The Facebook Problem

Brad Feld has a post up where he talks about The Facebook Problem. Brad sees an emerging problem for those who are developing apps for Facebook and says:

It seems like Facebook could easily turn on CPM based ads on all of the Facebook apps pages and do a revenue share with the application developer.  Suddenly, the application developer would get paid for the massive new page views they are getting (as would Facebook), and Facebook would create a real incentive for the publishers to stay with their apps and grow them. 

In the absence of this, Facebook is going to need to address the “value to the apps developer” quickly, before some of the larger apps vaporize due to the developer saying “I’m not willing to keep paying for servers and bandwidth.”  I can think of a couple of other approaches here, including Facebook building an in-the-cloud infrastructure for their developers that they make available to one’s that reach a certain level of popularity.  But - the straight “we’ll make more money and share it with you” seems the most logical approach to me.

I see a different Facebook problem. Invite overload and application noise. I cannot keep track of all the invites I am getting, both the standard invites and the application invites. And what's worse, I can't keep track of all the applications that all of my friends are using.

We all know I am not the Facebook generation. So maybe I am just not capable of dealing with this level of social networking. But I bet that many of the members of the Facebook generation are secretly wishing for the old Facebook where it was more about them and their friends and less about being a social operating system.

The comments to Brad's post have a few such examples. Since there are a bunch of members of the Facebook generation who read this blog, please tell me what you think.

Comments

[Rik]

One of the problems is that so many of the apps don't really do or add anything ([insert name] quote generator, anyone?) they sort of clutter up the interaction.

Another problem is something I'd say is a general problem of 'web 2.0': since it's apparently so easy to 'go and code something', there is a complete abundance of apps and things to choose from. Couple that with the property that most, or at least many, are only useful if a lot of friends are using it too, and you find yourself in quite a pickle, because everyone is on a different platform.
This goes for social networks, chat agents, calendaring services, bookmarkers, twitterers, and music data aggregators (for lack of a better term), and a whole other bunch of things.
Put it all together and it's lot of work keeping up for people of any age.

[Chris]

@Rik: Those applications are periphery applications, and that's exactly what they're doing -- balkanizing the interaction.

I wrote a whole post on it (linked)

[Brandon Mullins]

Fred -

I was an original member of Facebook starting in 2004 when they first released a version for my university. It was, indeed, a much simpler time for the users of Facebook, albeit less networking effect. However, as you have stated, it was focused much more on the individual relationships between friends and groups of friends. And, as we are all aware, Facebook has implemented a few paradoxal features as they have progressed that has caused turmoil and uprising (i.e - News Feed, Open Registration), but nothing has caused more noise and confusion than this application release, in my opinion.

I have almost 1000 friends in total on Facebook (yes, I know every single one of them), so you can imagine the amount of application invites I receive upon every sign-in to my account. The newer applications and their developers have the ability to display each user's entire friend list upon uploading an app., with each friend having a check box beside their picture, defaulted to select all. Then all the app-applying user needs to do is hit "Invite" (thinking this is the next step to fully implement the app, when it is actually already installed), and there you go - 200 more people with spammed application invites who have no interest in applying the "Hot or Not" application.

Now I can appreciate the semi-revolution that occurred with regards to third-party developers and this new "Social Operating System", and I definitely appreciate viral growth with regards to efficiently spreading the word and harnessing the power of networks to deliver a product/service widespread, but I feel somewhat slighted to be captured within a tiny world in its own right, whereas I am in essence being spammed by my own community!

Many of my friends whom I have spoken to about this specific topic are confused as to what is even happening. Let's be realistic, the vast majority (and that's an understatement) of Facebook users do not read TechCrunch, A VC, ValleyWag, GigaOm, etc., so they had absolutely no clue as to the storm that was brewing. One day they wake up, and they notice a friend somehow has a music application on their profile called "iLike." Within a week, they are going "app crazy", adding every app they can get their hands on, similar to what you might find if you were to observe a small child with free reign in a candy store; they don't know why this happening, but they're going to tear the place down! But what quickly happened was this scenario was being played out millions of times with millions of other users, and now everyone is swapping app invites with one another (not the first time they've swapped something viral with other students, I'm sure). Now everyone's home page right-sidebar appears in similarity to a box of Crayola's; colors everywhere. I currently have 15 new app invites, with many of them consisting of 3 invites per app.

Ultimately, to answer your question: as a 3 year user of Facebook, I would say that yes, many users do not like this new layout, they feel it is beginning to turn into the MySpace realm where there is way too many visual distractions and less focus on relationships, and they are very confused. Does any of this really matter? Not at all. Out of the many friends who have expressed their dislike with this new Facebook platform, not one of them even mentioned a chance that they would ever leave the community.

