Earlier this week I wrote a post about how I didn't like that I couldn't alter the Facebook Connect privacy settings for updates from Foursquare, an iPhone app that shares my location through a GPS-enabled city directory. It didn't make sense to me that Facebook Connect information was automatically visible to anyone who had access to posts on my "wall," whereas privacy settings on a third-party app embedded directly on my profile were much more fine-tuned, allowing me to restrict them to specific subsets of friends.
I've been e-mailing back and forth with Facebook, and I've gotten some clarification on how the process works. Privacy controls for embedded apps aren't as simple as I'd thought. I can opt to block the "box" for a third-party game like Mafia Wars or Farmville, as the privacy controls indicate, but activity from those apps--i.e. if I just picked up a new weapon in Mafia Wars--will still show up to anyone who can see what I post on my Facebook wall, like status messages and new friend connections. (You can, however, block individual Platform apps from posting to your wall in the first place.)
"Activity from apps and Connect sites are grouped with the activity you take on Facebook (which then appears on your wall), all of which can be blocked from a select group of people using publisher privacy," Facebook representative Malorie Lucich explained to me via e-mail. "So, for example, if you don't want your boss seeing your Mafia Wars activity and your usual Facebook activity, you can block her/him from viewing your wall."
Everything on the wall, therefore, is treated as a single unit. Except not quite: With status messages and content posted directly through Facebook, as part of Facebook's new privacy controls there's now a drop-down menu that lets me choose exactly who can see that message--the public Web, friends of friends, only my friends or "networks," or stratified groups of friends. That's great, because I can post a status message asking for Christmas present suggestions, and opt to block it from my family or other potential gift recipients.
For third-party apps, I'm not so lucky. I'm sure I wasn't the only Facebook member who figured that blocking the Mafia Wars "box" from a certain list of friends would also block activity updates on my wall. According to Facebook, it doesn't.
I'm also sure I'm not the only one who would like to use Facebook Connect with a service like Foursquare that isn't normally public; I liked some of the comments that would appear on "check-ins" pushed to Facebook (when I checked into a restaurant, for example, a few people responded with their favorite menu items, and another asked about the variety of beers on tap). But wanting to keep them restricted to half or a third or a quarter of my Facebook friends is not always just a matter of privacy--the majority of my Facebook friends have no interest whatsoever in which coffee shop I just checked into on the likes of Foursquare or Gowalla, and out of courtesy I don't want to plaster it all over everyone's news feeds. I'd like Foursquare's implementation of Facebook Connect, theoretically, to only be visible to close friends and people who live nearby.
Facebook is, and should be, proud of the wealth of data that gets shared on members' "walls." On Friday morning, I used my status message to solicit tips for an upcoming tropical getaway, and got some terrific suggestions from people in my "social graph" whom I hadn't talked to in ages. This was a great example of something that I'd like to open up to my entire Facebook network. But when it comes to information that's local, sensitive, or otherwise private, I'd like to be able to restrict it. As Facebook Connect grows bigger and more diverse, these instances are likely to come up more often.
So if I had to come up with a most-wished-for new Facebook feature, this might have to be it.
When Facebook Connect launched a little over a year ago, Facebook said it had big things planned for the service, which lets users log in to third-party sites with their Facebook credentials and bring their social identity with them. The numbers now seem to bear out those high hopes.
The social network said Wednesday that Facebook Connect is now available on more than 80,000 Web sites and is being used by more than 60 million people. Wow.
"Facebook was developed with the idea that friends make every experience better, and with Facebook Connect that same concept is extended off of Facebook so that you can view your News Feed and updates where and when you want," the company wrote in a blog post. "With just a few clicks on an external Web site, your Facebook content, privacy settings, and friends follow you to make your experience on that website more social and meaningful."
Perhaps Facebook Connect's best quality is ubiquity. The service is employed in several iPhone apps, it's available on sites like CBS.com (Disclosure: CBS.com is owned by CBS, which also owns CNET), as well as this site. Even Xbox 360 owners can use Facebook Connect.
