Utah Open Source Planet

Joseph Scott, developer at Automattic, posted that Wordpress.com has recently broken 4 million total blogs. He further mentions that it took just 4 months to go from 3 million to 4 million. Assuming the rate isn’t exponential, it will just be end of December when they hit 5 million blogs. What would be even more fascinating is to know how many self-hosted blogs on Wordpress are currently running. (This blog is a Wordpress MU install)

Wordpress seems to be no Facebook, but perhaps as projects like BuddyPress take off and people begin to virally create blogs and content with their friends it will get to that level. Where Wordpress still has left to compete is with microblogging sites like Twitter - perhaps, with the large user base that they currently have we could see this happen in the near future.

There are rumors that Facebook has been working on their own Wordpress plugin for Facebook. This is troubling for those of us developers that are developing for Facebook Connect, as it shows that Facebook could in one sweep, wipe any developer writing for the Facebook Connect platform out without any advanced notice. It only appeared that in the past, this type of thing only happened on the Facebook website itself, as Facebook has a right to, but I’ve seen it myself with my own development on Facebook Connect today.

Fair enough. I like competition, although I’d love this to be a community effort. So, since we know Facebook is working on their own Wordpress plugin for Facebook, and we know Facebook isn’t willing to divulge their code yet. Since I’ve already devoted 20 or so of my own hours to the exact same project with no knowledge from Facebook, and am just now learning that Facebook was working on this behind the scenes incognito with no involvement from the community, I’d like to release my own plugin to the public, under the GPL v2.0 today, in the hopes the public can help with development and further building of this plugin, as a community, not just under Facebook’s roof.

It’s very troubling to see Facebook develop on external apps outside of Facebook like this - it only shows that Facebook is not afraid to encroach on other developers’ projects and that any one of us is at risk of having a useful project, our time and effort (I had no intentions on making money from this), wiped out in an instant. Sure, Facebook has every right to compete, but the least courtesy of notifying developers it already knows would be competition. With such a Wordpress plugin this also encroaches on Six Apart’s announced integration with Facebook Connect, and puts Facebook in direct competition with Six Apart instead of making it Automattic’s problem.

It’s my sincere hope that Facebook decides not to continue such projects internally, but instead contributes to existing projects if they must do so. Facebook should in no way be competing with the developers that use their platform without warning, or risk us not being willing to contribute such things in the future. Let’s work together on this Facebook - how about a “we need help” board, or an “internal projects” board so we can know what you’re working on in advance. In this way we can work with you instead of parallel to you and hours spent doing so won’t be wasted. Or how about a little nudge to people like Six Apart saying, “we may just have to compete with you on this in the future” so their own time isn’t wasted with the integration.

Why should I keep building external web apps that integrate and send users to Facebook if Facebook is just going to replace my web apps in the end anyway?

So, I’m going to release my code here right now in hopes we can make this a community project - it requires you to set up your own app for your blog under the Facebook Developers site (just set your callback URL to your own website’s URL), and you must take your application key and enter it into the admin section. Only developers of the Facebook app itself can login through Facebook Connect until Facebook launches (one more advantage Facebook has over us developers - they know when they are launching, and therefore know how much time they have to develop these things, another reason to leave it to us developers in order to keep it fair). To install on your blog after doing so, just unzip the folder in your plugins folder, and activate your plugin under the plugins section in Wordpress. After that, any Facebook user will be able to leave comments, under their own authentication, Facebook avatar, and name without having to re-enter it each time. We’ll be integrating this more in the future - if you can help please let me know! My project is a community project, not owned by Facebook, completely owned by me and you for the benefit of the community.

You can download it here.

You can see it in action on my test site, http://socialmediacast.staynalive.com - check out the Hello World post to see the existing comments. Note you will not be able to log in to Facebook Connect on that site because you are not a developer on the app for that site.

Now, I know I ranted a bit - it’s late, but I hope this makes some sort of sense. Am I out of line here? Should I just scrap my code completely and let Facebook do this? Is it a wise move for Facebook to keep making external apps like this that integrate with Facebook? What’s the best way for Facebook to approach this? I welcome your comments below.

It all started with this post today. A supposed “employee ‘close to the deal’” told blogger, Zach Klein (who doesn’t seem to allow comments on his blog) that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Family History division had made an unsolicited bid to purchase Facebook. Nothing else - no other background, no other resources to confirm the deal. Soon after, ValleyWag, the first to the scene and first large blog to publish anything about it, was blogging rumors they are well known for spreading. Soon after, Venturebeat and the Industry Standard were blogging about it, quoting Brady Brim-DeForest, who ironically was claiming this as news, not a rumor at all - I’m unaware of where he got it, but his news broke after Valleywag’s. TheInquisitr, while I’m sure had no ill-intentions, even made fun of the manner with some very radical and somewhat inaccurate claims that I know have offended some members of the LDS Faith that read the blog. The blogosphere seems to be a mess today in regards to regard for religion, faith, and respect for one another’s belief. It appears the LDS Church has become the punch-line of the blogosphere’s Jokes and I’m getting really tired of it.

Now, let’s talk about rumors. The blogosphere is known for spreading rumors - I’ve hated them from the get-go, but let’s face it, it’s a part of many blogs out there, and it may not be going away any time soon. (I think I could do an entire post about rumors in and of itself) I expect an occasional rumor about Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo, or Facebook employees leaving the company because they are mad with Executives, or even a crazy one like the iPhone 2.0 coming with 2 cameras and iChat video support. Frankly, I never share those (well, rarely), but they are fun to read because, well, they’re funny. But rumors like an entire Faith buying a huge company like Facebook are ridiculous, unfounded, and frankly offensive to me that anyone would take such a rumor seriously when the Faith is my own. It’s a religion, people - tell me one reason a religious Faith would need a social network like Facebook to further its mission. Do you seriously believe any religion would be so stupid as to try this? People would leave Facebook in droves if that were to happen, and a network like Facebook has no good way of building up the members of the Faith itself. The claim is absolutely ridiculous, and I can’t believe established bloggers are taking this serious enough to share with others! There seems to be a serious lack of understanding between the blogosphere and the LDS Faith and I’d like to figure out a way to put an end to it.

