Facebook

Currently the only search that Facebook offers globally is a search within Facebook itself. Greg Sterling is wondering if Facebook should add the Microsoft Live Search to the site. The idea makes sense seeing as Microsoft has $240 million invested into the social network. It's certainly a question of when not if.

Bebo is currently using Yahoo (who knows if that will change now that AOL owns the social network) and Google has MySpace all locked up.

Sterling notes, 'Adding a Live Search box (and related search ads) would boost not only the utility of the Facebook site but monetization as well. It would also give Microsoft a "back door" way to expose millions of users to Live Search.'

Live Search integration would potentially keep users within the Facebook framework for at least one additional monetizable click. Getting wild for a minute, could Facebook create the next Wikipedia?

The only reason not to would be if Zuck and pals don't think the Live Search is up to par with the other search offerings. Things that make you go hmm!

Check out the video below. It's from the Idiots of Ants who are a comedy group based in the U.K. It starts with a poke and ends with a game of Facebook Scrabble. Best part, "do you want to be my friend, confirm or ignore!"

What this video shows is that there still is a difference between how people act online and how they act offline. MORE »

Video hosting service Viddler is out today with a new Facebook application which I have to admit is pretty damn slick. It replicates the majority of functionality from Viddler.com into Facebook. Viddler's lead social developer Kyle Slattery was the man behind the application. The app uses Viddler's new open API and is a great way to show off the power of their API.

The Viddler Facebook app shows your videos plus the latest videos from Viddler and the daily highlighted videos. It appears to handle widescreen videos as well. Developer evangelist Colin Devroe tells me that soon search functionality will be added. You can also add videos into Viddler directly from inside Facebook. MORE »

LinkedIn community evangelist Mario Sundar has posted a chart from Nielsen showing the top social networks and their growth over the past year (March-March). I've embedded the chart below. The analysis is based on U.S. home and work traffic and does not include international traffic.

LinkedIn shows growth at 319% while Facebook only grew 98% and MySpace barely grew at 9%. I'd suggest that Facebook and MySpace have the market nearly tapped so their growth will be slower than LinkedIn. Buzznet also grew nicely at 49%.

A year ago the Facebook fans claimed LinkedIn was dead and that Facebook would replace LinkedIn as the business networking tool of choice. I haven't seen that happen and if anything, I've seen more LinkedIn requests than Facebook requests lately. Do you believe Facebook will still replace LinkedIn as the business social network?

Drama 2.0 also wonders Are the Most LinkedIn Really LinkedOut?

This post is in response to Inside Facebook’s post entitled, What CPM is your app making? As someone who is in charge of quite a bit of digital advertising budget from 12 brands ranging from consumer electronics to financial services and many things in between, I find advertising in/around Facebook applications very challenging and questionable. As marketers get smarter about their media selection and care about joining the conversation with their audience, extremely integrated opportunities have emerged within the digital space.

For quite a few marketers, their audiences are on social networks such as Facebook. As many Facebook users are installing applications and such, the marketers are trying to buy their way into the consumers attention span.

Just as we have advertising networks such as Advertising.com, we’re starting to see the same type of networks emerge within the widget/application space. If history repeats itself (which it very likely will), we will see these widget/application networks create standardized ad units (IAB standard if not already) and go on a scaling spree… how much inventory can they sign up to maximize their reach across the web. The top 2-3 will be acquired to bundle into a Platform-A type approach by most media companies, and the world will not be any better off than it was prior…. why? Because these type of ads are non-integrated. Most of these ads run alongside these applications and don’t have high interaction rates. MORE »

Last weekend I joked around on Twitter regarding the ads I see on Facebook on the left menu. As a single man in my 30s, the ads are always sexual in nature -- some examples: "Hot Singles Waiting For You" and "30s Singles Looking for Love", etc. Apparently single men in their 30s are only interested in sex says Facebook. I wondered what women see in that spot so I changed my sex as a test. As a woman the ads were much more general. Sure, some are around sex with singles ads, but as a woman I am also presented with a variety of more general ads. Weight loss ads seem to be the most popular because clearly men have no weight issues (??) along with "mature 45+" singles ads coming in right behind. This week I will try female married and female widowed -- any bets on the ads that will be displayed?

This afternoon Charles Hudson said that social networking advertising will be harder than we think. Hudson notes that he's used Twitter and Facebook as social shopping tools outside of the advertising to gain insight from his friends. This model he says hurts both services because they didn't capture a piece of the pie.

