Avenue A/Razorfish Using Facebook Groups to Track Project Status

After doin a little creepin' on Facebook, I came across this new group. Avenue A/Razorfish has started using Facebook groups to post news and track the status of inter-office projects. The idea is that offices in say Ft. Lauderdale, Chicago, and Austin can all be on the same page when working on regionally shared projects. More so though, employees can track company news like the Microsoft merger and stay current with the status of the take-over.

Pretty much one of the lamest ideas I've ever seen. Why would the largest interactive marketing and technology services firm in the U.S. be using a social networking site like Facebook to communicate between offices? It doesn't make any sense. Dave Friedman, president for the Central region, must have wanted to create an excuse so he could check friends' mini-feeds all day. What happened to creating a micro-site or company emails? Or how 'bout a blog?

I want to believe Friedman has his head at least 1/4 of the way out of his ass, so my theory would be this decision came in correlation with the Microsoft merger. Microsoft buys a little of Facebook and Avenue A, and then puts some pressure to have everything start assimilating into one indomitable powerhouse. In about 6 months however, this will fade away when everyone realizes how dumb this idea is. Utterly retarded.

Make Dave Friedman your Facebook Friend!

Facebook Application Trickery

I had been very careful to avoid adding some of the many applications available on Facebook, until recently when I decided to add as many as possible in 15 minutes. The result was not only chaos on my profile, but the discovery of Faceook's trickery. On a few of the applications, in order to use them, you have to send the application to 10 or more friends. In addition, your profile is queried higher in search results with the more people you disseminate it to. Ridiculous. I just wanted to find out who had a crush on me, but I guess it wasn't meant to be.

The one good thing about adding content to your Facebook profile that has been an improvement to MySpace's format has been the ability to hide applications on your profile. So why am I analyzing this so much? I think it will be interesting to see how Google will handle applications, and how the clutter and cleanliness will affect each network.

Scrabulous not so fabulous

While we're on the subject, a little note of interest for all half-a-million daily users of the Scrabulous app. Facebook has been asked to scrap the popular game (is that a pun? intended none the less) as Hasbro/Mattel believe it violates their copyright of the board game Scrabble.

Rory Cellan-Jones a BBC technology correspondent put it best by saying, "Early dreams of being a happy-clappy, open-source, 'do no evil' kind of business soon fade when the realisation dawns that you are worth suing"

About 15,000 people signed a petition in the 2 days following the request to delete the Scrabulous app. We'll see where this goes. It's not like you can't play a scrabble game somewhere else on the internet. jeez.

Google's One-Two Punch to Facebook's... Face

Yup, it had to happen and is happening. Google will soon launch it's own social network to rival MySpace and Facebook. The new network is called "Maka-Maka," which means "a big hit" or something. Word on the street is that this is an internal codename for the project and the name will most likely be changed at launch. News.com noted, "'maka' means knock or blow in Hebrew. Maybe they are hoping to do a one-two punch to Facebook." Which, is funny considering that just a couple weeks ago, Google was on the losing end of a bid war with Microsoft to acquire 1.5% of Facebook.

Google recently released new APIs for application developers to leverage Google’s social graph data. This will help drive traffic, and the data will be available to other social sites that want to participate. It's a great way for Google to gain targeting data for their advertising efforts.

Currently, Google has a social network (if you want to call it that) called Orkut. TechCrunch wrote:

The bigger challenge for Google in the U.S. is Orkut itself. While there may be 24.6 million monthly visitors to Orkut worldwide, only 500,000 of those are here in the U.S., according to comScore. Cool social apps aren’t much good if none of your friends use them.

We'll see how many people want to switch over to Maka-Maka when it's released, and if they will offer some sort of incentive for the switch. God knows I don't want to hvae to enter all my "favorites" and pictures again on a new site. And, it appears that Maka-Maka wil be just as cluttered as Facebook is becoming. I hate looking at someone's page and witnessing a page fold length epic battle between pirates, ninjas and zombies. Dammit people! CLEAN UP YOUR GODDAMN MINI-FEEDS!

