Online Media Cultist

It’s Friday, time for some fun. This video is somewhat derivative of the truly hilarious Internet party, but it’s still pretty good stuff.

Imagine if Facebook were real life, and its human agent was a smug British man who randomly shows up at your door. Enjoy…

Found via Laughing Squid.

In the midst and tumult of companies falling all over themselves to launch applications within Facebook’s wildly popular platform was a dirty little secret: that with about 20,000 Facebook apps to choose from, it’s now nearly impossible to stand out from the crowd to gain traction. At some point the scales will inevitably slide to the point where you have the same chance of breaking through with a standalone web presence as with the time and effort it might take to build and launch within Facebook.

Now Facebook is looking to create some hierarchy within its application dominion, creating a Preferred Application Program, according to TechCrunch. Except no one knows yet where the preferred part comes in. It might be by giving apps “in good standing” extra access to invites that other more run of the mill apps aren’t preferable enough to receive.

TechCrunch suggests other ways that preferred apps can be preferred, such as showing up higher in search results. This could easily lead to a pay-for-placement or within Facebook, though there’s no reason to suspect that they’re leaning this way. But you’d have to mention that Facebook folk would love to dream up ways for apps to pay their way into a Featured Apps or Suggested Apps or “You Like iLike? You’ll Love Slide!” sort of revenue-generating path.

I wonder if this program is a way for Facebook to angle its way toward a tighter and more lucrative partnership with upper tier apps? When I first saw the term Preferred Application Program, I assumed it was a way to continue to draw in new apps and create a way for existing apps to better position themselves amongst the rabble. I wonder though if instead it’s simply a way to throw a few bones to the very elite apps.

allfacebook is most concerned with how this might affect the development of a beer pong app.

It turns out that the hype about Facebook this year ain’t just hype. In the UK, Facebook has surpassed reigning global social networking champ MySpace for the first time, with a whopping 541% increase in audience since December 2006 (MySpace rose a relatively sedate 20% during the same period). Meanwhile, Bebo, a company you don’t hear about a lot in the US, moved to take a strong third in Britain.

And over on the other side of the planet, Friendster – a site often thought of as an also ran in webby American circles – is seeking to expand its presence in South and Southeast Asia. Friendster is launching its first non-English version in Chinese. According to TechCrunch, close to 90% of its monthly unique visitors already come from Asia, so it makes perfect sense that they would target their a new potential audience of teeming web savvy millions.

So while MySpace is still massively popular in the United States and other nations (but not so much in social networking-crazy Brazil, where Orkut is champ!) the social networking game is anything but static.

With hundreds of start-ups looking to grab audience, and a global marketplace that allows competitors to find regional footholds, MySpace may not be the ubiquitous name for social networking for that much longer stateside.

Facebook is certainly the social networking darling of 2007. Any thoughts on what 2008 may have in store?

There’s been some chitty-chatter through the weekend about alleged leaked reports that Google has plans to deploy a “Facebook-killer” social networking platform that will allow users and developers to tinker and manipulate a new web platform to their heart’s delights.

Tony Hung makes the great point that the real killer app is the ability to get lots and lots of people to congregate on a site, and then figure out ways to keep them around while getting new hordes to come by. That’s what Facebook is doing particularly well these days.

Technology is great, fantastic, amazing. But in terms of web platforms, everyone is playing with pretty much the same toolkit. A new social network based upon fancy technology – even with Google’s overwhelming presence on the web – will have a hard time breaking through if there’s not more “there” there than that.

And that’s that.

I’m sure that some people really are addicted to the Internet. I’m probably one of them! I can and will “unplug” from time to time (”I can quit anytime I want,” he said…) but truth be told I’m online for large chunks of most days. I get tired and burned out and haggard like everyone else in the working masses, but I attribute it more to work than the mere experience of being online.

But there’s addiction and then there’s addiction.

According to a doctor in Israel, “10 percent of Internet surfers are afflicted with ‘Internet addiction disorder,’ which can lead to anxiety and severe depression. Internet addiction is classified by mental health professionals as an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a mild to severe mental health condition that results in an urge to engage in ritualistic thoughts and behavior.”

Ten percent of “Internet surfers” is a lot of people. Like hundreds of millions. I think it’s going a little far to allege that hundreds of millions of people are experiencing a disorder from online use that can “lead to anxiety and severe depression.” So in essence one could also argue that eating food in great quantities can lead – for some, mind – to getting fat.

Meanwhile, a new study asserts that Facebook is costing Australian companies billions of dollars in lost productivity (hat tip: Lifehacker). This alarming conclusion comes about due to the speculation that “the cost to companies if one person in every organization spent an hour on Facebook instead of working.”

