sorted by: recent | see : popular

Content Tagged with Featured + Facebook

Technology buzzwords come and go…virtualization, green, SaaS…and after sitting through the Google Friend Connect announcement, reading about Facebook’s Connect service and writing about last week’s MySpace Data Availability launch, “open” appears to be just the latest. But open is one of those words whose definition can be spun into a variety of meanings.

While Facebook isn’t yet releasing much detail on its efforts and may completely surprise me, Google’s Friend Connect program today highlights how open standards such as OpenID, OAuth and OpenSocial can be used to create a platform that’s pretty closed. The service, which will launch tonight and only expects to have between 12 and 24 sites participating while it’s in preview mode over the next few months, will allow site publishers to put some code on their sites. If a user visits a site with the appropriate code, she can get access, via an IFrame, to applications built in OpenSocial. A user can also share her activities on a participating site with her contacts, as well as through her news feeds on participating social networking sites.

Last week, I pointed out that MySpace’s Data Availability efforts were welcome in that they expand the number of sites on which a user can use her MySpace data, but that MySpace still had a lock on the user data since it hosted and determined who could display that data by approving site partners. If MySpace’s efforts were three steps forward in opening up user profiles, then Google’s Friend Connect represents two steps back.

The use of the IFrame means that site owners have no way to change or work with user data, they can only display it. MySpace doesn’t allow sites to store user data on anyone’s servers other than its own, but it does allow that data to be used directly in the outside site. For more differences among the three services, please check out the chart below.

While none of these services are entirely open yet — and may never be, given security and data abuse problems — the trend toward a more social web is clear. With broadband more prevalent than ever and voice fading as the primary means of communicating with people who aren’t in the room, enabling a truly open social web is the next big step in communication. But in order for that to happen, the user needs to be able to reach across walled gardens and gain granular control as to what he or she shares and with whom.

There’s open source (really open in that anyone with knowledge can participate in how the code evolves), open standards (open only in that anyone can participate using a pre-defined version of the standard), and open APIs (open in that anyone can take the pre-defined standard and build something for a closed platform such as Facebook). Knowing this, the efforts to open up a user’s data on a social network (their social graph, if you will) by these three companies falls somewhere between an open platform and an open standard.

Facebook Connect (not launched yet) Google Friend Connect MySpace Data Availability Standards Used Social Data That’s Shared Getting Access to the Data Time Frame Launch Partners Where Data is stored and displayed Privacy

unknown, but Facebook API is likely	OAuth, OpenID, OpenSocial	OAuth
basic profile information, profile picture, friends, photos, events, groups	Applications built with OpenSocial, contacts, activities on participating sites published back to a news feed	Profiles, friends, photos and videos
unknown	Web site owners must apply to Google and be accepted	Web site owners must agree to MySpace terms and conditions, but MySpace will allow anyone who doesn’t abuse the user data to participate
will launch within a few weeks	First 12-24 sites will go live in the next few days and the rest of the web will take a few more months	Launched on May 8 and adding more partners within the next few weeks
unannounced	Plaxo, Orkut, Hi5 and Facebook	Yahoo!, Twitter, eBay and Photobucket
unannounced	On Google servers and displayed only via an iFrame	On MySpace Servers, but can be displayed however the participating site wishes
A user’s privacy settings will follow him around the web	Users opt in to Friend Connect and can limit their profile sharing to existing contacts only; a user can elect on which sites he wants to share his activities, can also instantly change privacy settings across all participating sites	Users can control their privacy settings (right now, only which sites get access to their data) on a central page. Partner sites must accept changes in real time and sharing profile data is an opt-in service

After the debacle of yesterday’s on-stage interview with Mark Zuckerberg at South By Southwest, I decided to take myself out of the process as much as possible by offering up a Q&A. The results below are heavily edited excerpts from my conversation with the Facebook CEO. Instead of grilling him too much about monetization and the company’s $15 billion valuation, we spent most of the time talking about infrastructure, scaling Facebook’s architecture and what the ad platform is going to look like. And I’ll tell you right now: When I asked about money, my questions were quickly shot down.

ME: What does the Facebook infrastructure look like right now as it supports more than 67 million users?

ZUCKERBERG: I can’t talk about the number of servers specifically, but I can say it’s not on the order of hundreds of thousands yet; it’s in the order of tens of thousands. Would you like to talk about how the architecture has evolved over time?

It’s pretty fascinating to see that the evolution of the network architecture pretty much reflects the evolution of the site. When we were in a few colleges one of the theories there was that most of the people would want to talk to people at their own schools, so we set up a network architecture based on the school. We had a Harvard database and web server and routed traffic to them through sub-domains. As time went on, and we reached a reasonable scale, we had to break out into tiered services.

