Inside Facebook

21 Responses to “About Inside Facebook”

1. pierre Says:
   November 14th, 2007 at 4:02 pm

   hi,
   i m looking to be in touch with facebook france, do you know how i can find some details to contact them?
   thanks , it s very important.
   pierre

2. WT Lewis Says:
   November 15th, 2007 at 2:05 pm

   The Facebook Dilemma

   We publish a weekly college newspaper at a large public university. When Facebook opened up its registration window to non-students we thought it would be a good idea to get involved. After all, we share the same primary user base — college students. At that time, businesses were creating profiles and adding friends. We were no different. As of yesterday we had about 500 friends who added us voluntarily. Today, we have none.

   With no warning, we received the following email from Facebook:

   Hi XXXXXXX,

   Facebook profiles are meant to represent a single individual.
   Groups, clubs, businesses and other types of organizations are
   not permitted to maintain an account. We apologize for the
   inconvenience, but you will no longer be able to use this
   account. This decision is final.

   If you would like to use Facebook to represent your
   organization, we offer a Groups application. Facebook Groups
   allow users with common interests to come together to express
   objectives, discuss issues, post photos, etc. If you have a
   personal Facebook account, you can create a group from the top
   of the Groups page.

   Thanks for understanding,

   XXXXXXX
   Customer Support Representative
   Facebook

   So all our hard work and expense of getting local readers to add us has been for naught. Adding insult to injury, we have spent money on Facebook flyers in the past. What is most ironic about the days events is that just 30 minutes prior to receiving the termination notice, we had finalized written plans to develop a FB Application for our newspaper’s content — stories, drink specials, local events, bar photos and more. Our plan was to migrate our “Friends” into “Fans” of our new Facebook Page (which we had recently created). That page would be the home for users to add our new App.

   Now we are extremely hesitant to build any Application on Facebook for obvious reasons. It is clear to us now that Facebook is NOT a business friendly ecosystem. At least not unless you’re spending major advertising dollars with them which rules out the local advertiser. No matter how successful an Application, no matter how many “Fans” you have, at the end of the day they are Facebook’s users — not yours. This alone is a risky environment on which to build a business. There has been speculation on many blogs and websites that application developers feared the heavy hand of Facebook. Let this be a real-world example that there is merit to that concern. It’s one thing if you know the rules of the game ahead of time. It’s another if they can and do change the rules with impunity.

   I understand what they are doing. They are clearing the airspace of local, small business “clutter” so the big brand bombers can come pouring in. We also had many friends who were local businesses and they are all gone too.

   It is my belief that businesses who operate in that ecosystem will eventually be the ones who pay the piper. There is no reason to believe (and lots of evidence to suggest otherwise) that Facebook will “tax” Facebook Page operators and/or Application owners. I make this assertion on the premise that traditional advertising is not effective in that environment. I should know, I’ve tried it on multiple occasions. Countless amounts of anecdotal evidence from other advertisers has suggested the same. If this is the case, Facebook will be forced to look elsewhere for revenue. As long as they hold the user base in their back pocket, businesses will have no choice but to pay or abandon their Facebook investment.

   A wiser investment, at least for us, appears to be to develop our own site to control our destiny. Will we get as many users as a Facebook integrated App — probably not. But in the end they will be OUR users — not subject to the Terms of Service police at Facebook. We would rather succeed or fail based on what WE have to offer users and how WE execute.

   WTL

3. Curious Office - Seattle software incubation, investment & development » Blog Archive » The Facebook Marketing Bible: 24 Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook Says:
   December 12th, 2007 at 9:21 am

   [...] The Facebook Marketing Bible is the best quick study I’ve yet seen on this topic. Oh, and speaking of viral! This little guide was started by Justin Smith of Facebook application developer Watercooler and he should get kudos for thinking of this in the first place! This is brilliant online marketing for his own company and it illustrates that the best online viral marketing campaigns provide something of value to users. Pretty simple philosophy isn’t it! No gimmicks! [...]

4. Widget Roundtable: Categorizing the Industry Says:
   January 17th, 2008 at 7:28 am

   [...] or categorize them. As a result, tonight, I’ll be hosting Dave McClure, Justin Smith (of Inside Facebook), Rodney Rumford (of FaceReviews), and colleague Charlene Li over to Forrester in Foster City [...]

