastest, most real-time, and responsive messaging system to replace e-mail. While Google moves forward with Wave, you can bet Facebook will be doing the same with their own messaging. With the ability to now truly identify individuals socially without need for an actual “address”, E-mail may actually be going by the wayside.

Gmail has yet to launch any sort of API into its own messaging (that I’m aware of) – this move by Facebook is unprecedented. While Facebook will not allow developers to actually send messages on behalf of users (a wise and careful move, I’m sure), this makes Facebook even more “open” in my book.

Developers can sign up for the new messaging platform by signing up for the Inbox API whitelist.

Facebook to FriendFeed: "You Complete Me"

Posted on August 11, 2009 by jessestay

I have to admit I’m a little behind on the news of Facebook acquiring FriendFeed. My day today consisted of driving through up-state New York, and tonight I sit here typing just about a 15 minute walk from the beautiful Wonder of the World, Niagara Falls. There are so many better things to think about! (just see the pictures I took tonight) Yet, as I got the initial text via Tweet from Louis Gray today stating Facebook had acquired FriendFeed, I couldn’t get my mind off of what that would mean for both services.

For those that know my background, I’ve written 2 books on Facebook, both from a developer/platform perspective, and a marketing/user perspective (if you want to see what those books are, check out the upper-right nav of my blog). I’ve written numerous apps for Facebook, even sold one of them in just a few months after developing it, and spend much of my time consulting and helping major companies and app developers understand Facebook better.

At the same time, I have always been extremely bullish on FriendFeed. I love the open nature of FriendFeed and how it allows me to express myself publicly in ways I couldn’t before. I love the messaging capabilities, and especially the search and notification options FriendFeed offers me. I almost wrote a post about the perfect Trifecta of FriendFeed, Twitter, and Facebook, and how the three just work well together. I even predicted earlier this year that FriendFeed would be acquired this year. I have been rigorously researching and working on the developer platform that FriendFeed offers, and loe the open nature of it and their relationship with developers.

It’s because of this background that I had to think seriously about what I thought about this new relationship between Facebook and FriendFeed. I came to the conclusion that the two complete each other. They’re like two puzzle pieces just waiting to be joined. The thing is, I can’t think of any reason why they shouldn’t be together. Here are just a few reasons why:

FriendFeed Needs Privacy Controls

I was actually about to put together a post on this exact topic. I’ll try to keep it short here. I noticed recently that Louis Gray’s wife joined FriendFeed. I was excited, because this meant my wife, who is friends with Louis’s wife (albeit virtually), could actually have a chance at being convinced to do the same. The problem is that we have children old enough that I would prefer we kept their identities off the internet as much as possible.

At the same time I have had threats of physical assault before via my blog and elsewhere. I want to be more careful about what I type and who sees it. The problem with FriendFeed is that not only do my friends see it, but so do their friends, and their friends’ friends, and that pattern has the potential to go on forever. We saw this with the “mob” mentality that drove Michael Arrington off the site much earlier. Yes, this is also a strength and what makes FriendFeed powerful, but I want on occasion to have some control over who gets to see that, and from what Friend List I have on the site.

Privacy is Facebook’s main strength. Imagine FriendFeed being able to educate the Facebook team based on their own experiences with allowing “friends of friends” to see the data and cycling newly “liked” items back to the top, while at the same time allowing Facebook to give their own expertise of allowing those same users to make their items more private?

I think there’s a lot of power in that, and it’s something FriendFeed doesn’t have yet.

FriendFeed Needs Profiles

I’ve asked for profiles for quite awhile now. I want a way to identify myself on FriendFeed, so people can know who the person is regarding the feeds their reading. This one is simple – there’s no doubt that Facebook is good at this.

