I always loved reading “Dear Abby” in the Sunday paper growing up… You know – back in the days where people actually read newspapers.  I always wondered how “Abby” got her gig – quite possibly the easiest newspaper column in the world to write (and hands down, the most fun)… getting opinion questions in the mail and answering them, without doing extensive research.  With my childhood memories at the forefront of my conciousness, I was particularly excited when my good friend, Paul (prolific Voxer and neighbor in SF), wrote me an email (which, he gave me permission to post) to ask my opinion about a popular social media topic – Plaxo:

“I have some substantially horrible memories of ‘plaxo spam’ from 2004, 2005 and 2006.  I had one particularly persistent cousin who took full advantage of Plaxo’s ability to bug the hell out of his uninterested acquaintances — he pinged me from Plaxo’s site at least once a month for two years.  I could have stopped the acquaintance spam by asking him to stop (though he’s not what we would call a ‘good listener’) or putting Plaxo’s address in my blacklist, but I mostly grumbled about it and deleted the messages.

Now I’m receiving new Plaxo-pings from my coworkers for a new service called Plaxo Pulse.  It seems to be some kind of uber-content-stream-sucker with little added value.  My question for you, oh-queen-of-all-things-2.0, do we leave Plaxo in the electronic doggy house for their acquaintance-spamming ways, or does Pulse represent a newer/better/faster Plaxo that deserves my clicks?”

Dear Paul,

Thanks for writing!  I too have “substantially horrible memories of ‘plaxo spam’ from 2004, 2005 and 2006,” and like you, I’ve recently started to receive Plaxo-pings from all sorts of people for Plaxo Pulse.  I know that technology products change frequently- mostly for the better, but since the spam hasn’t stopped from Plaxo, I’ve not bothered to give it a second look.

Am I being silly to ignore it?  Maybe, but if it “Plaxo Pulse” were really that good, it would take note of my blood pressure, realize that repeated spamming makes my blood boil, and it would stop spamming me.  Alternatively, when it did spam me, the email would thoroughly explain why I should want to join a service with a long history of spamming.  And, that reason shouldn’t be that a random acquaintance or friend has added me to their address book.  It should explain the benefits of Plaxo Pulse in detail and, in the process, apologize for the hundreds of spam emails I’ve received from it’s predicesor, Plaxo.

So as not to dismiss the merits of Plaxo Pulse without doing at least a little research, I went to Plaxo.com an dug around to uncover the ‘new’ value proposition. This is what I found:

“Sign up and get the only online address book and calendar that syncs with Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, Apple, AOL — and your mobile phone.”

I don’t see the point.  Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, Apple, AOL, and any smartphone (mobile phone) each sync with free address book/calendaring apps and Outlook… Granted, if you’ve got 5 address book and calendar accounts from 5 different providers, you may need Plaxo.  But, if you’re like most people and only have work calendar/contacts and home calendar/contacts, and you actually communicate with the people on your contacts list every once in a while, Outlook or Entourage should do the trick.

The only differentiating feature that I’m aware of with Plaxo Pulse is that it’s able to simultaneously sync information from 5 providers, and it will send annoying spam ‘fill in the form’ emails to your friends, family, and colleagues regularly to ensure that you have the most up-to-date contacts.

In a digital age where communication is often too frequent and less meaningful than it once was, I think you’ll have better luck staying on top of your contacts (and ensuring that they remain meaningful) by finding out where they are/ what they’re up to when you speak to them, rather than soliciting ‘fill in the blank’ updates.

– Abby (ahem, I mean Lisa)

Check out the new blog post I wrote for SocialMedia Networks about social advertising.

I just published a new post at SocialMedia Network’s blog.  Check it out!

Yesterday, I started a 2 month, part-time consulting gig with SocialMedia Networks, a leading provider of social network services including a large and growing network of applications across Social Networking platforms.  SocialMedia’s flagship product, Appsaholic, currently available on Facebook and MySpace makes it easy for independent software vendors (ISVs) to manage, market, and monetize the applications they distribute online. In other words, SocialMedia helps developers buy and sell advertising space inside their application, cross promote their applications, and more.

A couple of weeks ago, SocialMedia announced that it secured Series A financing of $3.5 million. The investment was led by Charles River Ventures, with additional investors including: Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and Jeff Clavier, founder and managing partner of SoftTech VC.

In the next couple of months, I’ll be getting Developer Relations up and running, writing the company blog (which is very good already), and working closely with Julia French from Covered Communications, who I’ve been working with over the last several months on marketing and business development projects for other clients.

