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The "What You get From Facebook Pages" Series: Default Widgets and Applications

Posted on April 19, 2008 by jessestay

On FacebookAdvice.com I am starting a new series on “What You get From Facebook Pages”. Over the next week or so I’ll cover several topics on how you can best optimize Facebook Pages for your business. In the first article I’m covering the default widgets and applications that are installed when you set up a Facebook Page. Read more about it here.

Need some help getting a Facebook Page set up for your Organization? I do consulting! Contact me at jesse at staynalive dot com and I’ll get you setup with a plan on how you can utilize Facebook to bring your company more customers.

Toronto Star and the Power of Community

Posted on April 19, 2008 by jessestay

I’ve written before on the power of community and how Social Networks are bringing back the days of the small community within a large world. That’s why I was happy to hear in a recent interview I had with Erin MacLeod of the Toronto Star that BJ Fogg, Professor at Stanford, and teacher of the “Psychology of Facebook” class seemed to be on the same track (Fogg is also author of an excellent book on technology and marketing called “Persuasive Technology“). From the Toronto Star article,

“If you look at the history of civilization, you’re part of a community and as you grow up you stay connected with a community and those past lives and past friends,” Fogg says. “So maybe in some ways Facebook is bringing back what humans have lived with for thousands of years, a persistence of identity and relationships for decades.”

I agree wholeheartedly with Fogg. In the article I mention that it goes even further beyond that though. Technology always adds another layer to something that previously existed in a lesser form. With Social Networks, technology is simply bringing together a massive world of people into a small community-type atmosphere, but at the same time allowing a layer of privacy, giving users control over what that small community sees, and does not see.

It’s true that you will need to be more careful in the future with what you reveal on Social Networks, but the power of these Social Networks is that there are controls in place already to prevent information from getting out. Facebook has friends lists, privacy features, and flags you can enable and disable to control what elements are revealed to what people. You’ll find similar elements in other networks. I imagine even in Twitter (which I argue isn’t necessarily a “Social Network”, but rather a communications platform for Social Networks of people) will develop methods to segregate your friends and communicate only to whom you want.

At the same time, I feel we are becoming more forgiving of one another. We recognize through these mediums that we are all human, with flaws and imperfections, and that’s okay. Social Networks have power to make the world a better place.

Check out Fogg’s Psychology of Facebook class on Facebook here – he Ustreams it live every week!

Why You’re Seeing "Those" Facebook Ads

Posted on April 17, 2008 by jessestay

Yesterday I was checking Facebook and noticed an Advertisement on the left for a singles site targeting Homosexual Men. Well, maybe Facebook knows something I don’t, but I do have a wife, and yes, 4 kids – I am far from such! Not only that, but my Facebook Account specifically says I’m interested in WOMEN. I Twittered it and got responses from other people saying they had seen the same ads, and others as well that were definitely not targeted towards what they had entered on Facebook.

Valleywag (I skim it occasionally – yes, they do get some dirt occasionally that is actually news!) today posted an article about a similar situation. I also remember several times seeing an ad for wedding rings when it clearly says I’m married. So why are we seeing these non-targeted ads?

The reason is because there’s a flaw in Facebook’s advertising system. The ads you see on the left are only ads submitted by users, and they are submitted completely by users via a tool on Facebook called, “Social Ads“. So the ads are truly up to the users submitting them as to how targeted an audience they show to.

However, in some of these cases (like the Homosexual ads) I’m afraid it wasn’t the users’ fault the ads weren’t targeted correctly. Right now, when you sign up for a social ad, it gives you the option to filter by Location, Sex, Age, Keywords from your Activities, Favorite Music, Favorite Books, and About Me sections on your Profile, Education Status, Workplaces, and Relationship Status. As you can see there is no “Interested In” field in there. Note, there is no “Religion” field in there either, nor is there a political views field, or field for the IM networks you’re on. Because of this there is no way to target an ad only to homosexuals, or heterosexuals, or catholics, or christians, or Jews, or Muslims, or conservatives.

