DF's Social Corner

New official BeeFM blog

2013-02-13T11:29:00.000-08:00

As I told you almost a year ago, I'm leading the BeeFM project - it is made to be your Facebook radio that provides personalized social music experience.
Now BeeFM has an official blog, it's all about music, there is a lot of free online music and other music related stuff.
You are kindly invited to visit: http://blog.beefm.com

Thank you and spread the word about BeeFM - the latest social music online radio!

A novel social sharing music service released

2012-05-12T03:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I've disappeared for a while and here is why:

The Israeli startup BeeFM (http://www.beefm.com) launched a new Facebook social video/music sharing application at the Next conference held in Berlin on the 8^th of May.

The new BeeFM video/music social sharing service changes the way we consume music online and significantly enhances the social experience on Facebook whenever music or video sharing is involved.

Sharing music and video clips is one of the most popular channels on Facebook. Just as we get updates on what happens with our friends via text and pictures, so should get updates via videos and music. However, to this day, there has been no easy and convenient way to see and hear all the materials that appear in the Facebook news feed, and most shares are therefore lost.

BeeFM offers a novel service that allows the consumption of these materials in a simple and intuitive manner. The service is started with just one click. Go to www.beefm.com or the BeeFM Facebook application, click the Play button and you will start hearing all the songs and music/video clips that your friends have shared.

The songs are played in sequence and the user will discover a world that was thus far obscured due to information overload and the cumbersomeness of the Facebook news feed.

BeeFM has a pleasant and simple interface. Moreover, the service can be put to work in the background while the listener can continue with the daily routine.

Fully aware that different people have different musical preferences, BeeFM developers have introduced convenient management tools that allow control over the playlist.

Among the management tools is an effective search engine that finds songs and videos that user liked in the past.

BeeFM founders view this new application as a tool that stands to turn Facebook into the world's largest music service.

BeeFM entrepreneur Daniel Fogel explains: "Sharing songs is an important aspect of Facebook users' lives. To date, this sharing was practically a one-way trip. It is easy to share a song, but who has time to sort through the mountains of materials and hear them all?"

Venture partner, Yaron Meiri adds: "To this day, users had to stay in front of a screen to experience Facebook. With BeeFM Facebook breaks through the boundaries of the screen so that the users can hear it wherever they may be"

Once BeeFM was launched, first reactions from users were flattering. BeeFM in turn, promises to make new developments in the experience of listening to social music.

Social Media Expert?

2011-09-05T06:04:00.000-07:00

The holidays are over and here we are, Social Media Experts, coming back to conquer communities with our clients' products.

Unfortunately, some of our clients dare to ask questions like "what qualifies us to do the social media marketing for them?", "What we know, that they don't?".
Here is an example. You are about to watch a homemade video on social media experts. Warning - it is not flattering! On the other hand, it is genuine. Enjoy!

What surprised me is the amount of similar videos found on YouTube. There are tens of those. The makers are owners of small businesses that do understand the importance of presence on social media. They spend their precious time making these videos and sending us a message.

How did we earn this kind of reputation? How can we cope with this attitude? Can we cope with it at all?

I'm feeling a little bit lucky here, because I have a strong technical background. I'm an R&D guy who loves and tends to understand social media. Hence, technical skills may help to distinguish yourself from heavy Facebook users who like, post, make friendships, use applications, and in one word - live in the social networks environment.

One of the most important aspects of social media marketing is the expert - client cooperation. I always explain to my clients that Facebook is just another stage for their products. Social media marketing is just another tool that must fit in the company marketing strategy. We are not there to invent products, neither to brand them or think about special offers or giveaways. Our job is to reach the audience that is unavailable to the client in other way.

In my opinion, the critical approach above derives from the lack of understanding of the scope of work by the social media expert himself. When the scope is defined, it is much easier to present your advantages to potential clients and to convince them that you are the one who deserves to get the job.

What do you think about it? What are your advantages (show off, please, you have an opportunity to promote yourself here)? Why are you a Social Media Expert?

What Google+ Does Better Than Other Social Networks

2011-08-21T22:57:00.000-07:00

Today I've found an interesting question in my G+ stream. Pete Cashmore from Mashable asked what Google+ does better than other social networks?
The versatility of the answer is amazing, from the stream, through uploading gifs, Hangouts, privacy control, meeting new people to "everything".

There were a lot of emotions in answers. It seems that there is a community of people that have a very negative opinion on Facebook, for various reasons, loaded with emotions that cause them to see in Google+ something that it isn't, yet.
In my opinion, the greatest advantage of G+ is the Google philosophy. Allow me to paraphrase it in the following way: if you don't come to us, we will come to you! Hangouts are already on YouTube. Public shared material on G+ is already a part of Google search results. It will continue in this manner, that's what Google always do. Google content and services are everywhere, they are distributed all over the web. Facebook understands it, therefore it invested a lot of effort in Facebook Connect, but Google is still way ahead.