Microsoft Buys 1.6% of Facebook... for $240 Million

The Seattle Times reported that Microsoft just made a deal with Facebook to become the exclusive, global provider of banner advertising sales until 2011. Microsoft purchased a 1.6% share of the company for $240 million, which makes Facebook worth $15 billion. Seattle Times also notes that even though it's a $15 billion dollar dot-com, it has yet to turn a profit. The deal appears to be another step in Microsoft's recent takeover of online advertising, which includes their recent acquisition of AQuantive (Ave.A-Razorfish). Well, let the games begin cause who did Microsoft beat out for the share? Good ol' Google.

I guess since Google got beat, they'll probably just make their own networking site that will rule them all! Since MySpace is held by Murdoch, and now Facebook is teaming up with Microsoft, the only place Google can really go is on their own. I know there are a lot of other social-networking sites, but they suck, which is why I can't name any of them here. But, I think this might work to Google's advantage, cause MySpace is on it's way out, so Facebook will be top-dog, but it's already getting crowded over there, so... Google can sweep up on people jumping the Facebook ship. We'll see I guess.

I also have to note that Microsoft has it's own social-networking site called Windows Live Spaces, which is about 1/6th the size of Facebook. I guess they don't have much faith in their own site, or they're too lazy to make it better. Here's the approximated breakdown of size by users:

Win Live - 6 million
Facebook - 30 million
MySpace - 60 million

Placing a Facebook ad...sucks

I went to buy some Facebook Ad Flyers yesterday and was enraged by the time I made my purchase. How hard could it be to make a little flyer, post and pay for it? Holy shnikies I was about ready to make my Mac into an expensive piece of kindling! The process appears simple, and it is, if you're a simple writer. I don't know how many times I had to re-write my body copy so that the stupid program would accept it. Someone needs to edit their code to accept simple grammatical substitutions. Either that, or give me a larger character limit! Facebook wouldn't allow me to use quotation marks, hyphens and backslashes. I was trying to write in so my audience would understand and I could stay under the character count, but Facebook wanted to be a dick about it. They're lucky it's cheap advertising, or I would've gone to MySpace... okay, called my bluff, but seriously. When I can't put the name of a movie in quotes or italics, then WTF? Douche Mongers over there... Click the thumbnail for a view of what it wouldn't let me write.

MySpace Out, Facebook In

So, in the continuing debate of which social site is better, it appears the sheep are moving on to greener pastures; greener pastures being Facebook. AdAge is reporting that advertisers are flocking to Facebook because it's less commercial than MySpace. I guess what's to insue is a rat race to deface Facebook and create another ad space property for Mr. Moneybags Murdoch. Yipee! I personally can't wait untill Facebook has a big Ad for the next Amanda Bynes movie painted across the Homepage. It will be interesting to see where socialites fade away to next to escape the barrage of ads from dating sites. See what AdGabber has to say.

Facebook Grows Up

In a recent adgabber article, 40 percent of Facebook's audience is said to be over the age of 34. Wow. This has all happened since last September when Facebook lifted restrictions on membership to allow anyone to join. You used to be required to have a .edu email address to join.

In this terribly researched and written article by BBC news, the author points out the social divide that has occurred between users of MySpace and Facebook. The author seems shocked as to why to social networking sites could hold such different demographics. Well, if the BBC had done its research they would have known that higher class individuals prefer Facebook and lower class individuals prefer MySpace for a reason. Facebook was orignially created as a social networking site for Harvard Univiersity students. Last time I checked, most people who went to Harvard weren't lower class. MySpace was created by some guy in his basement and it was intended to include everyone. Also, because Facebook developed as a social networking site for college students, for two years it only allowed membership to college students. So, while all the high school students and the college drop-outs working at McD's were on MySpace, Facebook was getting the people who could afford a college education. Hey BBC, no wonder your findings showed a divide!

I do think it's interesting that the age divide on Facebook is happening. I thought it would be the opposite. Since membership restrictions were lifted, I thought there would be an increase in younger adults and teens who might already be on MySpace and wanted to get on Facebook too. All in all, I think this age divide could be attributed to an increase in online pedaphiles. Seriously, it's all those old guys who are 34, bald, and livin in a fantasy world.

Here are some links to articles covering the online social divide -
AdGabber
BBC News
Danah Boyd's Blog (It was referenced in a few other articles