MarketMe 2.0

Yesterday Om Malik discussed a conversation he had with Sarik Weber who’s company had developed a free SMS application on Facebook. Om as well as Sarik were surprised with the relatively low success of the application. Additionally, Om noted that the top SMS application on Facebook were only receiving around 500 active daily users. A quick glance at VOIP applications on the site yields similar results.

For Om, the lack of growth in these applications caused him to question the “viability of Facebook as a communications hub.” I disagree with Om in that Facebook is a communications hub but the only difference is that people communicate differently on the platform. While people use the Facebook based mobile site and Blackberry application, users are simply using the applications to send Facebook messages and update their statuses not leverage other applications.

Is the communication going on via Facebook the same conversation going on via email. While much of it is, most of my business communication still takes place outside of the network. As of now there are very few utility based applications that have been successful at doing anything more than building out existing Facebook features. Offering new communication channels have continuously failed on the platform.

So what will succeed? Right now widgets, games and applications that extend Facebook’s functionality appear to be in the lead. We have yet to see the success of enterprise applications on the Facebook platform. Will robust applications that support productivity ever succeed on the site? I doubt it. Facebook is a tool for productivity. What do you think? Are there any highly useful and highly functional applications that you spend a lot of time on?

AllFacebook

A development born from Google Experimental has crept its way somewhat silently into the company’s full-fledged Maps utility, according to Ionut Alex Chitu of the Google Operating System blog. Now found in the ‘show search options’ menu, an option to restrict searches to “Mapped Web pages” offers users the chance to browse the Web geographically. So, say, you type in ’silicon valley’. You can narrow down your request to address Web pages only, and what you get are a list of links with pins respective to location; in this case, northern California.

This addition to Google Maps doesn’t operate enormously well, at least not yet. Sometimes its hit or miss with searches. You can certainly count on catching plenty of Wikipedia links to cities and specific landmarks and the like, just as you would when employing a generic Google search in the company’s main engine. Yet, after you’ve completed your first search, and subsequently make another request for someplace halfway around the world, the service will remain locked on the original view. So it seems the best process with which to search effectively when seeking multiple locations is to first pinpoint a location using the standard engine available and then focus on the Web pages option. Doing so isn’t a perfect science, of course, but hey, you make do with what you’re given.

Overall, the quiet debut of this feature appears to emphasize its experimental tag. It’s an interesting tidbit with which to occupy a few moments of your downtime, but if you need a solid search tool, well, you know where to go.

Mashable

I’m left confused after visiting Lexus’ new Luxury Awaits. According to the press release of the agency who did the job, “the website is designed for the women who reach for the first time the world of luxury“.

The site contains editorial tips for a luxury lifestyle from travel to art, fashion and food. The idea is not bad, but the outcome is lacking and leaves you wanting more … if not offended. Everything looks so fake. Luxury is about showing

If you really want to tell, there are much better ways to do it. Just take a look at the Louis Vuitton travel guides launched last year.

While Skype already had unlimited calling options to land lines in the US and Canada, Skype has extended this offering to a total of 34 countries, including the majority of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Malaysia.

This includes calls to cell phones too, but only in a select handful of these countries: Canada, China, Hong Kong and Singapore. How much will this all cost you? $9.95 per month.

Coming off a pretty good Q1 report with strong revenue growth, tens of millions of new users across the globe, and a new CEO, Skype is recovering from some of the damage it felt last year thanks to eBay’s admittance of overvaluing Skype, a string of outages, and the loss of Niklas Zennstrom as CEO.

And with other VoIP and phone services looking to offer cheap alternatives that give users a local number in order to connect to other callers across the world, some of which already work with existing land lines and cell phones, the push for Skype to continue to provide value to users is what’s needed to keep it in the dominating position it currently holds.

Just last week, Six Apart released BlogIt, a Facebook application that allows you to create blog content and distribute it across an array of blogging and microblogging platforms. But that’s not all Six Apart has in store. In an effort to continue its appeal to its large user base, Six Apart is providing a slew of new tools for users seeking even more features for their blogs, including Advertising and Design Services.

Because of integrated advertising options for users, Six Apart’s TypePad is considered on of the better blogging platforms for those that are new to blogging. And with Vox’s community features, Six Apart has gained a good amount of experience for a networking and self-promoting stand point as well. With Six Apart’s new divisions dedicated to Advertising and Design, the company has taken its years of experience and turned it into a dedicated business unit for starting and seasoned bloggers alike.

In speaking with Chris Alden, CEO of Six Apart, and David Tokheim, EVP Media, I was able to get additional details on what the new sectors would entail. The Advertising and VIP Services are offering premium ad programs for influential bloggers and other social media sites.