So, Mr. Cashmore, the potential distribution is the answer I'm betting on.

LinkedIn Ads Platform Review

2011-08-18T02:44:00.000-07:00

If you have a business that provides services to other business, you will find that advertising on facebook isn't so simple for you. You will create a campaign and an ad, which is the fun part of advertising. When you get to the targeting, you'll find a problem. Let's assume that your main target is small businesses in your country. How can you filter such group of people in facebook? If you want, for example, restaurant owners to see your advertisement, it's not enough to state "restaurant" or "food" as an interest. It will bring your message to the people that eat in restaurants and only few of them will be the restaurant owners.

So, you have to be creative and try to think about other B2B services that may be present in facebook.

For example, Office Depot fans may be small business owners, the alternative medicine groups and pages often assemble professionals in this field, etc.

Fortunately, during January 2011 LinkedIn, the largest business social network, released a new advertising platform. Is there a right place to advertise B2B?

How does it work?

Most features of LinkedIn Ads are familiar from other services.

First, you create a campaign and an advertisement. Then, you define the target audience, pricing and budget, and at the end you have to provide the payment method to LinkedIn.

What is different and good?

LinkedIn Ads is a refreshing advertisement platform. It solves the problem I've described above.
Despite of it, unfortunately, there are more con's than pro's you'll find there.

Targeting

It is real business to business advertisement. The targeting is great. You can choose companies by name, category or even by size and job titles, including the seniority. There are also LinkedIn groups targeting and the standard geography, age and gender targeting.

Unlike the Facebook advertising targeting experience, it is very simple to target the appropriate audience. You can easily chose the decision makers positions in any company you need and you'll get to the right people.

Interface

The interface is clean and easy to use. It saves a lot of time.

Generally, LinkedIn communicates with the customers in a very clear way. If your advertisement is rejected, you'll receive an email with the precise explanation as to why. It takes less than 15 minutes to fix the problem and get your ad approved.

Different and not so good

The ad length

The title length is 25 characters max, which is in most cases enough, although the start-up I was one if its founders "Audiogate Technologies Ltd." would have to be left without the "ltd"part, which is a minor problem. The length of the creative part is more problematic - it takes a while to come up with acceptable creative limited of 75 characters. The funny part is that the creative must be at least two lines, so you can't be too short. If you have a logical explanation for it, please let me know - I haven't found one yet.

The price

The lowest possible offer you can make is $2 for click, while the recommended pricing reaches easily $3.1 My experience shows that it is more than twice of what Facebook charges.

If we make few convergence rates assumptions, the customer acquisition cost may reach from tens to hundreds of dollars, which may not be attractive for many businesses.

Language support

English is currently the only supported language. Although we can assume that most of LinkedIn users are comfortable with English, it is much more convenient and effective for local businesses to express themselves in their native language.

In my opinion, the language support is the most important improvement needed for LinkedIn Ads, if LinkedIn is interested in markets outside the US and the UK.

The account activation fee

There is $5 fee for the ads account activation. You'll survive it, but it isn't clear enough in the process and it may surprise you. It is not the best way to start doing business with LinkedIn.

Nice one for the end

After the campaign starts, you can find your ads at the top of the page and at the right side ads box. It is really nice to see how the advertisement looks when it's for real.

Summary

The bottom line of every advertisement platform is the efficiency and ROI. The high pricing of LinkedIn has to be translated into success, otherwise all good features are worthless.

If you have experience with both LinkedIn and Facebook advertising, you're welcome to share it here. I'll start: Facebook was more efficient in projects I was involved in.

On Riots and Social Networks

2011-08-15T02:31:00.000-07:00

When the UK authorities found out that the protestors have used social networks to organize themselves, the question whether to monitor those telecommunication channels or not has risen. It reminded me of the good old logic question:
Merry's father has five daughters: Nana, Nena, Nina, Nona. What is the name of the fifth daughter?

The answer, as you've probably guessed correctly, is... Merry. It is a classical distraction question. Just as the monitoring question is, if we formulate it in more accurate way: The poor people of the UK got out on the streets and used: facebook, Twitter, Blackberry to do that. What do we have to do to solve the problem? Just as the answer to the previous question isn't Nuna or Nyna, the answer to this question isn't to monitor social networks, than to solve the real problems in the the UK society. I don't have enough information to decide who's right, the protestors or the establishment, but I don't have to be there in order to know that the people have a reason, justified or not, to organize themselves and the communication tools are not the essence of the problem.

Another reason to get off the idea of monitoring social networks is the price of monitoring. It costs money! It seems much more logical to me to invest this money in real problems solution and not to enrich already rich technology companies that will be the only ones to benefit from the monitoring.

The questions which the ordinary man, who has no plans to rise against the government, has to ask is whether we can trust social networks to keep our communication private, even if we decide to do something that is considered as unacceptable? Who will decide where is the border between our right for privacy and the need for security? The first answer that pops up is to remain the social networks to function as neutral tools for communication as it suppose to be today. On the other hand, most of the existing communication tools, like telephony, for example, aren't neutral. Is the fact that we already gave up the neutrality in most of the channels, gives legitimacy to take our privacy from the social networks, too?