In mid-2005 or so we also started relying heavily on memcached, and today it’s become such an important part of our infrastructure that we’ve actually become the head developers on one of the branches of the code.

At this point in Facebook we’re now running our networks and have multiple data centers across the country, one on the West Coast and one on the East Coast. So we’re working on problems of reducing latency in transferring data from one to the other.

ME: So as you expand internationally will Facebook need an international data center? When?

ZUCKERBERG: That will be something at some point.

ME: Do the applications running on Facebook affect the network? How much of that does Facebook need to support?

ZUCKERBERG: We have an API tier that serves the data requests, but the same servers serve the requests generated inside of Facebook and those form outside of Facebook. We’re trying to blur the boundaries of content created inside Facebook and applications created outside Facebook, and that’s reflected in the architecture.

ME: What challenges will you guys need to address as you scale?

ZUCKERBERG: We put a ton of focus into making sure going forward that our development speed will be very fast. But you know the phrase, “Premature optimization is the root of all evil”? If we spend our time trying to optimize our architecture it could end up being one that’s difficult to develop on and going forward, a big focus for us is making sure that’s not the case.

One of the recent places is internationalization. The infrastructure to do that is pretty fascinating but it has the potential to slow down future development as people ask if they need to develop an application in another language first, so we’ve basically built a wrapper for every string of text and the developer puts a wrapper around that text and we send it to users to translate. So that doesn’t slow down the development speed.

ME: How do you handle quality control?

ZUCKERBERG: In the three cases we’ve done so far (Spanish, German and French), the quality of the translations that we got was actually better. If you wanted to get professional translators it wouldn’t be scalable.

ME: Let’s talk about monetization. You said yesterday that you envision the social advertising landscape evolving over the next 10…15…20 years. How will those ads evolve and when will we start seeing aspects of them on Facebook? And where does Beacon, which you said wasn’t an ad effort, fall into this?

ZUCKERBERG: Beacon was a part of the platform. It was part of this while effort to blur the boundaries between what’s inside Facebook and what’s outside Facebook. Beacon was our first cut at a protocol to do that.

When it comes to social ads we really want to line up what people are trying to do on Facebook and the utility it offers with monetization. If you look at what people are trying to do on the site, it’s communicating and connecting with each other and sharing information, so the business model should be around people sharing information and staying connected.

In banner advertising, people who have developed a trust with the audience run a banner ad and the trust bleeds over to the ad so people pay attention to it.

ME:(making a skeptical face.)

ZUCKERBERG: What? You look like something’s wrong? People go to a content site to see a specific kind of content and will trust those ads relate somehow to it. On Facebook, people aren’t coming to see content from Facebook; they’re coming to see what other people are sharing, so the most natural analog would be having the ads be information shared among the people. Because so much of our society has some commercial component it seems like there will be a way to both share information and line that up with what advertisers want.

Some amount is happening as advertisers pay to accelerate that distribution of information. The amount they’d be willing to pay is proportional to how much it is accelerated.

ME: And before we leave I wanted to ask about revenue and the fact that you mentioned yesterday that you are operating at breakeven.

ZUCKERBERG: I said we’re operating around breakeven. In the past we’ve run at sometimes more and sometimes less, but as a private company we don’t disclose those numbers. A lot of people ask us what we’re going to do with that Microsoft money, but we have no specific purpose for it. We didn’t take that money to buy something.

Looking back at 2007, we will remember it as a year Google finally grew up and showed its true colors. Sure there was Facebook and all the hoopla around its platform and privacy, but the big story of year was still Google. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company that still gets a majority of its revenues from advertising made moves that would help expand its reach into new markets.

Wireless, Voice and Applications were three areas of major push - and if that meant taking on the telcos, the FCC, Microsoft, Wikipedia and even Facebook, so be it. And along the way it is estimated to add $1.7 billion to its $10 billion or so sales in 2006. No wonder it commands a market capitalization of $217 billion. Here are some of the major developments of a very Google-y 2007.

• January 2007: Crosses $10 billion in sales.
• February 2007: Google Office, ready for business. Microsoft beware.
• March 2007: Announces its 700 MHz spectrum plans, taken on Verizon, AT&T.
• March 2007: Viacom sues Google for $1 Billion.
• April 2007: Buys Doubleclick for $3.1 billion.
• May 2007: Launches Streetside View for Maps.
• June 2007: Buys Grandcentral.
• June 2007: Buys Feedburner
• July 2007: Buys Postini.
• August 2007: CFO Greg Reyes retires.
• August 2007: YouTube launches embedded inline advertising.
• September 2007: GoogleNet is going global
• October 2007: Buys Jaiku
• October 2007: Launches OpenSocial, takes on Facebook
• November 2007: Launches Android, Mobile Platform, taken on Microsoft, Nokia, Others
• November 2007: Announces plans to produce GigaWatt of clean energy.
• December 2007: Launches Knol, takes on Wikipedia

Coca-Cola’s decision to pause and rethink their involvement with Facebook’s Beacon advertising program was a big topic of discussion over the weekend in this corner of the Internet we call the blogosphere. It was a particularly shocking reversal given that Coke was one of the landmark partners of Facebook’s new social advertising effort. Coke, to put it bluntly, threw Facebook under the bus, essentially shirking away from their own role in the Beacon controversy, much like 44 other partners who teamed up with Facebook.