5. Learnings from the Widget Roundtable Says:
   January 18th, 2008 at 5:44 am

   [...] teach the Stanford Facebook class, and runs the Graphing Social Patterns conference), Justin Smith (of Inside Facebook), Rodney Rumford (of FaceReviews), and myself brainstormed last night trying to understand the [...]

6. slackerism » Blog Archive » The NUS Facebook Course on InsideFacebook.com Says:
   February 18th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

   [...] InsideFacebook.com has done an interview with Ben Leong, lecturer of CS3216, otherwise known as “the NUS Facebook Course”. [...]

7. Bateman Says:
   February 25th, 2008 at 10:11 am

   Cool

8. Laurie Says:
   April 20th, 2008 at 6:34 pm

   I have been having such horrible issues with FaceBook lately. Over the past month approximately. There are now applications that in order to “play or win” you need to add as many “friends” as possible.

   This leads to adding people you don’t know just to continue enjoying the App.

   Unfortunately I am now experiencing unbelievable amount of problems and had my pc in with techs to get it “cleaned” as there were a lot of issues.
   Deleting some applications seem to have helped but why is there this kind of problems in the first place?

9. Inside Social Games » Blog Archive » Inside Social Games is here! - Tracking the convergence of games and social networks Says:
   April 27th, 2008 at 11:57 am

   [...] general. It’s certainly been an exciting two years – hundreds of posts, lots of interviews, conference and speaking engagements, a small publication, and, oh yeah, a [...]

10. geekgurl Says:
    April 29th, 2008 at 7:50 pm

    Facebook is a pretty new player in the social media business (it came after hi5, myspace etc..). However, once again, the newest player became the leader.

    Facebook is the google of the social media world, the prodigal son of web 2.0 . It is only normal that you see changes occuring but i think nobody should neglect facebook’s advertising power neither fear it’s power of deletion. If you want to start using it as a guerrilla marketing tool, you should not invest to much into it. After all that’s what guerrilla marketing is all about.

    You can’t deny all of those bad experience posted below still attracted attention on your brand. In response to WT Lewis post, here is an easy strategy that could be applied to outsmart facebook move of deleting your facebook page. You had 500 friends who added you or fanned you. Suddenly your friends will see a page saying that this page has been deleted. They will certainly search for you organization name on facebook after ending on such a page.

    Example of a strategic response to FB would be:

    1. Start a group named “Petition to bring back [insert organization name here] page on facebook.

    2. As facebook stated, Pages are only for individuals not organisation. Then play within their guidelines. Start a page called [insert organization name here] with a random word after. In that page you do a quick introduction of yourself as the founder of the organisation and that organisation being your focal point of interest. And then, you copy paste and build the page exactly as it was before. By doing this you are promoting yourself as the founder of the organization instead of promoting the organisation.

    3. Put a link to that page in your new group called back [insert organization name here] page on facebook saying that this is the new location of that page.

    4. invite your old subscribers to join and to tell their friends to join as well. This way you will fully benefit from the viral marketing those events can bring you. This will create a snowball effect for sure.

    End of the story.

    We all know it wont change much for facebook as petitions are useless. However it will target the subscribers that were truly interested that you can’t get a hold of since they will search for your organisation by themselves. It will also filter the non-active members that you don’t necessarily need. When you are doing guerrilla marketing, the only way to be successful is to be creative. Get out there and brainstorm

11. Charles Says:
    May 12th, 2008 at 11:53 pm

    I have a rumor which has been circulating about Facebook’s seach box that you might have heard about but I couldn’t figure out how to search your site so I don’t know if you’ve already written about it:
    If you sign into Facebook and click in the search box like you want to search someone’s name, but instead of typing a name or group in you press the down arrow on your keyboard, a list of 5 names pop up. These are rumored to be the top 5 people who view your facebook profile.
    I found a Yahoo Answers page about this subject but it was full of a bunch of idiots who didn’t seem to know what they were talking about. Have you heard about this malfunction? It seems too easy to have a back door open to something as private as that…