While Facebook gives great tools to target your advertising in ways you can’t through other venues, their advertising still has holes. To compete I anticipate these things will need to be made available to advertisers, or a better filtering system will have to be in place.

What do you think Facebook can do to improve this process?

(Image courtesy Valleywag)

Google Gets the Discussion Going on "Templates" for OpenSocial

Posted on April 14, 2008 by jessestay

This morning an e-mail went out to the OpenSocial and Gadget Spec Mailing List for OpenSocial developers, mentioning proposed problems and a need for “Templates” in OpenSocial. For those Facebook developers out there, this could be one of the missing links in OpenSocial, replacing the benefits of FBML for Facebook.

Facebook Asks for Developer Input on How to Improve Platform

Posted on April 12, 2008 by jessestay

I’m going to be interviewed by the Facebook development team on Monday. I want to give them the best answers that reflect the Facebook developer community. I’ve heard plenty of input for my “FBML Essentials” book soon to be published by O’Reilly, but now is your time to speak and have your answers heard by Facebook.

If you have suggestions for things you would like to see improved on the Facebook development platform, or just plain things that are nagging you, leave them in the comments and I’ll ask all those I have time for in my chat with them on Monday. In addition, what would you like to see in FBML Essentials? If you were to read a book on FBML, what is it you think is missing on Facebook currently? I’ll also see these get reflected back to the Facebook Development team. Add your suggestions to the comments and maybe we can start a discussion…

Please feel free to forward this on so we can get some quality feedback!

Wanna win a copy of the book?

Posted on April 12, 2008 by jessestay

Beth Kanter and I met over at Graphing Social Patterns this year. I was running late to the lunch and happened to sit down at a table I saw Rodney Rumford at. I introduced myself and Beth happened to be at the table. She asked if she could give a book away on her blog, and interviewed me briefly. She posted a great review of the book today (yes, that’s my big head in the close-up!), and announced the free giveaway of “I’m On Facebook–Now What???”.

Learn more about Beth and ways to “Change the World” using Facebook on FacebookAdvice.com…

Utah Social Media Developers Garage Has a Mailing LIst

Posted on April 11, 2008 by jessestay

I mentioned this at the Hackathon in March, but have not had the time to blog about it yet. Thus far all announcements for the Utah Social Media Developers Garage Meetings and Utah Facebook Developers Garage Meetings have been announced either through this blog, or our Facebook Group. I’ve now created a Google Group for us at http://groups.google.com/group/utsmdev. Please sign up there and I’ll issue all announcements via that list. Google Groups provides a more neutral ground in the sense that users don’t have to have an account to use it (to an extent), as compared to the Facebook groups. We’ll keep the Facebook groups around, and depending on membership I’ll still send announcements there as well, but I encourage all to sign up on the Google Group if possible. In addition, having a mailing list will allow us to have more of a discussion. This way if you are working on a project in Facebook, or OpenSocial, or even WordPress or Twitter or other APIs and you run into issues, you can ask the group and we can work together to solve the problem. I figure this way we’ll be able to all build a strong Social Media Development community here in Utah that others can rely on. Google groups will also give us a page we can tell others about the group, when the next meeting is, etc. If you have some graphics and HTML skills to help with that I am open to volunteers!

Also, I have created a Google Code repository at http://code.google.com/p/utsmdev/. For anyone okay with producing their code under the GPL, this will give you a place to store your code, and collaborate with others on the code, track issues, etc. If you want commit permissions to that repository please contact me and I’ll add you. As Google App Engine gets more integration into these things we’ll also set up a hosting option through Google App Engine to actually host your apps. Hopefully all these options will make it all much easier for everyone to get out and collaborate in their coding. It’s a good time to be a developer…

P.S. – We will continue on in our every-other-month meeting structure now, so our next meeting will be the second Tuesday in May. I’m working on a speaker, so if you know anyone or have ideas let me know!