Facebook Archive

Let’s start this journey by taking a ride back in time. Some of you are too young to remember the Internet of the early 90s. Back then one of the most popular ways to get “online” was to use AOL. This was the popular online service that came via disks you received in the mail. Prodigy and Compuserve were on their way out and this new service AOL was the darling of the time. I went to college in a small town in upstate New York which had no local number for AOL. I had to call to Albany to access AOL. And boy did I access AOL. One of my first months I received a phone bill for over $500 in long-distance charges (where was Vonage back then?!?) and that didn’t even include the AOL access fees. I still use the same username on AOL today that I originally registered way back then.

AOL was exciting – you could read news, send and receive email, play games, IM chat with friends, go into chat rooms based around topics, search for content, listen to music, send eCards, customize the home page to suit your preferences and a variety of other online tasks. In later versions of the AOL desktop, a Web browser was included and other “partners” were added to allow for additional content and, what I will call, applications.

It sure does seem that the more we try to move the Internet forward, the more things seem to copy the old. So with that said, allow me to introduce you to the next version of AOL… AOL 2.0… otherwise known as Facebook.

Read the rest of this entry »

Several years ago I was with a friend at a steakhouse in Berlin and right outside our window were a few huge billboards promoting the Motorola Razr phone. Our discussion that evening seemed to focus mostly on mobile and where the market was headed. It’s amazing how quickly technology has advanced over the past two years. This morning we took a look at the Google Nexus One supersmartphone. Those Razr billboards promoted both Motorola and the Razr device. I was unable to find any information on the Nexus One ordering site that provided information about the phone’s manufacturer (which is HTC).

After posting the Nexus One story, I wrote “facebook phone” on my story ideas pad. This afternoon blogger Robert Scoble also mentioned the idea of a Facebook phone and that some sort of phone with an Android operating system was a possibility.

Back to the Facebook phone in a minute. Are the days of manufacturer-branded phones numbered? What I mean is that in the near future we will buy branded phones. For example, instead of a Nokia 9100A, will we buy the Bing phone (which is manufactured by Nokia). When I walk around Times Square, there are many billboards for HTC and their phones. Does anyone actually care who manufacturers the phone anymore? Does the average consumer select a phone because it’s a Motorola or a Samsung? Or do they select a phone based on the features, software, apps, etc. that are available and most importantly, the device cost. It’s the same reason why I believe Intel is wasting money buying bloggers for their Insiders campaign.

Read the rest of this entry »

It seems the hot Twitter news of the day is that the service might be slowing in U.S. growth. You can read the Twitter stats story on Mashable and TheNextWeb. Earlier in the week the big news for the so-called social media experts was the on and off status of the new “retweet architecture system”. Twitter turned it on for many users (I was not one of them) but then turned it off so they could fix some bugs.

Apparently there are two camps when it comes to the new retweets…one camp likes the consolidated concept and the other camp hates it because they can’t add their 2-cents to the conversation. My guess is that 90% of re-sharing on Twitter is either direct sharing of something Mashable posted or the addition of “lol”.

This past summer I wrote about how Friendfeed could generate massive income and also reach the mainstream. Sadly that never happened because Friendfeed sold out to Facebook. While it looks like Facebook wasn’t reading, this morning I started to think that perhaps Twitter was. What really got me thinking was something I read on Patricia Handschiegel’s blog. While she discusses the way Twitter defined their service in the beginning, she uses the word forum throughout the column.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, Adaptive Blue hosted the “The Changing Role of PR in Publishing and Tech” meetup in NYC. The panelists were (from left to right in the video): Chantelle K from Yelp, Kristin M from Attention PR, Ami G. from Macmillan and Russ M from RussCommunications.

The panel discussion lasted an hour and I’ve split the video into 20-minute segments – you can view the videos below. Some notes from the panelists:

• Chantelle loads Tweetdeck the moment she hits the office to check Twitter and spends 30 minutes to 1 hour each day going through what her friends sent her
• Kristen discussed using the bit.ly URL shortener as a way to track ROI
• At about the 18 minutes mark in the first video, Chantelle explains how they went to market for their iPhone app using an exclusive with Robert Scoble. She notes that they saw great results by using Robert to get the word out about the app and were even able to get an exciting trending topic on Twitter. They didn’t give the news to the NYT or Newsweek. They met with Robert several times beforehand to build a relationship with Robert. Later on Chantelle noted that depending on the type of story they are trying to push, they will use different sources to work with.

There was a discussion about analytics in the second video although I found the analysis weak. There was no mention about real-value stats – just simple discussion about how many followers or fans a brand has. My guess is that in late 2010 ”followers and fans” will be the hits of 1995.

In the third video there is a discussion about whether to hire a PR firm or if you should look at bringing a person on-board internally.
Read the rest of this entry »

Swiss-based Sobees has announced updates to their two client applications: bDule and Sobees. Founder Francois Bochatay explains the difference between the two application by noting that bDule is their starter kit providing a Windows-based client combining Twitter and Facebook support. Sobees is a multi-window application that combines many “bDules” together.

Most of the updates in today’s 0.9.6.5 release are usability and performance enhancements. They have also rewritten the Flickr search. The new functionality is the addition of Digg and the Digg search along with the ability to submit items from others windows to Digg. They have also added new themed content windows for the MLB, soccer, tennis and the NFL.

The Sobees tools compete in the same space as Tweetdeck and the new Seesmic. Currently the Sobees tools are only available for Windows. The company is working on a cross-platform version which they expect to release this summer.

Last night was like Times Square at New Year’s for geeks. Everyone sat at their computer waiting for the stroke of midnight to claim their new exciting URL on Facebook.

Interestingly enough, it seemed like it only took one minute before some “people” started to claim some interesting names. Some are calling the names below spam – I guess only time will tell if they picked these vanity URLs for fun or for something more serious.

The list includes (both with the dot and without):

• /free.porn
• /freeporn
• /online.gambling
• /onlinegambling
• /buy.phentermine – Todd says he registered this one as a joke and he agrees with my previous posts regarding domain branding
• /buyphentermine
• /cheapairfares
• /cheap.airfares
• /cheap.hotels
• /cheaphotels
• /cheapcruises
• /cheap.cruises
• /freeipod
• /free.ipod

Have you found anything else that seems odd with the Facebook Vanity URLs? Leave them below in the comments and I will add them to the list.

Earlier this week I shared my thoughts on why you should use your own domain name for marketing instead of a social network link. Owen Stone (aka Ohdoctah) posted his thoughts in a video which is a must watch (embedded below) about Facebook’s vanity URLs and social network links in general.

Owen notes, “You need the tools like facebook and twitter to grow, but the first think out of your mouth should ALWAYS be YOUR brand.” In the video he talks about a variety of people including Michael Jordan and Pdiddy. Owen also makes a good point about missing the opportunity to connect with users/customers who aren’t on Facebook.

I continue to say that you should get your brand’s vanity url for protection but never use it for marketing or promotion. This process makes for a better customer experience.