This morning I had the opportunity to present via O’Reilly Webinar on Facebook development. I covered the basics of how to get started in Facebook development, and the resources that would get you going. I mentioned I’d post these slides online, so here they are. I was hoping to get audio attached to them, but we’re still waiting on that. Regardless, if you want me to present this to your organization or group, feel free to contact me.

UPDATE: Facebook’s security team is now aware of this and is taking care of the matter. Again, if you know the guy, call the police immediately.

I found this, posted under 2 categories in the Facebook developer forums today. The man seems depressed over having his account removed, and gives 1 week before he dies. I have notified Facebook - is there anything else we can do for the guy?

His note, quoted below, from bhong025:

My facebook account is my life! I really need the account active for my work, my family, my friends and my own world.

I can’t live without facebook. All the years of work, message, relationship and love is gone.

It’s very very important source for my work. I know the rules now. I won’t randomly add people again.

The entire friends i have for my life is vanished! I am lost in the deadly loneliness after my account is disabled.

How can I possibily live again?

So this is it, I should just kill myself. I can’t live with this shameful sin.

There is nothing I could do to get it back. I am here all alone by myself after my job is over and my friends all laughing at my disabled account.

Without facebook, I am planning 1 week to live with the rest of my money.

Please tell god, I died in a painful death.

If you know this man or this user, please, call the police immediately. This is completely serious and letters like this shouldn’t be taken lightly. How can we help out this guy?

For those that regularly read my blog, you’re blatently aware of my weird annoyance that I can’t seem to get my hands on an official Facebook T-Shirt. My Friend Rodney had to purchase one off the back of a waiter at F8 in order to get his hands on one - that’s how hard they are to come up with. Dave Morin has said they’re coming soon.

Could a recent announcement on the Facebook Engineering blog be a signal that Facebook finally has T-shirts to give away or for purchase by others? Facebook just today announced the 11th annual Hackathon for their internal developers. Who cares about that news though. What’s most important about the announcement is that as part of that they’re offering the opportunity for outside developers and users to offer suggestions for their developers to work on. The top 10 suggestions earn free Facebook T-Shirts.

Dave Morin or David Swain or others there at Facebook, does this mean I’ll be able to purchase myself a Facebook T-Shirt soon??? Please? Pretty Please?

In an amazing act of rage, a South London man appears to have killed his wife over a simple statement she made on Facebook about her and her husband splitting up. According to the BBC, Emma Forrester, mother of two, had posted an entry on Facebook (no word on where and how), stating she had left her husband and was looking to meet other men.

The husband, Wayne Forrester, found this, and in a drunken, drugged, rage, went after his wife, beat her, stabbed her, and according to neighbors was found outside his house covered in blood. He was jailed and sentenced to life in prison.

More on the stabbing can be found here. Photo courtesy BBC News

Facebook has long been known to be the largest photo repository in the world. Today on the Facebook Engineering blog it was reported that Facebook today hit the milestone of 10 billion photos across the entire site. The 10 billion photos each have multiple copies stored, totaling 40 billion files in whole.

According to Jeremiah Owyang back in January, Facebook photos draw more than twice the traffic of the next 3 competing sites combined. In November of last year, TechCrunch reported that Flickr hit their 2 billionth photo.

Some further stats from the article:

• 2-3 Terabytes of photos are being uploaded to the site every day
• We have just over one petabyte of photo storage
• We serve over 15 billion photo images per day
• Photo traffic now peaks at over 300,000 images served per second

Just yesterday, MySpace announced the release of their myAds Beta self-serve Ads platform. As part of it, similar to Facebook’s self-serve Ads platform, they released an automatic statistics engine, now available to any user that goes through the motions of setting up an Ad. The new engine allows a glimpse into the MySpace userbase. What’s even more interesting is that you can do the same on Facebook, now allowing very accurate comparisons of the two platforms when determining where you should advertise or build an Application. Based on these comparisons, it would appear that, while Facebook traffic seems to be going up and MySpace traffic seems to be going down, Facebook still has far to go before catching up with MySpace in North America, at least in regards to number of users.

Here are the results I came up with - note that myAds only allows statistics for North America, so I was unable to do a comparison of the countries outside of the region. All these stats are North America-specific:

North America as a Whole:

Facebook: 33,3393,820 users
MySpace: 83,895,693 users

Males:

Facebook: 14,538,700 - 43.5% of total
MySpace: 37,653,707 - 44.88% of total

Females:

Facebook: 18,804,380 - 56.3% of total
MySpace: 46,241,986 - 55.11% of total

25+ Age Range:

Facebook: 12,649,720 - 37.88% of total
MySpace: 30,804,487 - 36.71% of total

24- Age Range:

Facebook: 20,722,540 - 62.05% of total
MySpace: 53,089,687 - 63.28% of total

Based on these statistics, as mentioned, MySpace dominates the North American market. Of the demographic break-up, the two sites seem neck-and-neck, so where you target your marketing and apps may really bring you over to MySpace first, and Facebook second. While minute, Facebook does seemingly have a stronger female to male ratio, as well as a ratio of those 25 and older. That would make sense considering Facebook reports their largest growing customer-base is the 25 and older generation.

