Facebook Applications

With the exceptional success of the facebook f8 development platform rumours have been abound that other social networking sites will follow their lead and build their own platforms. The rumours included hi5, myspace, linkedin and google. Three of those now look like they are about to become reality, and soon.

Myspace and hi5 are the two that seem to be imminent. FT broke the myspace rumour in June and another again today by TechCrunch. They claim that third party developers have been contacted for input on the system and they also claim that they have info that the platform will be launched next week at the web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.

Hi5 already has a portion of its API posted and they have a small group of developers already making widgets and application for the network. So far they have said that facebook star developers Rock You and Slide are involved.

Also it has been supposedly leaked by a secret industry meeting (and then reported here by TechCrunch) that google will open up a platform for developers starting with their social networking site orkut and igoogle. They may also have plans to open it up for their other apps later on too. This is supposed to start on November 5, 2007!

And Linkedin? There have been indications from their CEO that they are going to do something but it doesn't sound like it is clear what or when. They are much more business focused so most of the fun apps and ideas will not likely work there. New business-like apps and innovation is going to have to be developed for linkedin.

What does all this mean? For one, we still have social networking 'silos'. A handful of closed networks are ruling the roost and the dream of an open social graph is not yet apparent. One where the Internet itself is the platform and all networks can integrate so it won't matter which network any friend or colleague is on. A social graph without walled gardens where everyone can connect with anyone they have a relationship with. It looks like a pipe dream for now and the top networks are going to have to fight it out for some time yet.

As for the third party platforms, right now facebook is the only game in town for third parties to access the social graph. Once the other networks launch their platforms however, the game is going to change. There is going to be flurry of innovation for the developers to access hundreds of millions of new users for their applications. It won't be easy though as they are going to have to maintain multiple sets of code and adhere to standards and rules (these networks do have a lot of rules and have ultimate control of course). Also how will the networks treat their developers? Will they compete with them and just develop the best ideas and functionality themselves? Or will they support and nurture them and prosper alongside them?

Fasten your seatbelts, it is going to be a fun ride!

iLike, the intensely popular facebook application with 8.75 million users has started a new service targeted directly at musicians. They are launching an Artists Platform to enable fans and artists to communicate better. The artists can add media and songs to their profile, add event dates and also track stats for who adds their songs to their profile.

iLike is currently the 7th most popular application on facebook, if they can get the artist on board, they may have something here.

This just in from Center Networks, they report that all developers that have submitted ideas to be funded by the fbfund, need to re-submit them. Here is the note that the developers got from fbfund:

"Thank you for your inquiry about the fbFund grant program, and for your support of the Facebook Platform. Our goal for this program is to encourage as many developers as possible to write innovative and engaging new applications on top of Facebook Platform. Additionally, we hope to enable an even broader class of developers to become entrepreneurs by giving you the financial resources necessary to pursue a new venture that relies on Facebook Platform.

It has become clear that we will receive proposals which contain similar or even identical ideas. As a result, and in order to protect other developers and us from claims that we or anyone else copied material without the creator's permission, unless we agree otherwise in writing, we can't promise that any materials or information you submit here will be kept confidential, or specifically that we or others might not develop similar or identical products or services.

To make sure that everyone understands the conditions of submitting a grant application, we will not review any materials you have sent via email, and any materials you may have sent have been deleted. If you would like to submit an application for an fbFund grant or require more information, please see our website and grant application submission form at http://www.facebook.com/developers/fbfund.php. We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope the online information and submission form will help you develop and structure your proposal. We are accepting applications from around the world.

Again, we are very excited to be offering this program and wish you the best of luck whether or not you are an fbFund grant recipient. We can only give a limited number of grants and not getting one does not mean that we don’t believe in your application nor that it can’t be successful - it simply means that we have a limited amount of resources and weren’t able to give money during this cycle to you. You are welcome to apply as many times as you like as each funding cycle represents a new opportunity to receive a grant.

More information is available at
http://www.facebook.com/developers/fbfund.php.