Facebook Needs Search

Facebook just proved today that this is a focus for them. And guess what – one of the first things they announced in their rollout of a new search engine was their recent acquisition of the FriendFeed team! This gives a lot of potential, not only for search, but also for the ability for broad, real-time search, across all of Facebook and more, something the FriendFeed team is really good at. The FriendFeed team will also be very good at making this search more accessible to the public, all of this while respecting their privacy preferences.

Facebook Needs Better Notifications

We all know FriendFeed is good at this. On almost every page (and it was soon also going to be on search pages) you have the option to have posts, or posts and comments sent to you via e-mail or IM. Also, each page has its own RSS feed, with support for PubSubHubbub, something the FriendFeed team helped instigate. This enables real-time updates via RSS. Facebook enables RSS on only very few pages – the FriendFeed team is very aware of this, as they have been trying to import that data from Facebook themselves! The FriendFeed team knows the headaches of the Facebook platform more than anyone!

Now, what if we could take Facebook’s current SMS capabilities, something FriendFeed does not have, and apply them to the FriendFeed-style posts, agreggation, updates, and search notifications we see on FriendFeed currently? I know I would certainly become a happy user, as this is something I’ve been asking for on FriendFeed since day 1!

Facebook Needs Better Messaging

I saved the best for last. Facebook has had its static Inbox for quite awhile now. We know they’re working on a new solution from posts by TechCrunch, AllFacebook, InsideFacebook, and others, but we know this is something Facebook just isn’t very good at. The FriendFeed Team re-invented messaging with their bare hands. Let’s put this in simple terms: Paul Bucheit, cofounder of FriendFeed, is the creator of Gmail. He now works for Facebook. End of Story.

Be at Ease

Sure, this news took a lot of people by surprise (although it shouldn’t have if you read my blog). Some people dislike Facebook. FriendFeed was the “new early adopters playground”. Early adopters don’t like going back to old things. It’s a little scary for some.

I suggest you wait a little. FriendFeed has a very competent team. We still don’t know what was in that contract they signed. Sure, we have some hints, but FriendFeed has yet to let us down. They have a perfect track record for long-time users of their service. They know what’s going to happen at Facebook, and while sure, things can change, you better bet they’ll be fighting for their existing loyal users. You now can know you have a team you can trust at Facebook, if you didn’t have that trust before.

Also, here’s what we do know: FriendFeed.com is still up and working just as well as always. Facebook now owns FriendFeed. FriendFeed may start integrating more deeply with Facebook. We don’t know that for sure. That’s all we know. Before you jump, think of your trust for the FriendFeed team and their track record so far. Let’s see what happens, and when they do take action that effects us we can make our decisions. Until then I’ll be waiting and supporting them and celebrating their recent success.

The two businesses could not have asked for a better relationship. I think because of this, Facebook all of the sudden has put out the announcement that they want to become more open like FriendFeed. We should be applauding them! FriendFeed has just announced that they leaped over Twitter and are more mainstream than they could ever imagine, as the exact same service they always were. We should be applauding them, too! Now think about that for awhile and let’s see what happens.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go spend some more time at the ‘Falls.

Photo courtesy http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009/08/friendfeed-accepts-facebook-friend.html

Making WWW::Facebook::API Facebook Connect Ready

Posted on July 4, 2009 by jessestay

I’m going to get geeky on you here again. I’ve been working on a few things with SocialToo to enable Facebook Connect on the site – more on that to come. What I’ve been surprised by though is that this long after the launch of Facebook Connect the main Perl libraries for Facebook, WWW::Facebook::API, still do not support Facebook Connect. The main difference between making API calls from a native Facebook app and a third-party Facebook Connect app is that in the native app, you verify the signature via the URI parameters, via parameters that begin with “fb_sig_”. In Facebook Connect, those variables are set in Cookies by the Facebook Client-side Javascript libraries, and begin with your applications API key, so they’d start something like “(api key)_”, and come from the cookies instead of the URI. You can read more about that here.