Facebook: 1, Majority of Users: 0

Ah, the power of critical mass and monopolies. Zuckerberg & Co. know that there is not much they could do to drive away even 2% of their current users; we saw this exact example when the News Feed system occurred (everyone complained, the press was involved, and I guarantee you that Facebook barely saw a dent in their userbase). Where is the alternative? MySpace? Laughable. Bebo? Yes, its the third largest SNS in the U.S., but nobody wants to go to a party with none of their friends there, so unless you can convince 200 of your friends to switch to Bebo, you aren't going anywhere.

I overheard a rumor that Facebook has now restricted the number of Facebook app invites that can be sent per user per day. Do you have any confirmation to this rumor? If so, it shows the realization by Facebook that there may indeed be an issue with this "app spamming," and they are attempting to remedy it.

Bottom Line: If the poll I took of my friends is any indication, then the majority of users feel there is too much noise currently on the site.

Brandon Mullins
Co-Founder/CEO
BookMesh.com

[Steve Kane]

Plus ca change...?

What Brad describes is just what happened with the web 1.0 "social networking" leaders GeoCities, Tripod, et. al. -- the burnout/churn of users who lose enthusiasm for the loads of work and resources needed to maintain a web site/app; the annoyance of everyone as a simple clean interafce twists into unusability in attempts to monetize; the inherent conflict between those who support and pay for the enormous infrastructure and their need to monetize versus the anti-commercialism pathos of the web user.

Anybody remember the uproar when GeoCities put ads on users' pages?

Anybody remember GeoCities?

Facebook is facing/will face similar stresses when it either brings in-house the support for third party apps (the cost and pain of which will drive them to enforce/restrict/control the apps in ways that will piss off everybody) or else reverses itself and closes off the facebook api. its only a matter of time.

unless, of course, papa google or papa newscorp or papa cbs comes in and buys facebook and, as they did with youtube, myspace and last.fm, says "big losses? spiraling costs with no business model? cool!"

the pressure on jerry yang to do some transformative-looking deal and acquire facebook must be overwhelming around now. it will be fascinating to see whether that brilliant thoughtful man -- who signed off on the $4.3BN GeoCities deal, and so best understands the fickle value of such web properties -- will do a similar deal again.

[Ig]

Those annoyed by invites will just stay annoyed, but I got the "don't you have myspace/youtube/skype, etc." never hurt anyone in the past.

[Michael Chui]

Ooh! I have a Geocities! It's... that site that has all of my high school stuff... that I haven't touched since high school... Right.

One of my friends has commented to me that Facebook beats out Livejournal (she posted this on her Livejournal); the exact quote is, "ok now that facebook has all this fun apps to play with i think it has defeated the lj ... now i can look at my fav. photos, watch my fav youtube videos and listen to my fav songs all on one convenient pretty profile page."

On the other hand, when I told a different friend about f8, he said, "MySpace?"

I think that the people with small social networks will be impacted the least. The larger your friend network (past, say... 100? 200?), the harder you'll be spammed. You can call this balkanizing your interactions, but I think it's just highlighting the fact that most people don't, and won't, network for the sake of networking. It's too bad there isn't a metric to track for the average size of friend networks across time.

[rick]

"Never trust anyone over 30."

There's going to be an opportunity for a new social network for the kids now that the adults are joining Facebook.

[Tyler Willis]

Fred:

I wrote a comment that was about 2.5 scrollable pages long. Didn't want to post that here so here's the most important snippet while the longer thought is posted in full on my blog. (I think that may be of less interest to you, it's about my information filter, my response to Brad's take, and the intelligence of a "Platform Play" for Facebook). Here's the clip:

"Facebook exists as the primary online brand for most of my peers. 10% of my network have websites/blogs (most also have facebook or other social profiles), 75-80% of my network has a facebook or a myspace page. I have a desire to define myself online, so I'm redesigning my website to continue to house my blog and also use widgets to converge all my major online published material and control the presentation of it. Facebook Apps like last.fm, del.icio.us, twitter, etc. are essentially widgets and allow that 80% of my network to exercise similar control over there definition/brand online as those who code their own website/blog. If you doubt the value of widgets to some people, just look at the sidebar of this bar. Of course not all 80% of my network that uses facebook find widgets useful, but more than the 10% that also run personal sites/blogs will have use for widgets. This brings me to my third idea.