Let’s go back to earlier this year. You may remember my “Shame on You TechCrunch” post I wrote awhile back, calling out the writers at CrunchGear for an extremely biased, and very misunderstood and inconsiderate interview of Penn Juliette, in which he claimed Mormons had “magic underwear” (as a Mormon, I affirm to you, that my underwear is not magic), and went on to encourage him as he talked about how easy religious women were, degrading women at the same time. While I still will not read CrunchGear because of that, I have lifted my boycott of TechCrunch (just because there is no way to avoid it - I also did not know Arrington at all at the time), but as you can see, there is a blatent misunderstanding of the LDS Faith in the blogosphere. CrunchGear still stands by their article and has refused to make any statement to the contrary.

Now, to give credit to those that have blogged about this today, Eric Eldon (of VentureBeat) does have a great point in that the LDS Church does actively invest in stock to retain and increase the value of its members donations through Tithing, and Facebook employees are selling stock. Like Louis Gray, I too give 10% of my wages in the form of Tithing to the Church, and I sincerely hope they invest it wisely and don’t just waste it away. I know their investments are wise though, and even the “widow’s mite” is considered and cared for. The Church itself never publishes these investments and it would be impossible to know if some are in Facebook or some are in Microsoft or some are in Google. They take these donations as sacred, and every effort is taken to maintain the sacredness of those donations. However, an outright acquisition of Facebook would be proposterous and completely out of line with the Church’s history.

Every one of these bloggers could have done a simple Tweet in fact, and quickly gotten a response from Mormons on how ridiculous the claims are. Or they could have shot Louis Gray, or me, or Matt Asay, or Phil Windley, or other Mormon bloggers an e-mail asking us if the claims were true. It took me about 5-10 minutes to send an e-mail to the LDS church and get a response back (which, btw, said the claims are not true and unfounded), and in fact, the LDS Church CIO is even on Twitter - an e-mail or even simple dm to him may have done the trick.

Now, I’m not necessarily trying to call out these specific bloggers, but rather point out the problem in general - I respect most of them in fact and really enjoy their regular blog posts. I’m just trying to make a shoutout to the blogosphere that we’re here if you have questions! Let’s start an open dialogue about the Mormon Faith - do you have questions? We’d really like to answer them before you assume and blog inaccuracies in the first place. Please, don’t hesitate to contact me, Louis Gray, or any other Mormon blogger if you have any hestitancy before posting an article. It’s time we put an end to this nonsense, once and for all.

Last week I spoke about how the ‘@’ on Twitter and other microblogging services may no longer be necessary due to the addition of the in_reply_to_status_id API call on services like Twitter and Identi.ca. In the comments of that article you mentioned several examples why that would still be necessary. I’ve spent the weekend contemplating these and still argue with a proper infrastructure these would not be necessary. In my own opinion, services like Twitter and even Identi.ca are broken because there is no easy way to tag individuals and people without cluttering up actual content with unorthodox, unorganized ways of tagging data and people. We, the users have had to come up with our own ways to do so socially, and I think that’s a hack. Let’s go over a few:

Addressing a specific person or group of people publicly.

With current infrastructure on microblogging platforms, this is the one problem that will cause people to continue to need to use the @ sign. There is no easy way currently to say you want to make sure a particular individual or group of individuals see a specific message. This is different than a reply which the recently added API calls resolve, in that these types of messages are not necessarily in reply to anyone. So instead we have to clutter up our posts by prefixing our post with the intended recipient at the beginning, whereas if a proper infrastructure were provided, we could focus solely on the content.

Facebook has overcome this pretty well with allowing you to “tag” individuals in a Facebook Note that you would like to see the message, or that might be in the message itself. Twitter, Laconi.ca, and others need to look into a new API call to allow users to tag other individuals so this is no longer needed. Imagine, for instance, if Twhirl let you choose from your list of friends and tag them in the post you are sharing. You could then have pure message in your 140 characters and not have to worry about the intended audience.

Common English (or your language) names

I mentioned before that @ wasn’t necessary, perhaps even if there weren’t an API call provided to link replies. Microblogging clients should be able to read each username and look at your friends, and tell immediately that you are referring to one of them, adding them to your list of replies.

However, this gets tricky when you get to someone with a username that is common English or even another language. For instance, what if my username were “stay”? Every time any of my friends said they were “stay”ing somewhere I would get a notification stating they were replying to me or addressing to me.

The solution for this again would be fixed with a simple person tagging system like what I recommend above. Allowing me to specify the intended users in the message would allow clients to know I was addressing those users without me having to further clutter up the actual message with meta information that doesn’t need to be there.

Hashtags

Hashtags need to be gone, plain and simple. All Twitter and Identi.ca and even FriendFeed need to add is a simple meta layer to their API, and beyond just allowing me to tag individuals to my messages, allowing me to add tag keywords to identify my message and make it more searchable. Tags clutter up our messages as well and keep us from being able to say what we need to say in 140 characters. In fact, I argue that meta layer should be completely flexibly - imagine if I could append whatever I wanted to a message. Location information, what I’m eating at the time, websites I’m surfing, etc. (I’m just listing those in theory - those could be messages themselves, but some are meta information) Part of our 140 character message should not be words not pertinent to the intended message itself.

SMS and XMPP/Track

So you ask, if we add a meta layer on top of all this, how can I then tag my messages and tag people in my messages via SMS or XMPP (Jabber)? SMS and XMPP should be treated as clients. The SMS client should be just like any other GUI client out there, just text based. I should be able to type “help” and have it give me a list of commands I can type to make it do what I want. Part of that client could be to include #hashtags and @intended’s to specify meta information about the message, but those should be part of the additional 20 characters SMS gives me outside of the 140 Characters microblogging requires. All of the same goes for XMPP. XMPP could provide an even richer experience since it isn’t bound by the 160 character limit SMS gives people. For a great example, see Dustin Sallings‘ Track XMPP clients for both Twitter and Identi.ca (Identi.ca is real time!). Type help to his client and it gives you a whole list of things you can do with it. I’m sure this could easily be expanded further to allow tagging, person tagging, and more.

