Today Facebook presented a 6-month developer roadmap. Finally – it’s been frustrating as hell writing a book about Facebook and not knowing what was coming from them and when, not to mention staying abreast of all the changes for our clients. In their presentation Facebook said that there were not many or big changes being announced, but I beg to differ. Some of them are quite significant. I’ll be covering those changes over the coming weeks and how they will affect your business, personal, and application presences on Facebook. What’s great is that Facebook is actually giving developers a heads-up for the next six months, and making that information public to all. That’s fantastic. If only I had this before I started writing the book.

Let’s get to the meat of it.

What’s chopped? What’s not? The first  big change, for both developers and users, center around the Facebook Stream and communication channels. Facebook is offering a new one, which is big news, and taking away some old ones, which is, perhaps, bigger news…

The Stream

Notifications are dead. Both application-to-user and user-to-user. At least the way they work today. Ouch.

For those applications or companies that depend on these for growth this is a blow. What are notifications? They are the little lightweight messages that pop up in the Facebook user interface to let you know of some event happening in an application. They can be sent currently by applications on behalf of their users to their friends or other application users (in the case of user-to-user notifications) or from an application to its users directly (for application-to-user ones.) Facebook collects the recent ones in the bottom right of the Facebook window, as shown in the image on the left (usually filled with messages from Facebook, Living Social, or Mafia Wars.) All user-to-user notifications will be routed to the Inbox; however, there will be no way for applications to send anything on behalf of their users anymore without their consent.  Invitations/requests will also be routed ’somewhere’ into the Inbox. Which is fine since I cannot remember the last time time I have even looked at my requests. When they hit the 300-or-so mark I simply delete them all.  Those are all being routed to the Inbox in the near future.

Why kill notifications, one of the only ways left for apps to communicate with users without their consent? Simply put, they don’t work, except in very specific circumstances. Most of the time they are noise. A LOT of noise. Additionally, most people have no clue they even exist or where they live. Currently users have to keep track of five different communication channels in Facebook: invites/requests, messages (Facebook Inbox today), notifications, Feed stories (the stuff on your Wall and News Feed), and IM/Chat. They say it’s too much and no one is clear where to look for them. They’re right.

So basically one-to-one communications of all types Facebook wants to route to the Inbox: one spot for users to check messages targeted directly at them. Makes sense. Unclear how/if Chat will be affected if at all.

One-to-many communications will be handled solely by the Stream in the form of Feed stories published via the Open Stream API. And the automatically-published one-line stores that applications can publish to your Recent Activity section on your Wall? Also gone.

Honestly I think this is a great thing for users and for applications. Why? Because now more than ever developers and content providers are going to have to think about engagement first, before features, before copying the other guy, before writing a line of code. The only way for apps to really spread through the Stream is for users to interact with the stories that applications post there – meaning stories that application users *allow* them to post to begin with – either via the Like or Comment features.

The other big news on the communcation front is that Facebook will provide a means for developers to prompt their users for, and grant the right to store users’ real e-mail addresses. Also the right to store their first and last names most likely, though at the time of this post the details have not been hashed out. You heard that right. Facebook will allow applications to contact users directly without having to use Facebook as the intermediary. This is HUGE. And a huge boon for Facebook Connect developers for sure.

What do you think?

UI Changes : Dashboards, Counters, and the Death of the Profile Box

Facebook is changing the look and feel of the Home Page, at least. A long, narrow bar will contain entries very similar to the way the Facebook Application menu looks today. The screen shot to the right, though blurry, gives you the idea. It will contain the friend lists like it  does today but will also incorporate Bookmarks. And they’re finally giving developers an FBML <fb:bookmark/> tag so they don’t have to jump through hoops to get users to do so. Finally. They are also introducing UI menus they call ‘Dashboards’ that originally will be of two types: Applications and Games. Recommendations might make the cut as well. These are all in early mock-up stages but will potentially be easier ways for users to find new apps and games. There are no distinctions at this time between them.

To allow users to see when applications have notified them of something they need to act on – the way notifications do today – Facebook is introducing Counters to the right of bookmarked (only?) applications in this new UI bar. You can see them in the image to the right. Counters show the number of things ‘you need to deal with’ in the item their associated with. Presumably this would be user-to-user or application-to-user messages in the Inbox, for example.