If you’re a developer on the SocialMedia Network or are interested in joining, please drop me a line to introduce yourself!  And, check out SocialMedia’s blog
in the next few days (I’ll post a link on my vox blog when I do my first post).

A colleague at Forum Nokia recently introduced me to a great mobile search product called “Boopsie.”  Until now, I’ve used Google search on my Windows Mobile phone to find the things I’m looking for.  Last week, I started using Boopsie, and I plan to continue.

Google searching on my mobile is still great for doing local searches, settling pub quiz debates, etc., but Boopsie is great for helping me find mobile content that I wouldn’t necessarily search for.  From social networking (Facebook, Plaxo,  Yelp,  Wikipedia), to google services (gmail, calendar, etc.), to store finders (Starbucks, Jamba Juice, CitySearch), to news and entertainment (Major League Baseball, eHowto, Fandango, etc.).  Boopsie aggregates channels of mobile content (including those outlined above) and makes them easy to find.  Think of it as a catalog for mobile content.   A native Boopsie application is available for download to your Windows Mobile, PalmOS, or Blackberry mobile phone by clicking here on your mobile browser.

Was I the only one who was underwhelmed with the Facebook and RIM announcement of Facebook for BlackBerry at this morning’s CTIA keynote?  Don’t get me wrong, Facebook’s co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz, presented very well, but I was hoping for more.

• Moskovitz didn’t mention Microsoft.  Just hours after the keynote, the Wall Street Journal confirmed rumors that Microsoft agreed to invest $240 million for a 1.6% stake in Facebook Inc.  That gives Facebook a value of $15 billion.  That’s pretty big news to keep quiet at a conference where both companies (Microsoft and Facebook) had such high visibility.
• Moskovitz talked a lot about the importance of creating an “open” platform, but, ironically, the mobile application he announced is “closed” to the majority of mobile users (its only available on Blackberry).  I was hoping to see more seamless usability enhancements to Facebook’s mobile web capabilities (i.e. it would be nice to change my status message on Facebook from my mobile web browser.)
  
• The good news for all Facebook mobile users is that 3rd party apps now appear in mobile profile pages, and, users can interact with 3rd party apps through SMS.  Requiring mobile users to launch SMS to interact with their Facebook apps seems a shame, as this inconveniences anyone with a single threaded operating system (i.e. feature phones and any PalmOS phones), presumably requiring them to close down their mobile browser before opening up their SMS client.
• Mike Lazaridis, the co-CEO of RIM didn’t do a live demo.  Live demos can be precarious at places like CTIA where so many people are connected to the mobile internet and network performance sluggish. (Microsoft lost their mobile connection yesterday and had to switch phones mid-demo but did it gracefully).  But, without a live demo, the audience is left wondering how good an application really is.

I’m not a BlackBerry user, so I can’t test the new app, but I’m curious to know how it performs.  If you download the Facebook for Blackberry app and have feedback, please post a comment with your opinion.

The social media quote of the day goes to the International Herald Tribune, who published a great article on social networking for the retired set:

Technology investors and entrepreneurs, long obsessed with connecting to teenagers and 20-somethings, are starting a host of new social networking sites targeting their parents and grandparents. The sites have names like Eons, Rezoom, Multiply, Maya’s Mom, Boomj and Boomertown.

Think Facebook with wrinkles.

The sites are being built to capture the attention of a generation of Internet users who have more money and leisure time than those several decades younger, and who may be more loyal than teens flitting from one trendy site to the next.

Having watched the adults I know get older, I can see how online social networking can benefit web savvy retirees.  But, after reading the article, I can’t help but think that sites that specifically target older people, while excluding the younger generation are missing the boat.  As tech savvy baby boomers get older, it’s inevitable that over time, there will be fewer users, which jeopordizes advertising revenue. Beyond that, from what my own grandmothers tell me, the hardest things about getting old are watching all of your friends die or lose it.  To mitigate this, as you get older, it’s important to surround yourself with friends and family of all ages.

The other thing that a good social networking site should do for seniors is keep them in touch with what the younger people in their lives are up to (kids, grandkids, etc.).   I don’t know any kids who’d want to show their grandparents their MySpace page, and I don’t know any Grandparents who would seek solice in discussing health problems or dating with their grandkids.  But there’s a happy medium somewhere in between, easily achieved by expanding tiered privacy structures and allowing people to target specific content on their social networking pages to specific demographics of their “friends” and hide other content from other demographics of their “friends.”

