Inside Facebook

In what is sure to be one of the biggest social networking entrepreneurship themes of 2008, MySpace has announced that it will be opening it developer platform on February 5.

Initially announced late last year, the launch of the MySpace Platform marks a major shift in the social networking giant’s third party strategy: originally aggressive in preventing third parties from monetizing MySpace widgets and sucking out traffic, MySpace now wants to help developers monetize their MySpace Platform applications. This is great news for developers. Things have changed quickly in the last year!

The MySpace Platform will support OpenSocial from day one, with MySpace-specific enhancements layered on top. Of course, Facebook developers who have built their applications using FBML or iframes will need to change their apps to work on MySpace and other OpenSocial containers. However, I’m sure MySpace will not have a problem courting developers to test and develop the Platform.

In order for applications to experience the same kind of growth on MySpace as they did on Facebook, MySpace must give app developers access to powerful viral marketing channels, while preserving the user experience. Hopefully, MySpace can take best practices from the Facebook Platform’s first 8 months, and avoid a lot of the early issues Facebook developers and users experienced.

In Facebook’s continuing campaign to improve user experience by adding new constraints to the viral channels it has made available to Platform applications thus far, Facebook today released an “Ignore All” requests button that allows users inundated with Facebook and application invitations and requests to wipe the slate clean with one click.

While many developers are upset by this move, it’s unlikely to have a large impact on application growth rates because users with dozens or hundreds of requests piling up are unlikely to convert at high rates. That being said, it’s one of many changes Facebook has made so far this year to limit certain aspects of various marketing channels.

When Facebook joined the DataPortability.org Workgroup a few weeks ago, the press described the move both as a “bombshell” as well as “brilliant PR”. In order to understand what Facebook’s decision to join actually means a little bit better, I spoke with Chris Saad, Co-Founder and Chairperson of DataPortability.org.

IF: What does it mean for companies like Facebook to “join” DataPortability.org?

CS: It means they agree to engage in the conversation and work towards a blueprint for maximum interoperability between applications.

IF: Has Facebook promised to implement any particular functionality by any particular time?

CS: Not yet - but once the blueprint is done we can then start asking vendors to implement things. Many other vendors have already moved quickly - in the last few weeks and months lots of vendors have been implementing OpenID, etc - these things are not unrelated.

IF: How has Facebook explained their interest in joining?

CS: They are interested in representing their users and their agenda in the conversation to make sure the solution is compatible with their needs.

IF: Who controls the direction of DataPortability.org?

CS: DataPortability is managed like a wiki - participants step up to the plate and just get things done. Some of the most active participants join the Steering group to help set the direction.

IF: What do you expect to be achieved within the next 1-2 years?

CS: We will have the blueprint done, and vendors starting to implement it. The size and scope of implementation will depend on continued public and media pressure to get the job done!

Two days ago Facebook announced a new set of JavaScript APIs that allow third party developers to write Facebook applications using the Platform APIs inside iframes on any website, not just apps.facebook.com.

This is indeed an interesting and perhaps very powerful development in the evolution of the Facebook Platform that will enable new classes of Facebook applications and websites. Additionally, web developers will now be able to more naturally take advantage of the value provided by Facebook’s “viral channels” by integrating features that just “work better” on Facebook into their existing websites.

However, the main constraint on developers using the Facebook JavaScript APIs is that, of course, you must go through Facebook to talk to the user. All JavaScript apps still require Facebook login.

The Facebook JavaScript APIs are potentially a much more viable way for Facebook to extend its reach onto the rest of the web than Beacon is (was?). Now, websites that implement Facebook JavaScript will generate a plethora of feed items inside Facebook that could in turn drive traffic back out to the app’s website. Facebook could become the platform on which news regarding your engagement with many web apps is shared.

I would like to see any examples of web apps taking advantage of the Facebook JavaScript Client Library - if you’ve built one, please let me know.

Following up last year’s inaugural Graphing Social Patterns conference in San Jose, O’Reilly and Dave McClure have partnered to bring two installments of Graphing Social Patterns in 2008. The first, Graphing Social Patterns West, is being held March 3-4 in San Diego, CA. This year, the conference will focus not only on the business and technology of Facebook, but also questions surrounding the OpenSocial initiative and other social networking platforms. Benjamin Ling (Facebook), Amit Kapur and Jim Benedetto (MySpace), and Charlene Li (Forrester) will be delivering the keynotes. Inside Facebook readers get a 30% discount for registering with code “gspw08spbl”.