I'm, personally, looking at the social networks as a public communication channel, like talking with someone in the middle of the street. I'm not even trying to block the access to the content I'm generating, I simply don't generate content that shouldn't be public. It is the only advice I can give in this complicated semi-philosophical discussion.

Please share your opinion, maybe we can get to more creative solutions together.

If Google had to get an investment for Google+

2011-08-12T00:08:00.000-07:00

Notice: DF's Social Corner is the official blog of Yedalab. Please follow Yedalab on facebook

Today I've found on Google+ lot of excitement - a small group of users got the chance to try Google+ Games!
The reactions are mixed - from "oh, no, that's why I've left facebook" to "it's great, don't worry, there will be a separate stream for games and it won't bother if you don't like social gaming".
Anyway, the feeling that Google aims to build facebook+ got even stronger than it was before.

A weird thought

Suddenly, a weird thought came up - what if Google had to get an investment for Google+, i.e. what if Google were a start up?
One of the most important questions entrepreneurs are always asked is "How much time will take to your competitors to reach you?". What would be an answer?
Circles? It's just a better interface to facebook's friends lists.
Sparkles? Nothing special about it, facebook already has millions of groups that provides a conversation and information about every subject you can think about.
Games? If it's so good idea, facebook can do the stream separation in no time and there are so many games there waiting for the gamers.

There has to be something good

Hangouts. Yes, I can't hide my excitement about it, although I'm not really using it yet, but I'm planning to start.
Anything else? A lot of potential, Google services are waiting for the integration to Google+.
That's the plan I would like to see as an investor. Fortunately, I'm not an investor and Google is not a start up.

What about you? What is so revolutionary about Google+ in your opinion?

Mentioned:
http://plusheadlines.com/google-games-are-here/981/
http://mashable.com/2011/08/11/google-games-goes-live/
http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=1334138&rd=1

The Cycle of Viral Marketing

2011-08-08T03:32:00.000-07:00

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You are invited to follow Yedalab on facebook

When your application meets the news feed

2011-08-05T05:20:00.000-07:00

After we've been talking about good posting in How helpful is good posting in increasing the number of fans? post, let's take a look on the new statistics section in the application insights, which was added recently by facebook.

News Feed

The news feed section provides you an important information about your application's posts.
The following statistics are available:

CTR - click trough rate, which means how many clicks on links in the story, relatively to the number of impressions your stories have got. This data shows you how successful the formulation of the stories is. If you're changing the text, you can learn from the statistics if the change had a positive effect.
Spam - user can report your posts as spam. It can happened everywhere, but especially if your application is posting on users friends walls. It's not cool, so don't do it. Spam reports can hurt your application bad and in certain cases it may lead to removing of your application from facebook.
Hides - users can hide the stories your application posts. It usually means that they have no intention to use your application ever and they don't want it in their news feed. It is not the end of the world, but facebook does consider it to decide how many impressions your application stories will get.
Likes - likes are good, you want them. If your stories are more informative and less inviting, they'll get more likes. On the other side, the stories are the place to invite friends to use the application, so try to find the appropriate balance.
Comments - comments are good, too. You can always try to start a discussion through the application stories. It may be accomplished by posting a question or an interesting fact or by posting some fun stuff. Personal stuff, if possible.

Summary

Facebook wants us to make applications that posts interesting stuff. The above categories help the machines to understand what's good and what isn't. Here is the guideline from the beginning of the "News Feed" Insights section:
The number of story impressions is highly correlated with positive user engagement and can decrease when we receive negative user feedback.

Remember, CTR, likes and comments are good, spam and hides are bad.
Good luck!

3 observations on Google+ buzz

2011-08-01T01:43:00.000-07:00

Google+ is with us a little bit more than one month, but it feels like forever. One of the reasons is over 10M blog pages talking about it.
After the initial excitement, I would like to share with you 3 more rational observations.

The acquisition pace

Wow! Google+ acquired more than 20M users within 2 weeks! The web is full of infographics that shows how fast Google+ grows, comparing to facebook and Twitter.

Well, I'm not sure how successful it is for a company that has more than 1 billion active users. Google+ is not a revolution, it is a potential improvement of other revolutionary social networks. Viber, the revolutionary VoIP service for mobiles had impressive growth of 10M users in one year. It is not 20M in two weeks, but they came out of nowhere and brought something new to the complex world of VoIP, full of big players like Skype, Jajah and others.
Google+ is doing just fine, but, although the graph looks good, it is not Google's victory, yet.

Circles are cool?

Finally we have privacy, experts announced, ignoring the fact that facebook provides almost the same features, just with worse user interface.
Animations are cool, but it took only few weeks to understand that it's not so simple. Google already made changes to improve the Circles management.

