RSSInside Facebook is an independent blog based in Palo Alto, California, focusing on Facebook and the Facebook Platform. Inside Facebook was started by Justin Smith in April 2006.
Motivation
We believe that Facebook is arguably the most important software company in the next chapter of the Internet. We’ll help you stay up to date on the latest Facebook news and track the growth of the Facebook Platform economy.
- For application developers - We’re here to help developers stay on top of the latest changes in the Facebook Platform API and viral channels. We provide news and analysis of not only the Facebook Platform, but also the MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, Hi5, Orkut, and other social network platforms - and we’ll stay on top of the latest innovations in Facebook apps.
- For marketers and agencies - We’re here to help new media marketers and agencies understand the opportunities and risks associated with investing in both Facebook and Facebook applications. We provide reports and insight on the latest strategies marketers and brands are taking inside Facebook and other major social networks.
Publications
We publish original research to serve application developers and new media marketers working on Facebook. Current publications include:
Speaking Engagements
Justin Smith has moderated or participated in discussion panels or spoken at the following events:
- Graphing Social Patterns East 2008 - TBD (6/10/08, Washington, DC)
- Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco 2008 - Comparing Social Platforms panel moderator (4/23/08, San Francisco)
- Graphing Social Patterns West 2008 - Engineering the Viral Loop panel moderator (3/4/08, San Diego)
- Web Community Forum: Community Building in the Age of Facebook - Future of Facebook panel member (12/5/07, Seattle)
- Stanford University CS 377W: Creating Facebook Apps - Guest speaker on Facebook Platform (11/29/07, Stanford)
- SNAP Summit - Facebook development panel member (10/26/07, San Francisco)
- Graphing Social Patterns 2007 - Viral Strategy panel moderator (10/7/07, San Jose)
Advertise
Please direct all advertising inquiries to mail at insidefacebook dot com.
Contact Us
Feel free to contact us at mail at insidefacebook dot com.
Disclosures
Justin also currently works with Watercooler, but the views on this blog are his own.
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
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
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! […]
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 […]
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 […]
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”. […]
February 25th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Cool
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?
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 […]
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