Entries Tagged 'Facebook Applications' ↓

My dad remembers waiting in line on campus to add college classes every semester. Lines so long they would wrap around several buildings, no matter how staggered the student numbers were, and no matter how hard the rain was falling in Tacoma that day. My college experience was not quite so low-tech, but there was still a lot of paper involved. When I first applied to schools, back in 97,* you wrote or called universities to request information. Then a few weeks later, huge, glossy pamphlets and brochures would arrive in the mail, and I’d spread them out on the kitchen table and look them over with my folks…ah, those were the days.

Those days, apparently, are gone. Now you can use College Planner, the Facebook app that lets you compare schools, get recommendations, check on what your friends are looking at and more.

I don’t remember how we found out about our options in my day. I imagine most schools have some kind of college counselor who can help you through all that, but at my school you were pretty much on your own. It was a big imaginative leap: first, to picture myself at college at all**, and then to figure out what schools were out there. Now the imaginative part has been removed, it seems to me, and you can search through every school in the country with the click of a mouse.

This is not me being anti-progress; I think it’s fantastic that kids have better ways to research their options. Although the application itself, I have to say, is not so great for that. Your only options for search criteria are what you want to major in, private or public schools, urban/suburban/rural settings, and where in the country you want to live. However, the app gives you an option to perform a much more advanced search at the parent site, Embark.com, where you are given a lot of input choices: everything from your preferred faculty-to-student ratio to how good your grades are. The major reason for using the Facebook app, I would say, is to see what your friends are looking at. It’s nice to know you’re going to know someone at the new school.

I’d like to see the application expand to include rating systems for the really important stuff like dorm ratings, dining hall reviews and descriptions of the social scene. Perhaps the developers can form some relationships with the universities who are creating a Facebook presence.

In the meantime, this application is definitely worth adding if you’re in the preliminary stages of college hunting. You’ll get a solid sense of what’s out there, and you can research your options more on your own.

*I’m sorry, I know this is such a granny story. “Eh, in my day it were tough to apply fer learning, not like you whippersnappers have it today.”

**This is making it sound like I grew up in the rural South or something, but actually I was raised in a reasonably affluent California suburb. Say, now that I think about it, why didn’t we have a college counselor?

Enjoy watching videos on YouTube? You can share your favorite YouTube videos with your friends on Facebook with a new application called YouTube Favorites. Once you, add the application you’ve to link to your YouTube user name. The application will automatically show the top 10 favorite videos of yours once you’re done.

The application has been developed by Joe Lazarus.

To all Bob Dylan fans out there. Enjoy his latest album and also check out the popular Bob Dylan Facebook application which is a terrific example of viral marketing by Sony BMG.

Before there was LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, or the internet at large, there were block parties. There were casual chats on your front stoop. There were, in short, your actual, physical neighbors.

If, like me, you live in a city, you probably don’t know the majority of your neighbors. And in the suburbs, where fenced-in yards replace parks and cars replace subways, you can be even more socially isolated from the people around you.

Of course, we have more options than we used to. Online gaming, social networking sites, forums and chat rooms offer the possibility of making friends all over the world. Still, wouldn’t it be kind of nice to walk down the street and know the names of the people you pass? Maybe even meet up with some of them based on common interests?

Now Facebook — part of the online social networking that enables us to totally ignore our neighbors — offers the Your Neighbors application, courtesy of developer Nathan Blecharczyk.

When I first saw this, I laughed, I admit it. I thought this was some kind of virtual neighbor, created, like (fluf)friends, to mimic something you didn’t have in the real world. I figured Your Neighbor would occasionally poke you and ask to borrow a cup of virtual sugar (which you can earn by taking this very quick survey, or just selling your soul).

Instead, the application turns out to be a mapping program that shows you other Facebook users who live near you, including how close they are. Using this app, I’ve already discovered two writing groups and a workout partner in my neighborhood.

Of course, being Facebook, this app offers a privacy setting that lets you see who’s out there without them seeing you (unless they’ve got the same privacy setting enabled). But this level of protection doesn’t really jive with the spirit of the app.