Facebook users are experiencing an exploratory phase. Most users are not entrenched in the Web 2.0 world, this applications program is arguably the first time many of these users have seen these ideas of widgets (and also the "web2.0" services that are easy to build but don't actually provide much value -- we all know that the vast majority of "web2.0" isn't useful). Facebook users are doing what all people do when placed in new circumstances, they are exploring. This I say with relative assurance because in just reviewing my notifications - my friends are removing applications just as fast as they are adding them. The quotes, the pets, the "hangouts i like" apps don't stick around much. The last.fm, twitter, and other "established services" apps don't get added much but they never get removed (I'm inferring from this that only current users of the services are adding these widgets). The iLike phenomenon is the most interesting, iLike faces a lot of entrenched competition and is still pretty young (8 mo. old). It now says it has between 6 and 7 million users, 3.9m of which have signed on to the facebook app in the last month. More than 4m have joined in the last 30 days. I've had many friends add this app and some remove it. It's my educated guess that most of those friends hadn't heard of iLike before the application, so everyone who still has the app is a brand new user for iLike. That's good news for the users that found a useful service and it's good news for iLike. It would be of interest to see the metrics across the FB network of adding and removing applications. I'm dealing with a limited sample group.

If you are disappointed with the "noise level" - the info-noise level will continue to be higher than previous levels, but you are now experiencing an exploratory spike which will calm down as people begin to realize what apps are and what they do. The same reason I don't email my friends when I sign up for a new service just because it asks me to, your friends will learn that they need 3 days to test drive an app before saying they like it. Most will learn to stop notifying you, unless they think it will provide value to you, and in that case wouldn't you want to hear about it?"

[dw]

As a member of the Facebook generation, I have to admit I have that secret wish. But who knows, maybe something good will come out of all this.

[mruk]

The invite problem is very real, and drives me crazy, even with my small network of friends (~50).

What's interesting is watching my non-tech wife use Facebook, she sees the application invites and isn't clear on what they are so ignores all of them!

Facebook needs to add something where we can decline all of the auto-invite crap generated by all these applications.

Despite all that, it's brilliant. I'd much rather use Facebook than that MySpace rubbish.

I'm going to get rid of my personal website, as I'm only using it to keep in touch with friends and family (blog, share photos, etc), and the new apps within Facebook serve that need perfectly.

[Facebook Development]

I really think everyone just is too excited with Facebook to really start building TRUE applications using it.

I have been developing web applications for about 10 years using my own admin system and user authentication.

Why not just deploy these on the Facebook platform and allow users to access there?

The marketing and implementation using a platform people have already adopted is huge!

Just think people really need to calm down for a few moments and get real, then we will see the true potential of what has happened.

[James E]

Didn't anyone read the Wall Street Journal article on Facebook on Friday?

It was in the Marketplace section. Facebook is leapfrogging other social networking sites by the way they are integrating revenue models with Facebook users.

[Mike]

Absolutely. I joined facebook so that I could keep in touch with my friends back home and all of the friends that I have. I didn't join facebook to add 3,334 applications to be added to my page. It's okay to offer some, but at some point, it's just too much. It's too cluttered, it's just too much. Which is precisely why I don't - and wouldn't use MySpace. Facebook's competitive edge, among other things was a simply and clean design.

Oh yeah, and did I mention apps like "quote generator" are just stupid.

[John]

Ya, it really sucks that facebook forces you to accept and add those 3,334 different applications...

If you don't like them, don't use them, simple as that. There is an excessive number at the moment, but as the cost of running some of these applications runs up without any sort of revenue stream they we start to disappear.

It does clutter peoples pages a bit too, but only those who go a little crazy with it, they seem to like all this stuff though. If you don't maybe you should just remove them from your friends.

Anyone comparing facebook to myspace, have you been to myspace lately? Some of those pages look like vomit on the screen. With facebook at least there are some restrictions and the applications have to fit within their guidelines and styling - not the free for all of myspace.

Bottom line is if you don't like it don't user it (or build something better). Enough people do this and they'll either change or else their will be a new place to hang out. Also, have you checked out the numbers for apps like iLike or Top Friends? At least 6.5 million users seem to like this app platform...

[Steve]

I agree, the old facebook was easier, faster, cleaner. I think face book will start to have the clutter problems seen on myspace.

[Paul Mackles]

I just launched my facebook app over the weekend. Its a golf game tracker - nothing revolutionary but somewhat useful for those who like to play golf and keep tabs on their game. Moving it to facebook was a no brainer for me in terms of getting users. As far as clutter... while I get the basic argument, if you consider having 20 different accounts on 20 different social networking sites with separate "inboxes" on each of them clutter, then having everything in one place on facebook seems less "cluttery" to me.

[Geoffrey]

As someone who got a facebook account back in the day (which was a Wednesday) when you still needed a university email address to do so, I definitely can relate to the sentiment in this post. Facebook has really lost its identity in the last couple of years. When Facebook first came out, people actually spent time editing their profiles with personal info that they may want their friends and acquaintances from school to know about them. Now most people's profiles consist of their name and school, along with a few photo albums and maybe their sexual orientation. It certainly still serves a purpose (as an entertainment site) with the addition of the applications, but its role has certainly changed from what it once was.