The Facebook chrome is going to change (again) as well – new top nav, cleaner layout.

And oh the poor Boxes tab is finally meeting its maker. As developers we called it ‘Siberia’. If an app had a presence there its engagement was dismal, so this should be of no big surprise to anyone. One other interesting change is the change to profile or application tabs – they are going to be given much less real estate width-wise. I assume this is to compensate for the new left nav idiom? Anwyay they are going from 760->560 pixels in width.

Ethan hinted at some other (seemingly very significant) changes to the Profile page as well. They want to allow more sharing of content that makes your Profile more unique. That’s great – right now everyone’s looks identical except for the profile pic and potentially the one application profile box below the friends widget. They could not elaborate on these changes but suggested that they would involve some work for developers.

Platform Policies and Programs

Highlights here included an entirely new Facebook Developer site with completely rewritten Platform documentation, more social features focused on community. That’s great: the existing wiki is weak at best, pathetic at worst. Many of the most important pages became woefully outdated yet were locked from public editing (<cough>FBJS</cough>). They will be providing comprehensive how-to guides and walkthroughs and will also provide all the content they covered in the demo today. One other interesting thing is that they will be providing a ‘Health of the Platform’ section that will show how all (?!) the APIs are currently working in the wild and the current top bugs they are working on fixing, and those they expect you to work around. This will undoubtedly lessen the massive forum threads that alternate between ‘it works’ and ‘it doesn’t’ posts.

The gargantuan 14-page opus that comprises the Facebook Platform policies have been shrunk to 3. With screenshots showing best practices and examples of flagrant violations of policy. Fantastic!

Application and Page Insights will be updated and accessible through APIs. Darn, just about finished the app to scrape them dynamically.

Open Graph API

This is the next evolution of Facebook Connect it sounds like. Basically it was pitched as a way for ‘any web page’ to become a Facebook Fan Page/Public Profile through the use of what I assume are custom widgets or code in the Facebook Connect or Facebook JavaScript Client Libraries.

For example, let’s say as a brand I don’t want a Facebook Page. I’ve spent a lot of time cultivating an audience on an external site that I control and don’t want to fragment them by investing in a Facebook presence as well. The Open Graph API will allow me to add Facebook widgets and access their entire API allowing my users to become Fans of my EXTERNAL page – and have that show up on their Profiles WITHIN Facebook. These external pages will also show up in Facebook Search from within Facebook, just like they were Pages within the site. Developers will be able to publish Streams targeted directly at these Fans on the external site(s) that use the API. This will undoubtedly be an interesting area of development in the coming months. Along with direct email communication this will probably jolt Facebook Connect implementations into the stratosphere.

Questions Asked By the Audience

Some of these were very good so I’ve included them to the best of my knowledge:

Q: As part of it’s new interactive developer site is Facebook going to give developers a ‘vote’ on features for Facebook to add?

A: Um, no.

Q: What’s up with Facebook’s currency system? Any news?

A: Facebook credits (used in past to purchase Facebook Gifts) are still in use, but they have no ‘real’ announcements. They are testing whether or not to allow developers to use or accept them as currency in their apps but that’s about it for now.

Q: How are apps going to prompt for user email addresses? Extended permissions are painful today.

A: They know, they are going to collapse them into a fewer number of them that allow users and developers a more clear view of how they work and what they grant.

Q: Will counters only show up for bookmarked applications?

A: Yes

Q: Will ‘Publish to a Friend’s Wall’ still work?

A: Not been addressed; only changes they’ve made to the Stream have been the Open Stream API and that’s just been a week ago – no changes planned.

Q: Is Facebook killing the verified applications program altogether?

A: Yes! They are going to spend a lot of time and expense making sure ALL applications are up to the same level of quality as verified ones were.

Q: Any idea in the new Stream of which messages will get more visibility or prioritization (popularity?)

A: Likes and Comments are key – make sure that people want to Comment and Like them. This will ensure their spread. He was unsure of how this affects search rankings within Facebook search.

That’s about it, in a nutshell.

Thoughts? Questions?

Twitter is very popular now – getting mentions on daytime talk shows,  spurring celebrity competitions, and even receiving governmental uptime requests. People and companies are jumping on to the service because everyone else is. But should they be?