The bottom line is that generic senior-focused social networking sites aimed only at seniors that don’t target a specific shared interest (like being a grandparent, dating, etc.) are short sited and won’t endure the test of time.  This leaves mainstream, leading social networking sites like FacebookOmniture (who just acquired Offermatica).

Facebook is the most successful mainstream social networking site in terms of attracting a wide age demographic.  If it is able to continue to grow it’s 3rd party developer network AND increase privacy and personalization features, it will be easy to grow an enthusiastic user base with wrinkles without becoming wrinkled.
opportunities to find ways to acquire older users by creating personalized content delivery networks (capable of delivering different messages to different demographics), while beefing up privacy filtering capabilities which allow users to determine which of their own content they want to share with which demographics of their online “friends”. I don’t think this is too far off.  Webmarketers can already change the look and feel of their sites and appeal to different age and socioeconomic demographics using tools like

Today, Reuters published an interesting article “Social Network Sites Tempt Investors” talking about the liklihood of a flury of social networking IPOs.  The article is well worth a read for all of you social media fans out there.  According to the article, so called “Wall Street observers” believe that United Online Inc.‘s recent registration for an IPO of its Classmates Media Corp. arm (i.e. Classmates.com) will  “test the IPO waters” for other social  networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

While I believe that the remainder of 2007 and early 2008 will bring more social networking IPOs than we’ve seen so far (not many), I don’t
believe that Classmates.com will be an accurate indicator of the success of future social networking IPOs.   Even if Classmates.com’s IPO bombs, Facebook, LinkedIn IPO, and Bebo IPO have a strong liklihood of being successful IPOs.  To have a solid IPO, a social networking company will have to do more than just link people socially.  It will need to be a platform for relevancy, discovery, sharing, and search.

When Google IPOed, it was successful, not just because it enabled search, but it provided a platform that wove together search, information, email, and
more with relevant and targeted advertising.  Facebook will succeed with an IPO not because it is a social networking site but because it is a social networking platform that allows 3rd party developers to plug-in and users to benefit.  In other words, it is, in effect, a social media operating system.  LinkedIn and Bebo will have successful IPOs if they continue to grow their user base, expand their platform capabilities, and quickly develop a useful API for 3rd party developers.  However, to be clear, it will take a lot of effort, great skills, good timing, (and, perhaps, a miracle) for either Bebo or LinkedIn to have a more successful IPO than Facebook.

By engaging 3rd party developers so early, Facebook gained a clear lead over the competition, which will be hard for competitors to surpass.  By creating a social networking operating system, which allows entreprenurial developers to plug in, contribute to, and profit from a wider economy, Facebook has peaked the interests of investors – not only as a company in which to invest but as an economy in which to invest.  As I mentioned in my last post,
VCs are expressing a strong interest in the players within the facebook 3rd party developer economy, and is easy to see why.  Facebook is creating a social media operating system that has the potential to revolutionize the web by changing the way people find and interact with content and applications.

Yesterday, Robert Scoble posted an interesting video trilogy on his blog in which he predicts that if they work together, Facebook,  Mahalo, and Techmeme will trounce Google in 4 years by providing superior SEO-free, reduced-noise, social search that does more than Google.  While I’d be seriously surprised if Google didn’t have something up its sleeve to compete with the vision Scoble outlines and I don’t think we’ll see the end of SEO, I do think Scoble makes some good points in his vlogs.  His musings on the topic of social networking, social media, and search highlight a growing interest in social networking as a space and its potential to change the way we surf the net.

There is nothing more attractive to investors than strong possibilities and good ideas, and it’s clear in the quickly growing and evolving space of
social networking, there is a high concentration of both.  Which social networking companies will choose to ride the wave with an IPO remains to be seen, but I’m betting with Reuters in thinking the numbers will increase very soon.

Note: I’m not an investment advisor, and my blog posts do not constitute financial advice.

Tonight is the first chance I’ve had to write about the Facebook Developer/ Influencer conference that I went to last week.  The event was an invite-only afternoon of panel discussions hosted by Seth Goldstein of SocialMedia.  Attendees included about 50 developers, entrepreneurs, investors, and a couple of bloggers, and the discussions ranged from “When, if ever, will Facebook start ‘taking back’ core chunks of its platform?” to “What metrics really matter for gauging success on the Facebook platform?”