Various tabs let you look at the community profiles of your neighbors, check out the competition in different neighborhoods, and find events happening near you. It’s kind of like having a genuine community newspaper, full of people who have a lot in common with you and news about events you might be interested in attending.

If you don’t like Your Neighbors (the app, not the people), you can also try Neighborhoods, which doesn’t offer the events but does provide real estate listings, which are kind of a de facto event in my city. Each neighborhood is set up with its own profile, complete with wall and photo section.

Neighborhoods has 19,555 users and Your Neighbors only 1,260, but the real test will have to be made neighborhood by neighborhood, since the only way you can successfully use these apps to meet people is by finding a lot of users in your area.

Got a preference? A quibble? Leave ‘em in the comments.

Popular applications called  ‘Are You Interested’ and ‘Meet New People’ built on Facebook Platform have crossed 3 million users on Facebook. The ‘Are You Interested’ application has grown in popularity levels since its August 14th launch. During mid-October the application had an installation count of 2,000,000.

According to Clifford Lerner, eTwine’s CEO, "A fifty percent increase in the install count of an additional 1 million users during the past month for ‘Are You Interested’ is very gratifying". "We are delighted by the extraordinary growth that our applications continue to experience and by the positive response from users. More than 200,000 unique users visit our applications on a daily basis. We look forward to further innovation and the addition of many exciting new features to the application."

eTwine has been looking to maximize shareholder value and the success of these applications have opened new opportunities for eTwine.

eTwine holdings has been incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in New York, eTwine Holdings, Inc. offers the next generation in personals and free online dating sites for singles. For more on the dating site visit  IamFreeTonight.com or else install the application ‘Are You Interested’.

After the minor hubbub over a recent post about the Pink Ribbon Toolbar, I spoke to one of the developers, Matt Adkisson, to clear up some of the questions surrounding this application. The app provides a downloadable toolbar. Using this toolbar creates cash flow which the developers donate to breast cancer research in partnership with Susan G. Komen for the Cure. However, several people have questioned how much of the money actually goes towards research, and how the funds are being raised.

Here’s what Matt told me:

Q: How did this app get started?

Matt: We started as a non-profit research project based out of MIT in Boston. We were funded/subsidized by MIT at first. My mother is a cancer survivor; other co-founders also had close friends and family members affected by cancer.

Q: Some people have suggested that the application raises money by tracking and selling browsing data. Is this true?

Matt: We don’t track (and therefore couldn’t sell) any browsing data, which, of course, leads to the question - how do we make money?

We have a broad-based partnership with Internet search engine Yahoo!. Yahoo! powers the search box on the toolbar and when users search they raise funds for Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Also, we have affiliate partnerships with several online stores that donate a percentage of purchases made.

Since funds are raised every time a user searches or shops at a featured store, we have created a revenue stream, rather than simply a one-time donation, for Komen. The net present value of the revenue stream to Komen, as of today, exceeds one million dollars.

Q: What percentage of your profits actually goes to breast cancer research?

Matt: The exact percentage we donate varies month-to-month to comply with tax issues. As a strict rule, we donate more money to the Susan G. Komen Foundation than we keep in profit. Currently, we don’t make any profit at all; we are barely break-even and that’s without any salaries for employees who donate their time. Facebook applications with millions of users are very expensive to maintain.

With Pink Ribbon, we did stumble upon a fantastic way to monetize Facebook applications. We see browser toolbars as the most effective way for Facebook application developers to monetize their applications. We have the ability to make completely customized toolbars for other developers who are interested. Please tell any developers who are interested in this to reach out to me at madkisso at mit dot edu.

You can now choose your top 8 Facebook friends and put them on a t-shirt.Thanks to the new application called “My Facebook Friends on a T-Shirt” you can now take your friends where ever you go. You can customize the shirt, choose your colors and style and have instant shipping.

The application has been developed by Eric Ries who’s based out Silcon Valley. For more information on the application do check out “My Facebook Friends on a T-Shirt” right away on Facebook or contact ERIC.