Poker is one of the most popular games on Facebook, and mainstream poker companies like World Poker Tour are now entering the fray. WPT Texas Hold ‘Em Poker is a game for Facebook where players can create avatars, puchase extra chips, earn achievements and play Texas Hold ‘Em against friends and other players over the social network.
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An unofficial Facebook application has surged to the top of the iTunes charts after charging $2.99 for the only Facebook iPad application currently available. While it’s not clear whether or not Facebook will force the developers to shut the application down due to trademark infractions, it’s clear that hundreds, if not thousands of people have been duped. All that Joe Hewitt, the original developer of the official Facebook iPhone app could say is “#7 paid app is the 2.99 ‘Facebook Ultimate!’…. Sigh.”
I think the real issue with this application is that people who download the application might actually think that they are getting an official Facebook application, which it isn’t. It not only starts off with the Facebook name, but it also has a similar logo. Additionally, it doesn’t specifically state that it’s not an official app. While we’d assume that Facebook is considering development of an iPad app, this one is definitely not an application you’ll want to grab. Some developer has clearly made a decent amount from selling this app as it has been in the top 10 paid iPad applications for the past 24 hours.
There’s no doubt that having the ability to navigate through Facebook on the iPad would be useful. For now though, you can simply visit the website and it isn’t too much trouble thanks to the large screen. With around 1 million devices sold, there’s no way of telling how popular the device will become and while many popular sites have developed iPad applications, many others are still on the sidelines.
If you want to pay $3 to access Facebook through an application that makes Facebook harder to use, go grab Facebook Ultimate!. Otherwise, wait on Facebook to make an official version, or deal with browsing Facebook through your internet browser.
Just over 24 hours after Facebook turned off application notifications, developers are reporting a dramatic decrease in traffic. Speaking to a number of developers, we’ve heard traffic has decreased in the range of 10 to 50 percent, depending on the application, most hovering between an 18 to 27 percent decrease. While our poll sample was small, Facebook developers are now entering the “post-notifications era”. So what does this mean?
There are a number of theories about why Facebook would kill off notifications but ultimately there were two primary routes for Facebook to take:
Given that Facebook’s largest chunk of revenue comes from performance advertising, this is clearly going to be a major focus for Facebook. With an estimated $350 million in revenue last year from performance advertising, Facebook is heavily focused on this space. However, virtual goods are also an area which Facebook is hoping to experience a large amount of growth.
While it’s not known whether or not Facebook will force developers to use their Credits platform, there’s a very good chance Facebook will become the primary payment provider of all virtual goods on their site. This means Credits could very well become a business worth over $300 million a year if the platform is expected to generate over $1 billion in revenue each year.
These two revenue channels will become increasingly integrated into the overall Facebook experience moving forward, and that means any platform changes will most likely take into consideration ads and credit performance.
While virality is possible within applications, it is no longer a given. There are two parties now who are “paying to play”: developers, who will now purchase more ads to drive traffic to their applications, and users, who will increasingly pay for virtual goods in games. While it appears that application requests and other channels still drive traffic, developers have become one of the largest buyers of Facebook ads.
Whether intended or not, this has pulled Facebook closer to many of the game developers and it has also given Facebook much greater control over platform developers.
Unfortunately as platforms of the past, the Facebook platform is not completely open. As Mitch Kapor, the developer behind the original Lotus notes, told a group of Facebook developers back in October of 2007 “innovations in the application space tend to migrate into the core platform”. In other words, developers serve as the R&D for Facebook.
In contrast to platforms of the past which often started from a more closed position and eventually opened, Facebook has moved in the opposite direction: slowly limiting the viral channels to developers and increasing their control over each channel. For the developers, these changes create ongoing tension with the platform providers (in this case: Facebook).
As I wrote in the “Social Web Economy: Developers“, platforms are the primary source of tension for all developers.
While developers have tension resulting from numerous sources (bugs in their applications, tight deadlines, etc), in the social web economy, the primary source of developer tension is the platforms. When a platform decides to revamp their entire system, or make sudden changes resulting from user feedback or malevolent actions by another developer, the rest of developers are impacted. On the Facebook platform the result was developers waking up at 3 am to fix their no longer functioning applications. Occasionally teams of developers worked around the clock in response to complaints from Facebook about terms of service violations.
Clearly Facebook needs to generate a relatively healthy environment for developers. Otherwise, developers will run off to other platforms, such as the Apple iPhone. As such, Facebook has launched a roadmap, a migration tool, and other features to increase transparency. That transparency continued as Facebook has made the shift away from notifications. Unfortunately for Facebook, despite transparency, there will continue to be some resentment from developers who prefer a completely open platform.
Ultimately, one could hold the view that Facebook is an “evil participant” in the ecosystem, only looking to make more money as they move toward an IPO. By killing off notifications, Facebook forces developers to spend more money on ads and increasingly takes a cut of app developer revenue with Facebook Credits.
