Facebook

One of the major pieces of the keynote address provided by Mark Zuckerberg yesterday was around how huge Facebook is internationally and how Facebook appreciates all of the various language versions that have been created. In fact he said that most of the growth in membership comes from their international versions.

Yet when we look at the initial launch partners for Facebook Connect, 6 of the 24 are from outside California and only one is from outside the U.S. Four of the launch partners are from IAC and three are part of CBS. Here's a list of the intial Facebook Connect launch partners and their headquarters location. Marc Bernegger also notes that only one company is non-U.S.

• ABC TV _ Los Angeles
• Amiando - Munich, Germany
• CBS - New York
• Citysearch - NYC - Part of IAC
• CNET - Silicon Valley - Part of CBS
• CollegeHumor - NYC - Part of IAC
• Digg - Silicon Valley
• Disney - Los Angeles
• Evite - Los Angeles - Part of IAC
• Flock - Silicon Valley
• Hulu - Los Angeles
• Kongregate - Silicon Valley
• Loopt - Silicon Valley
• Plaxo - Silicon Valley
• Radar - Silicon Valley
• Red Bull- Los Angeles
• Seesmic - Silicon Valley
• SocialThing - Silicon Valley
• StumbleUpon - Silicon Valley - Part of eBay
• Twitter - Silicon Valley
• Six Apart - Silicon Valley
• The Insider - NYC - Part of CBS
• Uber - Los Angeles
• Vimeo - NYC - Part of IAC
• Xobni - Silicon Valley

Should Facebook have worked harder for location diversity in the companies they selected for their initial Facebook Connect launch partners?

This afternoon was the big Facebook F8 Developer Platform keynote from CEO Mark Zuckerberg. We were able to catch it on video and shrink it down to a simple 5 minutes. You can also check out live coverage of the event on Techcrunch, VentureBeat and All Facebook.

There are 24 partners on the new Facebook Connect including what looks like one non-U.S. company, Amiando. Sam Gustin notes regarding the keynote, "there just wasn't that much "there" -- there." On a serious note, how does this affect OpenID?

Please enjoy our videotaped broadcast of the Facebook F8 Developer Platform Keynote.

Last October we asked Facebook to widen the application pages to allow for better usability and monetization. Today Hussein Fazal, AdParlor CEO, has put together an his thoughts on how advertising on Facebook applications might change with this new redesign.

There are two components to speak of when discussing how the new Facebook profile will affect advertising. First, let's look at the ads put out by facebook themselves throughout the site. Secondly, we'll look at what effect the facebook profile redesign will have on platform applications and the ads which may appear on these apps.

Let's talk about the facebook ads themselves first - These ads will now be appearing in the right hand column but starting higher on the page. In the current version, the ads appear in the left column but underneath the applications. This is a better placement for facebook ads as it seems to be more prominent. Have a look at the screenshot below. The blank white space on the right is where the ads will go. Although this is not confirmed, this is the feeling I got while speaking to Rebecca Sawyer of Facebook's Monetization Team at the Facebook developer garage in Toronto. Note also that the left hand column for ads is 150px wide in the current design and it seems that the right hand column in the new design has room for an extra 15px of width - this could give the standard 120x600 banner a little more white space to stand out.

Now on to custom facebook applications and ads that may appear on the new application canvas pages. The canvas page will now be 760px instead of 646px - meaning that social networking ad networks should probably be offering a new ad size!

More importantly however than the width change, is how user engagement with applications will change as a result of the redesign. Applications can now have their own tab in the new tabbed profile design - as seen above. Unfortunately however, many apps will end up losing overall user engagement as they are automatically being moved from the main profile page to the new 'boxes' tab.

User engagement is what will affect advertising on these applications the most. It seems as if developers who take advantage of the tabs and who have an engaging application will benefit - while those apps that are not that exciting and are not updated will lose daily active users - a key metric in determining how many advertising dollars app developers can attract.

The new facebook profile is still buggy and incomplete but you can try it out by going to http://www.new.facebook.com. It should be launched to the public next week!

Social networking service Facebook is currently down. Our sources tell us this is due to the Scrabble news from this morning. It's important to remain calm during this brief (we hope) outage. The first reports came in about 4:25pm Eastern.

Don't bring out the fail whale just yet- but have it ready should it be needed.