For 10+ years I've said that most times when a service tells me they can't get advertisers, it winds up being more about their lack of ability to sell ads rather than lack of inventory. In Hudson's example, both Twitter and Facebook could slap an affiliate code on the links that go out to the merchants and earn revenue on the transaction. FatWallet has made a very successful business this way and just think about how much larger Facebook is. Why any link from Facebook to Amazon would go out without an affiliate code is beyond me. And there are hundreds of other ways Facebook and other social networks can generate revenue. Cheesy bottom feeding CPM ads only hurt the image of the company.

Since day 1 with Facebook, I've been shocked at how poor the ad quality is. For a company that has a $15B valuation, their ad sales teams plain suck. Do you seriously mean to tell me that all they can sell for a man is sex ads? Facebook knows more about me than many of my friends do, and should be able to easily provide ads that benefit me along with providing a strong revenue stream for Facebook.

While I agree with Hudson that social services will be used in some ways that the service might not be able to monetize, the truth is that so many of the social networks do a piss-poor job of bringing in relevant ads. Most of the social networks talk to their users about what they want in a service, but never talk about the ads they would like to see. Why is it so scary to have this type of conversation? Frankly I don't know. But I do know that Facebook is wasting super cheap CPM ads on me for dating services while there are so many other types of ads that I might actually be interested in.

Rodney at FaceReviews is reporting that the Facebook application count has passed 20,000 today. Rodney notes, "The big trend to take note of here is that applications are becoming better (less annoying). They are adding more functionality and moving into more complex ground." He goes on to say that there is still plenty of room for new apps to launch and prosper.

How many of the 20,000 are poke, super poke, ultimate poke, super dooper poke, reverse poke, top down poke, retro poke, 80s poke, city poke, farmer poke, you get the point. Is there a breakdown of the 20,000 available that displays the apps by category?

While there was a good bit of discussion late last year of Facebook taking over as the business networking tool over LinkedIn, it appears that this chatter has died out. I still see LinkedIn as the business networking tool and Facebook as the personal networking tool.

Mobile social communications provider Jangl is announcing a new distribution relationship with PerfSpot today. Nielsen Online recently ranked PerfSpot as the U.K.'s fastest-growing social media site, with PerfSpot witnessing over 700 percent growth in the last nine months of 2008. The company self-reports over 50,000 new members signing up daily.

Jangl already has applications inside of Bebo, Facebook, Friendster and Match.com. This new partnership with PerfSpot will allow members to send texts, make calls and send voicemail messages online and on mobile devices. The services are ad-supported and Jangl provides the ads before each of the above services are utilized by the end user.

Hart Cunningham, founder and CEO of PerfSpot.com said, "Jangl knows how to make social networks and phones hook up, and that's why we chose them."

Jangl has also released an update to their Facebook app (see screenshot below) which allows you to call or text your Facebook friends using a number generated by Jangl.

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan over at the Mojo blogging network has an interesting post this evening about Xobni. Xobni (inbox spelled backwards ya'all!) is an add-on for Microsoft Outlook. Ash believes that Xobni should be acquired by Facebook, not the much rumored Microsoft acquisition.

Ash doesn't provide backup for his argument except that the VC firms would prefer to get in bed with Facebook than Microsoft. He also notes that Facebook will eventually be acquired by Microsoft if they don't go down the IPO route. I don't see why Facebook would want Xobni.

Xobni is currently a valley darling and apparently has a hot product. The service currently only works with Outlook though I hear they are working on porting to other systems as well. I tried the Xobni service for several months and eventually removed it as it sucked ram big time and I never found much value in the tool which apparently provides a social graph layer on top of the traditional mailbox.

On the flipside, I enjoy reading the Xobni blog as it provides an inside look at what the team is working on, how they work and their passions, both on- and off-line. More startups need to create insider blogs as they help to humanize a technology service.

If Microsoft comes a knocking, Xobni should be quick to work with them. If they decide not to, Microsoft can easily spend the capital needed to build what Xobni has and Xobni might be looking at a darker future. Check out our previous Xobni coverage.

I've been thinking recently about how the ability to go "live" may affect many careers. Using the Sarah Lacy/Mark Zuckerberg keynote as our example, I want to share some thoughts with you. Whether you are a blogger or an entrepreneur, the ability to recognize when you've screwed up is critical for success.

Unlike those watching from far away, I was actually there in the room, arrived nearly two hours early so I could sit in the front and get ready to live blog the event. I watched the room fill up, people standing along the sides, cropped down, chairs changed to couches and audio tests. The number of cameras snapping photos when Mark came out was simply amazing - in fact it seemed like a press conference with the number of photographers in the pit. read more »