“We have adopted a bit of a ‘wait and see’ as far as what we are going to do with Beacon because we are not sure how consumers are going to respond,” Carol Kruse, Coke’s vice president of global interactive marketing, told The New York Times. She thought Beacon was an opt-in program. “That’s what I heard before as well as what I heard on the 6th.” Not sure about about you, but I ain’t buying Coke’s excuse. Kruse’s comments led me to these questions:

1. Did Facebook lie to Coke?
2. Did Coke get snookered?
3. Or both?
4. Did Coke really ask all the right questions about privacy, opt-in and automatic enrollment before signing on?

How did Coke or Verizon or Blockbuster expect this data would be collected? In fact, did anyone really ask the tough questions of Facebook? Because if they did, then they all were very well aware of what they were signing up for. And if they didn’t ask the right questions, well…why didn’t they? I guess big dollars signs clouded common sense.

Some potential partners Facebook tried to sign up before launching Beacon, asked the opt-in vs. opt-out questions, and in the end decided to stay on the sidelines because of concerns for the privacy of their community. All of the partners — everyone from Overstock to Blockbuster to Fandango — are equally complicit in this mess.

In the coming days, many of them, like Coke, will feign ignorance, show surprise and duck for cover. But the fact of the matter is that they were transmitting information about their customers to Facebook in hopes of earning more dollars via this new thing called frimping, i.e. pimping stuff to your friends. And if they want us to do that, well they should be held to the same standard as Facebook, and offer everyone an opportunity to opt in to this new kind of advertising program.

Update: Travelocity and  Overstock.com are stepping away from Beacon.

The video comes to us from Christopher Carfi.

Facebook may announce alterations to the Beacon social advertising system as early as today, according to BusinessWeek. Perhaps Facebook will now allow global opt-out of publishing third-party activities on the Facebook site — and this would appease many who have complained.

But that may not go far enough in protecting users’ privacy. Some people may also want the ability to stop Facebook not just from publishing information from third-party sites, but also from gathering that information at all.

Many Facebook users have complained that they shouldn’t have to opt out every time Facebook wants to publish transaction information from third-party sites. Besides, some critics say, the opt-out notices are so subtle that many people don’t even notice them.

Blogger and Wiley marketing director, Ellen Gerstein, discovered how subtle those notices were when she congratulated her babysitter on buying a purple ski jacket. Her babysitter had no idea that her Overstock.com purchases were shared on Facebook. Ellen said, “I cannot imagine I would want anyone on Facebook to know what I am purchasing.”

When Facebook announced Beacon, Om called it a potential privacy hairball, noting that even if you opt out of the information publishing, Facebook still knows what you’re doing.

Bokardo blogger Joshua Porter highlights this same problem:

Most people are worried about what happens when the shared information gets back to Facebook, and their Facebook friends see their outside activity… My main concern was that Facebook and Blockbuster were talking at all.

So when the Facebook announcement comes out, we should be looking not only for the ability to opt out of publishing transaction information to Facebook, but the ability to opt out of sharing any information outside of Facebook as well.

Update: Three weeks is a long time on the Internet. It was on Nov. 6 that I raised the question: Is Facebook Beacon a Privacy Nightmare? Three days later, my next post, Facebook’s Cruel Intentions elicited some response from the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, which responded and clarified their position. But soon after, the situation got a bit out of control. MoveOn.org got involved and the whole thing started to look like a major PR disaster.

In a classic example of marketing doublespeak, the company saw privacy concerns as an issue in the minds of pundits. (Never heard them complain about pundits praising their “innovations.”) A few hours later, the Palo Alto-based company outdid John Kerry when it came to flip-flopping and announced what are being perceived as big changes to the Beacon system. Why? Because it was not the pundits, but instead Facebook users who were up in arms about it. Facebook finally backed down, more or less acquiescing to the demands of those concerned about its seemingly blatant abuse of privacy of its fast-growing user base. Now you are explicitly asked whether to publish or not publish the information that is being innocuously called “stories.” There doesn’t seem to be a universal opt-out, however.