This is an integrated approach that’s not often seen from the blogging platform or services company itself, but it will likely usher in a useful alternative or supplement for current advertising options presented to every blogger out there. Given some of the other approaches I’ve seen, from sites like HubPages and its YieldBuild program, I was further interested in learning about the types of advertising Six Apart would offer its participants.

Beyond display ads, Six Apart can also offer more socially adept ads that look to better engage other users and readers. For instance, the ad campaign Six Apart did with HP allowed users to join a template design contest, vote on preferred designs, and use entries for their own blogs. And thanks to Six Apart’s acquisition of consulting and design firm Apperceptive, the company will be able to ramp up its design services as well.

So with two major new additions to its services company, will Six Apart change the blogging industry? I think a key thing to look at here is the ways in which Six Apart, and other blogging platforms, will find for acting as a conduit between brands that want to find subtle ways in which to engage end users and influential bloggers.

Advertising in social media is an important topic now, that’s touchy because of situations like Blockbuster being sued for its Beacon participation, but getting more creative all the while. Because of the success, funding and acquisition of major blog publications out there, as well as a shifting attitude towards the industry, increased access, and low returns on programs like AdSense, there are millions of people out there seeking alternative ways to start earning money from their blogs immediately.

So the other important thing to consider is the ease with which individual bloggers that are building up their audiences in order to become more influential can benefit from more automated and integrated advertising options as well.

Mashable

Facebook appears to be cutting the fat on the website as of late. The most recent item to disappear from the website was Facebook gifts. It has now been hidden and you need to choose to have the application displayed in your sidebar. In the past day or so, Facebook has apparently removed the friend timeline. Will it be missed? Probably not. Apparently not enough users were actively using the feature.

Does that mean Facebook should have deleted it? I’m not sure but I’ve already received at least one or two emails from people asking why this feature has disappeared. I haven’t reached out to Facebook but I can assume that there wasn’t much demand for the feature. Additionally, if you weren’t obsessive about entering the dates that you meet people, it wasn’t really a useful tool. I have been fairly obsessive with grouping friends but I haven’t been really specific with entering the dates I met them.

The other problem is that friend grouping was by year and for many people as they meet more people thanks to social technology, there is not enough order in a yearly timeline. While I won’t be missing the lost feature, I’m sure a number of people will.

AllFacebook

File this under “It’s About Time”:

Following the backlash surrounding Facebook’s misleading mini-feed stories, Facebook has decided to change the message when removing mini-feed items. The previous message on the mini-feed was “Hiding will remove the story from your mini-feed and prevent anyone from seeing it” (as I described earlier this week).

Many thought this was misleading. Well, it looks like Facebook has caved and updated but my question is if this was a large enough step? Ultimately I want to control what stories my friends can and cannot see. That’s basic privacy rights. The concept that once you login to Facebook absolutely everything is public will not benefit the expansion of the Facebook platform. This happened the other day when I was asked to see if I’d like to take a “favorite sex positions quiz” that one of my friends had taken.

Do you really think they wanted me to know that? The developers of that application clearly felt that it was acceptable to share that information with me. Had I been the individual taking that quiz, I most definitely would have wanted to be alerted to the fact that my friends would be notified about this. Currently, Facebook has no effective way currently of preventing sensitive information leaving applications and notifying an individual’s friends.

This will have to change. I’m guessing that this was a quick fix and will eventually be resolved. Would you like to be able to filter news items being broadcasted to your friends about you?

 AllFacebook

Earlier this week, Ted Leonsis posted about the future strategy of Facebook. He hits on how Facebook needs to figure out what they want to become and whether or not they “want to be needed or loved as a brand and as a service.” It’s the utility versus entertainment question and ultimately I think Facebook has already stated that they want to become the most effective social utility.

There only point of failure in my own opinion is that they haven’t yet manifested their ultimate goal which is being the center location of social knowledge. What is social knowledge? Earlier today I touched on the difference between social and search and how social could ultimately become the future of search. First they will need to have the largest aggregate of users’ social data and then be able to decide what individuals’ expertises are.

Facebook is best positioned to become the center of social on the web. They are rapidly becoming the largest social site on the web and is most effectively aggregating data about relationships and the conversations between them. As Ted says in his post, Facebook “will also have to innovate and redefine utility-like services such as email, messaging, search, chat, storage and self-expression.”

I’ve argued this before. Facebook has the potential to redefine how we handle email overload by creating filtering systems which are based on our social graph. Rather then going into details on the subject again, I’d rather simply say that Facebook is in the position to become the social search engine and the social homepage of the net. Since much of our information will be socially filtered, we need a system which most effectively maps the graph and tracks the influence of people.