What would be an even more interesting study would be why users come to each of the sites. Where Facebook seems to accommodate all businesses with their “Page” business profiles, MySpace seems to be targeting the Band and Movie genre. With categorized demographics, MySpace makes it easy to generate statistics based on these demographics, but Facebook doesn’t seem to make it very easy, relying mostly on keywords that pull from the Info section of a user’s profile. It would be hard to do a comparison in this area.

Now, if you compare actual traffic, it gets even more interesting. According to compete.com, Facebook has been increasing very steadily, while MySpace traffic is decreasing. It’s hard to tell if this is a reflection of the user-base, or of simple engagement within the site. If MySpace’s userbase has been growing, MySpace needs to do some serious consideration of how to increase traffic and PageViews within the site, because in this area in general, Facebook is about to overtake MySpace.

So while Facebook is hot on the tail of MySpace, it would appear that it still has far to go in North America. Facebook still needs to double in size in North America before they get even close. If I were to target Facebook I would target a more global audience for now.

With my new work at i.TV (go visit the iTunes Store Home Page if you want to try us out - lower right-hand corner), I have started phasing out my consulting (which used to be my full-time job) and am putting my focus towards building (with a top-notch team and great CEO, of course!) one of the top Entertainment App companies out there. In the process, I am still getting 5-10 people a week contacting me asking if I know anyone that does iPhone or Facebook Development. Quite frankly, finding someone to refer to is not an easy task! That is what I used to do, so it wasn’t something I was looking for (and I know there just aren’t many out there, as well, even with the high demand).

So, if you or someone you know does either iPhone or Facebook development, or work for a company that does, I want to make a deal with you or your company. I’ll send you these referrals for a commission on the deal you make with them. This is a win-win for all - I now have someone to send referrals to. You get the referrals and regular business, and the Clients now have someone they can get help from. Having written books on Facebook, and working for a company that does iPhone App development, along with this blog growing considerably and guest blogging on some of the top blogs on the internet, I get these requests regularly - I’d really like someone to send them to.

If you’re a developer, perhaps you’re starting to see the demand of Facebook and iPhone development. This is an excellent area to have knowledge in, in particular in a down economy. If you’d like to learn I do recommend you look at my book, FBML Essentials, and at the end of this month I’ll be doing a free webinar for O’Reilly in which I’ll cover beginning Facebook development. Stay tuned to this blog and I’ll reveal more details soon.

Know a Facebook or iPhone development company or developer? Shoot me an e-mail (or comment below): jesse at staynalive dot com or call me at (801) 853-8339. Also, if your business is in need of such work, give me a ring and I’ll point you in the right direction!

Just yesterday, I posted on how Facebook had seemed to deprecate the apps.new.facebook.com domain, the primary domain for all applications on the Facebook platform. I reported that it seemed to be up now, but some people are still not able to access the App according to reports in the Facebook developers forums. One such casualty is the Facebook Obama “Vote for Change” app, allowing users to register to vote, vote absentee, find polling locations, etc. With today being the deadline for Voter registration in many states, this doesn’t come as good news for the crucial Gen. Y crowd said to be much of the deciding factor for this election.

It appears that as I wrote earlier, the 20-50% reduction in app traffic may be due to a DNS issue. Some users are seeing the issue, and some aren’t. Where I’m seeing it now, it would appear that perhaps my DNS resolved, but others are still reporting it. After an entire weekend, there is still no word from Facebook on this issue.

Facebook developers are reporting 20-50% drops in their Application traffic due to an unannounced deprecation of the old apps.new.facebook.com URL by Facebook. Over the weekend, Facebook appears to have deprecated the apps.new.facebook.com domain, but some developers are reporting that users aren’t recognizing the new domain, apps.facebook.com, causing the drop in traffic.

The apps.facebook.com domain is the central location for all applications on Facebook. Developers are given a unique suffix to the apps.facebook.com domain, giving apps.facebook.com/appname a unique location for every application on the Facebook platform. Facebook created the domain, apps.new.facebook.com to accommodate apps trying to test in the new design as it was in the process of being released. Now that all users should be transitioned to the new design, it appears that Facebook has decided that the two URLs are no longer necessary.