Twitter and Identi.ca’s announcements supporting linking of replies via the API last week is a very welcome announcement. With just a few more tweaks I think we’re on our way to a much cleaner microblogging environment that is even more searchable, more focused on content, and definitely more organized. For now I’m stuck using ‘@’ and #hashtags.

You can follow me on identi.ca at http://identi.ca/jessestay or FriendFeed at http://friendfeed.com/jessestay.

O’Reilly just published a great interview with me on their FYI blog. If you want to learn why my book, FBML Essentials is important to you as a Facebook developer or business looking to develop Facebook applications, you should check it out. At the end, Mary Rotman announced a competition that could get you a free copy of my book, straight from O’Reilly.

Here’s the deal: regardless of whether you’re a Facebook developer or not, all you need is an idea. Let’s consider this the pre-cursor to getting your fbFund money — I’ll show you how to get started making the app, fbFund will fund the way. Simply go to O’Reilly’s FYI post and enter in the comments the application you would build (or are building) and how it’s different from the rest of the hundreds of Facebook applications out there. The best one or two ideas get a free copy of FBML Essentials - bring it to the next Social Media conference that I’m at and I’ll even sign it for you! How cool is that???

Those of you in the Facebook Group or Google group have already received notice about this but I just realized I hadn’t blogged about it yet. Tomorrow we have a great Facebook Developers Garage planned here in Salt Lake City. Facebook has sent us a professional copy of the DVD of the Palo Alto Facebook Developers Garage that I was able to attend in May, so we’re going to watch that, and then go over some of the new changes that are coming into play for the new Facebook design.

This should be a great event if your a developer or even non-techie, as it will help you see some of the integration points you can build into with the new design. A lot will be changing with the new Facebook design, so if you are currently, or are planning to build a Facebook application, either as a developer or in a marketing or business position, you’ll definitely want to attend. This is a completely open event so please invite your friends! All I ask is that you RSVP here.

We are still looking for someone that can provide food for the event so if your company would like some great exposure in front of possibly 20-30 developers and Facebook-interested people, please contact me! In the meantime, the event will be hosted at EPIC Ventures in downtown Salt Lake City and they will be providing snacks and drinks for all that attend. I’d like to thank them personally for hosting the event - they are doing this after hosting our food for last month’s event!

All in all, this should be a fun event as all of them are. If for some reason you can’t attend, our next meeting will be September 9th from 7pm to 10pm so put that on your calendar! I’ll look forward to seeing you all there!

Here’s a map to EPIC Ventures - it has been recommended that you park in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building parking lot across the street. I’m told they can provide vouchers for that. Also, if you arrive late a phone number will be posted on the door of the Zions building for Rachel Strate - please call that number and we’ll let you in!:

Epic Ventures
One South Main St, 8th floor
Salt Lake City, UT 84111

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about the Flock Browser, and after checking it out today I thought it was time for an update here at Ubuntu Tutorials.  For all of you that are addicted to all of the social networking sites (Digg, Twitter, Facebook, del.icio.us, Flickr, etc) you get an integrated-into-the-browser experience with the Flock Browser.  Follow the steps below and give ‘er a try:

Install Flock Browser v1.2 on Ubuntu 8.04

Unfortunately there are no .deb packages for the Flock Browser so you’ll have to install things manually.  Yes, this’ll require some commands at the terminal.  Yes, I’ll give you cut-and-paste commands.  No, the terminal won’t eat your cat.

1. Download Flock Browser v1.2 and select “Save File” to store it on your Desktop.
2. Open a terminal and run: sudo tar -C /opt -xzvf Desktop/flock-*.tar.gz
3. Create a link to the new browser within your PATH: sudo ln -s /opt/flock/flock /usr/bin/flock-browser
4. Dump the following into a new file: /usr/share/applications/flock.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Flock
Comment=Flock Web Browser
Exec=flock-browser
Icon=/opt/flock/icons/mozicon128.png
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Applications;Network

You should now have a new entry in your Applications menu called “Flock Web Browser” (your menu may need to refresh first).  You can also launch the browser from the terminal using the command:

flock-browser

Enjoy!  Anytime there is a Flock Browser update you should be able to safely repeat steps 1 and 2 and you’re set.

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Just yesterday, Facebook announced their second F8 conference, to occur July 23, 2008. This Developer-targeted event is said to possibly include some major announcements, including the new Profile redesign, more information about the fbOpen platform, and most significantly, possibly the launch of their E-Commerce platform. What hasn’t been announced or shared however is the odd timing of the event.

The event occurs right smack dab in the middle of O’Reilly’s Open Source Convention, scheduled to occur for about the past year now from July 21 through July 25. This conference is known as an essential “Mecca” for Open Source developers around the globe, and has presentations from such players as Google, MySQL, Sun, Meebo, and even SixApart. Everyone who is a developer (unless you solely develop for Microsoft) or Sysadmin will be at this conference.

As a developer, this is tough news to hear that Facebook will make me choose between OSCON and them. Frankly, I would by default choose OSCON if I were any smart developer, as I would get more. So why isn’t Facebook just joining OSCON and doing an “F8″ track there? Do they really want to tick off Open Source developers? You better bet that OpenSocial will have a presence there. If Facebook really wanted to target the Open Source crowd, as they have “claimed” to do with their fbOpen Platform and a few other contributions back to the community, they would try to have a presence at this conference and not interrupt it as they are currently doing. I was actually going to go to OSCON to promote my FBML Essentials book to potential Facebook developers for O’Reilly. Now I’m forced with a decision. I’ve contacted Facebook with no response, and I’m getting a little frustrated as a Social Media developer. Which conference will you choose?

Facebook appears to have just launched a previously announced feature to their new design staging area. If you go there you’ll notice a new little “+” sign next to the tabs at the top. Click on this, and now you can choose to add “Posted Items” to the tabs at the top, as well as “Find more applications”. The “Find more applications” feature does not seem to be working yet.