12. USA CONSERVATIVE Says:
    November 28th, 2008 at 8:39 am

    It has become common knowledge that Facebook has been removing, banning, freezing many American Conservative members they have. The numbers that they have illegally censored are in the thousands. It has become so bad and so rampant that a class action suit is forming. Facebook will all togeteher freeze up a Conservatives personal profile, they will actually block them for 48 hors from being able to retreive their own personal messages, keep them from being able to use the IM feature. They will totally close down their personal account, siting they posted information that had a copyright..etc..they infringe on free-speech with the excuse they have a privacy policy and not have to tell you why you were banned. They are really good to ban your account on weekends, holidays or around an election, you may get access back after the busy hours have passed. They will remove your own personal thoughts from your personal profile. Why they call it a personal profile is unknown. We found they will also read your personal messages between other Facebook users. For the most part they are now just totally banning Conservatives all together and will send you a whole list of excuses why, they will not reply except with one computerized canned answer over and over. Also, note, in their alphabetized section they exclude Conservative groups. They do however have one group that is not alphabetized or where it belongs..The Obama group is the first one you see in the Alphabetized section eeven though it starts with an O!! Seeing how FOX bews has been promoting a friendship with Facebook and advertsing it in their daily shows, this makes no sense for FOX since the largest part of their viewers are Conservative, FOX will not be happy they are wasting their money on Facebook, Conservative groups who are paying for advertising on Facebook are also be frauded by Facebook. Report crimes against Conservatives to us: We are united!!
    RepublicanFaith@aol.com

13. Mulkazarus Says:
    March 13th, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    2]Get your own Nintendo Wii
    The games console with one of the strangest names on the planet (it’s pronounced ‘wee’) is also one of the most innovative. In fact, with its potential to change the face of the gaming landscape, Wii may be on the verge of a new era, if you’ll pardon the pun.
    The $400 Wii package comprises a square white console unit and stand that plugs into your TV or AV receiver, a wireless sensor bar that connects to the console and receives wireless commands from the battery-powered paddle-style Wiimote controller. Basic composite cables are supplied, but if you have a plasma or LCD the $50 component cable options will deliver better picture quality. The console also supports an SD slot, USB port and a DVD drive for games.
    Games data can be saved to SD memory cards, which weren’t officially released at the time of publication, but in lieu of their arrival, GameCube memory cards will suffice. The USB port can’t be used to save games either, but will enable future hardware upgrades such as a hard drive or DVD player, although no announcements have been made to this effect.
    Despite its DVD drive, the console is not a DVD player (a modification chip is required if you want to watch movies). Nor is it the high definition, hard drive-toting, networked multimedia online multiplayer gaming machine that is the Xbox 360 or forthcoming Playstation 3. Instead, it presents as the most affordable ‘next generation’ games machine available and, certainly, lacks for no important ingredients if you want to have fun.

14. Hiawatha Says:
    June 23rd, 2009 at 9:49 pm

    You the man, Smitty! Keep up the interesting work and posts.

15. Facebook for Business SuperGuide Says:
    July 7th, 2009 at 9:23 am

    [...] Inside Facebook Blog Inside Facebook is an independent blog based in Palo Alto, California, focusing on Facebook and the Facebook Platform for developers and marketers. Provides agencies and marketers with information to help them understand the opportunities and risks associated with investing in both Facebook and Facebook applications. Provides reports and insight on the campaigns marketers and brands are deploying inside Facebook. [...]

16. facebook application developer Says:
    July 22nd, 2009 at 11:16 pm

    Thanks for providing an informative article.

17. anne Says:
    October 3rd, 2009 at 11:53 am

    i would like to join your facebook

18. Rocky Bolin Says:
    November 5th, 2009 at 9:50 am

    I Am trying to change my location Network from Little Rock Arkansas to Lawton Oklahoma & Cannot figure out to do it any help would be appreciated thanks

19. Voxygen.net » Facebook feed changes and you Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 9:17 am

    [...] for instance, the site AppData: Independent, Accurate Facebook Application Metrics and Trends from Inside Facebook. Seriously. People make a living trying to figure out how to use Facebook to sell crap to us. They [...]

20. Alfan Nahdi Says:
    November 16th, 2009 at 11:57 pm

    Thanks for All…I really enjoy..

21. Mindy Hull Says:
    December 3rd, 2009 at 1:20 am

    @Pierre,
    Contact Colette Ballou at Ballou PR in Paris. They handle PR for Facebook in France. I’m sure Colette can get you in touch with the right person.

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