At the other end, Facebook is simply making adjustments that improve the overall user experience, making the ecosystem a more valuable environment overall. The company is improving the system and figuring out the most effective balance which takes into consideration the needs of platform developers as well as the company’s business objectives.
My guess is that Facebook is balancing the needs of both parties but ultimately they will always have the ability to make adjustments that benefit themselves more than the developers. That’s just what developers have to deal with. There is rarely an instance in which the owners of a platform will but the developers’ objectives ahead of their own business objectives.
The only case in which the developers get to make the final decision is open platforms like Linux, where developers can contribute to improving the overall platform. The business model for the licensed platform providers in such an ecosystem is a service-based one and Facebook has made it pretty clear that they don’t want to get into the services business.
For now, developers will have to deal with the short-term implications of the removal of notifications and figure out ways to regain traction, as they always do. The entire time it’s important for developers operating on the Facebook Platform realize: this is Facebook’s world. If you don’t want to put up with the challenges of the platform, you can just set up your application off the site.
Oh, and when you build that “off-platform” application, don’t forget to use Facebook Connect: it will increase your application’s engagement!
“What will you look like in the future if you continue with your current lifestyle?” That’s the big opening line of the new MirrorMe Facebook Application from Ideonic, and fortunately this application lives up to its promise. By utilizing a questionnaire and solid photo manipulation techniques, MirrorMe is able to produce a photo of you
Upon entering the application, you’re asked to pick a photo, and by using some slick Facebook integration, the application presents you with every “Photo of You” in your Facebook profile. The chances that you have a picture where you’re staring straight ahead in bright lights is dim (unless you’re showing off a recent jail term), so the fact that they have the ability to upload from your hard drive is useful.
Once you’ve picked your photo, you explain your location, ethnic origin, age and are then presented with a quiz about your consumption of fruits, alcoholic drinks, illegal drugs and more. Click OK and wait a minute, and tada, your transformation is complete. You are able to view a split screen image, which is often hilarious, and also the full views. They also give you an estimate of your age.
The great thing about an application like this isn’t that it has longevity, or that it’s the most engaging application you’ve ever used: It’s great for a one-time use and is worth a laugh with all your friends. The fact that they also skewer your face much worse if you have smoked or done drugs means it does a small service, in a way. I did find a lot of people on the comment boards stating that they were so put off by their first result that they went back in and took out all the drinking and smoking and they still looked terrible. It seemed a bit like a reason to keep smoking to me, but an application that rouses that kind of behavior is truly an application worth trying, to me.
Whether you realize it consciously or not, your level of trust is greatest for your friends and family when it comes to recommendations for products, services, travel destinations and so on. Many people do prefer recommendations from people in media (such as newspapers, radio, TV), but more people prefer recommendations from those we know. It’s this trust that the new Facebook application Help Me Decide wants to leverage for Social Decision Making, a form of Crowdsourcing.
The developer(s) of Help Me Decide quotes in their video (above) that 90% of people trust recommendations from their friends (according to a report by Neilsen Company, dated Apr 2009). Of course, most people probably prefer to discuss important questions privately. Simple recommendations, on the other hand, could be crowdsourced to your online networks, or even to strangers. This is essentially what Help Me Decide (profile, FB app, website) appears to offer.
When you go to the Help Me Decide app page on Facebook, you see the screenshot above. The page shows you some of the questions recently asked by the HMD community on Facebook, and the number of days left for responses. When you click on the “Post your question” tab, you see the screen below:
[Note: If you're starting from Help Me Decide's website, clicking the Facebook Connect button redirects you back to the Facebook application. (The Connect button is in German, likely because the developer(s) is from there. The FB app itself tells you to post questions in English, to get more responses. Though if you are only posting to your FB network and everyone speaks the same language, you could pprobably post in any language.)]
Help Me Decide is in the vein of Yahoo! Answers, but with more more features, allowing for complex questions and responses. It also it leverages multiple social networks, not just Facebook. Here’s a quick overview of how the app functions:
When you’ve posted your question successfully, you’ll get a screen displaying the text as well as a “social sharing” toolbar. Clicking on the share bar gives you a dialog window similar to that shown below:
My first-glance impression of Help Me Decide was, “Seriously?” However, upon giving it a spin and comparing to Yahoo! Answers, I’m leaning towards, “Yeah, this could be useful.” Help Me Decide is easy to use (no sign up!), with a simple interface that lets you ask simple questions or provide multiple choices. You can easily track responses from friends or the Help Me Decide community. You can also share your question on other social sites.
Help Me Decide is a work in progress. Here are some of the areas that could use fixing:
It remains to be seen how many Facebook users will use Help Me Decide for personal decisions, let alone post quality questions. (Have you seen the nonsense on sites like Yahoo! Answers and competitors?) On the other hand, I can see that an online marketer with large networks on, say, Twitter and Facebook, could use Help Me Decide successfully for polling and crowdsourcing for ideas.