Entries Tagged 'Facebook Commentary' ↓

Facebook Whale (def): A person with more than 3,000 friends on Facebook.

What would it take for someone who isn’t a famous web personality to become a Facebook whale?

I mean folks like Jeff Pulver, Robert Scoble, Michael Arrington and Jason Calcanis are all whales, but shouldn’t they be? I mean given the sort of readership they have, if they didn’t have that  many Facebook friends I would be shocked.

I am not hating, they earned those friends.

But how does someone who doesn’t have millions coming to their site each month become a whale without spamming Facebook forums?

Heck, I have more subscribers to this blog, then I do friends on Facebook. Honestly, I do not buy the quality over quantity bit either. There is power in numbers and having lots of friends never hurts.

So how do I get to be a Facebook whale in the next 30, 60, 90 days? Is it possible or just a pipe dream…

P.S. If you want to help me out and add me as a friend, you can do so here.

Career management company Vault.com recently released a survey indicating that 82 percent of employers surveyed will let online profiles influence their hiring decisions. In English, that means the next person to interview you might be checking out your Facebook page first.

At first glance, this seems a little unfair. For most of us, Facebook is where we go to hang out with our friends, play games and brutally Vampire Bite people. Facebook is not corporate clothing. Facebook is casual Friday. Heck, it’s weekend wear.

But have you ever made a date with someone, then done a little research on their Facebook profile before meeting up? How about party invitations? Ever checked out someone’s friend list to see if there would be cool/attractive people at her party? After all, they posted this information on the internet, right? It’s not like you’re invading their privacy.

Let’s face it, putting your life on the internet isn’t like living life in your house. Like it or not, the internet is a public space, and that means everyone from potential employers to the future mother of your children is going to be checking out that video of you drunkenly vomiting all over the Mayor’s shoes.

Does this mean you should take down your Facebook page? Definitely not. But it might pay to be a little cautious. You don’t wind to wind up like the folks in this Washington Post article. One guy lied to his manager to get off work, but was betrayed by pictures on his Facebook page showing him at a party that day. The manager not only busted the guy, he also forwarded the pictures to the entire company. (This is being a dick above and beyond what is required, I think, but then I am not a manager.) The article also talks about a Facebook group featuring pictures of girls in various stages of drunkenness – not the images you necessarily want floating around on the internet. (I’m not going to link to that one, because I feel kind of ishy about adding to these girls’ embarrassment.)

If you don’t want to adjust your page then you shouldn’t have to, say I. Damn the man and all that. But if you want to clean up your online image to impress future bosses, here are three easy suggestions for things you can do to keep your page work-friendly without totally selling out:

• Avoid photos of you looking conspicuously wasted. Pictures of you drunkenly hugging your friends and grinning are fine: no employer that isn’t owned by the Mormon Church should have a problem with social drinking. But images of you vomiting, looking cross-eyed and queasy, or doing something generally horrible/scandalous/criminal should probably be reserved for your private collection.
• Swear words on your page are okay. Racial slurs and sexist or homophobic remarks aren’t. This isn’t a moral regulation: it’s business. Employers need to know you can work with all kinds of people in an office without raising a fuss because of your personal belief that people from Yemin smell like brie. (Note: I do not personally believe that people from Yemin smell like brie, though I admit I have never met anyone from Yemin.)
• Be reasonable about the groups you join. A group called “kill all middle managers” is funny, but might, you know, send the wrong message to an interviewer.

That’s what my 15 year old brother told me earlier today, in response to the question, “Do like Facebook or MySpace better?”

I am not surprised by his answer. It is widely known that there is a big difference in the types of users of each social network. To a 15 year old (and many others) MySpace is undoubtedly more fun than Facebook. The ability to customize your profile page (a form of self expression) on MySpace is just one example of why many perceive MySpace to be more “fun” (or less professional depending on your point of view) than Facebook.

If Facebook is not the ideal tool for business professionals, and younger generations find MySpace to me more fun, what does the future hold for Facebook? I do not think there will ever be an all-in-one social network, so Facebook is not going anywhere; even Rupert agrees. The real question that still remains to be answered is are all of the things that Facebook is doing to become the social network, going to lead to them losing what the site was originally all about - college kids?.

If you’re using Facebook as your primary photo storage, you might want to look closely at the Terms of Use.