The answer for most companies is probably no.

Using social media isn’t about checking a box or matching the competition. It is about finding new ways to enhance a company’s relationship with its customers, whether is it just listening to them, giving them more information, or truly engaging them in conversation or even brand development. Twitter is a medium that can enable this in a low cost way, but it may not be the right place for your company.

Here are some reasons why not:

• You don’t know if your customers are actually on Twitter. This is pretty simple to find out – go to search.twitter.com, and run some searches with your company name, your brands, and other keywords and it should be pretty obvious whether your customers are talking about you. You might also search for your competitors – are they getting mentioned? If your customers aren’t there, then try to spend your resources somewhere they actually are.
• You haven’t committed time and resources. Social media takes time, and Twitter is no exception. A good Twitter strategy would involve daily searching and interacting, production of useful content, effective resolution of issues, and a plan for incorporation of useful feedback. If your company isn’t prepared to allocate these resources and commit to following through day after day, then your Twitter outreach is likely to fail.
• You are just checking a box. People can sense a lack of authenticity. Oprah’s total of 5 tweets in June have turned the positive feelings of many supporters into disillusionment. The negatives of a ghost town far outweigh the benefits of just having an account.
• It doesn’t fit into your marketing plan. You need to have a plan to make your social media efforts succeed and it needs to be part of your overall marketing plan. If everyone isn’t moving in the same direction, it is likely that your social media efforts might contradict or change the effects that the general marketing plan is trying to achieve. It is much better to get everyone lined up under the same set of goals, and use each medium to its full potential to reach those goals.

If you don’t have the issues above, and are ready to start, but don’t know how – don’t let that stop you. It is better to start and have an open mind to learning and adjusting than to wait on the sidelines.

The Other Side Group recently wrote a blog post about Keeping Social Media Social. She said that people can get to a state with social media where they subscribe to a large number of people, but filter out everyone but a select few to compensate for the information overload. Participation with the masses goes down, and results in one-way conversations that are no different from traditional marketing.

I think there are two benefits to social media that are different than traditional media. The first is listening – companies now have the ability to hear what people are saying in ways they never could before. Blogs, forums, Twitter search, and Facebook status updates all create a stream of searchable content that companies can use to get feedback and keep abreast of perception shifts. They can do this without creating accounts or participating.

The second benefit is engagement with customers. This can affect product cycles, help with PR and marketing, increase sales, help identify trends, decrease support costs and empower fans to help spread the word. Engagement also provides an answer to the question “Is anybody listening?”

A common perception of many of these social media outlets is that they will be a gigantic time drain on already strained resources. This can actually be true – truly listening and interacting with customers can and should take time. That is why it is really important to understand up front what a company’s goals are and what resources they have to commit to the process. Everybody hates finding out that companies aren’t truly involved; that they aren’t really interested in putting in the effort, but are merely checking a box. Lack of authenticity leads to outrage and abandonment. Sites become ghost towns.

Just listening to customers is a great first step. It helps companies to understand how and where they might engage in the future. However, it is important to let people know that you are gathering feedback and it also very important to have a plan to address that feedback, even if that doesn’t happen via social media channels. Customers will appreciate this and will be happy to know that someone is hearing them.

Thought Labs has published a new Facebook Public Profile for the West Point Directorate of Communications focusing on providing information to the hundreds of Parents Clubs around on the country and their members.

The new Public Profile has several features designed to inform Fans and increase user engagement:

• Custom FBML Parents tab – This is set as the default landing page for Profile visitors. This tab describes the benefits of Parents Clubs overall, features one of the many Parents Clubs around the country, and provides links to key content relevant to parents of previous and current cadets.
• Custom FBML R-Day tab - Registration Day is the beginning of the West Point experience for cadets and will occur on June 29th, 2009. This tab will serve as a reference guide for cadets attending R-Day as well as for parents wanting to find out more information about preparation and the events of the day.
• Integration of social media channels – The Profile pulls in cadet blogs, West Point YouTube channels and Flickr photos and puts them all into the Wall stream. Combined with daily Status Updates, Fans and Visitors will easily be able to keep up to day with what is important for West Point parents.

