Facebook fixes Application List
One my main frustrations with the new Facebook profile design has been the Application list. The new design had a menu option entitled “All Appliations” that really only led to your bookmarked applications. To make things even more confusing bookmarked applications were applications you ‘installed’ under the old profile. Facebook has gone along way to […]
User Generated Recommendations, hard to get right…
Joey deVilla has a great post about his experience trying to get a recommendation for a moving company. It sounds simple enough, ask you’re blog readers to respond with recommendations for local services. In reality its hard to get reliable information, in Joey’s case the recommendations were tainted by an apparent fake recommendation and legal/intimidation […]
Can Social Network Monetize?
I’ve been reading alot about Social Networks and concerns over their ability to monetize. I’m not really too sure why there is a belief that social networks can’t be monetized. Myspace the guerillia in the space, and arguably still the leading Social Network in the US, has been monetizing just fine. Fox Interactive is reporting […]
Facebook working the Media
Facebook seems to be changing their approach to communicating new features/functionality. In the past Facebook would just use their blog or the developer blog to communicate new functionality. Media sites and other blogs would then pick the new features and write about them. The approach worked reasonably well but wasn’t really inline with traditional PR […]
Why Monopoly?
The Hasbro/Monopoly team has decided to remove the leaderboard from their Monopoly board top city vote. Maybe they weren’t happy with the line-up of cities or all the interest the vote process was getting. In a process that was fairly open from the beginning I’m not sure hiding the results at the last minute is […]
PodCamp Toronto
On Saturday I attended the PodCamp Toronto at Ryerson University. I’ve been to a lot of Toronto events but I was surprised to see and meet a lot of new people. The Podcast community is defininetly a different one from the other Toronto events. The event also attracted a good number of out of town […]
FacebookWeekend Beta Wrap-Up
First of all, thanks to all of the organizers and volunteers who participated in the planning and running of our event. Your efforts are greatly appreciated and it’s great to see so much support for entrepreneurship. Facebook Weekend BETA was very productive and a number of different teams made significant progress on their projects. All […]
Facebook retreats on Beacons
When Facebook announced its SocialAds I think everything was fairly accepting of advertising inside Facebook. At the same time they announced Facebook Beacon’s though, which let third-party websites advertise users actions inside Facebook. Unlikely many of the other features inside Facebook, the Facebook Beacons were turned on by default and required users to turn them […]
Creepy Friends Invalidate Social Networks?
Cory Doctrow, a Canadian writer who I have alot of respect for, has just written an article about Facebook, and social network in general. Cory believes that social networks come and go because people eventually encounter an awkward social connection. A friend from highschool, college or co-worker that you don’t really want as a ‘friend’. […]
Facebook messing with Secret Sauce
Facebook is updating their Newsfeed algorithm again. This time they have added the ability for users to thumb and thumb down particular news feed items. The update also forces developers to use the new Newsfeed templates if they want their newsfeed items to be seen by users who have not installed their applications. The Newsfeed […]
FacebookCampMontreal Review
FacebookCampMontreal We were in Montreal last night for the FacebookCampMontreal event, its was our first time in Montreal as part of their Barcamp community. The FacebookCampMontreal event combined both the developer and marketing tracks into a single night and was able to get nearly 200 people in the SAT (Société des Arts Technologiques ). SAT […]
StartupCampToronto Announcement
StartupCampToronto has been announced after the success of StartupCampWaterloo. The concept is essentially that 5 startup’s get 5 mins each to pitch the audience on their company and get feedback. Kinda like a Dragon’s Den with the audience as the Dragon’s… I ‘m excited about the concept but a little unsure of the format. As […]
OpenSocial sounds great, can it deliver?
The Google OpenSocial API sounds really cool and brings together the ability to ability to write web applications and widgets for multiple platforms. Launch partners include : hi5 LinkedIn Plaxo Ning SixApart Google’s own Orkut At first glance it would seem Google has collected all the losers in the social media space and got them […]
New Facebook Usage Numbers
Facebook has published new usage numbers, the growth continues to be impressive, especially in Canada. 47 Million Active Monthly Users 50% of active users return daily Average 21mins daily, 192.5 mins per month 57 Billion Page Views Monthly ( #6 overall website by Pageview ) #1 overall Online Photo site 13.8 million photos uploaded daily […]
New Newsfeed Algorithm for Facebook?
The Facebook Newsfeed algorithm has been a popular discussion topic and applications have been attempting to optimize for it. A good Newsfeed optimization strategy can make or break the success of a Facebook application. The application can’t control everything in the Newsfeed and the user behaviour plays an important role. For example if an application […]