A Fuller View

This is smart. Zoomf, a UK property search engine, is using Facebook to drive traffic and raise awareness. How? They have created a Zoomf group, they have a fan page (on Facebook, must be logged in to see fan posts) and there are having the fans send messages to keep people up-to-date. It helps that the fan sending the messages is an attractive young woman. I thought about adding her photo to this post but decided that was pushing the limits of good taste…

The site also just had a re-design and new search UI released. Like I said before, this is a site to watch. But they need to get more data and coverage - I can’t find the house on my road that I know is for sale now. See property search can be infotainment especially in property obsessed Britain.

Update: check the Zoomf blog for more on the Facebook fansumer action.

The Facebook announcement is finally out, they actually made at least 3 releases today and a big press conference in NYC. The other announcements were Beacon and Landmark Partners… TechC has Q&A. There is also a great analysis on this along with MySpace on Jeremiah Owyang blog. Here’s the Facebook Ads release:

 

Facebook Unveils Facebook Ads

60 Leading Consumer and Internet Brands Announce Participation in New Ad System

NEW YORK — Facebook Social Advertising Event, Nov. 6, 2007 — Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg today introduced Facebook Ads, an ad system for businesses to connect with users and target advertising to the exact audiences they want. Through Facebook Ads, these users can now learn about new businesses, brands and products through the trusted referrals of their friends.

“Facebook Ads represent a completely new way of advertising online,” Zuckerberg told an audience of more than 250 marketing and advertising executives in New York. “For the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation. And they’re going to do this by using the social graph in the same way our users do.”

The keynote opened the Facebook Social Advertising event, which also featured senior executives from landmark partners including Blockbuster, CBS, Chase, The Coca-Cola Company, Microsoft, Sony Pictures Television and Verizon Wireless. More than 60 major consumer and Internet brand partners were highlighted at the launch of Facebook Ads.

Today, Facebook Ads launched with three parts: a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with their audiences; an ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads™; and an interface to gather insights into people’s activity on Facebook that marketers care about.

More than 100,000 Facebook Pages Launch Today
Zuckerberg detailed how Facebook Pages allows users to interact and affiliate with businesses and organizations in the same way they interact with other Facebook user profiles. More than 100,000 new Facebook Pages launched today covering the world’s largest brands, local businesses, organizations and bands.

“The core of every user’s experience on Facebook is their page and that’s where businesses are going to start as well,” explained Zuckerberg. “The first thing businesses can do is design a page to craft the exact experience they want people to see.”

Just like a Facebook user, businesses can start with a blank canvas and add all the information and content they want, including photos, videos, music and Facebook Platform applications. Outside developers have created a range of applications to enhance Facebook Pages, such as booking reservations or providing reviews of restaurant pages, buying tickets on a movie page or creating a custom t-shirt. Companies launching applications for Pages include Fandango, iLike, Musictoday LLC, OpenTable, SeamlessWeb, Zagat Survey LLC and Zazzle.

Distribution through the Social Graph
Advertising messages will gain distribution through what Facebook has termed the “social graph,” the network of real connections through which people communicate and share information. When people engage with a business’ Facebook Page, that action will spread information about that business through the social graph.

Users can become a fan of a business and can share information about that business with their friends and act as a trusted referral. Facebook users can interact directly with the business through its Facebook Page by adding reviews, writing on that business’ Wall, uploading photos and in any other ways that a business may want to enable. These actions could appear in users’ Mini-Feed and News Feed, Facebook’s popular products that allow users to share information more efficiently with their friends.

Unique Ads with Social Actions
“Social actions are powerful because they act as trusted referrals and reinforce the fact that people influence people,” said Zuckerberg. “It’s no longer just about messages that are broadcasted out by companies, but increasingly about information that is shared between friends. So we set out to use these social actions to build a new kind of ad system.”

Facebook’s ad system serves Social Ads that combine social actions from your friends – such as a purchase of a product or review of a restaurant – with an advertiser’s message. This enables advertisers to deliver more tailored and relevant ads to Facebook users that now include information from their friends so they can make more informed decisions. No personally identifiable information is shared with an advertiser in creating a Social Ad.

Social Ads can appear either within a user’s News Feed as sponsored content or in the ad space along the left side of the site.

Insights about Brand Presence and Promotion
Facebook gives marketers valuable metrics about their presence and promotion on Facebook. Facebook Insights gives access to data on activity, fan demographics, ad performance and trends that better equip marketers to improve custom content on Facebook and adjust ad targeting. Facebook Insights is a free service for all Facebook Pages and Social Ads.

Protecting User’s Privacy
Facebook has always empowered users to make choices about sharing their data, and with Facebook Ads we are extending that to marketing messages that appear on the site. Facebook users will only see Social Ads to the extent their friends are sharing information with them.

For more information about Facebook Ads, please visit www.facebook.com/ads.

Well its dinner time for the kids here in London while we eagerly await the announcement due from Facebook about the SocialAds network sometime today. Guess that means I am going to be online late tonight… I echo Mr B and hope it is more innovative than the rumors suggest. Let’s see how many of the 7 Rules for Success in social networking they follow. If not, please give me a call and I am sure I can help you amp the produc. Oh yeah and a good set of links to follow from this meta-post also by Mr B.

Wow, what a week or couple of weeks it has been for the hype around social networking. Please don’t get me wrong, I am a user of and believer in social networking/media serevices and sites. Plus, the wider trend in Social Media is one of the really useful and fun areas of Web 2.0 that definitely delievers something of value. I believe it is here to stay.

