Facebook Talk

Stupid, yet funny at the same time.

Facebook, YouTube

You might recall a post I made at the end of March Madness talking about Jacob Dodson putting up a photo with the URL Gamerosters.com prominently displayed. I suspected he had been paid to do so and it turns out, I was right:

This is True. My name is Brian Kaldenberg, owner of Gamerosters.com, and I was going to pay Mr. Dodson $200 to change his profile picture.

He did it and in 8 hours I received 800 visits. This was from about 11:00 p.m. unti 7:00 a.m. the next morning. However, Facebook decided to ban me forever.

I hate Faceboook for this. I probably would have gotten 30-50,000 visits over the next couple of days.

I’m not sure what would have caused Facebook to pull down the profile picture, but I take it they didn’t appreciate the “free” advertising Gamerosters.com was getting from Facebook, as they probably viewed it as such since Gamerosters.com didn’t pay any cash directly to Facebook. This isn’t to say that e-mailing Facebook and offering to send them some cash would have solved the problem, especially since this was a more “spur of the moment” type situation where timing was absolutely everything. Had Kaldenberg actually tried to get Facebook’s approval of this, it would have been well past the window of opportunity presented to him with Dodson winning the tournament - and getting the attention.

I must admit, I’m a bit bummed by Facebook’s decision in this matter. Like it or not, Facebook will continue to be compared to the other social network giant Myspace in every matter. It would be nice to a little control over the way our profile’s appear on Facebook and I’m sure this could be done without letting the site succumb to millions of profiles that make you want to vomit upon seeing them, like Myspace has now become.

But it’s clear now that Facebook would rather be overly aggressive when it comes to policing what they deem are unflappable rules in an effort to keep the site up to their standards. As to whether or not this is a good policy though is up to how you view it.

facebook, gamerosters.com

If you’ve tried leaving a comment on somebody’s Facebook wall today, you might have seen something similar to the message below:

So why might one of the most popular features on Facebook be unavailable in the middle of the day? Well, most likely this means that the wall feature was taken off line for some routine maintenance, but most websites wait until late in the night when traffic is at it’s absolute lowest before the start disabling features and updating stuff behind the scenes. As I am always on Facebook, I made a few wall posts late last night and it was working fine just then. Thus, we can rule out this being a routinely scheduled maintenance.

Chances are Facebook either realized a bug in their code that might allow people to do things they shouldn’t be able to and thus they decided to fix it now instead of later. Or possibly this is a new update that’s taking longer than expected that might contain a few new cool features for wall posts.

Frankly, I’m hoping it’s the latter.

A website called Zimride recently launched a Facebook API that makes it extremely easy to carpool anywhere you want to.

Right now, Zimride is mainly focused in California, but it’s not hard to see how this could easily spread to other college campuses. Many students at college don’t have cars, especially freshmen who aren’t allowed to bring them onto campus due to parking shortages. In addition, most people go to college in a town other than one they grew up in, even if it’s only just a few towns away. Thus, every year you’ll have a large group of college kids who are away from living at home for their first time and will want to go back every few weekends. This is where Zimride would come in perfectly, for it could easily fill the void of finding rides.

I’m sure it could be used for other purposes as well, though. Think about during Fall, Winter, or Spring Breaks when many dorms across the country shut down and require the students to leave. If the students don’t have cars, they’re going to need a ride no matter where they’re going and so you’ll find that during these points in the year, there’s a huge demand for people looking for rides to all over the country.

But what if you already have a car? At first glance you might think that Zimride wouldn’t be of any use to you, but not so. Let’s say you’re heading home for the weekend to get some of Mom’s homemade spaghetti and have her do your laundry. Well, you could post that on Zimride and offer to let somebody ride with you for some cash! You could charge just $5 or $10 and that alone would help cover the cost of gas you were already going to be using even if the other person didn’t ride with you. In the end, it’s a win-win for all parties involved.

Adding and navigating through ride listings are easy (as well as free!) and they show pretty much everything you’d need to know about the trip. Destination, date, time, type of car, phone number, and more. Plus, remember, since it’s integrated with Facebook, you can check out the other person’s Facebook profile just to make sure they’re not totally crazy or anything

Zimride needs to expand to more college campuses though before it can become a big hit and mainstay in most student’s travel plans. But this is an easy solvable problem as more press and coverage about Zimride will cause students all across the country to sign up and start posting their travel plans.

zimride, facebook, carpool

Mashable is reporting that Facebook sent out a short survey to a few select users inquiring as to whether or not they would find a classified section on Facebook useful. Below are the questions asked:

Imagine you log onto facebook one day and find a new classifieds feature, where you can connect with other users to buy/sell goods and services in your local area. You see that it is FREE to make a post to any network you are in.