Facebook (perhaps not as often as Twitter) is known for changes like this. While it’s been awhile, the early days of the Facebook Platform were prone to frequent changes by Facebook with little notification by the company. For this reason, Facebook implemented a beta testing ground before pushing changes so bugs like this would be revealed, but it appears Facebook is not using this testing ground in all cases. As one developer put it, “I was planning to go on a sailing trip today, but when I noticed all the problems had to cancel that to fix all the absolute urls I had.” Unannounced changes like this, with little testing, are bound to cause developer frustration and angst as we’re seeing now.

Facebook has put in place a Status Feed to announce such things, and just last week announced that over the weekend the new “api.new.facebook.com” would point to the same place as “api.facebook.com”. Being a backend process, Facebook mentioned nothing about a deprecation of the apps.new.facebook.com domain. Also, any user that previously had an apps.new.facebook.com domain bookmarked will now be sent to a 404 not found page.

We have yet to hear an announcement by Facebook on this matter.

UPDATE: For some reason the link to the forums above has been removed and the post is gone. The text of the main link is below (written by crimson), followed by a long list of other developers seeing the same thing:

I’ve been doing some testing with the recent DNS errors and it seems that for most users, apps.new.facebook is broken. It’s sporadic though, and only affects certain user accounts at random times. I haven’t heard any complaints about apps.facebook.com being broken though, so I would suggest putting a message on your about pages asking users to go to apps.facebook.com instead of apps.new.facebook.com. If you have any absolute links to apps.new especially in notifications, newsfeeds, or notifications, you should also get rid of those immediately since it will cause your users to end up on the new domain, which will rewrite all urls from apps.facebook.com to apps.new.facebook.com, and can lead to further problems.

It’s so annoying that Facebook decided to do this over the weekend, which means we have to work also on the weekends. I was planning to go on a sailing trip today, but when I noticed all the problems had to cancel that to fix all the absolute urls I had. I found I’m losing anywhere from 20-50% of new users simply because of this issue. It also seems that at times only apps.new.facebook is broken, and not www.new.facebook. Hmm, talk about double-standards.

UPDATE 2: Facebook appears to have fixed the problem - when I checked today, apps.new.facebook.com was again correctly redirecting to apps.facebook.com

UPDATE 3: It appears other developers are still seeing the issue, still no word from Facebook: http://staynalive.com/articles/2008/10/06/facebook-dns-blunders-take-down-obama-app/

Regardless of any complaints from developers surrounding the new Facebook platform redesign, many developers are seeing success. Looking at various statistics from sites such as Adonomics and the Facebook Developers Forum, it appears that those apps that are truly integrating the new Integration points that the Facebook Platform provides are truly seeing success with it. Those apps that remain stagnant will see a decline in behavior.

Apps That are Seeing a Decline

Reviewing the apps complaining of the new design and showing declines in their numbers, it appears that many of them aren’t integrating into the new design where they are supposed to. I’ll use my own app as an example. “We’re Catholic!”, one of the religious apps I wrote and run (I also run “We’re Baptist”, “We’re Protestant”, and wrote the app, “The LDS App”) at one point was getting up to 1,000 visits per day (DAU’s, or Daily Active Users) as it was taking off (it is still currently the largest single group of organized Catholics on Facebook). Users began to get used to the Facebook platform, and that leveled it off to about 2-300 DAU’s per day. At launch of the new design, that number has gone down 1-200 DAU’s per day. What’s not being told in this picture is that I have done absolutely nothing to integrate it with the new design due to lack of time. I have no doubt that with a little integration into the user’s profile with a tab, and maybe info section, along with some Feed Forms to give users the option for larger stories to share with their friends from the app, I could very well see my app stats increase to even more than they were before.

Pieces of Flair

This seems to be the issue with some of the apps developers are complaining about. One example pointed out in the Facebook developer forums is the Pieces of Flair app, by RockYou. Looking at Adonomics statistics, it appears on September 4, the week the new design was put in place, Pieces of Flair took a dramatic turn from near 660,000 Daily Active Users down to around 350,000 DAU’s in just a matter of a day. They were stuck there until September 16, where their DAU’s went up to 570,000 in just a day, still far short from the 660,000 DAU’s they used to have. Then, on Sept 18, the DAU’s went back down to around 400,000. Looking at this statistic, it would appear that Pieces of Flair isn’t doing very well, and that the new Facebook Platform redesign is to blame. To know for sure though, you have to look at the timeline of events related to the App.

Facebook Platform Timeline

September 4th, 2008 - New design launches to all

Looking at the history of the new design rollout, the new Facebook redesign was rolled out right on the week of September 4th, which would make the sharp downturn very understandable. At that point users were getting used to the new design and learning where things were.