Namely we had the Google-MySpace OpenSocial announcement. Plus continued speculation and analysis around Facebook post the Microsoft investment and the OpenSocial stuff.

The Scoble Starfish is a great way to explain the space. Love it - so here it is again!

Here is my first crack, lets call it an alpha version, at Social Networking’s top 7 rules (please take note product managers and developers):

1. People will only maintain a limited number of profiles (probably less than 5, avg. 3)
2. Switching costs are moderate to big, more like email or a new website or moving a new laptop than web search
3. There is a spectrum of needs (or use cases) in the Social Media space, see the ’starfish’, focus on one arm
4. Metcalfe’s Law does not apply
5. Usability that is either fun or delivers some value is key, make a great UI and it will grow the user base
6. An open API for 3^rd party developers is a must have
7. Mobile use or access is still wide open for someone to set the bar
8. Bonus: Get out of jail free - it is early days for Social Networking - let’s see how things play out as we move to Web 2.x

Please suggest additions! I want to expand this to 10 for the beta.

I’ve been at the beach most of this week on holiday with my family - which means this will be a short wrap-up…The big news this week is of course the Facebook and Microsoft investment deal that was announced - after many a rumour. There is tons of good and crap commentary on this deal on the blogs and news sites. Be sure check the following comment/analysis:

• Scoblozer - interesting snippet about former CEO of aQuantive helping drive strategy for MSFT
• At TechCrunch lots and lots to read, but wild one about apparent additional investors and a possible $700M+ war chest for the kids at Facebook
• Facebook Kremlinology on Radar
• Mr Battelle always astute

On a related thread, in last week’s print version of the Economist, there was a good piece about some of the reasons why Facebook is over-hyped. Even tough I am a big fan of Facebook and think MSFT’s investment is smart, I tend to agree with the Economist’s points. The thesis is that Facebook does not benefit from Metcalfe’s Law of networks, but instead is vulnerable to Groucho’s Law: “I refuse to be a member of any club that will have me.” [Tom Glocer has coined a new Groucho 2.0 Rule: "I refuse to participate in any social networking service that seeks to capitalize on my membership."] Or even worse it’s just a fad. Let’s watch and see what happens because its going to be fun and unexpected things will happen. Social networking is here to stay but it will change a lot in the next 5 years.

The last word is simply that last week Microsoft got to throw some sand in Google’s eye. This is the battle of the titans - M vs. G. Just think of a good game of Risk where its down to 2 players both with about 5000 armies. All good - everyone is a winner!

As usual I close with something funny - so here is a hilarious video someone posted on my FunWall.

This was another interesting week for the Internet and the blogosphere in general. However, I would like to to start with two important stories that are a bit off to a tangent for this site - firstly, the story in Burma has gone from bad to worse and I am not sure anyone knows what’s next for the people of Burma. I only hope that freedom wins one of these days and that the junta is toppled. Secondly, congratulations to Al Gore for being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (lots of press on this of course, I like this piece on the NY Times) - a well deserved victory for Mr Gore - respect!

Here’s my wrap up for last week of top stories and interesting posts from the space:

• Reach Local - raises a big (for the SEM space) founding round - see TechCrunch for details
• Social advertising post from Read/Write Web
• Facebook applications market report from O’Rielly
• Google acquires Jaiku- micro-blogging service

For this weeks piece of humour (Or as I used to say when I lived in the USA, humor), check out this comic I found on my friend’s Praized Blog:

Above Comic Credit: http://xkcd.com

That’s all for now. See you next week.

The good and the great at O’Rielly have done an interesting study on the Facebook applications market. I am linking to Chris Anderson’s post because I like his summary.This is not a real surprise - that the Facebook apps market - follows in the long tail curve (the Pareto 80/20 rule). In my mind this raises two initial questions:

1. What isn’t there a better filter or tool to help drive new and more useful ups up the curve to the head? Maybe this is the next great Facebook app? Or maybe as CA points out it’s the tyranny of the network or so far most apps suck?

2. What is going to drive change in the apps on the leader board at the head of the tail? Will it be random, merit based, cultural, regional or based on intangible behavior? I have no idea, but I’ve recently reading the research of R. Alexander Bentley. Once I’ve digested some more of his work and crossed it with the overall long tail analysis - I will be back to post some more on the subject.

So here is my wrap-up for the week on what I found interesting and what people sent me.

• More Google 411 billboards in the USA - gotta watch the big G.
• Nokia decides to buy NAVTEQ for US$8 billion and change - lots to digest on this deal. Has to mean better mapping and local search on mobile phones.
• Verizon starts to get some traction on their move into local fiber, check the Biz Week piece for details.
• The latest edition of Plaxo is starting to look really useful, but why can’t it support a Nokia synch or the mobile app in Europe?
• I played with Chip In, which to me looks like one of the 1st really useful and fun Facebook apps and this has to be worth more than $10 million.
• We started to see the Ask Jeeves ads on TV in the UK - the new Ask.com and Ask.co.uk looks sweet. Well done No 3 or is it 4 ? - for working harder on a good user experience.
• Internet advertising goes from strenghth to strength (IAB reports: 1st half ’07 up 27% in the US) - I’d say the Gorilla is turing into Godzilla.
• AtlSearchEngines posted their latest top 100 list. And its French search engine Exalead at the top.

More next week of course. Here’s a Friday night video to enjoy (be sure to check the Office Space refs, I know geek humor)… Enjoy the weekend!