1. Knowing it’s free, would you list something to your network?

• Yes
• No

2. If you were making a free listing for something in your network, would you also want to list it in nearby networks?

• Yes, I would.
• No, I wouldn’t.
• I said I wouldn’t list an item.

3. If you said you would want to list your item in nearby networks in addition to your network, would you be willing to pay to do this?

• Yes, I would.
• No, I wouldn’t.
• I wouldn’t be at all interested in listing in nearby networks.

4. How much would you be willing to pay for each additional network (knowing your own network will be free)?

• 50 cents
• $1.00
• $2.50
• $5.00
• I don’t think it’d be worth any money.

At first glance, it might sound foolish to allow the listings to be free. Facebook could easily charge a mere dollar, like they do with their icon gifts, and create a tidy cash cow on the side. But when you think about it, the idea is pretty smart. The best way to get people to pay for something is to get them hooked on it first. And the best way to get people hooked on something - give it away for free for a while.

In addition, this tactic will probably help to lure in people who are already weary of paying money to Facebook. The site already sells ad space to students and has been doing so for a few years. The ads generally cost anywhere from $3-$7 per day, depending on how large the network is that you’re advertising in. However, it’s been mine and many other’s experience that the ads don’t convert that well into sales, much less generated traffic, and thus it’s very easy to buy up a week’s worth of ads and basically flush $30 down the proverbial drain. Yet this way, people could test out the new classified service free of charge and see for themselves whether it’s worth the time and money or not.

Think of how easier it would be to sell or buy your textbooks through a free listing on Facebook than through Amazon.com or even worse, the local bookstore. The savings could easily reach into the 50% range and when the average book price nowadays is close to $100, that’s some serious money we’re talking about each semester. But these classified ads could easily go beyond just textbooks. I know had this been around when I was still in college, I would have probably listed all the old furniture I ended up putting on the curb just to see if I could have made an easy buck or two. If you have an extra student ticket to the next football game, it would be easy to list it on Facebook and sell it instead of letting it go to waste. The possibilities are practically endless and knowing the college community, I’m sure most people would be able to come up with some creative ways to sell things and earn enough cash for an extra round of shots on Friday night.

In addition, Craigslist has shown that free classified ads can work. They practically own the classified markets in the biggest cities in the US, but most colleges, especially the large ones, aren’t in major metropolises. I went to the USC in Columbia, SC and Facebook easily outweighs the Craigslist showing for that town. I have to believe the same gap is true for much of the other college towns across the country.

Facebook is already in prime position to fill those gaps with their massive amounts of users and appeal. Now all they need to do is execute and from the looks of it, they’re gonna give it a shot.

This clip from College Humor is pretty darn funny, mainly because I can see at least a dozen of my friends taking the time to actually do something like this.

Did you know there’s a “book” written by Karel Baloun called Inside Facebook: Life, Work and Visions of Greatness? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Maybe it’s because the “book” is actually just an e-book, only available as a downloadable pdf file or audio book, but what do I know.

I have yet to shell out the mere $9 it costs to buy the book. But from what people have told me, the book is essentially a massive lovefest for all that is Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. I was a bit disappointed upon hearing this, for I was hoping it would be a bit more of a “tell all” book where Baloun lets loose with reckless abandon on thoughts and feelings about the company. Still, people have told me it holds a few cool stories and anecdotes about how the site runs behind the scenes and how the dichotomy of the entire organization is focused.

It should be noted that Baloun no longer works for Facebook, as he and the site split amicably last summer, so on the surface he doesn’t have anything to gain from puffing up the site and making it seem better than it might actually be. Of course, if the site ends up selling for the $2 billion price tag that Zuckerberg has repeatedly asked for, it wouldn’t hurt that have Engineer for Facebook on your resume, which is the position Baloun happened to hold.

If you’ve got $9 to spare and don’t mind reading something that “feels like its a gigantic blog entry,” then pick up the book and see what you think.

[via Mashable and Gigaom]

facebook, book, tell all