Aug 142009

Facebook’s search tool has never been considered the crown jewel of the Social Networking site. This past week however they rolled out new functionality that breathed much-needed life into the struggling search bar.

Dave Barger of LunaWeb does a great job showing us exactly how these new additions may change the way you use Facebook:

This upgrade, along with Facebook’s recent acquisition of social aggregator FriendFeed (made up of several former Google employees), seems to foreshadow big news in the upcoming months for the site’s search feature and who knows what else…

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Please note: This is Pure Gut/Hunch Prediction.

Short and Sweet: Microsoft’s Office Online (“Web Office”) will be offered for free to individuals within Facebook (either as platform or a Facebook app). A paid “Web Office” package will be available for small businesses. The paid version will be within a collaborative framework much like an extranet. This fee-based package will essentially be a hybrid of a Facebook group and a public profile (“fan page”).

Microsoft Facebook after Google Lunch

More Details: There are developments that need to precede this evolution:

  • FB Groups will need extra functionality like applications, super admin, auto friend list(of colleagues).
  • Alternatively, “public profiles” will need privacy and membership options.

Facebook needs to pay more attention to its individual users before adding more business tools.  Lately, Facebook has been adding increased functionality for businesses, but not adding much for the individuals. Facebook must balance this out or risk alienating individuals.

Facebook users are already spending an immense amount of time on the site (increasingly for business).  Facebook is a mature, proven, and currently unmatched social network platform. Facebook’s popularity and Zuckerberg’s genius are formidable opponents to Google.  The increasing potential for Facebook to unleash it’s new display ad platform (more speculation on my part) across the immense number of Facebook Connect(ed) sites with ads that outperform Adwords is a major threat to Google.

luncheater

Thundering through Google’s product development cycle are: Wave, the new OS, and Voice. All of these are “game changers” in their own right.

With both Microsoft and Facebook being Google competitors (and with Microsoft’s ~2% ownership of Facebook), a collaborative project to erode Google share will be incredibly appealing and add tidal waves of motion to an already fluid medium.

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Image Attribution:
Sandwich: http://flickr.com/photos/john/2358626284
John Watson
Boy Eating:  http://flickr.com/photos/philscoville/3263542598
Phil Scoville
Thank you John and Phil for using Creative Commons licensing.
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Jun 302009

If you’ve managed to make it past your 2nd grade P.E. class you’ve learned that there are some people who just don’t like to play by the rules. There was the kid who didn’t go “out” in dodgeball when the coach wasn’t looking, the one who didn’t study for the test and read off of yours instead and the one who stepped to the front of every lunch line.

While things change and people grow up, there are always a few people who manage to hold on to this mindset as they step into their professional lives. The rules are irrelevant to them and the rest of us get left in the dust. Social Media has been riddled with spammers and even legit companies trying to get ahead by circumventing the rules of the platform.

Dont cheat by quinn.anya on Flickr

"Don't cheat" by quinn.anya on Flickr

LunaWeb has fallen victim to one of these social delinquients as of late in the flurry of excitement surrounding Facebook’s new vanity URLs.

When the URLs were first released they were only available to individuals and Public Profiles with more than 1000 fans. While we weren’t huge fans at being left out of the loop (we don’t have 1000 fans but we’d love it if you were one) we bade our time until Facebook allowed the smaller pages to start claiming URLs.

This past Sunday night we logged in at the appointed time to claim our vanity URL at long last, only to discover it had been done several days before by an individual profile from a person suspiciously named LunaWeb Agence. Apparently a French company of the same name created a fake profile for the purpose of snagging the URL before anyone else did.

You can bet we’ll be taking this issue up with Facebook and we’ll keep you posted on what happens. Until then… play fair.

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Earlier today ReadWriteWeb posted about Facebook’s impending Public Status Updates under the title “The Day Facebook Changed Forever: Messages to Become Public By Default.”  The post had made some assumptions based on Facebook’s blog post “More Ways to Share in the Publisher” AND empirical results obtained from actually using the new feature.  The problem was the new feature being tried was still buggy. The actual functionality and the functionality described in the blog post did not match. The actual experience trumped the described functionality in the blog post.

At first glance, it might seem that ReadWriteWeb jumped the gun and will take some credibility hits. However, the abstract nature of written specifications prevails and thus they are naturally discounted, even ignored, when there are hands-on opportunities to observe the (specified) behavior.

This makes the case for prototyping. To some, it may also substantiate a process involving hands-on interface and functional development before expending effort on detailed specifications (and given the situation, to question the utility of detailed specifications at all).

The argument for or against detailed specifications will never end.

Arguably, in verifying their source, ReadWriteWeb did what comes naturally (and even made a screencast video of it to further communicate the functionality).

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