Category: Facebook

Facebook on the wane?

Memo to Mark Zuckerberg:

Not everyone is enamored with the new Facebook Platform. Oh, sure, the grown-ups love it. Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine is one of your biggest cheerleaders. “I finally joined Facebook and have become obsessed with Zuckerberg’s creation,” Jarvis wrote in a recent column. (By the way, Jeff, I still haven’t heard back from you on my friend request. Please add me post haste. I’ve got some apps I want to share with you.) Jarvis also points to another glowing review, this one from Seth Goldstein, who puts metaphors into the Cuisinart when he enthuses that “the Facebook ecosystem … seemed to be bubbling up like thick layer of foam over a double shot of Google.”

Both gush about the network with the zeal of new converts.

Then there’s Marc Andreessen‘s recent analysis of the Facebook platform. And a reasonable, thorough analysis it is. Lengthy, but worth the read. Like Jarvis and Goldstein, Andreessen is also a big believer in Facebook. But perhaps because he’s been around for awhile and has seen a lot of Internet innovations come and go, he tempers his enthusiasm with a keen analytical approach. Still, he can’t help but end with a hearty “Congratulations to the Facebook team — big time! — for an amazing leap forward in what the Internet can do for real users and for opening up whole new vistas of opportunities for third-party developers.”

Meanwhile, Facebook’s base — the college students who made the creation such a success — seems to be weakening. Here are a few gleanings from this morning’s Facebook check. These are all comments displayed by UMR students who are in my Facebook network.

______ is disappointed in how sucky facebook is becoming with all the applications. :( *sigh*.

_______ is about to stop using facebook because she is sick of all the new “applications.”

________ joined the group I hate getting invited to Facebook Applications…It’s annoying

________ joined the group We hate all the %&*$ applications!!!

These comments are random and anecdotal. I’m not suggesting that the animus these students feel toward Facebook apps is widespread. But given the viral nature of communications on this social network, this vibe could spread quickly across Facebook and create unsettling tremors.

Take a note from the politicians, Facebook, and don’t abandon your base.

Forget Facebook; grow your own social network

Now that anyone with a network connection can get into Facebook, will it lose its cachet and become the next MySpace? Colleges and universities wanting to maintain a close-knit social network may want to look beyond Facebook and take a do-it-yourself approach. That’s what Elon University has done with its Elon Town Square.

Karine Joly describes Elon’s approach in a recent post. She interviews Dan Anderson, Elon’s assistant VP and director of university relations, who explains that the schools wanted to especially enhance “alumni and parent connections with Elon.”

I’m not sure that approach would work for everyone — it would take a strong working relationship with the IT department, for one thing — but it’s nice to see it can work in some cases. Just goes to prove that one size doesn’t fit all.

Playing with MyLifeBrand

mylifebrand-logo.gifUpdate, June 13, 2007: After playing around with the site a bit more, I discovered that you can add more than three social networking sites into your profile.

In last week’s Friday Five I pointed to a TechCrunch review of MyLifeBrand, a social networking utility (and yet another social network, in and of itself) that lets users aggregate social networking memberships and navigate between them from a single place. I was intrigued, so I applied for membership in MyLifeBrand Alpha and to my surprise was immediately accepted.

So far, all I’ve done with the site is create the space where I can access my top three four social networks (Facebook, MyRagan, and LinkedIn and MySpace). This could be a good solution for anyone managing multiple social networks. The Alpha version only allows you to place up to three several social networks on a page, and you have to go to the “snapshot” view to input and view them.

Introducing Facebook Polls

Facebook Polls is the latest addition to this much-buzzed-about social networking site. But the polls aren’t free. As TechCrunch reports:

Facebook charges you a variable amount based on how quickly you want results. You tell Facebook how many results you want and how much you are wiling to pay per result. The more you offer, the more quickly results are returned to you. Prices currently range from $.10 to $1.00 per data point, plus an initial $5 insertion fee. Facebook will estimate the completion time for the poll based on how much you bid.

Friday Five: clearing the cache edition

Cleaning out some starred items from the RSS reader:

  1. Michael Stoner wonders: Who listens to podcasts, anyway? Good question. And Stoner sort of answers.
  2. A university gets possessive. Via University Business, the Boston Globe reports on Boston University President Bob Brown’s “test-driving” of a new slogan for the campus: “Boston’s University.” It sounds like Brown has convinced Globe columnist Alex Beam, anyway. The tagline “removes two of BU’s outsized competitors — Cambridge-based Harvard and MIT — from the mix entirely. Boston College, its name notwithstanding, huddles in the shady groves of Newton. Both US News & World Report and Washington Monthly rank BU well above Northeastern University, the only other claimant for the title. So ‘Boston’s University’ it is.”
  3. Facebook vs. MySpace (video). A nice parody of those Mac vs. PC TV ads, from CNET.
  4. Paging Joseph Campbell: Tired of those Internet “trolls” who crash your forums with inane or inflammatory comments? You may as well despise the court jester! Via Boing Boing comes word that the troll is nothing more than the archetypical trickster of our mythology, who enter our online discussions with “the cracked, stoic smile of Robin Goodfellow, a Puck with the simple desire to disrupt peace itself.” If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended.
  5. From the effective keywords department: ‘Distance learning’ breaks out. Bob Johnson discusses how “a relatively rare example of academic jargon moving out into common use.”