You could use this time to update your LinkedIn profile, fix up your MySpace page, consider cleaning your apartment or getting outside into the Air - just don't say that it's Adobe's Air - then you will face all kinds of drama.

Of course, most people in real life don't want to make friends - check out this video to see what I mean.

For all of you looking for a triple-word score, rejoice! Scrabble is now officially on Facebook in the U.S. and in Canada. SCRABBLE from EA on Facebook Platform will be the first EA Hasbro-licensed property to go live on a social networking site. Scrabble is a very complicated game - not just on the board but with regards to the property rights as well.

Update: I can't find Scrabble on Facebook as of yet. Perhaps EA and Mattel shouldn't put out press releases until said game is live?

Jordan over at Marketing Pilgrim has a look from April into who owns what. Basically Mattel owns the Scrabble rights outside the U.S. and Canada and they launched a Facebook version in April. Today's announcement brings Scrabble to the worldwide Facebook audience. What's silly is that two development teams built the same game - what a waste of company resources.

Back in January, Erick looked at Scrabulous and how the Facebook community came together to attempt to save the game. He noted that the “Save Scrabulous” group has over 46,000 Facebook members.

Amit has a good look at how Scrabulous developers Jayant Agarwalla and Rajat Agarwalla, monetize their casual game using Google AdSense to the tune of $20,000 a month. Today's announcement certainly will hurt - to what extent is still unknown.

EA and Mattel have also announced that Scrabble is available on the Pogo games network. The Pogo version will have additional hidden features that aren't available in the Facebook version.

In case you are wondering how some tech blogs would do in Scrabble, here you go:

• SiliconAlleyInsider - 25
• CenterNetworks - 23
• TechCrunch - 22
• Readwriteweb - 21
• Inquisitr - 18 (got the big Q but nothing else to boost)
• Venturebeat - 16
• Mashable - 15
• Webware - 14
• Profy - 13
• Gigaom - 10

(yes i get that the sites all have a different number of letters, just smile geez)

Amtrak is excited to announce the launch of a new train service - the 2107 Microblogging Express. Please view the video below to experience a trip on the new 2107 Microblogging Express. We make a variety of station stops and connect to all local service.

This service even includes new services Posterous and Identi.ca.

People referenced in the video: Sarah Perez, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, Steven Hodson, Corvida and Steve Rubel. Our special tickettaker is Tamar Weinberg.

Found via Orli Yakuel, Facebook has announced that they have opened their translations application to 55 more languages today. Back in February Facebook launched the Spanish version of the social network and currently they support 16 languages. I call dibs on Leet Speak!

For those of you new to Web 2.0 and social networking, the translations application inside of Facebook is a "crowdsourced" application. Using this nifty Web 2.0 dictionary, we've learned that crowdsourced = free labor.

With the amount of funding and a $15 billion valuation, they can't afford to pay locals to help translate the service? Some of the people in these countries could certainly use the money. Of course once this project has completed, Facebook's local usage should move higher resulting in potentially additional ad impressions that will result in more income for Facebook.

Here are the languages they are seeking help with: Latin, Esperanto, Yiddish, Català, Ceština, Dansk, Deutsch, English, Español, Français, Italiano, Nederlands, Norsk (Bokmål), Polski, Português (Brasil), Suomi, Svenska, Íslenska, Afrikaans, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Melayu, Basa Jawa, Cymraeg, Eesti, English (GB), Español (Chile), Español (Colombia), Español (España), Español (México), Español (Venezuela), Esperanto, Euskara, Français (Canada), Føroyskt, Gaeilge, Galego, Hrvatski, Kiswahili, Latviešu, Leet Speak, Lietuviu, Limburgs, Magyar, Malagasy fiteny, Malti, Nederlands (België), Norsk (Nynorsk), Português (Portugal), Româna, Shqip, Slovencina, Slovenšcina, Soomaaliga, Tagalog, Tatarça, Türkçe, bosanski jezik, isiXhosa, isiZulu, lingua latina, rumantsch grischun.

Today was day 2 of Graphing Social Patterns East. I attended a majority of the sessions, moderated a panel and also met more awesome CN readers. I think Dave McClure did a great job in leading the overall conference. He was approachable all day, greeted many of the conference attendees and kept things moving basically on-time. One of the techniques Dave used was to play funny and viral videos between each session. Since the sessions were all in the same room, it was a great break between the sessions and lightened the mood quite a bit, especially with the miserable heat outside!