But just where Facebook will be taking Connect in the future is unknown. The company didn't say in the blog post whether it had any plans to update the service. All it said was that "soon, connected experiences will extend to even more platforms, all with Facebook as the underlying technology."
Any guesses? Let's hear what you think in the comments below.
MySpace's rumored adoption of Facebook Connect could be happening in the near future--as soon as early 2010, Inside Facebook reports.
MySpace and Facebook have historically been rivals, with Facebook having ousted MySpace from their spot as the top social network, but their relations have been of a friendlier nature as of late. It appears as though MySpace has effectively given up on winning the social-networking war and is instead focusing on its already strong entertainment business, which includes the market leader, MySpace Music.
The extent of MySpace's Facebook Connect integration isn't yet known, but it is expected initially to leverage MySpace's media content, like music. This news comes right on the heels of Yahoo announcing a massive Facebook Connect implementation across all of its sites. Facebook and Google are currently battling it out for the Web identity crown. With Yahoo and MySpace out of the race, 2010 should prove to be an interesting year as Facebook and Google both try to carve out pieces of the market.
Yahoo is bringing Facebook into just about all of its Web sites, allowing users to update their Facebook status and share news items with friends right from the Yahoo page.
The company announced the integration of Facebook Connect across several key Yahoo Web sites including Mail, News, Sports, and Finance. The idea is to drive even more readers to Yahoo's network of sites--the second largest in the U.S.--by making it easier for them to share things they like with their Facebook friends, some of whom may not have seen the Yahoo item otherwise.
Yahoo already offers a few hooks into Facebook, but this partnership strengthens the relationship between the two sites. The integration will take awhile, however; Yahoo said not to expect the process to begin until the first half of next year.
It foreshadowed the Facebook Connect integration at an event in August, when Yahoo announced social-networking features within properties such as Mail and Messenger. Those updates were restricted to friends within the Yahoo network, however. Facebook and Twitter are where the social-networking junkies congregate.
Web site publishers using Google Friend Connect can now allow users to connect through profiles, and serve them targeted ads based on those profiles.
(Credit: Google)Google Friend Connect is adding a few features that make it easier for Web site publishers to build their own social networks.
Visitors to Web sites that use Google Friend Connect will soon have the option of filling out a profile on that site that can connect them to like-minded individuals who frequent those sites. They can then search for other profiles on that site with matching tags, introduce themselves to those users through the site without having to post an e-mail address, and see content on the site tailored to their interests, said Mussie Shore, product manager for Google Friend Connect.
The whole idea behind the Google Friend Connect tool "is to make it easy for site owners to add social features to their site without having coding capabilities," Shore said. Google offers several services for Web publishers like this one, such as Google Web Elements.
The new features expand on ones unveiled last year. Site owners using the service will also be able to create and target newsletters based on the new profile information, and gather data about their interests as to make decisions about site content.
And, of course, it all comes back to the ads. Google Friend Connect publishers can now serve extremely targeted AdSense ads to individual visitors based on the preferences they declare on their profile page.
"I hope at their best they are beautiful, funny, warm, poignant, odd, and memorable," Sophie Blackall says of the paintings in her Missed Connections series.
(Credit: Sophie Blackall)OK, so your "Missed Connection" post on Craigslist never led to a great romance with that cute hipster who looked your way on the L train--let alone an e-mail from anyone vaguely resembling her. But those hopeful words you sent out into the ether may not be lost after all.
Brooklyn illustrator Sophie Blackall is immortalizing Missed Connections posts in the form of some pretty wonderful and whimsical paintings. And who knows? Maybe your note to that girl with the nose ring and headphones is now a work of art.
"Messages in bottles, smoke signals, letters written in the sand; the modern equivalents are the funny, sad, beautiful, hopeful, hopeless, poetic posts on Missed Connections Web sites," Blackall writes on her blog. "Every day hundreds of strangers reach out to other strangers on the strength of a glance, a smile or a blue hat. Their messages have the lifespan of a butterfly. I'm trying to pin a few of them down."