The conference began at Noon with lunch and networking followed by the first panel discussion at 12:30: “What is Engagement and why is it so important?” In the first session, Dave McClure from 500 Hats and Seth Goldstein  set the stage for the rest of the event.  Dave emphasized the importance of establishing more meaningful metrics for measuring the success of Facebook apps – beyond counting user installs.  His point was well taken… Clearly we need a way of measuring user engagement in apps, especially given that people are often compelled to download apps that their friends send to them and never use them again.  Just because an app has great word of mouth success initially, doesn’t mean that it will latch on for the long haul.  Similarly, time spent on the app isn’t the right measure for success either.  As Seth asked (and I’m paraphrasing), ‘What’s a more important to Facebook’s success- a graffiti app that allows Facebook users to draw for 3 hours, or an application that encourages shorter but more frequent interactions?’

Rumor has it that Facebook will be unearthing at least a few 3rd party app success metrics internally in the next couple of month, but it remains to be seen whether they’ll share this information with the world.  So far, Facebook hasn’t released any helpful metrics for measuring user engagement on apps.  Perhaps this is because they don’t have them, or perhaps they’re holding their cards close to the vest in the hopes of determining the best way to move forward (i.e. by taking back parts of the API they already opened and/or extending new Facebook features that leverage lessons learned by observing user engagement stats on leading apps).  Either way, in order for the 3rd party developer community to flourish on Facebook,  developers will need a better understanding of what makes a winning app and which apps are the most successful based on those metrics.

The next session of the day was about “Creating, Spreading and Scaling Multi Million User Facebook Apps.” The all-developer panel included:

• R. Tyler Ballance from Slide,
  
• Blake Commagere of Vampires / Zombies / Causes,
  
• Dave Genztel from SocialMedia,
  
• Jia Shen from RockYou,
  
• Joe Winterhalter and his colleague, Eric (didn’t catch his last name), of Quizzes and
  
• James Hong from Hot or Not.
  

Slide had over 10 million Facebook users at the time of the conference, and Tyler initiated the conversation by talking about what he thinks users want to do with their friends.  In cases where users have a large number of Facebook ‘friends’ (Tyler had a whopping 630 at the time), Tyler felt it was important to be able to quickly engage with lots of people, while having the option to more intimately engage with closer ‘friends’.   He attributed the success of applications like Happy Hour, which allows users to send virtual drinks to their ‘friends’, to this very phenomenon.  Dave Gentzel from SocialMedia, who developed apps like Happy Hour and Food Fight, agreed that user engagement is key.  In addition, he felt that speed in development was a key component of success.  Anything that’s taken him longer than 2 days to develop hasn’t paid off.

Tyler also brought up the issue of Facebook’s need to communicate more proactively and effectively with Developers.  He and others expressed concerns that Facebook had made some code changes without talking to developers in recent weeks, which resulted in killing thousands of profiles within Slide’s database alone.  Generally, the developer panelists felt that Facebook’s attempts to help a large number of small developers may unintentionally hurt larger developers.  As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I’m a huge proponent of investing in developer relations.  When you allow ISVs/ developers (at least large ones) to plug into your API, you should be treat them as strategic alliance partners and give them insight into what you’re planning in exchange for quality assurances.  If you don’t, you run the risk of alienating thousands of your users if/when something goes wrong with the apps that plug into your platform.

Blake Commagere, who helped develop popular facebook apps like Causes went on to talk more about developing Facebook apps.  It took 4 engineers to develop the Causes app (which was written in Ruby on Rails).  Blake pointed out that to develop a successful Facebook app, you don’t need 100 app servers, you just need to make sure the app and database are solid.  By way of example, Causes runs using 11 app servers, which serve 2.5 million users, and it is working well.  Joe and Eric who developed Quizzes, only use 4 servers for their app.  They emphasize the importance of focusing on app quality and investing time in apps that will grow spread quickly virally.

All of the developers mentioned that that Facebook platform is a little sluggish at times.  James Hong from Hot or Not said that to combat delays, his team opted for using Ajax.  The challenge here is that most ad networks don’t currently consider user action as the way by which advertisers pay for ads. Instead, it’s still page changes.  In principle, the ad networks James knows say they’re happy to move towards a user action model, but in the meantime, there are monetary disadvantages to using Ajax on Facebook.  But, most of the panelists seemed okay with the tradeoffs in the short-term because they increase user engagement long-term.  At the time, Hot or Not is apparently making $1000/day off of AdSense, and rumor has it (according to a member of the audience) that Graffiti is making $100,000 month!