Hangouts, the future of Social TV?

Hangouts are the most unique feature of Google+. Somehow, the revolutionary part of it doesn't get the appropriate attention.
Since the Google+ was released you can watch YouTube videos together with your friends. Few days ago, Google has added the possibility to watch YouTube live streams socially. It is a giant step forward for Social TV. It is the only thing that really excites me on Google+.

Potential vs. Existing

Everybody's talking about the potential of Google+. I agree, there is a lot of it. Unfulfilled.
Please, share with us, what existing features of Google+ excites you?

Mentioned
Growth infographic
Viber
Circles management

Hangouts and live videos

How helpful is good posting in increasing the number of fans?

2011-07-27T01:30:00.000-07:00

You've prepared a beautiful business page on facebook. You've used your advertisement budget and now you have few tens or hundreds or thousands of fans, depending on the investment. What's next?

According to the latest research made by comScore, your fans friends are on average a 34-times-larger audience than the fans alone.

How to reach them?

In order to expose your page to the fans friends, you need an active involvement of your fans on your page. It means that you have to give them a reason to like your posts, comment on them or even post their own content on your wall.

You must know an important fact before you get creative with your posts. Facebook has developed a complex algorithm that made the news feed so famous. Take a look at your news feed. The content you see is under the title "Top News". Next to the "Top News" caption you will see a link called "Most recent". There is a number next to it (300+ in my case). Take a look there and you'll find an enormous amount of posts that you will never see in a regular way. One of the main factors for showing your posts on your friend's or fan's "Top News" feed is the popularity of your posts. Usually, a post is shown to 5%-10% of your fans. Unless you're really good in posting.

Tips for good posting

1. Be creative!

You can use any material you want, you can post YouTube videos, links to news articles or any other content made by someone else, it is perfectly acceptable. If you think that a video will draw lot of likes and it is somehow related to your business - post it! Important, links are OK, but if you want to copy-paste, be careful with the copyrights of the content.

2. Initiate a fun conversation

Facebook users are looking for fun. So, if you're selling ice cream, post a photo of few ice cream balls in screaming colors and ask your fans what is the wildest combination of tastes they've ever tried. It is a kind of a conversation that people like to participate in.

3. Ask for an opinion

People love to have their opinions to be heard. Cola in a glass or cola in a can, what tastes better? I think it's a glass, do you agree? I'm sure you have a strong opinion on the subject, although it doesn't sound that important.

Summary

Choose your posts carefully and don't spam. Your goal is to reach a large audience of your fans and their friends and it can be achieved only if you manage to get to their news feed.

Good luck!

Mentioned:
comScore research

What is privacy in social networks?

2011-07-24T04:55:00.000-07:00

We already have discussed the Google+ emphasis of the privacy, as the main advantage of the latest Google's social network over facebook.
Today I've got a little bit confused: Google has deleted number of Google+ account, claiming the violation of their real name policy. Does the concept of privacy include our names? What are the boundaries of privacy?

The definition of the privacy

When I'm not sure about some term, I use to get help from a dictionary. Here is the definition of the privacy from the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary: the quality or state of being apart from company or observation.

It seems that my name has the right to be apart from the observation. Does it mean that I can expose a fake name?

The essence of the privacy

People come to social networks so socialize. It is a virtual, but in some cases it turns to the real life friendships. Fake names don't help here. So, why's everybody so worry about the real names policy?

Let's discuss two examples, a bad one and a good one.

If I'm planning a fraud, certainly I'll keep my real name out of the reach. No real name policy will convince me to do otherwise. Delete my account, I'll open other one. I'm a criminal. I'm not ignoring the unfortunate situations caused by false identification, but the social network platforms must find another, more sophisticated way to cope with it.

Another, more positive example. I'm hip-hop fan and Daniel Fogel is probably one of the most not suitable names for this world. So, I want to be loved by my hip-hop friends, I want to be, for example, Dan the Scum. Google answers that I can't socialize What's fun about it?
The essence of social networks is in the choice we have. We can introduce ourselves however it suits us and we can be a part of any social group we want. We need an identity to represent us. Let us choose what identity it will be, according to our goals. Most of us, anyway, use a real name. Fight the fraud, no problem, but don't hurt us, we came here to get some virtual fun. Virtual is an alternative to the real world. Why insist on the real names?

There is a problem

To be honest, there is a larger problem than the real names issue. The information we're supplying is essential to the social networks for making money. Fake profiles are considered as a junk in their databases. It may make a damage to the income. No ideology, it is business matter. Cooperate or find another, ideology driven, platform, willing to invest an effort and the money in your virtual freedom, in exchange for nothing.

Somehow, we're ignoring the fact that powerful companies with billions of dollars of income are those who give us a sense of privacy and freedom. Can we really trust them?