I will be moderating the Designing Viral Apps: Engineering the Viral Loop panel, and will be joined by Andrew Chen (entrepreneur), Blake Commagere (Mogad), Jia Shen (RockYou), and David Gentzel (SocialMedia). It should be a fantastic panel for those looking to hear from some of the top thinkers on viral app development. Hope to see you in sunny San Diego

Also in March, the SNAP Summit returns to San Francisco. Last year’s SNAP Summit was a big success, so look for Jeremiah Owyang, BJ Fogg, Jia, Blake, and many others March 25 at The Commonwealth Club.

Here’s a first look at the Spanish language version of Facebook!

As reported previously, Facebook is launching a major initiative to translate the site into many languages using a “crowd-sourced” approach. Facebook has created a Translation application allows users to translate every word on the Facebook site into a destination language.

In order to get high quality translations, Facebook has created a voting system that allows other translators to evaluate the quality of the translations. All user-entered information (such as status, personal info, and contact info) will remain as entered by users in their native language.

Facebook will be launching internationalized versions in Spanish, German, and French first - likely sometime in March - with more to come after that…

As part of the user experience improvement program (i.e. aggressive developer marketing crackdown) announced last week, Facebook is making another change to the way applications can publish stories to users’ feeds this week.

Facebook developer Ari Steinberg writes that developers will soon no longer be able to publish Mini Feed stories for a user if they are not the active “actors” in the feed story.  For example, “Justin gave a present to John” would be an acceptable story to publish on my Mini Feed, but “John was given a present by Justin” would NOT be an acceptable story to publish on John’s Mini Feed. This change will eliminate a certain class of feed items that many users perceived as spammy.

Facebook is giving developers a 1 month transition period to remove passive feed items from their code, but is taking a more aggressive tone to the transition than they have previously. Steinberg writes, “Starting 9am Pacific time Tuesday 22 January we may contact you, or in severe cases initiate an enforcement action, if your stories are not complying with the new policy, especially if the volume of non-complying stories is high.”

While many will remember the first few months after May 2007 as the “wild west” of Facebook Platform application development, 2008 is quickly becoming the year that Facebook pulled back the reigns on application developers in the name of enhancing the user experience. In the last week alone, Facebook has kicked a large portion of application boxes off of profile pages and limited the distribution of news feed stories to friends who don’t have the application installed.

Tonight, Facebook’s Paul Jeffries announced that Facebook is taking a more proactive and targeted approach to developers engaging in “deceptive or malicious behavior.” Those found violating the Developer Terms of Service are being punished by cutting off key viral channels — the Mini Feed, News Feed, notifications, and more — for an undisclosed period of time. According to Jeffries, “This measured action is in response to multiple violations of Facebook policies, generating an anomalously high level of user complaints.” He writes,

The vast majority of the Facebook developer community is well-intentioned and unlikely to ever be impacted by an enforcement action; we strive to work with developers to correct any issues we discover. But where necessary, as today, we will act quickly to correct problems and ensure a better Facebook Platform experience for all.

While cutting off feed and notification access is severe punishment, this is the right decision, as Facebook must protect the user experience from malicious developers in order to protect the Platform experience and economy. Facebook did not disclose which or how many applications would be put in the penalty box, nor their specific offenses.

The Facebook Platform is experiencing instability and a large number of applications are not working properly this morning.

Facebook developer Chris Nolan has pointed out a thread in the developer forums explaining the matter in detail and how to work around the problem.

Mike Arrington reported this morning that the German serial entrepreneurs Alexander, Marc, and Oliver Samwer participated in Facebook’s recent investment round to the tune of a few million dollars. The Samwers join Chinese billionaire Ling Ka-Shing and Microsoft as strategic Facebook investors.

Known for their investments in studiVZ (a German Facebook clone which they sold for 100 million Euros), LinkedIn, and Frazr (a European Twitter clone), the Samwer brothers will help Facebook navigate and expand into the European market. As previously reported, Facebook will be launching translated versions in several European languages soon.