[joshwa]

There's one really easy solution Facebook could steal from, of all places, MySpace-- the ability to turn off (or otherwise tab off to another page) all application invites and news-feed items. I went to go turn off application-add notifications from my mini-feed only to be surprised that, while I can turn off any other kind of notification, I can't turn off application notices.

MySpace lets you turn off Band Invites (one of the most prevalent sources of spam for a while)-- Facebook should do the same. Then if I see a cool application on a friend's profile page, I can add it from there; or, if I'm of the type that likes to troll for new toys, I could look at just the "application stories" feed to see what my friends have liked and not liked.

But definitely count me into the crowd that thinks Facebook is turning into MySpace... but it's an open question as to whether it has jumped the shark sufficiently to create an opening for an upstart targeted at the next generation of teenagers/college kids.

[Tyler M]

I've just started developing a Facebook app in the last week or so but have been an FB user for a few months now. I only have 30 friends or so, but I'm not using it to find old mates - I just want to keep in contact with those who, well, I'd keep in contact with anyway. It turns out I haven't been nailed by tons of invites like everyone else apparently has.

I do have one annoying friend who sends them my way and her incessant need to do this reminded me of the old days when she used to send me masses of email forwards. Remember those days people? I hate email forwards and, happily enough, I get less than 1 per week now. Finally we learned email etiquette (around the time hotmail became irrelevant it would seem).

I'm hoping we learn a bit of Facebook etiquette too. In fact, someone with a big popular blog is probably (or should be) blogging the notion right now.

As for the developers, once you get into the Facebook platform it's easy (and obvious) to plug all these viral invitational features into your app. In the end I believe the overly viral, light-weight apps are the first ones to get removed as soon as their utility wears a bit thin. Build your app with your user and their interested friends in mind. If you annoy anyone, and hence spread bad kharma, you'll find your app relegated to the trash bin it probably belonged in anyway.

Ps. Interesting discussion on here and a great blog.

Pss. We're building our FB app as a proof of concept. It's a strange notion but it works!

Psss. My fav app so far has to be the Fantasy Stock Exchange. It rocks and includes very little invitational BS.

[Jimmy Gambier]

Fred and the rest of the community,

I'd really like to get a perspective from people on whether they think there's value in launching a Facebook app first like Tyler mentioned above as proof of concept, or even to start generating buzz.

The only example I know of these being succesful is Sean Parker's Causes, which of course doesn't really count since he is so close to them.

I already know of a couple of entrepreneurs here who think there is value in building a quick and dirty prototype or smaller version their app to start building traffic.

My belief is that it still makes sense to focus on building the main application first and use Facebook as a PR tool once you've launched.

[Furqan Nazeeri]

In a wild rush to start and fund Web 2.0 companies, many entrepreneurs and investors are falling into a trap from which there is little likelihood of escape. The trap is called the "overjustification effect."

In the 1970s researchers started doing studies with school children and other subjects to better understand this. One study went like this: researchers played math games with 5th and 6th grade students. The students appeared to enjoy playing the games and did so regularly and with great enthusiasm. After a while, the researches introduced rewards for playing the games and, in fact, the amount of play increased. However, after withdrawing the rewards, the students played even less than they did before the rewards were introduced!

The basic problem is that rewards have the effect of overwhelming the intrinsic value of doing something that is otherwise enjoyable. What used to be "play" becomes "work" required to get a reward.

So as Web 2.0 startups buy traffic and pay users for UGC, they are setting a trap from which they cannot escape. Smart entrepreneurs and investors will shun using monetary incentives (including the ubiquitous "free iPod") and instead strive to get users to come to and use their sites for the right reasons, i.e. for its intrinsic value be it socializing, knowledge, pride-of-craftsmanship, recognition, etc. The common wisdom I hear is that "we're just buying traffic now to get some proof points for our next round of funding," but the problem with this "logic" is that the company will be worse off after withdrawing the incentives than had they not used them at all.

If "bought" traffic or UGC accounts for more than half of your site's total, that spells trouble. It means that, at least in the current incarnation, your site doesn't offer intrinsic value to users. Scaling the business means continuing to pay the $40 or $50 per user you have been paying and should you ever step off the treadmill, usage and traffic will collapse.

So if you're running or invested in a Web 2.0 company, do yourself a favor and avoid the overjustification effect trap. Focus on intrinsic value.

[Ryan]

I agree with the clutter issue although I sitll think it's worlds better than Facebook. I've posted additional commentary here in response to Forrester's recent study on the social networking sites:
http://mediatrending.com/2007/08/08/forrester-social-networking-usability-sucks/