Before you go

Please allow me to promote my company's facebook application that deals with profiles and names:
"Do You Know Your Friends" is a kind of trivia, you're asked to match your friends names to their profile pictures. It takes 2 minutes, it's fun and it may cause you to reconsider your attitude to the facebook friendships. Thank you in advance for using it, I made for you.

Mentioned:

Google Plus Deleting Accounts En Masse: No Clear Answers

Mirrian Webster definition of privacy
Facebook application "Do You Know Your Friends"

Is facebook the one being threatened by Google+?

2011-07-19T23:45:00.000-07:00

Google has done it again - it has created a huge buzz around Google+ by using the formula that made gmail one of the largest email services providers. Google+ is being released to a limited audience. It's invitation based, everybody is talking about it and the curiosity reached new heights. Early adopters praise the new social network and forecast facebook's fall.

When I finally got the invitation to Google+, I was excited. A few days later I could no longer ignore the feeling that Google+ provides the functionality of... Twitter and LinkedIn. Another thing worth noticing - during that whole period facebook's tab was proudly open in my browser next to the Google+'s one.

How's Google+ threatening facebook?

Google+ put in the front lines two features aimed to overcome facebook's user experience problems: Circles and Hangouts. Google assumes that the users are seriously concerned for their privacy in facebook, so it offers a solution, which is a very cool and modern design for the facebook groups feature. It is called "Circles". According to the survey made in 2010, 77% of facebook members already use privacy tools that facebook provides. The privacy buzz reached the peek a year ago and people have already adjusted the social networks usage to their needs. Now they have an opportunity to do it in a cooler way. Will it be enough to get them to migrate to Google+?

Another major feature introduced by Google+ is "Hangouts", video conferencing for up to 10 participants. Video calls have been around for a long time, but they haven't managed yet to replace the regular calls. There is one simple reason for it and the first thing you see after clicking on the "Hangouts" button addresses it: "Check your hair and make sure your mic works!". In order to start your video conversation you need to check your appearance. It is the reason why Apple felt free to release iPhone with the back camera only. People use video conversations for showing things happening around them, not to show themselves. There are, of course, video chats happening all around the world, but they can't be the killer application that will bring facebook down. The fact that facebook already has some nice and cool video applications such as Tinychat with more than 2.8M active users and the slightly different, but still very fun, Rounds with close to 800K active users, leaves "Hangouts" as just another well designed capability of Google+.

The biggest surprise is the lack of a Google+ API. How can Google+ compete with facebook, if it isn't a platform? The most fun we get from facebook is related to its applications and facebook users install 20M of those every day.

So, there are a few major reasons not to be worried about facebook. But...

What about Twitter and LinkedIn?

People connect in Google+ through the Circles mechanism. You put your friend in the circle and he puts you in his. In other words, you follow your friend and he follows you. Also, you can mention people in your posts by adding @ before their name. Sounds familiar? I have to admit that Twitter isn't my cup of tea. It's too short for me, too messy and I've never invested a serious effort to expand my presence there, but in Google+ everything seems to be more clear. Another victory for the Google design team.

In my first week of using Google+, I've found myself reading statuses and posts made mostly by my business connections. It is certainly related to the fact that I am part of an industry full of early adopters and my personal friends are less excited to try something experimental. The Google+ functionality doesn't cover the majority of LinkedIn's features, but it does give a simple and clean stage for professionals to promote themselves. Add to this the short browsing distance from gmail and other Google services and you may start to think about Google+ as a potential alternative or at least a complement to LinkedIn.

With Google+ I feel much more comfortable to communicate with my followers and read the updates from those I'm following. I'll still visit LinkedIn to find information about new business connections, but I'll try to connect to them in Google+ for future communication.

Google+, success or failure?

In my opinion, it doesn't really matter. Google+ has already achieved a lot. It servers to mark both the potential and the real problems of the social networks world and offers a few excellent solutions. Whether it succeeds or fails, the users will enjoy the progress of all social network platforms, initiated by a serious investment by such a big player, as Google is, in this area. Facebook has already announced the deeper Skype integration with video abilities and even released one-on-one video chat to the limited group of users. It is only the beginning. In the near future, I expect to see a lot of new developments by everybody, facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others, especially in the mobile environment, where Google has a potential advantage over the rest of the competitors.

The intensity of the reactions to Google+ expresses the need for a refreshment of the social networks and that need just got an answer. We, the users, are going to have a lot of fun.

Mentioned:
Privacy survey
Advanced Google+ usage
Rounds Video Chat
Tinychat
Facebook and Skype

Tips for surviving the facebook design changes

2011-07-17T02:07:00.000-07:00

While everybody's talking about Google+, there are people that still enjoy facebook.
Unfortunately, recently, an advanced usage of facebook is getting harder and harder.

A lot of design changes were going on lately. I've prepared a list of tips for you, maybe it'll help you to avoid the frustration I have experienced in the last month or more.

Where is my application page?

The developers section went trough a major change. There is no "My Apps", the name is changed to "Apps". No big deal. So, where is a link to my application page? Once it was simple, today you have to do the following: go to "insights" and you'll find the link in the "links" section on the left side. The first place to search for it?