This new feature allowing you to add applications to the tabs menu in the new design was announced previously by Facebook, and is said to allow your application, through just a simple “tab url” in your application settings to appear in the drop-down you can see there now when you click on the “+” sign next to the tabs. This is also consistent with the removal of “adding” an application by Facebook. Instead, you will be able to add “components” of your application to different areas of a user’s profile, which includes the tabs. Your application can have only one tab and works passively by default, meaning you have to click on something for javascript or Flash to auto-play. Nothing has been confirmed on whether Advertisements will be allowed to run within the Tabs on the new design. The tab also defaults to your Application name and cuts off at 15 characters.

See below for some more examples of the new “+” sign, and adding the Posted Items application to the tabs menu in the new design:

Nick O’Neill blogged about it, and Facebook confirmed it officially at the Palo Alto 1 Year Anniversary Developers Garage on Thursday, but Facebook has finally released their platform under a modified version of the Mozilla Public License. The code and announcement can be found here, and includes the full API, a parser for FBML, and more. I will probably be trying to sneak in a little info about this in FBML Essentials if I can beat it to press.

What does this mean for you? Well, first of all, there is a good chance (I have not confirmed this) you’ll now see sites like Myspace and LinkedIn also join sites like Bebo in providing a Facebook-style API. It should be an easy decision for them. This also means you are not stuck porting your Apps over to OpenSocial to get them on those networks, assuming they implement this into their own architecture. Ideally, it will take very few changes to port a Facebook App over to other FbPlatform-enabled sites.

Also, if you are building your own social network, you can now cater to all the Facebook developers out there and bring in the rich API Facebook provides. OpenSocial is great, but you do have to keep in mind it is still in beta - while new, I see no “beta” put in front of this new Facebook Open Platform.

The other thing you should take into account is that because it is Open Source, you can now contribute back to the platform. If you see something in the platform that is strongly needed, you simply have to sign the Contribution Agreement they provide and if they implement your change they’ll even send you a (drum roll please) T-Shirt! (they didn’t say if the T-Shirt was free or not) In reality though, we as developers now have some responsibility to give back to Facebook - that is the essence of Open Source.

I think Facebook just played their cards for Google on this one. Their environment is still closed, but at the very least they are sharing the components that make their closed environment so the world too can get involved. Google now has much stronger pressure to get OpenSocial in order, and in a way that convinces the Facebook platform developers to use OpenSocial instead of the Facebook Open Platform. It’s a race for developers, and I’m afraid Facebook just made the choice for developers to leap to OpenSocial a lot harder.

Tomorrow evening I’ll be heading off to Google I/O at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. I’m very excited to look over the various new technologies Google is offering, including OpenSocial, Google App Engine (keep an eye out for Bungee Labs, the competitor to App Engine - I hear they’re planning to make an appearance there), and hopefully I’ll get a first chance to play with Google FriendConnect. I’m hoping to take quite a bit back so I can apply it to the work I’m doing for Takes All Types to transition them over to OpenSocial.

While I’m out there, look out for me the next few nights. Tomorrow evening, probably late, I’ll be visiting the Wordpress 5th Anniversary at the Minna Gallery. That should be quite a fun event, and I look forward to meeting Matt Mullenweg and crew again. Then, Wednesday night, be sure to come out to the Silicon Valley Web Builders meeting, where I’ll be speaking to about 100-150 developers and such with an interest in Facebook and Social Media development. There, I’ll be speaking about a few tags you probably weren’t aware of in FBML, and we’ll go over some fun FBML facts, as well as discuss some of the latest news we’re seeing about Facebook lately. I also hear a local news reporter will be there, so the pressure is on. I’ll have a number of copies of my first book, “I’m On Facebook–Now What???” there for you to purchase, and I’m happy to autograph any copies you buy - if you haven’t yet RSVP’d please do so now!

The final event, Thursday night, is the Palo Alto Facebook Developers meeting. That meeting looks to be jam packed with developers, Facebook enthusiasts, and investors, from Jim Breyer, to Lee Lorenzen, to Justin Smith of InsideFacebook, to Dave Morin of Facebook, it seems anyone that has anything to do with Facebook will be there. They will be celebrating the 1 year platform anniversary, going over the new design and how that will affect developers. I anticipate some announcements out of that meeting, although I can’t say for sure.

So if your out in the area, stop by and say hi! I’m @jessestay on Twitter and FriendFeed - give me a holler and maybe we can go get some Thai or Seafood (my two favorite San Fran cuisines!) together. I look forward to seeing you all there!

I’ve been contemplating for awhile now a good way to share what I know about Social Software Development and helping business owners, marketers, and developers learn how to set up their own social apps. Especially for developers, I know there are many out there looking for howtos and ways to learn more about starting their own App, promoting it, and getting it off the ground. As the author of FBML Essentials, I feel I am well suited for the task so in the next few days I’m going to start doing howtos and overviews on how you can get your own Apps together. If you’re “the business type”, I may get a little technical on you, but I do recommend you keep watching and forward these onto your IT personell - your CIO, CTO, and the like should read these so they can learn what’s possible to integrate into your existing environments. I’ll also try to throw in a little goodie here and there for “the business type”.

So, I’ve created a new category to the right, “Social Coding” - if you want to track just that, click on the category name and add it to your RSS. I’ve also started a new FriendFeed Room where those involved or that want to get involved in Social Coding can discuss, learn, and talk with each other. You can subscribe to that here.

Let’s start by going over the types of sites I could cover. Here are just a few - let me know if you have a particular interest in learning about how to code for any one in particular:

• Facebook
• OpenSocial
• Google Friend Connect
• Twitter
• FriendFeed
• Pligg
• Digg
• LinkedIn
• MySpace
• Wordpress
• MoveableType
• Google App Engine
• Bungee Connect

Stay tuned! I’ll keep posting news and other rants as we go forward - I’ll just be adding in some good howtos at the same time. Oh, and if you’re a developer and would like to do a howto in your preferred language for us, contact me - I’d love to let you do a guest post.

I got a message from Facebook today saying that someone had friended me. I realized I didn't care. Not that I didn't care about the person who'd friended me--I didn't care about Facebook. It's been weeks since I was there and my life is pretty much the same.