Under the terms which every Facebook user agrees to before using the site:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

What this means in person-speak is that anything you upload to the site, including all your photos, can be used by Facebook at any time, for any reason, without warning you. (The Terms of Use are your warning.) They can use your face in an ad, a brochure or the company newsletter. They can also modify your image.

Of course Facebook is not a nefarious scheme to steal people’s photos. But it’s good to be aware that your photos become the property of Facebook when they’re on the site. However, as soon as you remove pictures from the site, Facebook has no more rights to them.

By contrast, the Flickr/Yahoo Terms of Use state that:

Yahoo! does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service. However, with respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service, you grant Yahoo! the following worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license(s), as applicable: … With respect to photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service other than Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Service.

All of which means, I think, that the site can’t use your photos for purposes you didn’t intend. In other words, they can’t use your work in an ad.

If there are lawyers or speakers of legalese reading this, please feel free to chime in with further clarifications of each site’s terms of use.

Recent Investments in Facebook Are Misleading

When you play poker and you think you have the winning hand, you go all in. You do not limp around or slow play. You go for the juggler. This is because you know you have a sure thing and you are guaranteed to win. When I take a look at the recent round of funding that Facebook has raised I am left with the feeling that Facebook is anything but a sure thing.

Here’s why.

While I am no venture capitalist, I know a thing or two about investing money in companies (I was a fairly successful day trader at one point) and I know that investing is very much like poker. Sure, there is luck involved, but if you make the right moves you can increase your chances of “getting lucky.” I know that when you have the “nuts” you go big, because you know you have a sure win. In this recent round of funding, none of the investors went big. Microsoft invested a third of what they were reportedly interested in investing and the remaining 500 million that was raised came from two different hedges funds.

If Facebook was a sure bet, one of these three players or possibly another suitor would have went all in. None of them did - they all limped in.

I Usually Don’t Agree With His Point of View…

But when your right, your right. And Jason Calacanis is dead on with his Facebook Reality Check post. Let’s take a look at his points and why I could not agree more.

1. Facebook Is Not Worth $100 billion - Okay, this is an easy one to agree with. Honestly even a company in the hottest sector of the hottest marketplace in the hottest business climate would not be worth 100 billion on $100 million in revenues and $25 million in profits. Multiples like that just do not exist. Personally, I think Facebook is probably going to cash out for around $3 billion.
2. Facebook Will Crush Google - Yeah and this site is going to crush TechCrunch. Again, this is just so unrealistic. No one is going to crush Google at Google’s own game. The best thing that Facebook could do is work with Google and leverage Google’s search technology inside of Facebook (so you can search the web from within Facebook, making it more of a “life portal” than a social network).
3. Facebook will Crush MySpace - I have been building web properties for a few years now and I can tell you that getting traffic is not easy and at the scale that these two sites are at it is is even more difficult. As Jason points out, Facebook would have to double their traffic in order to catch MySpace. Going from 30 million to over 68 million visitors a month is not going to happen anytime this decade. At best Facebook is a better platform, but I do not think it will eclipse MySpace if for any other reason then the MySpace has had to long of a head start to be caught.
4. Facebook is More Important Than The Graphical User Interface - Facebook is not that important in the grand scheme of things. It is a great platform, but it is not revolutionary. At best Facebook is evolutionary.
5. Top Facebook Applications Are Worth $500 million - If Facebook is realistically valued at 1 to 5 billion, then that means that 10 to 50% of Facebook’s total value is held within applications they do not even own. This math does not work. Given that most Facebook applications are not making money it does not make sense to put that sort of price tag on them.
6. Facebook is An Amazing Product - Yes it is. It is the most usable, flexible and unique of the major social networks. It has tremendous potential and great upside, but it is not the messiah that many make it out to be. Simply put, Facebook is an awesome utility.

If everyone you knew used Facebook would their be a need for the Internet as we know it today?

Think about it.

With Facebook you can email, instant message, text, call, send videos and voicemail’s, in addition to over 5,000 other different types of virtual interactions and communication utilities.

So what is missing? Search.

Think of what happens, though, when you can search the Internet from inside Facebook. If all of your web based communications are consolidated under one single platform that everyone you know uses, tell me again why you would use fragmented utilities?

Facebook just might be AOL 2.o, but maybe that is not such a bad thing for them. Last time I spoke to the general public about the web (the polling was conducted a year ago) an over-whemling number of folks thought AOL was the Internet.

For Facebook, “being” the Internet might not be the goal, but it is not a bad consolation prize.