Her original paintings, created with Chinese ink and watercolor, measure about 11 inches by 17 inches and have names like "Hairy Bearded Swimmer," "I Had a Blue Hat," and "Seeking Girl Who Bit Me TWICE Last Night While We Were Dancing."
Blackall sells 8.5 inch by 11 inch prints of her illustrations for $40 (with free shipping) on crafts site Etsy and plans to release a book based on the series in 2012.
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Facebook made a dual set of announcements this week pertaining to Facebook Connect, the universal-log-in product that it offers to third-party developers and Web sites. Both are aimed at making Connect more ubiquitous: first, a tool called "Translations for Facebook Connect" that simplifies the process of translating the product into international languages, and second, the "Facebook Connect Wizard" for incorporating the product into a site with little developer expertise required.
Facebook first announced that Connect would be available in a multilingual format this summer. Now, the tool can be used to translate any site into the language of a given user who's logged in with Connect.
Last we heard, about 15,000 sites had implemented Facebook Connect, a product that statistics firm Hitwise says gave the social network enough momentum to propel it past once-bigger rival MySpace in terms of U.S. traffic. Launching international translations of the main Facebook site--which the company ended up "crowdsourcing" to users starting early last year--is largely credited with kickstarting the social network's growth overseas.
Facebook now has over 300 million active users around the world, a sizable majority of which are outside the U.S.
Plugging in Facebook Connect information with the three-step 'wizard.'
(Credit: Facebook)"Establishing a presence on the social Web requires fundamental building blocks," a post by Facebook employee Alex Himel explained as it announced the Facebook Connect Wizard. "Facebook provides these essential tools, including identity for a great registration system, and immediate access to 300 million active global users. Facebook Connect gives entrepreneurs of all sizes--and with varying developer resources--the ability to build traffic efficiently through reaching a relevant audience, while offering an engaging user experience."
The new Connect Wizard takes only three steps, Himel's post said.
A company that promises the kind of success that advertisers usually see only via search launched its service Tuesday at the Shop.org conference in Las Vegas.
Permuto focuses on connecting online retailers with product-comparison sites, media outlets, and other "highly profitable" segments of the Web to help them try to sell their products more effectively. CEO and founder Shaukat Shamim asserts that the new platform will deliver the kind of return on client advertising investment that is found today only through search ads.
Permuto's flagship product is called ShopperConnect. The service tracks consumer activity on partner sites and determines their "ActiveShopper" score. According to Shamim, that score will help Permuto find the right placement for clients' ads.
"Online display advertising is a fantastic way for merchants and brands to reach their target audience, but it is plagued by poor measurability, analytics, and performance, and is traditionally low in return compared to search engine marketing," Shamim said. "The reach of online display advertising is three to four times the size of search-engine marketing, so ShopperConnect represents a huge opportunity to create significant value for our partners."
According to Shamim, the key to his company's technology rests with the ActiveShopper feature. He said it analyzes and targets online buyers with an "intent to purchase" in order to make advertising initiatives more profitable for retailers. The information is so in-depth, Shamim asserts, that his company can determine the likelihood of someone buying an individual product "down to the SKU level."
On the client side, Shamim told me that merchants that want to advertise through his company's network will have full control over the design and style of their advertising campaigns. A portal will mimic the "self-service search marketing" that has made companies like Google and Yahoo so successful. Once a design is completed, Permuto takes over and places those ads strategically across its network to target people searching for a particular product. Clients can change the ads whenever they want.
PowerReviews, a company that provides white-label customer review tools for retailers and brands, is preparing to release a service called BrandConnect.
BrandConnect features two elements: Listener and Megaphone. According to Darby Williams, the vice president of marketing at PowerReviews, "Listener will help brands track and understand what their customers really want out of their products."
Listener
To do so, PowerReviews first asks users to review a product in more detail than they might be accustomed to. According to Williams, the process will first ask consumers what the pros and cons were of a particular product. It then asks them to describe how they use it.