I think the reason is Twitter. Twitter is much more social, much more interesting, and the plethora of clients (including any mobile phone with SMS) means that I don't have to remember to go check the site to see what's happening. Twitterific displays a solid stream of the 140 character thoughts of my friends.

Because of Twitter, today I know:

• There were tornados in Denver and Laramie
• Twitter posted an article about their architecture on their blog
• There's a blogger dinner tonight in Salt Lake City
• @tylerwhitaker and @bradbaldwin aren't going to carpool to the blogger dinner

I like that.

Twitter has scaling problems even though their user base is reportedly quite small. As Nik Cubrilovic points out, Twitter isn't like Wordpress or Digg. Twitter is a group forming network (GFN). When a Metcalfeian network adds another user, the number of potential connections goes from N² to (N+1)². When a GFN adds one more user, the number of potential connections goes from 2^N to 2^(N+1). In case it's been a while since you'd done that math--it's a big difference.

To make this more real, consider TechCrunch's twitter account. When TechCrunch, with almost 18000 followers, sends a message, that results in 18000 messages--one to each follower. This is like the phone system with infinite, always-on conference call capability. Sure, you can do things internally to collapse some messages, but you're still dealing with exponential growth.

Cubrilovic points out that this feature creates some serious engineering problems getting Twitter to scale. AL3X at Twitter argues that they're not blind to the problems and they're working on them. There are dozens of people blogging about what kind of architectural solutions might lead to better uptime at Twitter. AL3X's final plea: if you're so smart, come work for us. Good answer.

Tags: facebook social+networks twitter

I’ve attempted to stay out of this until now because as Nick O’Neill implies, it’s pretty childish the way both the supporters and critics are handling this. I’m especially disappointed with the way Facebook is handling the Google Friend Connect issue. For those out of the loop, Facebook cancelled Google’s Friend Connect App on Facebook because, “it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service”. Facebook gave no examples of what sections of the Terms of Service Google was violating, nor did they explain why Google was wrong. This vaguely-presented move prevents Google from having a universal login and profile that includes Facebook.

Google responded today saying, “We read the Facebook numeric id, friendly name, and public photo URLs of the user and their friends. We read no other information.” Google then proceeded to show detailed examples of the data they are retrieving from Facebook, how it is presented back to them, and the fact that they only share the URL of the user’s public photo with third party applications. They also stated that they only store data for 30 minutes at a time, after which they purge any of the above data cached on their servers.

I was impressed with Google’s response, and due to the openness and (apparent) honesty of it, I’m edging towards Google’s side on this, and quite scared as a Facebook developer on what Facebook could do with my own Apps. Assuming Google is right and not leaving anything out, Facebook could potentially remove any developer’s App from Facebook, no questions asked (although they did say they contacted Google multiple times about “something”), even though, per the developer’s understanding of the Terms of Service, the developer’s App follows the rules.

Based on what Google has said, I can’t see anything they did wrong in the development of their App that violates the Terms of Service. I really wish Facebook would explain further so we as developers could ensure our Apps aren’t doing the same. It also brings up many important questions as to what Facebook means when it comes to certain parts of the Terms of Service. I’m actually quite confused now as to what I can and can’t do on Facebook.

For example, Section 2a-6 in the Terms of Service, it states:

“You may retain copies of Exportable Facebook Properties for such period of time (if any) as the Applicable Facebook User for such Exportable Facebook Properties may approve, if (and only if) such Applicable Facebook User expressly approves your doing so pursuant to an affirmative “opt-in” after receiving a prominent disclosure of (a) the uses you intend to make of such Exportable Facebook Properties, (b) the duration for which you will retain copies of such Exportable Facebook Properties and (c) any terms and conditions governing your use of such Exportable Facebook Properties (a “Full Disclosure Opt-In”);”

Yet, in the section before that, it says I can only store indefinitely the uid, nid, eid, gid, pid, aid, notes_count, and profile_update_time. Does this mean I can or can’t get a user’s permission to store data on my servers? What about permanent session keys? I don’t see them in that list, yet the documentation seems to imply you need one to auto-authenticate a user. Am I breaking the developer ToS by storing a permanent session key?

Google is passing the public photo URL to third parties. Technically, because this is public information, it doesn’t even take a developer key to retrieve that URL. I could simply pull up the user’s profile page via their profile ID, and scrape the photo from the public profile. Is this really what’s causing Google to have their App removed? If so, I’m really scared as a Facebook App developer.

As you can see, the Facebook developer Terms of Service are simply too vague and too confusing for any developer to feel secure about keeping their App on the network. With actions like the one Facebook took against Google, I now have to question if my Apps too could be a target for Facebook to remove. If Google, who has hundreds of Lawyers on hand to look over such terms can’t figure out what they can and can’t do on the service, how can I, as a developer know what I can and can’t do on the service? Right now it’s a complete guessing game, with just the hope that Facebook will be decent enough to give you a warning before canceling your App. Is this really how we as developers should be developing our Apps?

I really hope Facebook can clarify this matter. I think after this move by Facebook, Facebook needs to clarify their Terms of Service for Developers and first, explain according to what violation in the Terms of Service Google’s App was removed, and second, break down in plain English what we as developers can and can’t do.

Facebook, Google laid out all their cards, at least as far as we can tell (and even if not they certainly laid out way more than Facebook did). How about not leaving us developers hanging and clarify all this once and for all? As a developer, I’m absolutely confused and scared at the moment of the very Walled Garden I make a living off of.

Photo courtesy CommonSpace.org

I just noticed today a few new features in the Facebook chat window. When a new chat message comes through you may now hear a small, “pop”. It appears as though Facebook has begun adding sounds to their messaging, a much needed addition for those trying to know when people are trying to chat with them on Facebook. I have Facebook open most of the time in a separate tab, and often don’t realize until it’s too late that someone has been trying to chat with me in another tab. Now, assuming I hear the “pop”, that seems to be resolved. You can turn this feature on or off by clicking on “Settings” under the chat box in the chat bar, then checking or unchecking the box labeled, “Play Sounds for New Messages”.

