First glimpses of useful Facebook applications

A great article just came out in the Wall Street journal on some of the new applications coming out on Facebook. Here is a list of some interesting new ones that were mentioned along with others that caught my own eye. Note that only the first two are from the public sector.

• Causes - Lets you start and join the causes you care about. Donations to causes can benefit over a million registered 501(c)(3) non-profits.
• Ripple - This is essentially a way of donating to a charity without spending any of your own money. Simply, ad sponsors give money to ripple for any ads viewed. Ripple donates 100% of that money to charity (we hope).
• Neighborhoods -This application uses the founding company’s broker-defined neighborhood system to help Facebook members meet other people who live near them and share local information and photos. It also shows properties for sale in the neighborhood from any of Point2’s broker and agent members, which the company says number about 140,000 in 86 countries.
• MyStyle - Lets Facebook’s fashionistas place on their profile pages pictures of items they like from the retailer’s site, such as Oscar de la Renta dresses.
• Trips - Provides a place where groups can set travel dates, create itineraries and post messages to each other. Less than two weeks ago, SideStep added a search box to its application, which, the company says, now drives 2,000 visits to its site each day — where people can search for airplane tickets, hotels and rental cars. SideStep plans to enhance the application and, eventually, show some targeted ads.
• Visual Bookshelf - Helps Facebook members find new books to read by getting recommendations and reading reviews written by their friends.

Upon first glance, none of these bring anything drastically new to the table. However, what is interesting is that the barriers to entry in developing them were significantly reduced. Why? No proprietary software was needed, promotional costs were drastically reduced and community was formed overnight thanks to the power of social media.

Anyone else know any good ones?

The Facebook Economy Race for Riches…good or bad?

Be sure to read this CNN article on the The Facebook Economy . It offers great summaries at the end of all the latest applications created by users around the world ever since Facebook opened its floodgates to developers. That being said, the whole article revolves around how to make money off of this unique opportunity while it is free. I feel that this is short-minded thinking.

I realize that one can easily argue that if you develop an application you should be able to leverage its high usage to make money via ads.However, the downside is that we are being inundated with garbage applications from people looking to make a quick buck. Some of these applications die a quick natural death, others are added even though they are garbage and clutter people’s profiles. Facebook will likely soon go Public, and we will all lose out on this unique opportunity to create and reach “long-tail” audiences.

Before this happens, there is a tremendous opportunity for non-profits and the government to come in and make some truly community benefiting applications to help deliver on their programs and services. I have already seen a few such as RFP submission tools, bilingual polling tools, and recruitment tools used by agencies such as the CIA. Hopefully, with the whole slew of start-ups specializing solely in Facebook application development, we will be seeing some truly beneficial and unique uses of this platform before its too late. The race is on…

US launches ‘MySpace for spies’

“Spies and teenagers normally have little in common but that is about to change as America’s intelligence agencies prepare to launch “A-Space”, an internal communications tool modelled on the popular social networking sites, Facebook and MySpace.

The Director of National Intelligence will open the site to the entire intelligence community in December. The move is the latest part of an ongoing effort to transform the analytical business following the failure to detect the 9/11 terrorist attacks or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

Incredible! Kudos to the CIA for realizing the powerful potential of social media networks. Now if only the Canadian government could learn from our neighbours down south and follow suite to reduce the bureaucracy and lack of communication within and amongst departments. What are we doing instead? Banning Facebook. Go figure.

Read the full article here:FT.com / World - US launches ‘MySpace for spies’

SurveyMonkey & FACEBOOK Polls - quick, efficient and cheap!

I often come across clients that dread the thought of having to do any sort of marketing research since they assume it requires hiring an expensive marketing research firm or using precious, overworked, internal resources. While this is true for a comprehensive in-depth analysis, a quick online survey is a different story. If you haven’t yet heard of services such as surveymonkey or the new Facebook Polls , then please join today and start saving taxpayer money!

Surveymonkey allows you to create and design your own online survey in minutes. Once you are done the design (numerous templates are available), you are provided with a link which can be sent to your list or posted on your website. What’s more, basic analysis is automatically done for you. For those wishing to do a more comprehensive analysis, the raw data can be downloaded and analyzed in a program of your choice (Excel, SPSS, SAS, etc…)

Facebook Polls is explained in this excerpt from an article by Alicja Gulajski of Market2world.com :

June 1st, 2007, Facebook Polls was launched. This product creates great value for marketers: this tool can be used to create brand awareness and gather critical information about your brand from Facebook community members.
For example:

Facebook Poll users create a question (with up to 5 answer choices) and are able to target the poll based on age, sex, location and even profile keywords. There is an initial $5 insertion fee, but the poll creator chooses the bid amount - the amount the user is willing to pay per response. Depending on the bid, and the anticipated results, Facebook estimates the wait time before results are received. Currently bids range from $.10 to $1.00 per response, according to TechCrunch.

The advantage of using Facebook Polls of course, is access to the more than 24 million active users, and over 100,000 new registrations per day since Jan. 2007. Not only is this a significant audience, it is segmented for you! You can target specific groups based on geographic areas, psychographic characteristics, age, etc…

What are you waiting for? Get started!