Inside Facebook

If you’re in London on Wednesday 23rd July, you can watch a live stream of Mark Zuckerberg’s and Ben Ling’s (Director of Platform) keynote speeches from the f8 conference in San Francisco at the London Developer Garage. In addition to a live stream of the event, developers will be able to speak with a Platform representative live from f8.

The event is sponsored and hosted by Sun Microsystems and Facebook is providing free beer and pizza beforehand. It starts at 8:30pm and is at 45 King William St, London (click here for map). You can sign up for free tickets on Eventbrite and more details can be found on the Facebook event page.

While Facebook hasn’t said much about fbFund since Mark Zuckerberg announced it last fall, that’s about to change this week: Facebook is set to announce the first round of fbFund recipients at f8 08 this Wednesday.

The fbFund was set up by Facebook, Accel, and Founders Fund to provide strategic grants for developers building applications Facebook wants to see. Grants range in size from $25k to $250k. By taking the money, developers don’t give up any equity, but they do give a right of first refusal on any future investments to Jim Breyer and Peter Thiel. (I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Kleiner Perkins eventually invest in some fbFund companies, since new partner Chi-Hua Chien used to manage the fbFund for Accel.)

The first wave of fbFund recipients will reveal a lot about Facebook’s own vision for the Platform. I wager that many will be building different types of applications than those which are the most popular today. Facebook is full of deep thinkers who want to see entire industries transformed as more services move onto the social graph.

LivingSocial, the company behind Facebook apps Visual Bookshelf, ReelSocial, DiningSocial, and their corresponding websites, has closed a $5 million round of Series A financing led by Grotech Ventures and Steve Case. The LivingSocial team, led by Tim O’Shaughnessy, are Revolution Health expats, which is chaired by the AOL co-founder.

LivingSocial is a great example of a company that got its start on the Facebook Platform and has since launched on MySpace, Bebo, hi5, Orkut, and now their own websites. The company did not disclose what portion of is traffic comes from each platform.

What is clear is that the company took advantage of the opportunities for user acquisition on social networks - over 6 million users have created more than 80 pieces of content on the LivingSocial network since its launch less than 1 year ago. Achieving those kinds of numbers out of the gate before the Facebook Platform would have been unheard of.

“The support of Grotech Ventures and Steve and Jean Case will help establish LivingSocial as the leading social discovery and cataloging network, a centralized, user-managed community where people can organize, review and share what they are most passionate about,” Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO and co-founder of LivingSocial, said in a statement. “Based on the sheer number of reviews we already have on our site, there is no other interest-based community with the volume of user-generated cataloging, and we’re just getting started.”

When Facebook’s profile redesign beta launches tonight, it will also turn on a new way for users to edit their Application Settings while using the app. Now that the idea of “installing” applications has shifted to “authorizing” applications by default and integrating apps into your profile in different ways later, these new settings show how users will be able to change application permissions.

There are now new options at the top of the “Applications” drop-down menu. These appear when you’re within the canvas page of an application:

1. Feed Settings

If you choose to “Edit [application name] settings,” the following dialog box appears:

The default tab is Feed/Wall settings, and these are likely to be the most frequently changed. Users often react negatively to undesirable stories being published in their Feed, so this level of control will allow them to give their favorite applications full rights while limiting those they feel are abusing the privilege. (This is also an interesting change from the existing process whereby the user is expected to make Mini Feed permission decisions before they know what the application does.)

2. Profile Settings

The Profile tab settings show if the application appears on the Boxes tab and the application tab (if it’s been added). If either hasn’t been added, then you can add them from this tab directly:

3. Bookmark Settings

We’ve been wondering how applications are removed from the bookmarks list once they’ve been added, and this is the answer:

4. Additional Permissions

The last tab gives users more granular control over whether applications can access their data any time or just when they’re using the application. This won’t be ideal for some applications, but it puts control in the hands of the users. This is also where users can edit their email setting.

Conclusion

All-in-all, moving application settings within the application itself rather than being hidden in other settings screens makes sense. It also fits the new model of “logging in” - users aren’t asked to make choices up front based on limited knowledge, but instead can refine and tune their application settings as they use it. These changes could also raise the level of user/application trust in the system overall, as users now have more transparency on an app-by-app basis.

As the Facebook Developer community is busily preparing their apps for the launch of the profile redesign and gearing up for a big week at f8, here’s a quick recap of the week’s top stories.

1. Facebook Profile Redesign Beta Launches… Almost.

The long-awaited beta launch of the Facebook profile redesign was announced to be going live on Wednesday. However, Facebook took a few extra days to work kinks out of the system, and wrote last night that the redesign will be launching tonight. Developers can still access the new profile in the developer sandbox. Facebook released some details on new features available for the redesign migration earlier this week. Inside Facebook gives a tour for developers to see what your app will look like after the redesign launches.

2. f8 is Coming Up This Week - Get Ready for Facebook Connect, but Don’t Expect to See Payments.

The second annual f8 Developers’ Conference is this Wednesday, July 23 in San Francisco. Mark Zuckerberg will be delivering a keynote, and technical, business, and user experience tracks are planned throughout the day. Facebook will be taking the covers off of Facebook Connect, its reincarnated API for website developers, but don’t expect to see a launch of the rumored Platform payments system this week.

