The Progress Bar

Nice Facebook reality check at Venture Beat.

According to the Silicon Valley’s version of the National Enquirer,  two enterprising post-college grads have created a mashup which displays your out-of-control Myspace spasm in the spare, blue-and-white layout we call Facebook. And they call it, wait for it…. SpaceLift. Looks broken at the moment, won’t import my Myspace profile, must be getting hammered on.

This just in: The easiest way to get hired at Facebook is to come on as a ringer on their ultimate frisbee team.

Single these days, I am updating my Match profile like it’s a blog. If they’re not getting with the program I’m going to do it my own way. Every woman that has emailed me said reading a frequently updated profile was more interesting than the usual stagnant “lovetotravelgosoxbudlite” male profiles.

Why do dating sites and social nets make their freeform textareas so small? Do you not want me updating my profile? Given the lackluster performance of Match.com in recent months, I would think they might want to work on the mechanics of the existing site as opposed to getting distracted with mobile initiatives.

Hint, mobile alerts for online dating is only cool if you’re hot and you get lots of emails. Otherwise it’s like having a phone that never rings. Maybe the 20-somethings will use it, I don’t know. I don’t think Match does either.

People do use anonymous calling, or so Match and Jangl want you to know. I can’t talk about the numbers, but what I do know is that adoption rates take a long time. Dating isn’t Facebook and the mainstream online daters are not the Tech Crunch 50k.

Speaking of Facebook, my phone is constantly chirping when people write notes to me, write on my wall or poke me. I like that, and I can regulate what actions get passed onto my phone.

OTOH, Facebook now requires too much of my time to try out all the cool new apps. My home page looks like the Yahoo home page circa 1999, 500 things all over the place, no coherent User Interface or design strategy.

Re: open profiles. Wouldn’t it be great if I could link to my own blog from my dating profile? The pay sites already have my money, why should they care? Because that decreases pageviews? Get over it. Dating site ad inventory is mostly junk that no other sites really want anyway. Unless you are Trojan that is.

The open profile movement is finally getting the recognition it deserves. Scott Karp, who’s blog I read often, states what I have been talking about for years. I could not be more excited, as I have advised and consulted with several companies that have toyed with the concept but never had what it took to execute on the vision. Maybe I should yell a bit louder so the blogosphere can hear me.

Another case of social networking sites kicking the collective ass of the online dating industry, the original social network. Go Facebook! At least until something better comes along, at which time we’ll need to annoy, I mean re-friend everyone.

Moving to Charlestown on Monday, I’m surprisingly packed already. Off to Newburyport for an ocean cruise and fireworks tomorrow, back on the grid on Tuesday.

It appears that despite denying the very existence of such a thing,  Valleywag has received a copy of the elusive Facebook advertising rate card (via Valleywag). Dated from February, the document includes pricing for advertising on the home page, groups and various CTR and CPM data.

Softwaredeveloper.com has put together a thorough feature story on developing hit Facebook applications. Looks very thorough.

I’ll get to my review of last night’s WebInno later on tonight.

From TechCrunch:

Facebook has launched a Silicon Valley VC fund Bay Partners has earmarked millions of dollars for investments in startups creating applications for Facebook. The new program, called AppFactory, will be officially launched on Tuesday.

If your app is popular on Facebook you’re going to need the money. Companies offering free apps are getting slammed with bandwidth and hosting, there is a cost to the popularity that comes with a good viral Facebook app.

I was a hard-core Ecto user for a long time, then went to WordPress’s web-based editor, and now this is my first post using Flock. So far I don’t like it.

Flock doesn’t deal well with my custom CSS.
Tags not compatible with Ultimate Tag Warrior?
Can’t add title and id to links.

I’ll try a few more posts then probably go back to the WordPress web interface, or maybe Performancing.

Jeremiah Owyang on Web Strategy Predictions: Facebook, Identity, Social Networks.

Facebook will launch an Identity widget that I can embed on my blog. This allows only those who have registered to Facebook to leave a comment, many high profile blogs will do this, to avoid nasty anonymous comments, thus reducing the incident of Kathy Sierra type events. Dave Winer is right.

-The data collected from these widgets ables Facebook to erode the small marketshare that Attention trackers and MyBlogLog are creating.

-Facebook will have faster adoption that Open ID, as the consumer users will drive it. (Remember the mantra of consider joining before creating communities)

More about community groups and social networking, worth a read.