So for full compatibility in your preferred Facebook API libraries, both the URI parameters have to be checked along with the Cookies in the event the developer is trying to connect from a third-party website. In the PHP libraries this is already done for you. Surprisingly, Perl has not yet implemented this.

So I got to work on it, and through a couple simple lines of code added to WWW::Facebook::API::Canvas I was able to make get_fb_params check your cookies when the URI parameters are not presence. I’ve submitted the patch to the library’s owner, Clayton Scott, but in case you want to integrate it sooner you can apply it to the 0.4.14 version of Canvas.pm by downloading this patch.

I hope you’re able to get as much out of this as I am – please let me know if you see any potential bugs with the changes.

Come Follow Me on Facebook

Posted on June 29, 2009 by jessestay

Starting tonight, any Facebook Public Profile Page (that’s Page with a capital “P”) with over 100 subscribers has the opportunity to select its own vanity URL. While it hasn’t had the hype from the blogosphere that we saw from the previous private Profile vanity URLs, it does seem to be having a large effect, as Facebook has slowed down tonight, even more than when the private Profile vanities were released. Get yours now while you can – you can reserve yours for both your Public Pages and private Profiles via the http://facebook.com/username link. Please comment below if you want some help reaching the 100 fan limit!

As with any and all of my social network profiles, please don’t hesitate to friend me! My most active profiles are listed over on the upper-right of this blog, but if you Google “Jesse Stay” you can find just about everywhere I belong. Tonight I was able to reserve short URLs for my most active Pages – please become a fan or friend me!:

My personal Facebook Profile: http://jessestay.socialtoo.com

My public Facebook Page: http://facebook.com/socialdeveloper

SocialToo’s public Facebook Page: http://facebook.com/socialtoo

I’m on Facebook–Now What??? (my first book)’s public Facebook Page: http://facebook.com/fbbook

FBML Essential (my second book)’s public Facebook Page: http://facebook.com/fbmlessentials

We’re Baptist’s public Facebook Page: http://facebook.com/baptists

We’re Catholic’s public Facebook Page: http://facebook.com/catholicsocial

Don’t forget to join SocialToo (my service) to get your own personalized vanity URL. yourusername.socialtoo.com will redirect to your Facebook profile, and we’ll track statistics for everyone that clicks on your URL. It’s the only URL you’ll ever need to hand out to others. Oh, and see the above URLs? Expect a solution for those soon as well. Sign up for yours at http://socialtoo.com.

The Facebook Vanity Gold Rush Preempted by Facebook Employees?

Posted on June 12, 2009 by jessestay

We’re just hours away from the launch of Facebook vanity URLs. Many have complained at the preferential treatment given to some influentials and bloggers to get the names they want. After asking, I was offered my first and last name, but Facebook refused to give me and other bloggers the names we would have preferred. I turned them down – I’m pretty sure my full name will be available (and if not there are legal ramifications if the person does not have my name). In my case I was hoping for “Jesse” since I’m currently using that on Twitter. After all, Loic got his first name.

It would appear there may be reason for that. I’m noticing in just the past few hours Facebook employees seem to be coming out from the woodwork and snagging up the remaining first names available as fast as they can. It would appear others are noticing, too. For instance, “Jesse”, just in the past 2 hours or so is now occupied by Facebook employee, Jesse Dwyer. What’s odd is that in the last few hours there was even an account called “God” on Facebook. While it seemed to break the 5 character rule, it would appear Facebook has corrected and removed the account. I wish I had a screenshot (although I do have witness of at least one other Twitter user that saw it).

With Facebook employees being given preferential treatment, will there even be reason to try and get the names we want? It would appear that, to get the “official” names we want we have to work for Facebook. In the meantime I’ll be using my SocialToo Vanity URL – at least I get analytics from that. (really, check it out – we just launched it today!)

I’ll be on live tonight to cover it at http://ustream.tv/channel/thesocialgeek. We’ll see if we can get others to join in with us.