Update (July 24): Facebook designers have moved the link where it should be from the beginning: go to your applications page, choose the application you want and then choose "Edit" in the "Settings" section. You'll find there, on the left side, a link to the application page.

How to add an application to you business page?

Sure, it's simple! Go to your page, click on the "edit page" button at the top right and then on the "apps" link on the left. Surprise! There is a list of applications you are already using, but no link for adding a new one. I went to the help center and here is the answer:
How can I add more applications to my Page?

We encourage Page Admins to find and add the applications to their Page that will make their Page most useful and successful.

To find new applications for your Page, please visit the Application Directory. Click on the application you're interested in, and if the application you're viewing is available to be added to your Page, you'll see the option to "Add to Page" on the left-hand side. Certain applications may not be available for Pages. If you have any questions about those applications, please contact the developer of the application directly.

So, facebook sends you to browse the application directory, which is not so practical, considering the fact that once you had almost all you need in the edit page section. It may be OK, but, at the moment, the link to the application directory leads to the personal "app requests" page (Sunday, July 11)! So, I went to Google to find the appropriate link and, indeed, I've found it: http://www.facebook.com/apps/directory.php
The only problem I couldn't solve looks like this:

I'm chatting with someone and I want to see his/her profile

Once upon a time it was simple to see the profile of one you're chatting with. You could click on his/here name and the profile was loaded in the background. After the latest design change, click on the name minimizes the chat window. Open it again and click on the small profile picture of your friend.

Small, but annoying change.

Why now?

The main advantage of Google+ is the great design. The main advantage of facebook is the applications platform.

We are used to the constant changes of the facebook design. Still, it seems to me that it is really bad idea to make the facebook usage annoying, when you're under attack by someone like Google.

I hope the tips above helps. If you have more, please write them in the comments bellow and save us from the frustration.

I'll be happy to find this post outdated as soon as possible.

Google+ vs. Facebook - the motivation

2011-07-09T09:23:00.000-07:00

This article is originally published at soshable.com

On July 1st Google released it's 4th social network project. After the failures of Orkut, Google Wave and Google Buzz, Google presented the new promising social platform - Google+.
During the last few days, hundreds of articles describing Google+ were published. I won't describe here the functionality of the new social network, since I haven't experienced it personally. All my knowledge
about it derives from the demo available on the Google site and the reviews mentioned above.
Instead, I'll discuss here the motivation behind Google's decision to significantly enter the social network world, whatever it costs.

Google is still the biggest search engine in the world

Let's start with a reminder – the main Google service is it's web search, not social network. It is impossible to deny that Google has a great search engine. Still, in order to keep the title of "King of Searches", Google must strengthen a number of weaknesses.

One of the largest limitations Google search has is related to the image search. Google completely depends on the description provided by the HTML developer and the general context of the page containing the image. We are often looking for images of details or places that aren't significant enough to include them in the description of the image. For example, a request for a common tortoise in ... river, in most cases won't lead to the appropriate result.
Not only the images search has weaknesses. Google does not response well to requests like "I want to watch a comedy in LA next Saturday". You are welcome to try to get an answer to this question. Here are
some queries that don't work well: "Los Angeles showtime comedy July 9" "Where can I watch comedy in Los Angeles on July 9?", "Movie theaters Los Angeles comedy July 9" and more. After almost an hour of searching, I've found a partial answer and I am a search-engines power user. The fact that I have found the answer indicates that Google should do it for me too.
Another type of question is a personal question: "What good blues music is being released this year?". This year's blues releases can be found, but what about the word "good"? How can Google find music that
is good in my opinion?
Is it too personal? Let's try this one, even more practical: "Where
can I find a beach in New York with starfish?" You've guessed right - no answer.
I'm sure Google is aware of those problems. So, why is Google so decisive to get in to the social networking arena, instead of resolving the above problems?
We shall look for an answer of the term "Social search".

How social search helps here?