In a followup to the previous webinar on creating great Facebook Public Profiles, John Maver will be presenting 10 advanced tips to help brands maximize engagement and virality of their Facebook Public Profiles . These tips include:

• How to turn Visitors into Fans
• Using custom FBML Tabs as landing pages
• How to use a Profile’s viral features to reach a bigger audience
• Using Facebook Insights to measure your impact and increase engagement
• and more..

This webinar will be on June 24th at 3:30PM EST. Register to attend here.

Yesterday, Cappy Popp spoke on a panel hosted by the panel hosted by the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce on “LinkedIn – How to Increase Sales.” The panel also included: Mike Langford, Jeff Cutler and Eric Guerin.
The audience was already reasonably informed and engaged in some type of social media, having the most familiarity with Facebook and LinkedIn, but some with Twitter as well. Their questions focused on the whole of social media as well as specifics about LinkedIn.
Here were some key points from the panel:

Cappy Popp will be speaking at a MITX event Wednesday, June 24, 2009 on a panel titled,  ’Web Marketing on a Shoestring – Being Scrappy in a Down Economy‘.

The second installment of the MITX Marketing Technology Series, an educational series designed to explore the platforms, systems and infrastructures that allow marketers to execute efficiently, will be held  at K&L Gates at the State Street Financial Center in Boston from 8-10AM.

The following industry experts will be joining Cappy:

• Jeff Cram, CSO / Co-Founder,  ISITE Design
• Mike Volpe, VP Marketing, HubSpot
• Greg Slama, Manager of Contextual Marketing, One to One Interactive

Click here for detailed information about the event, or here to register.

Click here for directions. (or via Google)

MITX – the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange – today is the leading industry association in the country, bringing together digital technology, marketing and media professionals, to engage in what is next for the web and how it impacts the marketing and business worlds. With 250 plus member companies representing over 7,000 digital professionals, it is a dynamic and growing community of thought leaders, collaborators, and individuals in search of insight, education and opportunity. Check them out – or even better - join!

Our publisher,  Addison-Wesley Professional, has graciously published ‘Rough Cuts’ -  that means they still need final edits – of the first five chapters of our upcoming book, Facebook Development: A Complete Guide to Smart Application Development for the Facebook Platform, on InformIT’s Safari Books Online. Rough Cuts allow readers to get access to the book before it’s published or purchase advance copies.

Here’s an excerpt:

Currently Facebook has over  250 million active users and offers well beyond 52,000 applications — and the rate at which new applications are launching is staggering. But there is a lack of up-to-date information about developing those applications effectively — particularly in the light of platform  modifications that have rendered many applications obsolete. This book provides instruction on using the latest Facebook platform features and  helps developers create and deploy successful Facebook apps, revealing what makes them successful, how to measure progress, and how to deploy changes that will maximize the application’s value…

Please give it a read and let us know if you have any thoughts, questions, or ideas about the book or the chapters.

Mike Langford, fellow panelist and CEO of Tweetworks, has posted video of the panel discussion from the Girls in Tech Boston event held on May 6th, 2009 at Microsoft’s Cambridge Research Center.

You can view the video here.

Along with Mike, Cappy was joined by the following panelists:

• Rachel Happe, Co-Founder, Community Roundtable
• Karen Rubin, Product Owner, HubSpot and co-host of HubSpot TV

The event, Using Social Media in your Organization , covered many aspects of using and improving social media for business. Case studies from several companies were presented which the panelists reviewed and applied their knowledge to help them improve their reach and results.

Thought Labs’s Cappy Popp will be speaking on a panel titled, “Linked in – How to Increase Sales“ on Thursday, June 18, 2009 from 11:45A – 1:30P at the Clark University Graduate Management Center in Framingham, MA. This should be an interesting event; it will undoubtedly be covering a much broader range of topics related to developing a brand and increasing your presence using all forms of social media. Please attend and bring some of your most pressing questions.

The following industry experts will be joining him:

• Mike Langford, CEO of Tweetworks
• Jeff Cutler, writer, JeffCutler.com
• Eric Guerin, founder SmartMarket media

The panel is sponsored by the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce. Many thanks to Ed Nunes, Business Banker with TD Banknorth for organizing it.

Click here to register for the event.

Click here for directions.