The other addition, which I believe may be new (or I just barely noticed it), is Facebook seems to have added picture emoticons to the chat window. Now if I type, : - ) (without the spaces), it appears as a smiley face like this: I’d love to get a list of these.

Anyone know of any other new features added since the “pop”?

Note that I’m not going to provide any links to the mentioned content here - you can go research yourself. Unlike Wikileaks, I respect others’ copyright.

One thing you may notice on this blog is that while I rarely pipe in with religious thoughts and my own personal religious beliefs (although I used to quite often), I will not hesitate to step in when a Social Media-related religious event occurs. An interesting Groundswell is happening today between the Headquarters of my Faith, and the controversial anonymous sharing site, Wikileaks. However, I don’t think it’s occurring in the way people think it is.

This morning on Slashdot you may have seen an article about the Mormon Church (or “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints“, which is the Official name of the Church) sending a Cease and Desist to Wikileaks for posting links to a Copyrighted, yet old version (1999) of the Church’s “General Handbook of Instructions” for others to freely download.

I don’t understand why this is news. Having been in LDS Bishoprics before as a Clerk and Executive Secretary, I am very familiar with this manual. It is simply a guide for leaders of the Church to know how to council and guide members of the Church, and according to my understanding, NOT (fully) DOCTRINE. It is simply a Policy manual, and while Bishops and other Leaders of the church may follow its council, in the end they are left up to their own judgement (encouraged by the Church “to follow the promptings of the Spirit”) to decide how to handle matters in the Church. The Church considers the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Perl of Great Price to be the Official Doctrine of the Church.

The Mormon Church is simply requesting Wikileaks remove the content because it is their own IP, not Wikileaks, and they are removing it as they would any other Church-owned and copyrighted document. Wikileaks and other sites are also portraying the contents of the manual as though it is doctrine for the general membership of the Mormon church, when in reality it was only intended as a guide for Leaders in the first place. The Mormon church has to protect the dissemination of false information as well.

In Charlene Li’s and Josh Bernoff’s book, Groundswell, she starts out with an example that happened last year on Digg.com where a user shared a blog post about how the HD-DVD Encryption standard had been broken. AACS LA quickly sent a cease and desist to Digg.com and the Digg.com founders promptly removed the link. Before Digg knew it, their own users began to backlash against them, occupying the entire front page of Digg with copies of the HD DVD encryption algorithm. Digg had a Groundswell of its own between its own users and it knew it had to do something. What did they do? They listened to their users and put the link back up, stating they would go down fighting rather than ignore their users.

I think with the post on SlashDot this morning some people may be thinking (and some hoping) a similar Groundswell is going to occur with the Mormon Church. Those that think so will be pleasantly surprised - there’s a difference between a Groundswell of your own members and those outside of your membership talking about you. How do you handle a Groundswell of people outside of your customer-base/user-base/member-base? You get in the conversation!

I want to share with you a video from Elder Russell M. Ballard, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Quorum of 12 Apostles - religious or not, I’d like to encourage you to read this not just from a religious perspective, but also a business perspective and how you can disseminate correct information about your business:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is getting in the Groundswell through its own members. They encourage their members to blog, Twitter, get on Facebook, and clarify misconceptions. The Mormon Church will overcome this Groundswell (if you can even call it one) via its own membership, correcting misinformation Socially rather than through news releases and other means and letting the general media and blogosphere say what it believes. They have a Youtube channel here. They are on Twitter. They have a Facebook Page.

I encourage other churches and even businesses to take this response - there is a lot that can be applied from a religious, or even non-religious perspective from this. When you get your own followers of any business, brand, or religion to spread correct information about your brand it can overcome any misinformation spread about it.

Wikileaks is wrong in this case - they are sharing copyrighted information, not owned by themselves, and without the permission of the owner. The LDS Church isn’t going after them because the shared links are “secret”, but rather it is copyrighted material, and Wikileaks does not have permission to share it! As a book author and software developer I don’t want people using my content without my permission (which I’m generally pretty relaxed on in my personally owned content). Why would I want Wikileaks sharing the content I personally own on their site let alone others?

Props to Rachel Strate, an Analyst from Epic Ventures (formerly Wasatch Ventures) who has offered to represent her Firm in providing food and drinks for the Social Media Developers Garage event on Tuesday. Rumor has it that they will be providing Pizza and drinks so come if anything for a free meal! The topic for the event will be a demonstration by Bungee on creating a Facebook App using their Google App Engine Killer, Bungee Connect. We’ll try to play some Wii afterwards as well.

Again, a big thanks to Epic Ventures for the food and Bungee Labs for hosting the event! If you would like to host or provide food for a future event (or even speak!) please let me know and we’ll make sure your company gets credit. This is a great opportunity for your company to get in front of a group of developers, bloggers and Social Media Evangelists for more exposure and future recruiting events.

While still vague in regards to details, Facebook today released some important information regarding their new design that is sure to excite those users that are considering leaving for other networks. The first of such features seems to be a slap in the Face (and maybe a token from former Google Execs) to Google Employee-founded FriendFeed. Facebook is calling the feature, “Publisher”, and from the Developer Wiki,

“The Publisher will be a central focus of communication and sharing in the new profile. It sits right on top of a user’s Feed inviting the user or others to add content. Applications can integrate into the Publisher to provide rich experiences for creating or finding content to post into their own and their friends’ Feeds…

This has replaced the old Wall Attachments feature. Now, Wall is just one type of application for creating content (text content), on par with posting links, or uploading photos or videos. For example, to add a video with the Video application, the user no longer creates a Wall attachment and adds the video. Instead, the user posts a video to a friend’s Feed just as if she were writing a Wall post.”

From the screenshots (to the left), it appears as though you can also comment on each posted item, further encouraging a “conversation” amongst members of the Facebook community. What’s most interesting is the integration with the Facebook Platform API and ability for developers to present items for discussion within a particular user’s Feed. It appears as though your applications will be able to actually utilize the text box within the publisher to present information on a user’s feed in different ways. More information regarding the new combined Feed/Wall can be found here.