The social search is based on the input about the content supplied by real users. Google understands the importance of social search. At the end of March 2011, the +1 utility has been released, which is one of
the significant moves towards social search that Google is planning. It allows you to tell Google that the site offered in the search result indeed answers your question. This input helps Google to improve the search results for your friends queries. It is called "social signaling".
What about Facebook and social search? Let's deal a little bit with numbers. Each hour, Facebook users upload over 7.5M photos, half of them are tagged. As statistics shows, 65 billion images are uploaded
to Facebook each year and tagging of images is widespread. There are also comments that can be useful. So, finding the tortoise in ... river is equivalent to finding one of over 500M Facebook users that was in ... river and took a photo of the tortoise. I bet there is such.
There are 3M links posted per hour. It means that Facebook has possibility to index over 25 billion pages in a year, all of them posted by known users. More than 2.5M web sites already have integrated with Facebook. 10,000 new sites integrate daily.
The amount of useful data for searching the web is huge. Facebook database can provide helpful information about the good blues music, since I have friends in Facebook with similar taste to mine and they have such friends too, and so on. So there is an informal group of the blues lovers with the similar taste in Facebook, and someone there has published on his wall information about a new blues album or a song that he liked. There is a fair chance that I'll like it too.
Same with starfish. How many people share their experiences on Facebook? Over 4.5M wall posts per hour, over 5M status updates per hour, over 30M comments per hour... I can imagine that someone posted
a photo of a beautiful starfish found on ... beach. Even if the starfish isn't tagged on the photo, someone certainly commented: "Wow, it is a wonderful starfish!".
Almost all movies have their pages in Facebook. Those pages are having the information or are connected to other websites that have the information about showtimes. It seems that we have everything needed
for finding a good comedy in one of the LA movie theaters.
If you don't like to spend your time in movie theaters, you should know that in 2010, more than 3.5M events were created each month. All events were described by the publisher, there is a list of attendees,
people posted comments, before and after the event. It seems enough information to find what to do tonight, without going to Google.
The point is that Facebook already collected enormous amount of quality information. Behind each piece of data you can find a real person, well profiled by his Facebook activity, from his personal interests, through his personal taste, up to places where he hangs out, reported by using the sign in application from user's mobile phone.
It is the main reason why Google pushes so hard to converge as many users as possible to their Google+.
They need the information that Facebook already has.
On the other hand, Facebook user can't even search his own wall posts. This contrast should make Google nervous. What will happen when Facebook overcomes technical barriers of understanding the available data? Will the new search engine, provided by Facebook, conquer the world?

And what about the money?

At the end of the day. all information is translated into money. In 2010, Facebook had an estimated 1.86 billion dollars income, growth of 240%, while Google's revenues were over 28 billion dollars from the
advertisement only, growth of 23% from 2010. The estimation of the online advertisement market in 2011, in US only, is 50 billion dollars.
A succesful advertising platform must please both the advertisers and the consumers. In order to serve the appropriate ad and create ROI for the advertisers and a good buy to the consumer, they need information.
A lot of comparing between GoogelAds and Facebook ads has been done lately and Facebook is massively praised for giving great results. It makes reasons for Google investment in the social network project clear.

Do You Know Your Friends?

2011-07-06T14:02:00.000-07:00

Recently, there was lot of interest in Dunbar's number.
Prof. Dunbar from Oxford University claims that one is capable to manage up to approximately 150 stable social connections. When you reach your personal limit, every additional friendship is either doomed or comes instead one of the existing relationships.

Social network applications company Yedalab (of which I'm one of the founders) released a new facebook application "Do You Know Your Friends". It comes to check the simplest aspect of the friendship - can you recognize your friends by looking at their profile pictures? After 16 profile pictures, the application shows to the user the misidentified friends and the recognition success rate. Users can also see how they have done relative to the general facebook average.
Although the application was just released, we can already get the first impressions about people knowing their facebook friends. It turns out that we are able to recognize 3 out of 4 friend's profile pictures. The situation is not so positive for all users. If you have less than 250 friends, you'll probably recognize 4 out of 5 your friends. On the other hand, if you have more than 500 friends, recognizing 2 out of 3 friends will be considered as success.

It only takes a few minutes to test yourself, but, in some cases, it takes much longer to decide what to do with the result.

You can test yourself here: http://apps.facebook.com/douknowurfrnds/index.php

3 essential points for entrepreneurs

2011-06-29T03:01:00.000-07:00

After consistent efforts to avoid it, yesterday I finally saw the Social Network movie. Don't ask me why I've resisted it for such a long time, I guess I was afraid to find out bad things about Mark Zuckerberg, whose work I highly respect, and I had to prepare myself for it. The recent news about the Winklevoss brothers court adventures convinced me to see the movie.

Anyway, let's discuss 3 essential points that you can find between the lines of the movie. Spoiler – I still have a lot of respect to Mr. Zuckerberg's work.

1. Personal involvement

The anomaly in the story is that the Winklevoss brothers got the money. There is a common believe in the entrepreneurship world that at the same moment you're working on something new, there are, at least, 3 other crews in the world that work on exactly the same thing. There are almost no exclusive ideas, there are only new ways to transform the idea to the real thing.
Let's get it straight, I'm not claiming that stealing ideas is OK, because it is not. I'm saying that the way from the general idea to the specific implementation is so long, that often it is hard to find too many elements of the original idea in the final product.

If you are giving to someone else to implement your ideas, while you're busy doing other things, don't expect to get something back. Even if you have enough money to invest in a startup company, you must be actively involved. Unless you have expensive dad's lawyers that will achieve 65M dollars for you.

Personal involvement is crucial for taking a part in a success of startup company.