There are an endless number of ways that Facebook could improve their system to become the center of social on the web. The only problem that they face is they become increasingly cluttered as the community grows. If they can provide more systems to reduce the clutter and reduce the novelty of their site, I think Facebook could become the center of social on the web. What do you think? Will Facebook be our central location for tracking all that’s social?

AllFacebook

Facebook just recently settled a lawsuit by the founders of ConnectU who claimed that Mark Zuckerberg had stolen their code and their idea to create Facebook. Within weeks, the beginning of a new story is becoming more public. Aaron Greenspan, who is releasing a book on the topic, claims that he coined the term Facebook and was using it for the houseSYSTEM, a social network which he founded at Harvard.

Ultimately, there were numerous social networks that were being created on the Harvard campus around the same time Zuckerberg launched Facebook. Even I was building my own social network at the time. Either way, Aaron Greenspan sent me a copy of the cancellation filing that he is submitting to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office requesting that the Facebook trademark (as well as a number of others) be cancelled.

Is this a way to build buzz for his upcoming book release? Possibly. So far there has been no legal action taken by Aaron Greenspan aside from a filing to the U.S. PTO which is really not much of an action, it is instead more of a statement then anything else. It will be difficult for Greenspan to file any sort of suit following the launch of his book since it could be argued that the suit is being used for promotional purposes.

While I’m not sure what side is “the truth,” I will leave it to the justice system and the heavens to make a decision about that. In the meantime I’m going to read an early copy of Greenspan’s new book and I’ll be sure to let you know what my thoughts are. Below is a copy of the first page of the cancellation statement being sent to the U.S. PTO:

Yesterday Mashable posted to following article about Socialtext. What are your thoughts on it becoming the “Facebook of business”. Weigh in at the bottom.

Socialtext, the corporate wiki provider that dates back to 2003, is announcing a number of updates that founder Ross Mayfield calls one of the most significant updates in the company’s history. Socialtext Dashboard and Socialtext People, the two main products being released, have a familiar feature set for those of us that closely following the consumer social networking scene. But as Mayfield told me, similar to earlier versions of Socialtext, much of the product strategy is grounded in applying innovations taking place on the consumer side of the Web to much slower moving, conservative enterprise customers.

Facebook for the Enterprise?

The first product, Socialtext People, is essentially building an internal social network ontop of the company’s existing wiki software. Whereas wikis are traditionally fairly anonymous, with Socialtext People, users get profiles, buddy lists, and tags, though, in a more businessy sense. For example, while on Facebook you might list your interests as “snowboarding, tv, and Italian food,” in your enterprise Socialtext People implementation, you might list them as “marketing, product development, and Python.” Thus, the idea is that through Socialtext wikis, you can now not only find the content you’re looking for, but also the people best suited to help you solve a problem.

Meanwhile, if Socialtext People is Facebook for the corporation, the company’s other major release, Socialtext Dashboard, is its Netvibes. Dashboard is a widget-based start page, that allows you to keep track of both different content and people in your organization. You can see recent updates from the people you “follow” through an activity stream (Facebook News Feed for the enterprise), import any RSS feed as a widget, or install any widget that uses the OpenSocial gadgets standard. There’s also a calendar feature, which takes you to a wiki page for a specific day that can be edited by anyone in the company.

Getting Employees to Actually Use It

Overall, as someone that sits on the consumer side of the social networking space 98% of the time, it does look like Socialtext has done a nice job with applying “best practices” to enterprise social networking. The challenge, of course, is getting employees within a corporation to actually adopt and use these tools. To that end, Socialtext is launching four different “solution areas,” which they describe as follows:

Collaborative Intelligence for sales and marketing, as implemented for market leaders including Humana and SAP

Participatory Knowledgebase for service and support, as implemented for market leaders including Symantec and Microstrategy

Flexible Client Collaboration for professional services, as implemented for market leaders including MWW Group and CoActive Marketing Group

Business Social Networks for partners and customers, as implemented for market leaders including United Business Media and Epitaph Records

Competition

Since I covered the Salesforce-Google Apps deal earlier in this week (two enterprise software stories in one week, what’s going on here?), I asked Mayfield about how he perceived competition in the rest of the market. While he sees Google and Salesforce as two companies that are definitely helping drive adoption of web-based, software-as-a-service business models, the whole “no software” shtick is more marketing than anything else from Salesforce, he says. He tells me many of Socialtext’s clients actually prefer to have their software implemented “behind the firewall,” which is why his company offers not only a hosted version, but a server appliance and an open source option as well.

As for Socialtext People and Dashboard, they are currently in beta with several customers, and will be commercially available in 90 days according to Mayfield. It’s also worth noting that this release is the first major announcement from Socialtext since Mayfield was replaced by Eugene Lee in the CEO slot in November (when the company also announced a fresh $9.5 million financing round).