Also very interesting is it seems as though Facebook will soon allow, via the publisher, the automatic playing of Flash, and onload events within FBJS. It seems this is Facebook’s answer to the demand from users migrating from Myspace and the competition from Bebo who allows such onload events.

In addition to the publisher, Facebook has released more information via their developers wiki about the Tabs that will be available, and how applications will be displayed via those tabs. It appears as though at first, all applications will be rendered in their current form in a tab called “boxes” (they mentioned earlier today that name may be temporary). What’s new though is it seems as though your application will be able to give the user options to render other forms of profile boxes to an “Info” tab on the user’s profile. It’s unclear, but this could mean your application will be able to have multiple forms of displaying itself within the user experience beyond just Canvas pages, profile boxes, and feeds. A new FBML tag has been created for this purpose called “<fb:add-section-button/>” which appears to give your application the ability to have the user add a “section” to their profile. (I now need to update FBML Essentials!) Such section will have the ability to display image objects or text that the user can type and provide to your application.

Facebook is also allowing your applications to register an “Application Tab URL” which will have your Application appear in a list of applications next to a “+” (plus) sign in the list of tabs. The user will then have the option to add your Application as a tab, offering an alternate canvas view of your application for the user’s friends to see.

Beyond the Info and Boxes tabs, it’s a bit unclear as to what the other tabs will be called. The most recent screenshot by them includes a “Photos”, “Wall”, and “Feed” tab, but it seems as though the Wall and Feed may be combined to produce the “Publisher”. It could be that the current “News Feed” will be under the Feed tab, while the combined Mini-Feed and Wall will be under the Wall tab. I’m sure we’ll see more screenshots soon. Also of note is that the Action items, the links below your profile image currently, will be no more. Instead you’ll be able to offer your users interactivity via the publisher and other integration points throughout the user’s profile.

It also seems as though the separate News Feed/profile is no more when you log in. It seems they are bringing the focus on the profile and including what is now the “News Feed” to become what will be the “Feed” tab. I like this new concept and hope it catches on - I think it will be a win-win for both Facebook, users, and developers in that it will bring a more fluid experience to users, and encourage discussion and people more than anything else.

With the release of this information to the developers wiki it seems Facebook is on the verge of releasing the new design very soon. I would expect to see such features in the next week or two, considering it was originally supposed to launch last month.

UPDATE: Facebook just released their official announcement here: http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=107

I received a copy of the cover for FBML Essentials last Friday. I was waiting to figure out what the bird was on the cover before I shared it. The bird is a White Throated Dipper - from Wikipedia:

The White-throated Dipper (Cinclus cinclus) is an aquatic passerine bird found in Europe and the Middle East, also known as the European Dipper or just Dipper. The species is divided into several subspecies on colour differences, especially of the pectoral band.

My Editor tells me that usually they don’t have reasons for the animals they have on the covers of O’Reilly books, and that they usually choose an animal that fits well with the look and feel of the book. I guess one could say that most birds are “Social” - anyone know anything more about the White-throated Dipper? Here’s a video of one in the wild:

You can pre-order the book here - it should be available in print around June or July, based on the production schedule they sent me. There’s always a chance it could be at Graphing Social Patterns in June. If not, look for it at OSCON in the O’Reilly booth (and who knows - maybe I’ll be there to sign your copy!).

UPDATE: I forgot to mention - Nick O’Neill of AllFacebook.com, and Rodney Rumford of FaceReviews.com did the Foreword and Afterword for the book. Thanks to both of them (Rodney wrote his Afterword on his birthday!) for putting the time in for those! It’s an excellent read and reference for all already into or looking to get into Facebook development!

Our Utah Social Media Developers Garages (UTSMDev) happen every second Tuesday of every other month, and that is coming up one week from today. Our next meeting will be on May 13th from 7pm to 10pm at the same place as last time, Bungee Labs. We’ll bring the Wii or Xbox in case there’s time to play afterwards.

At this event, Bungee is going to show us a simple “Hello World” for Facebook using their Bungee Connect Platform. For those unaware, Bungee had “Platform as a Service” down before Google App Engine came out, and have recently even partnered with Amazon EC2 in order to provide full server access beyond their current platform. I have some videos of their stuff I took while at Web 2.0 Expo that I’ll try to post later this week in my “Utah Startups” series.

I am still looking for businesses to sponsor snacks and drinks (or even a full dinner - Bungee supplied Fuddruckers for our last event!) for the event - if your business would like some exposure I’ll be sure you get the credit. It could be a great way to meet new developers, Social Media experts, and bloggers!

As usual, while this event is targeted towards developers, everyone is welcome at the event, as it could be a good way for your business to meet developers in this area, as well as just learn a little more about the Social Media space! For future announcements of UTSMDev events, be sure to subscribe to our Google Groups mailing list here!

Bungee Labs is located in the old Wordpress building on the second floor - you can find directions here:

625 E Technology Ave B2300
Orem, UT 84097

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=625+E+Technology+Ave,+84097&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=34.724817,82.265625&ie=UTF8&ll=40.325575,-111.679738&spn=0.008163,0.020084&z=16&iwloc=cent

Please RSVP on our Facebook Event Page.

I’ve been analyzing various Social Applications Analytics tools lately, and have recently stumbled upon Sometrics. Sometrics handles full Analytics for your Facebook, Bebo, and MySpace applications, and will actually utilize the Facebook API to retrieve demographic info about those visiting your Application. As I examine the other Analytics solutions for Facebook and other Social Network Applications, I’ll try to post my findings of their strengths and weaknesses here, OpenSocialNow, and FacebookAdvice.com. If you’re not a techie, you may want to skip the next part, or forward it onto your IT department.