Note the use of the word if. In other news, if tortoises could fly, there would be a whole new magical way for Internet-addicted Facebook time wasters to commute to work.

I’m going to attempt to quell my Restless Leg Disorder while I ponder this one some more.

Facebook has been the rage of tech-geek conversations over the last few months. Beyond its stratospheric growth as a major competitor to social networking behemoth MySpace, the reason why is its “platform,” an easy way for outside developers and companies to install their own widgets, or applications, right into Facebook and thus have the potential to get seen and used by many millions of users.

The popularity of MySpace and Facebook has given way to a discussion of “the new portals,” web platforms that have the power and “stickiness” to attract massive audiences and keep them there for a full range of activities, from e-mailing friends and sharing photos and videos to reading articles and gathering information.

MySpace is actively angling to maintain and grow its massive audience, and one of the ways it has been doing that is to syndicate content and add original content to its offerings. For example, MySpace announced that it is adding The Onion’s unique brand of satire in the form of articles and video.

Until quite recently, MySpace relied almost exclusively on user generated content, or content created and uploaded by its millions of members. But in an effort to combat both the popularity of YouTube and Facebook, MySpace is using YouTube-competitor MySpaceTV and content partnerships as a way to bolster its own sense of portality, if I may coin the term.

One of the reasons why the Facebook platform works so well is because it allows Facebook members to opt-in to put “extra stuff” – i.e. widgets that let you do things like listen to hot songs and scroll through slideshows of pictures – on profile pages.

This gets down to how people, and especially young people, use the web in 2007. A typical experience with a social networking site involves logging in, checking out what changes friends have made to their profiles (newly uploaded photos, for instance), writing an e-mail or two, perhaps browsing around for new members that have joined that live in the person’s area… and that’s it.

Therefore, it’s not enough to add original content or syndicated content. You have to make it compelling and attractive, and then you need to give users the tools so that they can easily and seamlessly integrate it into their own web experience.

Facebook has done this. RSS is also great for this, but it has yet to break into mainstream web adoption in a big way. MySpace is trying to find its way to doing this, through what seems to be a multi-tiered strategy.

Meanwhile, MySpace appears to be making real money.

During Sunday’s Republican presidential debate, Rudy Giuliani brought the biggest laugh of the night in answering a question about a defining mistake. “To have a description of my mistakes in 30 seconds?” he said, shaking his head. He added that he could only properly confess his mistakes to moderator George Stephanopoulos’ father, a priest.

Perhaps one of Rudy’s lesser life mistakes was not getting his 17-year-old daughter Caroline on board with his campaign. In fact, Caroline’s Facebook profile caused quite a stir this week when it was discovered that she listed her political views as “liberal” and proclaimed membership in the “Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)” group. The profile, which is viewable by people who attend Harvard, where Caroline is headed, and the Trinity School in Manhattan, has since ended its affiliation with the Obama group.

Interestingly, Caroline uses a slight variation on her last name on her Facebook profile. However, that coupled with the fact that the profile was semi-public did not prevent the story from leaking.

Aside from shining some light on a major presidential candidate’s inner family dynamics, this story displays how the Internet and social networking sites are pulling control away from politicians, celebrities, and public figures over their image and public relations.

ParisLemon sums up this sentiment well, writing: “Yes, Facebook is indeed awesome. It is only here that we could see that Rudy Giuliani’s own daughter apparently doesn’t even think he’d be the best man to run the country - she’s supporting Barack Obama.”

Andy Beal thinks that this story may cost Rudy a few votes “a year from now.” I disagree. If Republican primary voters can get past Rudy’s multiple marriages, I doubt that his daughter’s political disloyalty will help to sway voters. However, it may help build an overall case that Rudy isn’t the traditional Republican savior that conservative primary voters are looking for.

The New York Times notes that Obama is besting Giuliani in the overall social networking game, with 500 Facebook groups devoted to Obama (”One Million Strong for Barack” has over 300,000 members). Obama’s MySpace profile has 160,000 friends as compared to 7,000 and change for Rudy. And on Facebook, the Giuliani campaign has yet to set up a presence.

techPresident has the best advice for both Caroline Giuliani and the youth population set worldwide when it comes to dealing with the Internets:

Hey kids, guess what! Put something online, and it might just be a little public.

A new Ipsos Insight study called The Face of the Web finds that the United States ranks fifth when it comes to the percentage of adults who have visited a social networking website.