3. Social Me Disappears, Returns a Second Time

Just a few days after Facebook application Social Me reappeared on the Facebook Platform after a 2 week suspension, it disappeared again. Since then, it has returned for the second time. Dan Abelon, lead developer on the SpeedDate application (was was also briefly suspended by Facebook recently), offered his thoughts and advice on how to steer clear of Facebook Platform policy violations.

4. Marketers Present Social Advertising Case Studies

As more marketers move into social media for the first time, conferences are emerging to help share best practices and learn from early case studies. This week’s SWAT Summit was one of the first dedicated to just that - how to run effective campaigns on Facebook, MySpace, and other social networks.

The platformization of social networks is continuing throughout the world as Rediff, one of the most popular portals in India (and publicly traded on the NASDAQ), is launching a Developer Platform, according to Medianama.

Rediff is using a REST API, a markup language based off Facebook’s FBML, and a query language called RQL.  The Rediff Developer Platform page has more information.

The Rediff Platform marks the best opportunity yet for social network application developers to reach the Indian market. Like Facebook’s fbFund, Rediff is offering “several grants of Rs 250,000 [about $5,850] for your innovative app ideas.”

Rediff also operates one of the largest webmail services in India, with over 65 million registered users, a popular IM service, and many other vertical services like travel, job, and marriage search.

Although it was announced that the Facebook Profile redesign beta was going live earlier this week, Facebook took a little longer to work out a few extra bugs. In a note to developers tonight Facebook says the beta will indeed start tomorrow (Sunday) evening. Get your apps ready!

The looming Facebook profile redesign comes after over a year since the Platform’s launch. While no one knows exactly what will happen, some expect the changes to spur the development of new types of meaningful applications - while simultaneously stifling spammy applications that have plagued the platform.

In anticipation of this potential inflection point, Inside Facebook has categorized the top applications (those apps engaging over 5,000 daily active users) by category across the entire platform. We did this to compare the Platform economy today to where it might be in the future.

Of the 577 applications with over 5,000 daily active users, here’s how they break down:

I dealt with two main issues in my categorization efforts: 1) many apps are listed in the very generic “Just For Fun” category, and 2) many applications are listed under two categories. I handled these issues by placing the “Just For Fun” apps into other appropriate categories and selecting the most fitting category for applications with two assigned categories.

Though some of my assumptions in categorizing will skew the data somewhat, I believe the underlying trends are still meaningful. Clearly, Gaming reigns supreme across the platform, while the more utilitarian categories (utility, money, file sharing etc) have been largely neglected by both users and developers.

It will be interesting to see if the speculation around the development and growth of more functional applications will come to fruition in the post-redesign world.

Last week, Facebook application SpeedDate was temporarily suspended from the Facebook Platform for violation of Facebook Platform policy. While SpeedDate founder Dan Abelon understandably isn’t willing to discuss the details of the suspension publicly, he has offered to share his thoughts and advice for fellow Facebook developers regarding his recent experience here. Dan’s words follow.

Dan Abelon, Founder, SpeedDate:

While some think it harsh that Facebook temporarily removed the SpeedDate app from users’ profiles without warning, we understand that Facebook’s ultimate goal is aligned with ours – to provide a great experience for users.  SpeedDate is focused on revolutionizing online dating by setting people up on instant live web dates, and the Facebook Platform will continue to be part of our strategy.

It’s clear from our conversations with them that they are focused on making sure that leading social app developers such as SpeedDate stay up to date with guideline changes, and play more moderately as related to any grey areas.  A lot of developers are worried about the implications for their apps, so here are a few things we recommend based on our experience:

1. Stay up to date with Facebook’s changes to their guidelines, especially in the Developers Wiki.  New rules came into effect on June 18th, and we assume there will be continued changes in the future.
2. If you think a rule is ambiguous, err on the conservative side and don’t push the limits.
3. Look at other apps for creative ideas, but be wary about borrowing an idea from an app (big or small) without a very clear understanding of Facebook’s rules.
4. React quickly if you think Facebook has taken any action with respect to your app.  As soon as you identify the issue, alter your code and contact Facebook to let them know.  If your users love your app, they’ll expect nothing less.  One user wrote on the SpeedDate fan page: “If it’s not back tomorrow I may have to have a breakdown and go sit in a corner.”  Because we took quick action, the app was back within days for the many hundreds of thousands of users who regularly rely on SpeedDate to meet new people.
5. While it may sound cliché, focus on building highly engaging apps.  SpeedDate has hosted over 10 million online speed dates since we launched in October, and for us the most important thing is creating a faster and more fun way for you to meet new people.
6. If you feel like your app is in the clear, spend your time working on the new profile redesign!

We welcome any developers who are grappling with these issues to reach out to us directly at info (at) speeddate.com.

While Facebook is rumored to be launching Facebook Connect, a new way for third party websites to connect with users’ Facebook profile and friend information without leaving the site, the Bebo Platform team have launched some interesting API’s of their own: today, Bebo announced new external authorization APIs which will allow third party web and desktop applications to access your Bebo account.

Developers interested in the Bebo external auth APIs can find more documentation here.