Ads were a hot topic on all panels – including the developer panel – with the need for relevant content delivery emerging as a key theme.  Most of the developers on the panel said they’d been approached to do demographic based behavioral targeting of users.  What I found interesting is that the only data anyone would cop to hearing advertisers request is: sex and geography.  If this panel was any indication, for all of those personalization fans out there (of which I’m one), it looks like we’re a ways off from seeing any meaningful movement in this space.

The 2pm panel was on “Facebook Advertising Models.”  Panelists were:

• Aryeh Goldsmith (Acebucks)
• Sourabh Niyogi (Appsaholic)
• Scott Rafer (Lookery)
• Narendra Rocherolle (fbExchange)
• Matt Sanchez (VideoEgg)
• Sundeep Ahuja (Appfuel)

Perhaps the most interesting part of this panel was how so many people are attempting to create ad networks on Facebook.   Matt Sanchez from VideoEgg says he has 20 sales people selling in 4 countries.  Aryeh Goldsmith is creating a new Facebook economy and customer loyalty company by introducing a fake currency to Facebook called Acebucks.  At best, the currency takes off and does just what Linden Dollars are doing for SecondLife.  Appsaholic is hoping to become a fully independent monitor of Facebook Stats (think the AC Nielsen of Facebook).  While, Slide wants to be the “single largest content delivery platform to unique users” across all social media OSes.

How useful are Facebook users to developers and advertisers?  The final session addressed “How to Value Facebook Apps.”  The panelists were:

• Eve Phillips, (Greylock)
• Keith Rabois, (Slide)
• Naval Ravikant, (Hitforge)
• Angela Strange, (Bay Partners’ AppFactory)
• Susan Wu, (Charles River Ventures)

One VC in the audience reckoned that each Facebook user is worth about $500 each.  While, Angela Strange from Bay Partners, whose AppFactory is actively seeking investments in start-ups that make Facebook applications, used a guideline of 25-30 cents per user per app.  In watching this last panel and listening to the excitement relayed through the questions from the crowd and VC responses, it’s clear that there are a lot of people pinning their hopes on Facebook (and other Social Media Platforms) continuing to open their APIs and thus encouraging the growth of a new developer economy that pushes apps for so-called social media operating systems.  There is a frenzy of enthusiasm about the potential, but it remains to be seen whether potential becomes reality.  The VCs aren’t taking any chances.  Each of the panelists said that when they’re looking to invest in a company that develops Facebook apps, they need to see the potential of those applications beyond the confines of Facebook.

For those of you interested in future developments in the Facebook space, Dave McClure mentioned that he’s planning a Facebook conference of his own on October 7-9. Stay tuned to his blog for details.

Today in Boomtown, Kara Swisher talks about a management shuffle at Facebook.  Among the apparent changes is the move of Owen Van Natta from COO to chief revenue officer and vice president of operations.  Swisher elaborates saying:

Van Natta now shares power–how uneasily it remains to be seen–with newly installed Vice President of Marketing and Operations Chamath Palihapitiya, a former AOL exec; longtime exec Matt Cohler, vice president of strategy and business operations (and a LinkedIn co-founder); newly installed CFO Gideon Yu (a former Yahoo and YouTube exec who replaced the quickly departing Mike Sheridan); co-founder and Vice President of Product Engineering Dustin Moskovitz; and CTO Adam D’Angelo…
Now, areas like human resources, customer service, legal, systems (which Van Natta heads) and finance all have different leads, as the company moves to professionalize its management ranks.

Included in today’s Boomtown blog entry is a great video chronicling Kara’s trip to Facebook’s HQ in Palo Alto California.

I’m curious about where, if anywhere, Developer Relations features in Facebook’s re-shuffle.  Marketing and Operations or maybe Strategy and Business Operations?  Facebook seems to have invested a great deal of resources in opening up its API to 3rd party developers.  I believe that establishing a more formal developer relations and/or application incubator program (think a more fun and funky take on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange and similar programs) will keep Facebook user-friendly, further the 3rd party application economy (encouraging innovation and profitability), and allow Facebook’s investors to reap the most from their investment.

In the meantime, today, I’m heading to the “Appsaholic Facebook Developer Developer Conference” in San Francisco.  50ish developers, entrepreneurs and investors that are at the forefront of the Facebook applications conversation are getting together in a town-hall-esque setting to talk about the future of Facebook’s development platform.  It should be very interesting!