Thank you for your patience - we apologize for the delay in this response. We've seen a tremendous response to fbFund, and look forward to reviewing great proposals.

Cheers,
the fbFund team"

We were excited to learn more about this new application for facebook where you can easily create 3D scenes and share them with your facebook friends. You can also browse other user's scenes and rate them too. It is called SceneCaster.

Next we proceeded to goto the SceneCaster on facebook and added the application. Then looked around at some scenes made by users, impressive indeed! "Is a new level of quality of facebook applications that is on the way?", we thought to ourselves.

The next logical step was to try and create a scene. We were then taken to this page where we noticed that it needs an additional install.

Ok, not ideal but lets give it a go anyway. Only to find... Windows only. We are mac users here and have been for many years, so are many graphic designers, bloggers and millions of other users. Honestly, we don't see apps that we want to use being Windows only much at all anymore and now with web and browser ubiquity, who in their right mind locks out Mac and Linux users willingly by not developing cross platform applications.

We could have gone to a Windows box, turned it on, logged in, went to facebook and continued the review, but frankly there are other things to be done, people just move on when stuff doesn't work on their computer. Too bad for SceneCaster.

Flyers Exchange (now known as Flyers Ex) came on the facebook ad scene a couple of weeks ago with with an "in-facebook" application and interface to advertise on facebook. Henrick Shyu was the creator of the network and started off with the developers on the wrong foot. He devised a workaround so that the Ads from his network sat outside the application canvas. What is the harm in that you ask? It violates the facebook Terms of Service and interferes with facebook inc.'s own advertising placement. Everyone complained that it was not allowed and trust wasn't high among the developers. Mr. Shyu then told the developer forum that this practice has been stopped. The editors (of this article) checked and it was still being offered. He was lying to the developers in the forum. A start on the wrong foot I guess you could say.

The network started to go along a little better and ad impressions and clicks were being delivered. Mr. Shyu was on the developer forum constantly slagging the Cubics ad network and pumping his own Flyers Exchange network. People started to tire of constantly hearing his promotional posts on the developer forum but, the network seemed to be growing a little and impressions and clicks were still being delivered.

Then IT happened. It was exposed that Mr. Shyu has code in his Flyer Exchange Ads that hit the cubics server 5 times for every time a Flyer Exchange ad is hit, effectively bringing down and overloading the Cubics server. In the forums there were many complaints of Cubics slowing and even crashing a couple of times. Next, the eCPM started to drop and application developers delivering Cubics ads started to complain about low payouts and loss of revenue.

There are developers boycotting left right and center. He has been reported to facebook. In our view this is corporate sabotage. Trying to overload a competitors servers so his customers get mad and leave is dirty business. Or maybe he was somehow faking to deliver Cubics ads and getting paid, which is stealing. What should happen now? We don't know but there are sure some strong feelings and discussions on the developers forums about it.

Here is a picture of the code..

Update: Henrick Shyu posts a reply to the accusations and the developers are not buying it. Also, no apology. Here is what Mr. Shyu had to say:

"Dear devs,

There's been some bad rumours in the past few hours and we feel like we owe you an explanation. I apologize for not responding earlier. It is a national holiday in Japan.

We here at Flyers Ex take pride in our business, and as amusing as it would be for us to be running our competitors' ads, the profit if any would be marginal compared to the lengthy load times. If you'll remember, Cubics was slow and crashed often long before Flyers Ex launched last week, and we do not like being blamed for our competitor's problems. Also, as flattered as we are for some to think that a 1-week old site has enough users to DOS attack Cubics, the number of users on all of Flyers Ex combined would equate to no more than 10 large apps. For "Facebook's official ad network", that should be no problem.

We are always trying to improve our services, and note Cubics as our primary competitor using a CPM system. The reason we use CPC as opposed to CPM is because of the likelyhood of view-fraud. We noted that they allow no more than 1 of their ads to be shown per page. The Cubics ads you saw on Flyers Ex this afternoon were done in short 6 hour intervals during 2 days in a study to learn more about Cubic's CPM and view-fraud protection system. Obviously our quality rating and CPM on Cubics dropped to near $0.00 but we were more curious than concerned about making a few pennies. We also noted that Cubic's downtimes had NO relation with the times we ran this experiment.