Regardless, I think it is laudable that Zuckerberg’s crew is at least listening to its community and responding accordingly. [FAQ on New Beacon] Of course, the cynical take on this would be: it isn’t the last time they are going to test the outer limits and see what they can get away with. And how much of these changes were instituted to ensure that the potential advertising partners don’t get scared, putting the future revenue streams at risk? (Maybe the Beacon flip-flop was influenced by the fact that Facebook was negotiating to get a $60 million investment from Li Ka-Shing, the Chinese tycoon who has previously made a killing with his tech investments.)

There is one issue that remains unanswered. During my initial inquiries, when I asked the company executives if Facebook continues to collect data even if that data (stories if you may) wasn’t published. They assured me that is not the case, and gave me written and verbal assurances. Those doubts have resurfaced, largely because of the language used by Facebook in their statement regarding changes to Beacon.

If a user does nothing with the initial notification on Facebook, it will hide after some duration without a story being published. When a user takes a future action on a Beacon site, it will reappear and display all the potential stories along with the opportunity to click “OK” to publish or click “remove” to not publish.

Following their argument, unless they are storing information being sent to Facebook from the partner sites, it is unlikely that “all potential stories be published at a later stage.” It can’t be auto-magically recreated from thin air.

Users will have clear options in ongoing notifications to either delete or publish. No stories will be published if users navigate away from their home page. If they delay in making this decision, the notification will hide and they can make a decision at a later time.

If you decide to opt out completely, you are in the clear, but if you forget to do so, and take no action, then the Facebook system will keep collecting data. In other words, Beacon continues to do its job — collect information from partner sites and also fine-tune the advertising system. From that perspective, nothing has really changed. Except perhaps the public perception that Facebook listens to its community.

(Dan Farber’s take on changes in Beacon is smart and worth reading.)

Update: CA Security Advisor Research Blog has tangible proof and details on information flowing back to Facebook from partner sites.

Somewhere in San Jose, Calif., devotees of all things Facebook have gathered to celebrate the cult of Mark Zuckerberg and the little company he started. Dave McClure might call it his Graphing Social Patterns conference, but we all know it’s all about Facebook, Silicon Valley’s Furby. And while the fanboys gather and rejoice, they should also pay heed to some of the red flags fluttering in the hot air.

The company apparently sent out an email earlier this month informing all those who applied for grants via the fbFund to start over. We emailed Facebook to check the authenticity of the email, but had not heard back from them at the time of posting. (Given that there is a Facebook app for the application process, we take that as a confirmation.)

The fbFund was unveiled at the TechCrunch 40 conference last month, and as part of the announcement, Facebook backers Accel Partners and Founders’ Fund earmarked $10 million in new funds to give out to app developers as “grants” of between $25,000 and $250,000 each.

“It has become clear that we will receive proposals which contain similar or even identical ideas. As a result, and in order to protect other developers and us from claims that we or anyone else copied material without the creator’s permission, unless we agree otherwise in writing, we can’t promise that any materials or information you submit here will be kept confidential, or specifically that we or others might not develop similar or identical products or services. To make sure that everyone understands the conditions of submitting a grant application, we will not review any materials you have sent via email, and any materials you may have sent have been deleted.”

However well-meaning their intentions are, if the email is indeed authentic, then let me point out the obvious: the Facebook brain trust didn’t think through the implications of their announcement, and rushed to the podium, literally and figuratively. That deserves an “F,” especially for a startup that promises to be social operating system.

Is this a one-time oversight, or part of a pattern? The latter seems to be the case. Previously, the much hyped start-up botched up the launch of a smart feature (news feed), that caused a ruckus and a short-lived backlash. Luckily they dodged the bullet that time. Similarly, at the launch of the Facebook platform, the company showed its organizational ineptitude, keeping partners on tenterhooks.

Launch partner companies have been struggling to deal with uncertainty and last-minute changes to the tools and services made available by Facebook, multiple sources have told GigaOM.

Remember that when Facebook was subpoenaed a few weeks ago by the New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo over issues of “safety,” what got the political opportunist riled up was that the company “ignored” complaints from undercover investigators about “inappropriate sexual advances to underage users.”

The veracity of the charges is up for debate, as commentators in response to my previous post let me know, but regardless: you don’t just ignore complaints from an AG. It was a huge tactical blunder. Add in the fbFund fracas – you can feel that something is not right here.

These repeated botch-ups are signs that the wheels on Facebook, arguably one of the fastest growing startups in Silicon Valley are starting to wobble. Or maybe the autocratic Zuckerburg is a cat with nine lives.

Two Facebook-related blog posts I recommend:

• Anil Dash: Blackbird, Rainman, Facebook and The Watery Web

• Kara Swisher: Facebook Apps are for toddlers.