South Korea, Brazil, China, and Mexico all have a higher percentage of adults who have visited a social networking site at least once within a thirty-day period. And when you consider the massive populations of Brazil and China, that’s a lot of people getting their profiling and friending and all the rest of it on.

And while MySpace may still be dominant in the US, other parts of the world have different tastes. Facebook is at least on a par with MySpace in the UK, with Bebo making a strong going of it as well. Friendster, exiled after MySpace usurped its power several years ago, still reigns supreme in parts of Southeast Asia. And Cyworld, kind of a social MMO (massive multiplayer online game), is the darling of South Korea.

ars technica notes that Brian Cruikshank, an exec at Ipsos, contends that it’s possible that the massive popularity of social networking websites may have an affect “on other online and offline entertainment behaviors that ultimately compete for a share of the consumer’s disposable time.”

This line of thinking ties into a conversation that has been ongoing since late last week on Deep Jive Interests and a number of other sites. It kicked off when Robert Scoble asserted that top bloggers are losing traffic because of the popularity of sites such as Facebook.

My counter-argument ran thus:

In my view the blogosphere and social networking worlds have very different cultures and people who fill them up. So it’s not a zero sum game i.e. the popularity of Facebook (and hasn’t MySpace had a billion registered users for several years already? How did Facebook reinvent the wheel?) does in no way deflate the popularity of the blogosphere or any “A List” bloggers in the process.

Now, if you want to argue that some bloggers are losing audience due to some notion of “more choice than ever before” (more quality bloggers, more web communities, more high quality content, etc. etc.) that’s something I’d be interested in hearing out.

That said, there’s no doubt that online social networking is having a massive impact on how people around the world are communicating. And hundreds of start-ups are trying to cash in on various niches of the social networking world – from horses to moms to honoring the deceased to college sports and everything in between.

MySpace, while still by far the most popular social networking site in all the humanoid galaxies, may be starting to peak out in terms of traffic and usage. In the UK, at the least, MySpace overall traffic dropped in May while traffic to second-tier powerhouses Bebo and Facebook increased.

Interestingly, average time spent on Facebook and Bebo (152 and 143) dwarfed time spent on MySpace (96).

Momentum is certainly with Facebook stateside as well, as its new Platform – which allows Facebookers to easily add custom made for Facebook widgets – is seeing great success.

Maybe MySpace should think about its users and keeping them happy, rather than dialing up huge new contracts for its founders?

The buzz on Facebook’s “Platform” – an easy way for Facebook users to easily add custom-made-for-Facebook widgets onto Facebook profiles – continues to grow.

Super quick refresher on Facebook for anyone not hip to it: it’s the MySpace of 2007. There, I said it.

I was therefore motivated to take a closer look, add some widgets, and mess around. My first impression was that the entire interface was kind of clunky and, in fact, adding widgets wasn’t as easy as originally advertised. However, I think this is far more Facebook’s issue than the widgets existing within the Platform (plus, I’m becoming more of a functionality snob as time goes on, I find). After a while I got the hang of it and found that choosing and adding widgets was pretty easy. The key is to click “edit” on the right nav bar next to Applications, and then click “Browse more applications” to get to a place where you can find a pretty wide range of widgets, from the useful to the odd and back again.

I can see right away why iLike’s music widget is so popular (and check out how it’s fueling the company’s insane growth overall!). It allows you to add individual music tracks and has a somewhat addictive game called iLike Music Challenge that tests your knowledge of music and bands. The best part about it is that it taunts you by letting you know how many points you need to reach the next rank. (I’m proud to announce that I am now a Music Intern!)

You can also sync up with popular applications such as Flickr, though I found setting up this particular widget to be far less than easy, and I can imagine and hope that going into Flickr itself, grabbing widget code from there directly, and slapping it back into a MySpace or other social networking profile would be an easier and more efficient experience.

Overall though I really like Facebook’s Platform and can see how this addition to Facebook’s clean, straight-forward, and network-centric approach to social networking is shooting Facebook’s popularity through the roof. And if you don’t want to take my word for it, Internet legend Marc Andreesen agrees, writing that “the new Facebook Platform is a dramatic leap forward for the Internet industry…. In a nutshell, the Facebook API enables outside web developers to inject new features and content into the Facebook environment…. Viewed simply, this is a variant on the “embedding” phenomenon that swept MySpace over the last two years, and which Facebook prohibited.”

And AttentionMax pays attention to the fact that Facebook is becoming a central hub that connects all kinds of viral applications that people find useful, such as Twitter.

This is really about making social networking useful to people who might normally not find much reason to set up, say, a MySpace profile.