2. Dedication

In the first stage of a startup company, you must dedicate yourself to it. It sounds simple, you're dedicating yourself to many things in your life – job, family, hobby… Here is the difference – you must dedicate yourself only to the company. 24/7, at least! You wake up thinking about it, you're going to sleep with it. You drink it, you eat it, you breathe it. Still, be prepared to find out that it isn't enough. Successful entrepreneurs sacrifice a lot. You must create a supporting environment in your private life, otherwise you may find yourself successful, but alone.

There are no accidental millionaires and billionaires, there are only people that were willing to sacrifice their lives to the implementation of the idea.

3. Think Platform

Obviously, facebook is not a social network application. It's not even a social network service. It is a social network platform. You can think about it also asa social network operating system with a bonus – well over 500M active users.

I'm sure you've heard the expression "Think Big" many times, but it doesn't reveal the essence. "Thinking platform" will allow you to quickly respond to the user's needs that arise from the use of your product. At the beginning, ideas are a set of cool features that answers the need you've recognized. Try to understand what is common to those features and try to figure out how to implement the building blocks that implicate the features. At the end of the day, each feature is only one case of the use of the platform.

Here is an example. My facebook friends are located around the world. When I want to chat with one of them, I never know what his local time is. Certainly, 2AM isn't the best time to talk about business, while 2PM isn't appropriate time to talk about the movie I saw yesterday. So, I have a brilliant idea to show the friend's time in the chat window (I know, Skype already does it and it is, indeed, a great feature). "Think platform" means to implement the time feature in such a way that adding in the future the local weather won't require writing a code, than only configuring the system. It can be achieved by implementation of a system where time, weather, exchange rates etc. are only cases of the general ability to bring local information from one place to another. Such approach may take a little bit more time in a short-term, but it saves a lot in a mid- and long-term.

"Think Big" is "Think Platform". Prepare yourself for future requests, so when they come, you can respond quickly.

Summary

We have discussed here 3 essential points required a success. There are more factors for startup success – focusing on one idea, facing problems in the real time without compromise and even luck, but without the active involvement, the dedication and thinking platform, the odds for success are extremely low.

3 important aspects of social gaming

2011-06-26T12:05:00.000-07:00

The Social Gaming genre brought to the world very different gaming experience from what we were used to.
Let's see which 3 elements had the main influence in this gaming revolution:

1. Slow pace

In the "old world", the one before social gaming, the most successful games were highly addictive in the straight and powerful way. If you remember the Tetris-mania, surely you recall all those people playing Tetris for hours. You couldn't communicate with them during the game, they were totally into it. Even Minesweeper, the game that comes with MS Windows OS, is such. I've got under 100 seconds on the hard level. It took me weeks of everyday practice. Up today, I spent more than 1000 hours playing the game.

Social Gaming is completely different. You are limited in the time you can spend playing. In most of the games there is energy or equivalent that doesn't allow you to play more than 30-45 minutes at once. Than you have to wait. And you have to come back. It doesn't mean that social games aren't addictive - they are! But in another, much slower pace.

Of course, there is no problem to speed up the things. It will cost you just a few dollars.

This great idea have 2 consequences: you're coming back frequently and you have enough time to miss the game. You are not "having enough" of the game quickly, people plays social games like FarmVille for years!

2. Creativity

Or I shall say "the sense of creativity"?

The aim of most of social games is to build something. It can be a farm, city, mafia, garden, village or any other complex structure. Since not everybody have enough talent for arts, there are ready made building blocks. It turns the social games to sort of virtual do-it-yourself playing field. You feel creative, you choose where to put the house and where the store should be. There is also a game plot. You have tasks. So, the building blocks are prepared, you are well directed what to do, but still, the sense of creativity is there.

The main challenge here is to keep the balance between the freedom of player to be creative and directions that will keep the player on the track.

Let's take for example two similar games: FrontierVille by Zynga and Wild West Town by ClipWire Games. Both games are dealing with the Wild West, but FrontierVille has close to 14M monthly active users, while Wild West Town has just a little bit more thant 1M. There are lot of reasons for the difference, one of the main is Zynga's strength and huge amount of active users playing their other games. Nevertheless, there is another important factor. Wild West Town has a nice, but very demanding story. If you suddenly felt creative during the game and you have done something that is not part of the given tasks, you may find yourself doing it again in a while, in order to fulfill a new task that just arrived. It is frustrating and players don't like it.

So, give your players an opportunity to feel creative, but don't leave them alone to lose themselves in your game.

3. Playing with your friends

Of course, you will say, those are social games. You're right! But, the emphasis here is the word with, which is opposite to the word against your friends. You're helping each other, you can't finish your tasks without their help. Another important aspect is that places where your friends have an obvious effect to the outcome of your play are under your control. So, you're still the one that exploits your own creativity from the point 2, but you can't advance without help of your friends.

In this situation, you're sharing. It is the name of the game in the social world - sharing, and you are willingly doing it again and again.

Summary

There is no magic formula to make a successful social game. At least, when you're preparing your social game, you can make sure that the aspects we discussed here are there. They will make you closer to the success.