The one thing the conference seems to be missing is buzz, excitement and chatter. The media/press room was basically empty except for Adam Ostrow of Mashable. Maybe it's the fact that all the sessions are in the same room but the conversations and typical high energy just seem to be missing here (maybe it's the heat). It seems more like a training session atmosphere. Nothing like the photos and videos from the GSP on the West coast.

Kent Schoen - Facebook

Kent was supposed to lead a discussion about "Facebook Business and Marketing Solutions" but to me it felt more like, "Facebook Stats Showoff." Kent noted that Facebook ads will always be unique and social in nature. Basically he explained that the benefit of buying ads on Facebook is that your ads will be seen by your friends and they can then interact with the ad and spread it to their friends, etc.

Here are some of the stats and updates he shared:

• Four times the invites sent on eVite are sent on Facebook monthly (16m vs 66m)
• Over 150,000 pages have been created and 85,000,000 fans have signed up to the available pages.

Hooman Radfar - Clearspring CEO

Hooman spoke about widgets in general during his discussion. I liked his definition of a "social application" = "widget plus a canvas plus the ability to push socially and virally." One thing he said that I agree with is that analytics and tracking is the key for a successful social campaign. I see way too many companies investing in social media without any measurement. It's like throwing money down the drain.

Hooman closed by speaking about cross-promotion of widgets and social applications and how it's one of the keys for success. He explained that Slide and RockYou can launch a new widget or social app and receive immediate users because they can cross promote it into the apps that are already in use.

Evening Party

Tonight's party was put on by the SocialTimes and SocialCash. Josh at ReadWriteWeb has some info on Social Cash today. The party was held at a very upscale sushi club (wtf?) and the crowd was hopping. The place was jam-packed and the conversation was good. I finally got to meet Chris Saad of the DataPortability project and Sean Ammirati of ReadWriteTalk and mSpoke.

As I was leaving, the folks at SocialCash handed me a bag - which looks similar to a "loot" bag I remember getting as a kid. Inside the bag was a t-shirt (who wants it, email me!), a credit card which apparently is used to cash out the rewards you earn on SocialCash. Also in the bag was $1 dollar bills - 100 of them!!! Damn. I am waiting for confirmation from SocialCash but I may have been given the "winning" bag with all of the loot inside. Somehow I am thinking each of the 100 bags were supposed to contain a $1 bill. I will update this post once I receive confirmation. Check out the photo below for confirmation.

See everyone tomorrow - don't be a stranger - say hi and grab a CN sticker!

We haven't written about many Facebook apps recently but today one caught our eye. It's from Moneybookers (similar to PayPal) based in the U.K.. Moneybookers is one of the largest money transfer services online with over 4.6 million worldwide customers.

The Moneybookers Facebook application is currently in beta and will launch to the entire Facebook community next month. While Moneybookers pushes it as a "social fundraising" application, all of the normal Moneybookers money transfer services will be available inside the application.

The application will expand Moneybookers' ability to extend their reach by offering their services to the millions of Facebook users. It appears that the fee structure for the Facebook application will match the current Moneybookers fee structure (also similar to PayPal).

I prefer the security of logging directly into Moneybookers or PayPal when I send and/or receive money. Not sure I will feel comfortable completing the transaction inside the Facebook framework.

By now we’ve all read the recent data portability announcements by Google (Friend Connect), MySpace (Data Availability) and Facebook (Facebook Connect) to extend social functionality outside of their walls to any website.

Since these announcements were made I’ve been asked for my opinion about what it means to web publishers, the market and KickApps. I believe all three will be useful but the key point if you’re a publisher is to what degree do YOU want and need to own YOUR site’s audience’s’profile data and activities data. This will dictate how you use or don’t use any of the three.

At the highest level, core to every publisher is its brand, editorial content/voice and relationship with its audience. As the web becomes more social, access by the publisher to their audience’s Profile and Social Graph (audience data and activities) becomes extremely important. Having this information becomes a powerful tool that delivers deep insight into their audience, which informs editorial programming and marketing. Crucially, it plays a huge role in delivering truly targeted advertising. more »