Also, Flyers Ex has never scammed anybody. You've not heard a single post on this board about a publisher not being paid, or an advertiser not receiving points he/she paid for. The conversion rate for points is not "randomly set" as some have speculated, but adjusted weekly on Fridays at 4pm (PST) as stated on the site. The conversion rate depends on the number of publishers/advertisers, and as we just launched, we need the flexibility to adjust it to attract more publishers if there are too many advertisers. Also, using a point system instead of money allows Flyers Ex to serve out its primary purpose of allowing developers to exchange clicks with each other without having to pay a commission on the transaction.

I hope your trust in us is not damaged by such speculation, and we hope to continue serving you in the future as the ad network for developers, by developers. If you have any further questions, please let me know.

Yours truly."

and here are what some of the developers had to say so far:

"So you decided to "test" Cubic's fraud detection system…
Riiiiggghhtt "

"You're doing shady business and this post lacking any kind of apology regarding this "test" shows that you clearly aren't someone to be trusted."

"Its just like you try to rob a bank and say that you were only testing the bank's security arrangements."

"ouch. That's fraud, pure and simple. You are not only defrauding people publishing on your network, but also Cubics. Your ethics are beyond the pale."

"Thats the most bullshit excuse I've ever heard.

I've reported you to Facebook and Dwayne, I hope others do the same. "

Update II - A further response from Mr. Shyu was posted on the facebook developer forums:
"Perhaps I'm missing something, but we promise you a certain rate for placing an ad on your site, and we pay you for it. You get to preview the ad, and when you place it on your site, it loads instantaneously and looks exactly like you expect it to.

What does it matter if there's other information hidden in the ad? For example, all good ad networks track ad views/clicks and referring URLs, and must embed such tracking code in the ad. If we're researching our competitor by placing their ads to track their statistics, that has absolutely no affect on you as the publisher. And as I already mentioned, Cubics was laggy and crashy before we came along. In fact, that was one of the main reasons we wanted to build a new ad network.

We do apologize for the confusion and will be careful to notify publishers of such changes in the future.

Regards."

Update III - After this response Mr. Shyu took a pounding in the forums (some of the responses to follow). Also, he then backtracked and deleted his posts and they are no longer in the thread. Good thing we saved it, one of them anyway! There were three more posts from Mr. Shyu that were deleted, you can see where they have been deleted in the picture below. In one of the posts, he went on to bash appsaholic and accused them of being the crooks because he thought their pay scale was unfair and then went on to basically say that he had done nothing wrong. Have a look at the next dialog and see what you think. (names and faces are blurred to preserve the identity of the other forum posters.)

Want to find some cool new songs? Want to know what your facebook friends are listening to? Now you can with InTune.fm, a new facebook application that offers free music. Yes you heard right, free. Oh and there are 80,000+ songs already in the system!

We are not quite sure of the legality or copyright issues that may plague applications like this, but in the meantime you can enjoy free music.

The facebook terms of service state that any file sharing application submit a signed copyright agreement and have a copyright policy in place along with a way to report pirated material. We couldn’t find either a policy nor a way to report on this app and would assume that it is just a matter of time until it gets shutdown, either by facebook, RIAA or other music piracy police.

In the meantime, here are some features from the application’s about page:

"inTune allows you to discover and listen to the hottest music on Facebook, in your Network and from your Friends.

Features
* Discover and listen to the hottest music on Facebook, in your Network and from your Friends.
* Search for songs through a huge collection of music thats growing daily, and add them to your online collection.
* Friends Bar - Friends appear who enjoy the same music you are currently playing. Mouse over a friend’s photo to discover what music that friend enjoys.
* Profile Art - Your "Most Played" songs are used to automatically create a gorgeous collage of album art for your profile!"