One thing I noticed about Sometrics is it seems to only provide code to paste on your Application pages for PHP, Ruby, and ASP.net. The code they provide is relatively simple, but in case you’re wondering how to do it in Perl, here is how I did it in Template Toolkit under Catalyst on Perl:

Enter this on all Application pages (I do it in my “footer” file):


[% IF Catalyst.request.param("installed") %]

<fb:iframe width='1' height='0' frameborder='0' src="http://halo.sometrics.com/fb_tracer.html?src=fb&installed=1&session=%7B%22session_key%22%3A%22[% Catalyst.request.param("fb_sig_session_key") %]%22%2C%22uid%22%3A[% Catalyst.request.param("fb_sig_user") %]%2C%22expires%22%3A0%2C%22secret%22%3A%22%22%7D&t=[% date.now %]"></fb:iframe>

[% ELSE %]

<fb:iframe width='1' height='0' frameborder='0' src="http://halo.sometrics.com/fb_tracer.html?src=fb&session=%7B%22session_key%22%3A%22[% Catalyst.request.param("fb_sig_session_key") %]%22%2C%22uid%22%3A[% Catalyst.request.param("fb_sig_user") %]%2C%22expires%22%3A0%2C%22secret%22%3A%22%22%7D&t=[% date.now %]"></fb:iframe>

[% END %]


Then add this in the “post-remove url” subroutine for your Applicaiton (or create one and add the URL in your App’s config):

=head2 remove

  Page that handles App removal

=cut

sub remove : Local {

  my ( $self, $c ) = @_;

  if ($c->req->param(”fb_sig_uninstall”)) {

    $c->res->redirect(qq{http://halo.sometrics.com/met.gif?a=u&app=}.$c->req->param(”fb_sig_api_key”).qq{&uid=}.$c->req->param(”fb_sig_user”).qq{&age=&sex=&city=&state=&country=&friend=&src=fb});

    $c->detach();

  }

  return;

}

I’m sitting in here at the Blogger Lounge at Web 2.0 Expo, and have been working on a cool little gadget I think you may like. Mari Smith yesterday Tweeted that she and others wished there was a way they could “turn off” Facebook chat. Right now there are privacy controls to block people and keep people from chatting with you, but there is no real way to turn off the Chat feature in Facebook.

So I created a simple little Greasemonkey script (works in Firefox only, sorry) under the GPL v.2, in conjunction with SocialToo.com’s “Social Companion to the Web” theme, that I call, “Facebook Chat-B-Gone”. Go ahead and download and install Greasemonkey here, then click here to download “Facebook Chat-B-Gone”.

Enjoy! And be sure to sign up for SocialToo.com for more cool “companion” features like this in the future!

http://staynalive.com/wp-content/themes/revvedup-158/fbchatbegone.user.js

Yahoo’s keynote proved very interesting. In it they announced a new technology they call, Y! OS. This technology is to be the beginning of a new Open, Social Strategy for Yahoo, and with the technology, as they term it, they are “Re-wiring Yahoo”.

Starting today, Yahoo is opening up the beta for their Search Monkey platform, which is to be a new way to organize and format search results. He showed some interesting formatting of search results with reviews, descriptions, etc.

According to them, Yahoo’s open strategy is about opening up all the properties of Yahoo. First of such will be an Application platform. They will be socializing all of their properites, unifying the user profiles, and integrating the ability to add “applications” across all Yahoo properties and apply Social properties to those applications.

According to Yahoo, they are “Not creating ‘yet another social network’”. Yahoo does not view “Social” as a destination. It should be an integrated environment. He showed some examples of integration within the Yahoo mail environment, showing a way to pop up messages most relevant to the individual through the Social Graph. Taking Yahoo portable will also be an integral part of this.

Yahoo says that later this year the first version of Y! OS will be delivered. This will include the beginning of Social Graph and Application Development platform, and an entirely new dimension of developing applications at Yahoo will become available.

This is huge news for Yahoo - it puts them up at par with Google and Facebook, and will change the way you use the internet as you know it. Expect to see more from Google along these lines in the future - I believe the iGoogle OpenSocial integration predicts this. With Yahoo as a part of the OpenSocial foundation, I expect them to integrate OpenSocial as part of this, and move to a fully social strategy. I’m very excited for this announcement and look forward to Y! OS to come into play at the end of this year.

Mark Andreesen, creator of Mosaic and founder of Ning.com, spoke to us in an interview today at the Web 2.0 Expo, and shared with us some of his thoughts on the growing up of the web, and what he thinks of the future. As I mentioned earlier, one interesting thing he mentioned was plans for Facebook Platform Integration, something I am very excited for. Here are the highlights.

What were your expectations when you released Mosaic?: “Hype at the time was interactive TV. Mosaic and internet technologies were kind of the renegade of the time - no one believed it could make money.”

At what point did you think this was going to change the game?: “It wasn’t until after Netscape was started that Mark started thinking it was going to be a phenomenon.”

Many of the TV and media companies mentioned are now extremely important players in this space. What do you make of those guys now?: “By and large most of the major media companies are still unprepared for the shift. Many of the newspaper companies are in an absolute free-fall. There is still a story that has yet to be written. These companies are uneasy about a commodotized future. That said, things are still developing and are still unknown.”

In 1995 Microsoft realized what you were doing was competitive and decided to launch Internet Explorer for Free - what is your thought of that?: “Well, in fact they used my code. If you go into the credits you’ll see the name of Mosaic from University of Illinois in there.”

Looking at the legacy of the browser, what is it you like and what do you wish evolved differently?: “It has turned out far better than anyone ever thought. The big surprise has been how many of the ideas that we had that we thought were experiments have lasted. One example being javascript - we created something that looked like Java because it was familiar to people at the time. Another example was cookies - we were writing an E-Commerce site for MCI, and needed a way to do it, so created the “cookie thing”. People are now seeing that as a threat to privacy, and I find that amusing. The other expiriment was the back and forward buttons - we were looking for a better way to navigate the internet, and it’s interesting to see that that method has stuck around.”

You said, “It’s nice to have this kind of money for the ‘coming of the nuclear winter’”. Can you tell me how to “build our bunkers”?: “There’s a huge irony for the industry where after the crash of the stock market in 2001 all the money got put into Real Estate, and now that’s crashing. On one hand all of this is happening in a remote area and doesn’t have a lot to do with us, but on the other hand, it all comes back around, and effects us in the end.”

What are the advertising models that might work?: “Your company has a strong advertising model to it - Ning is a social network play, but different - why is it not Facebook?: Ning is a company for people to create their own social networks. On averag