Listener then examines the data gathered from each review and aggregates responses for the client. Williams contends that the tool's statistical data helps deliver actionable content to PowerReviews' clients.
BrandConnect showing reviews in real time.
(Credit: PowerReviews)Williams said in a phone interview on Wednesday that most companies are averse to negative customer reviews. PowerReviews employs a two-level moderation process. It first analyzes reviews containing "at least one word in the comments and three checked tags" to ensure that no profanity or unnecessary content is included in a respective review. From there, reviews are sent to the client, giving them the option of removing negative reviews or allowing them to stay on the site.
Williams told me that PowerReviews encourages its clients to keep negative reviews in place to maintain credibility, but ultimately, that decision rests with those clients.
Megaphone
BrandConnect will also feature a tool called Megaphone. The company's Megaphone feature gives customers the option to syndicate their reviews to Facebook, Twitter, and their blogs.
BrandConnect showing advocates and detractors.
(Credit: PowerReviews)While they're writing a review, consumers are notified by Megaphone that they can share it when it's complete. They can either use Facebook Connect or log in to Twitter to syndicate their review to the respective social networks. A snippet of about two sentences will be displayed on Facebook, followed by a link to the review. That same form will be displayed on the user's blog, if they choose to syndicate it there. A message will populate Twitter's input box, giving users the option to introduce their review to followers.
PowerReviews said it believes that it's that social element that could significantly improve its clients' ability to drive traffic to their sites. The company makes BrandConnect available to retailers and brands on Tuesday.
Updated at 12:01 p.m. PDT on September 21 to include information on positive reviews.
Facebook's Aditya Agarwal shows off its new Prototypes feature at TechCrunch50.
(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)SAN FRANCISCO--Facebook took the stage on Tuesday afternoon at the TechCrunch50 conference for a "Developer Garage" event, to highlight just how important its team of engineers is to the company--and to unveil a new feature to let users play around with what they're up to.
Facebook engineering lead Aditya Agarwal unveiled a new offering called "Prototypes," which makes internal projects on the site accessible as applications on its developer platform. "Some of them are going to be buggy," Agarwal said. "Some of them are going to be super polished."
Prototypes, which is sort of like Facebook's version of Google Labs, had accidentally been unveiled in a company Twitter post earlier on Tuesday afternoon. "It's difficult to predict just what Facebook engineers will come up with next," Agarwal said of Prototypes, which has since been elucidated in a post on the company blog.
Many of Facebook's hottest new features were created in late-night employee "hackathons," Facebook Vice President of Engineering Mike Schroepfer told the audience. Its new iPhone app was created by a single engineer (someone from Facebook told me that this employee was actually a summer intern, which makes it even more impressive), its "Facebook Lite" low-bandwidth-friendly site option was created by three engineers, and the brand new status tagging feature was built in a hackathon.
Some of the new prototypes, Agarwal explained, are photo tag searches, desktop notifications, and a way to filter news feed items to see which ones your friends have recently commented on.
Considering TechCrunch50 is an event devoted to new Web start-ups, Facebook also had a pitch for the entrepreneurs behind them: employee Justin Osofsky then came onstage to talk about Facebook Connect and why start-ups ought to implement . He cited the power of being able to share information on such a massive network, the advantages of not requiring a separate registration process, as well as the proven jumps in page views and traffic that some of the 15,000 sites currently using Facebook Connect have experienced.
At TechCrunch50, Facebook conveniently was able to make the dual announcement that it's cash flow positive and just hit 300 million active users. There are 6 billion minutes spent on the site every day, Schroepfer explained, 1 billion chat messages sent, and 80 billion photos stored on the site (20 billion individual photos, each stored in four different formats).
Within an hour of the site opening up the floodgates to vanity URLs this summer, 1 million had been reserved, Schroepfer explained. He reiterated that the company's engineers were what kept it all afloat.
"The problem with this is, we (were) basically asking 200 million people to show up at the Web site at about exactly the same time," Schroepfer said. "Most people would call this a denial of service attack. We called it a product launch."
