First, the user community is thrashing him over privacy. Essentially, Facebook intentionally reneged on a deal and exposed people without their permission.  This was no techno web hacking accident. They intended to do it and still stand by their decision.

Secondly, the agencies responsible for getting so many people into Facebook have now been insulted by Facebook’s restricting of a fantastic feature to those with only 10,000 fans or a minimum monthly spend of $10,000 (and hence warrant a Facebook rep). Just like the privacy issue, this feature availability is also a back track. It’s not a new feature. It’s a feature agencies have lead clients to, and it often meant business for the agency. Without warning, the feature was ripped away from the masses and made only available to the Facebook affluent (fans or dollars). Facebook spit on the faces of many of its community leaders.
[Update: Link to Mari Smith's post that explains this particular issue]

Thirdly, now people have no faith or expectation of what Facebook will do next. They will trust it less. Not necessarily consciously, people will use it differently. And maybe we should, now that we understand Facebook a little better.

Mark is in for a hard lesson.

If you want to participate in a little boycott, put down the Facebook for a day next Friday: it’s Facebook Free Friday.

What do you think?

We’ll put up with a little promotion, but there’s a line not to cross.

It’s as basic as someone jabbing their business card in your hand before even getting your name. Yet, there’s an increasing number of businesses with an equivalent approach in the online social realm. A significant portion of these businesses may not even realize it. This Step Zero is totally fundamental.

Further…

One of the problems is that the community doesn’t banish, or notify offenders. In a more passive way either by conscious effort or through a setting, the penalty is to become invisible. “Pay no attention…”

The additional casualty is that this passive penalizing takes extra time to be recognized or detected.

Some of this will result in “social burnout” by means of an unfulfilled social utopia (the hype). These people will be convinced that “social” is neither effective nor worth effort. They’ll be inclined to revert to a traditional approach instead of understanding their community’s perspective.

One way to be pretty sure is to ask the community (and get helpful feedback, not complacency).  Because people are more comfortable giving “feedback privately” (as we’re all schooled), and “praise in public”, if you only regard your public comments, you’re getting a glazed-over view in many cases.  No doubt, company size and volume is a factor. The more of a face on the business, the more people are inclined to be “polite”. Bottom-line, to get a good view of your community’s perception, get it privately as you’re more likely to get the negative edges of something you can actually improve.

Last week we tossed the idea around at the office and collectively wrote this post on Step Zero on the LunaWeb blog. We had it out in our preparation for a Lunch & Learn event I’m giving on Social for the Greater Memphis Chamber.

What’s your take on this?

Because the broadcaster isn’t actually in the network participating in the conversation, it’s akin to broadcast email or texting.  This is not genuine to me. I’ll cave to the fact that my definition of genuine in these networks is old fashioned in a traditional 2.0 sense, but right now, I still enjoy remembering when I’m on Twitter, that I am in fact “on twitter” participating in a conversation.  I enjoyed the illusion of seeing a tweet and thinking there’s a person IN this conversation with me.  NOT some social version of  ‘man behind the curtain pulling levers’ and hitting the “broadcast” button.

Help me see the light here. Right now, I’m not getting it (and have many friend using such techniques).  There are always exceptions. Give me some enlightenment here, please.

What we see helps to derive strategies for our clients, and at times adjust our own production and skills direction.

At the LunaWeb blog, I just posted Web Office in Facebook to Lighten Google’s Lunch. This blog post actually contains two predictions that come into play:

1. Facebook is in the process of building one awesome ad platform right under our noses via Facebook Connect. Nothing devious about it. It’ll be more effective display advertising than plain text and it will be highly targeted from a Social perspective. The social perspective is increasingly significant and something that Google doesn’t have.

2. Microsoft and Facebook will team-up and build a fee based “cloud” extranet-type function within Facebook that will compete head to head with Google Docs and their fee based small business offering.

I don’t delve too deep into the ad platform as the post is about the Microsoft / Facebook extranet for small businesses.  However, I feel it’s just as significant, but a whole lot more obvious.

Are you sitting on any great predictions (that you’re comfortable sharing)? What do you think of this?

“Fan us up” at http://facebook.lunaweb.net

( BTW, the Sandwich in the above collage comes via  http://flickr.com/photos/john/2358626284 John Watson who uses Creative Commons licensing on his photos at Flickr. Thanks John! )

Link to Facebook video about Apps modifications.

Today’s “Verified Application” sets a soft stage for more defined standards that remain eminent. There are many outstanding perspectives to this problem:

1. Maintain a low barrier to entry for creative innovators who makeup the soul of Facebook applications.
2. Create some level of quality expectations for users when installing apps.
3. Establish a process for Facebook platform upgrades with a maximum degree of forgivability to existing applications.

1. and 2. are self evident.  However, 3. is much more complex because:

When Facebook updates its platform, it may cause many reliable Facebook applications to fail.  This causes the developers to modify or rewrite the applications to conform to a new environment.  The affect is that Facebook’s more cherished assets become liabilities overnight until the developers can get around to fixing modifying them.  Where a company has hired a developing firm to create an app., the costs and timing are impossible to budget for.

You can easily argue for a Beta period allowing both users and developers to adapt to a platform change. However, there has only been one beta release of a Facebook platform wherein users could choose between “current” and “new” versions.

As the potential “utility” AND value of Facebook grow, the greater the consequences of this problem become.

The new Facebook Application page is found at http://www.Facebook.com/apps .

Do you hesitate to use Facebook Applications based on their reliability?