Graphing social

At Graphing Social, a facebook conference. I’m doing the biz track, Jim the tech track. Lee Lorenzen is […]

At Graphing Social, a facebook conference. I’m doing the biz track, Jim the tech track. Lee Lorenzen is talking now on facebook 101 and user perspectives.

I’ll try to pull out interesting points

  • because it was closed to only .edu addys, facebook has a high level of authenticity (and/or expectation of)
  • Altura expects facebook to be the winning social platform, as windows was the winning OS
  • a known problem is because it started as a college network, profiles aren’t appropriate for parents, bosses, etc
    • new ap coming out will allow you to group your friends (assumed is it’ll also limit access by group)
    • He sees that as a nail in the coffin for LinkedIn
    • as business people come on to facebook, LinkedIn loses traction
  • the nature of social networks is they tend to own a country (orkut on brazil and india, friendster owns Philippians) Facebook is looking to own US, canada
  • created a profile, and designed his top friends list to prove his reputation
    • Facebook employees are forbidden to friend you unless they know you fairly well.  They can’t be a collector.
  • “I am hungry” ap sold for 20K, though originally on ebay was only 2K valued. Facebook ap to allow you to find out which of your friends are hungry so you can grab lunch together.
    • part of value is potential to advertisers, i.e. macdonals, outback steakhouse can get a jumpstart on a userroup
    • gross! he says you could buy and rebrand an ap, for example mcDs could buy I am Hungry, and one day a profile would suddenly have I am hungry replaced with I’m loving it, find a mcD’s near you. So much for authenticity.
  • Do not put up a ap that is only useful for a single person (i.e. dolphin bumpersticker) but is better with people, such as waterfight. What made it even more viral was getting access to locked items as you use it more. e.g. if you throw X times, you get access to a watergun, then a hose, then…
  • it’s trivial to create a facebook ap– really only profile page and canvas page. the profile page needs to not be too dynamic. the canvas page is where you have fun. 
    • better if things are standard; facebook has helped with that such as standard invite page
    • you can use the standard ad networks that are on facebook
    • cost-per-install advertising (like the first wave of miners selling the next wave their shovels)
    • CPI (40-60 cents)
    • You almost need to buy installs to get your ap critical mass. (Duh, of course if you build it they won’t come)
  • You have to measure metrics. almost every ap will get 200-300 users immediately. the point is to get to tipping when numbers start to double.
    • he suggests even using facebook as a test arena. you can get feedback, development cost is lower.
    • critical to have a great graphic for your application.
  • Flyers
    • CPM ones don’t work, expensive
    • flyers pro are targeted, look hopeful. tested with waterfight, and much better. you only pay for clicks. Allows for testing different environments.
    • The problem with ads is that they are always in the same place, so they suffer from banner blindness. (women in bikinis worked. wonder why?)
    • Flyers don’t affect much as viral nature. better a good ap than advertising.
  • There is a spammometer, that measures if you are behaving too spammy, and if you hit 4 green dots, you are shut down. nice!