September 10th, 2008 - Applications link moves

Right around September 10th or 11th it seems Facebook moved the “Applications” menu from the top down to the lower-left panel on Facebook. In addition, users could “bookmark” their favorite apps. Could Pieces of Flair have been one of those users were bookmarking? Other apps were bound to have seen a decrease because of this change.

September 16th, 2008 - Pieces of Flair makes changes

September 16th took some research to figure out. Looking at the forums on the Pieces of Flair About Page, several users started commenting about how it was now possible to add the app’s profile box to their “wall tab”. It’s unclear if they added a specific application tab at that point or not, but there was definitely an increase at that point, and it looks like it may be because of a change put in place to adapt to the new design by Pieces of Flair.

September 17, 2008 - One-line feed stories consolidated

On September 17, Facebook consolidated one-line feed stories that happened frequently for a single user in a day into one item in a user’s news feed. This would have reduced the visibility of some apps that updated frequently, perhaps explaining the slight decrease on the 18th.

Is it a Facebook Problem?

So, analyzing by date, it would appear that the biggest drops for Pieces of Flair may just be that Pieces of Flair wasn’t yet built for the new design when it was rolled out to members. Perhaps the new design isn’t to blame, but rather unpreparedness by developers of apps that are to blame for the decrease in traffic. Facebook announced the new design back in May, and developers have had since then to prepare - it would seem that this is a developer, not Facebook problem.

Apps Seeing an Increase

Regardless of the complaints, there are apps seeing an increase. While names weren’t mentioned, several developers in the Facebook developer forums posted stats that show such. Even Pieces of Flair we see is starting to show a gradual increase since feed stories were implemented.

We’re Related

Some have shown significant increase though. One of the most significant is We’re Related, which went from 180,000 DAU’s to 460,000 DAU’s when the Applications menu was moved, an all-time high for them. It seems the only decrease they ever saw was right after the redesign was launched. Some developers are claiming they’re spammy, but based on the stats in association with the time-line it appears regardless of spammy measures or not, they’re increasing because users like them and are bookmarking them as a favorite - they shot up more than any other on the date Facebook implemented bookmarking. (disclaimer: they were a client of mine and I trained some of their developers and helped design their initial release, so there is some bias there, but the stats do coincide with what I’m saying. I hold no equity in the company.)

Texas HoldEm Poker

Also of note is the Texas HoldEm Poker game. One of the most popular apps on Facebook, it would seem they too have never seen much of a decrease in usage. They too saw a slight drop after the redesign, but, while not as significant as We’re Related, they are definitely higher in DAU’s than ever before.

WaterCooler, Inc. and (lil) Green Patch

Some other Apps to look at are WaterCooler, Inc. (a conglomeration of many smaller apps), and (lil) Green Patch, all which have continued to show an increase, even after the new design. Of course, Facebook’s native apps have also shown significant increase after the new design, but they may be the exception in the fact that they get special promotion by Facebook in areas developers do not have access to, and are default for many people on Facebook.

Reasons for the Increase

As “DesignerMichael” put it in the Developer Forums, “The golden days will return in about a month though by my estimate. Users will finally start getting used to the new platform again by around then… So all is well. smile Just no more ridiculous changes please… Changing the location of bookmarks once a week is not good for apps. lol…”. It appears, based on the common drop amongst all the apps, that the major issue for developers is that users just haven’t gotten used to the new design yet. Assuming Facebook does not put any more changes in place, things will get back to normal.

In a communication via e-mail with Facebook, I was given the following message about the current state of the platform:

“We’ve seen a number of areas with greater engagement and sharing across the site, both on our own applications and on Facebook Platform. Daily and weekly active usage for applications have been on a healthy growth track for the past six months. Since the cut over began, aggregate Platform usage has continued to increase. The apps that have made the greatest effort to take advantage of the new integration opportunities are starting to see the results.”

Facebook is monitoring this. Without their developers, Facebook is not nearly as powerful as they are now. Currently developers are doing the marketing for Facebook and I’m sure Facebook recognizes that. However, it appears that in the end, as we see with the success of those apps that are seeing an increase, that it involves some work on behalf of the developer to happen. Some areas Facebook suggests are bringing more traffic to apps, or have the potential to do so are:

• Deeper integration into the profile
• Greater distribution through feeds
• Easier for users to discover new apps
• More meaningful user engagement
• Customized application tabs

For developers of apps, you can bring your application to even higher Daily Active Users than before by simply finding new ways to integrate with the different points mentioned above. It is very possible to be successful on the new design, and now is the opportunity for new developers to come forth. We’re in a new race for popularity, and those apps that embrace the new features most will see the most success.

In FBML Essentials (O’Reilly), I cover some of the points of the Facebook platform new design components. You can purchase and review it here on Amazon.