I have to admit I have been using Facebook less and less.  I am not sure I could put my finger on exactly why I don’t use it as much as I did in the past although the constant bombardment to use different applications that my friends have installed is a big reason.  I had made a post a while back called “Facebook Notes” and stumbled upon a new batch of notes that would be a great follow-up.

This is a list of ten things you didn’t know about Facebook posted by Guy Kawasaki a few days ago that I found interesting and I am just now getting back to them.

Here is his list:

1. You can syndicate your blog.
2. You can post images and set your status via your cell phone.
3. You can post “Polls,” or “Surveys” to different demographics.
4. You can track available demographics directly in Facebook.
5. You can track your friends’ statuses via RSS.
6. You can post Flash and HTML directly in your brand’s Facebook Page.
7. The largest demographic on Facebook is the 25 and older group.
8. Through a Facebook Page, you can track the traffic of a brand’s Profile.
9. You can tag anyone in a posted note, video, or photo.
10. Give others an easy-to-remember link to your Facebook Profile.

Guy does a great job of expounding on each of these points.

I have to say I am not certain that number 10 belongs in this list but I do see the benefit, but I wonder if you don’t already have that within Facebook itself.

By now everyone has some issue or another with Facebook.  I think applications are great but Facebook is killing me with kindness.  But this isn’t my big issue, or really issues since I have two that I just can’t get over.

First, we need levels of friendship.  Some people I am acquainted with others I am friends with.  Acquaintances want to follow me and sometimes I want to follow them.  But friends I want to keep in touch with much better than an acquaintance.  Give me a variety to choose from and allow me to tweak how much I want to follow the person.

Second, search.  Didn’t we figure this out in the 90’s?  If I search for George Jetson I don’t want to wade through a list of George Jone’s.  I want search to be relevant not filled with irrelevant people.

I guess I have these issues with nearly every social network.   Why does simple stuff like this seem so obvious, yet so ignored?

Yahoo! inadvertently spilled the beans to the New York Times about a new service they are going to offer called Yahoo Mash. Well TechCrunch got it nearly correct when they reported that Yahoo! was working on their next generation social network called Mosh. So the big question I hope is on everyones mind is; what happened to Y!360?

I am glad you asked that question because it needs to be dealt with by Yahoo! in order to make their next social network site a success. I blogged about what I thought were some of Yahoo!’s mistakes back in July (see “Why Yahoo! 360 failed”). I have not changed my opinion on why Y!360 failed.

Facebook has been successful because it has allowed people to interact with each other in ways Y!360 never did. I hope Yahoo! has been watching.

I would add one more thing that caused Y!360 to fail. Yahoo! was nimble enough to change. Facebook and MySpace is not rocket science. Little innovation exists in either of these sites. Yahoo! has a lot of talented software engineers. Let them do their job and move management out of the way. If you don’t I don’t think Yahoo! will get a third chance.

Think what you will of Jason Calacanis no one can dispute that he has been successful in the web space and I think what he did at Netscape has really moved social networking into the mainstream. So when he declares Facebook bankruptcy I think we should listen to what he has to say.

Basically his issue with Facebook is that, with applications, he is just being overwhelmed with information. And a lot of this information is not really all that useful to him.

This goes to point out the real flaw with social network thinking that is mainstream right now. Its connection centric. What does that mean? Good question. Basically all I am saying is that you want a way to stay connected with the people in your network but you don’t have a way to say who is in your network.

Yes, I know you can add friends. But every child on a playground knows that all friends were not created equal. I find some people more interesting than others. I want a level of interaction with some people more than other people. I have degrees of “friends.” But on all the social networks today all friends are created equal. Utopian perhaps, but not very useful.

Over at the Library Clips blog they have been having a lot of posts about lifestreams. This is what we want. An easy way to view or networks lifestreams from our vantage point looking out in the network. Apply the Apple principle to the design. Make is so simple it hurts. Add in a lot of the design patterns displayed by the socialstream demo and now you have the next generation social network. And this is one that will be sticky because it is all about your interests and not everyone in your networks interests.

Now as soon as someone hires me to build it we will all be successful together.

Tags: Lifestreams | Facebook | Jason Calacanis

Both Robert Scoble and Jeremiah Owyang are making this claim. I agree that Facebook doesn’t let data out, but is that a bad thing? Is having one place for all of your data a bad thing?

I like the fact that I can connect to my network, add my blog feed, and add other services if they have built a Facebook application. One central place for everything.

This isn’t the optimal solution. I would rather have a more open architecture where I can connect all my social data and connect to my network in a way that allows my network to not necessarily be part of Facebook. We all have different needs from our social network. It would be nice to be able to use the network of my choice but still connect to friends that are one another network.

Today Facebook is the best we have. It only takes one development effort that is well thought out to push the community into the next generation of social networking, possibly open social networks.

Social networking is a young industry. I think calling Facebook a data black hole is not very helpful. Let’s explore some constructive ideas form improvement along with pointing out the flaws.

Tags: Social Networking | Facebook

Stop the boat! What just happened here? Facebook, a company that I like, but hasn’t figured out how its going to make money when it grows up, just purchased Parakey, a company you likely haven’t ever heard of because, as far as anyone can tell, they haven’t ever built a product.

What is Parakey you ask? Well that is a good question. They got a lot of hype a few years ago. Then they did what most software companies that where hyped like the second coming do, nothing. Complete vaporware. The company’s web site has the same lame page it had roughly three years ago. Here is a link to the wikipedia entry which is vague and has no source of real information.

So let me summarize the events.

A company, in this case Facebook, which is really not making money, at least as far as the pundits can tell, purchased a, presumed, software company that, as far as anyone can tell, has no product after all these years.

This is a crazy industry in which we work.

Source: (Yahoo! News)

Tags: Social Networking | Facebook | Parakey

Updates:

As the news spreads the pundits are coming out.

Techcrunch: FaceBook’s First Acquisition: Parakey 

Read/WriteWeb: Facebook Acquires Web OS Company Parakey

I am playing along with Read/Write Web and making this weeks posts about Facebook.

I just realized today that you can import your blog posts into your Facebook Notes. I am not sure why this fact has escaped me for so long. The more I scrape at the surface of Facebook the more I find I like. But wouldn’t it be better for Facebook if I just made Notes my preferred blogging tool?

Where are trackbacks? I find trackbacks an important feature for blogging conversations. The question is are they really necessary in Facebook? The answer is maybe, maybe not.

If everyone is on Facebook then they will automatically know when a new note is published. But this leaves anyone not on Facebook out of the conversation. Facebook plays down that Notes are blog posts, but I am not sure you can see them any other way. As I have mentioned before, this is one of the items that ruined a potentially wonderful social network, Yahoo! 360. Lets hope there will be some movement to further develop Notes into a full fledged blogging platform.

It is Facebook week on Read/Write Web.  With all the buzz about Facebook it should be a good series of posts.  I have been finding the further I dig into Facebook, the more I like it.  So if you haven’t taken the Facebook plunge this week is a good week to get up to speed.

If you ever needed an application that demonstrated the power of Facebook applications this is it.  I found this through Scobleizer and am excited at the potential.  The application is called Google Reader Shared Items.

The idea is you subscribe to all of your favorite RSS feeds in Google Reader. As you find items that you think are interesting you mark them as shared. The Facebook application lists your shared items and all your friends that are linked to you and have installed the application can see your shared items. You can also see all of your friends shared items.

Leveraging existing applications to stimulate conversation. Now take that one step forward and make sure that you subscribe to your friends blogs and via blog posts, trackbacks, and comments information relevant to you and those in your network flows well.