Facebook Public Profiles Now Have Viral Invite Mechanism

Facebook have been making a number of additions to their 'public profiles' recently (what used to be called fan pages); the latest of which is to add viral invites to pages, as All Facebook report. This means that a fan of a public profile can send direct invites to their friends, similar to applications. The effect of this won't be dramatic, as if people really wanted to share a page with their friends they could do it with the share feature, however this could be a stronger call to action for users; and it's certainly something which brand owners of pages have been calling for.

Facebook's re-design: the right way forward

There's been a lot of furore over the recent Facebook homepage changes, when they changed from a newsfeed showing an algorithmically chosen selection of feed stories being generated from your friends, many of which were passive (reporting on activity they'd done around the site, but not necessarily actively chosen to share); to a 'live stream' of actively shared content, along with a highlights section, using algorithms as before to create a small selection of content (events, photo albums, applications) which are interesting to you because of the interest they're getting from your friends. They've also made the live stream easier to personalise using friend lists - this was possible before, but not as clear.

As when Facebook first introduced the newsfeed, a small minority of their users very vocally resisted the changes. Some of these are/were valid complaints; e.g. some people found too much application activity in the new stream, or if a user uploaded a number of photos consecutively (rather than all at once), this would create a long list of posts from just that user.

However, Facebook have recognised that as people on the web become more used to sharing, what becomes interesting is what people are actually choosing to share - not just a passive feed of their activities. This is the point behind Twitter, and has been found in application design; if a user clicks the share button and posts a link to their profile along with their own comment, it is far more viral than a passive newsfeed story. Facebook know this is the case - because they have the data on all their user behaviour. Facebook's own research has shown before that when users are exposed to more active types of sharing on the newsfeed (e.g. seeing uploaded, tagged, or commented photos) they are subsequently more likely to engage in the same, active behaviour. The same is now very likely to be true of status updates, and anecdotally this seems to be the case.

The truth is, with their masses of data, Facebook know very quickly whether a design change is good or bad. They've listened to feedback and are refining some of the aspects of design to reflect this (namely, more control over application stories, better highlights etc). However, if they're sticking with the design, it's because they know that users like it. Not because of a small minority making loud noises about how they don't like it; but because Facebook can see how people are actually using it.

Personally, I'd much rather have a stream of status updates and actively shared content from the people I want to hear about than a feed of passive activity that Facebook are struggling to make relevant from the huge mass of stories that were being generated every day.

I'm off to SXSWi tomorrow, followed by some Silicon Valley action

Tomorrow morning I'm jumping on the plan to SXSW (due to arrive sometime on Friday morning US time) (I think). Should be an action packed long weekend with lots of fun, including an invite only Facebook party on Saturday night (will the great Zuck himself be there?), and of course all the UK party-mad favourites along with me for Digital Mission. As an experiment, I'm going along without any business cards, and only a Poken - although this may just be an excuse for being disorganised at the last minute.

Turns out the cheapest way for me to get to Austin was to fly via San Francisco - which gives me a convenient excuse to hang out there for a few days after SXSW before coming back to the UK. Whilst there, I'm going to be speaking at the Silicon Valley Facebook Garage on the 19th.

Give me a shout if you're in Austin or SF and want to meet-up - josh(AT)theiplatform.com.

Social networks beat email

According to a new Nielsen Online report, Facebook now has a 47% reach in the UK, the Guardian reports. Together, member communities (made up of blogs and social networks) are the fourth most popular web destination in the UK - ahead of personal email. They've grown over 10% in the last year.

However, UK penetration is dwarfed by Brazil - the Google owned social network Orkut has a 70% penetration there, the highest social network penetration of any of the countries in the Nielsen survey.

Brazil is also top in time spent on these sites - 23% of all time spent (1 in 4 minutes), followed closely by the UK with 17% of all time spent online (1 in 6 minutes).

This shows how far social networks have come in terms of personal use - however also points out that despite the seemingly world dominating growth of Facebook, it's not the total solution if you're aiming for a global audience.

I'm really glad Facebook have unmoderated comments on their blog

Check out the original blog post for more quality comments like these.

Help Red Nose Day '09 - Donate Your Facebook Status to Comic Relief!

This Friday it's Red Nose day 2009, in support of Comic Relief, a charity campaign which, in over 20 years, has raised over £500m to support projects across the globe, from helping disadvantaged young people in the UK, to supporting those in dire poverty or suffering from HIV and AIDs in third world countries.

They teamed up with iPlatform to allow Facebook users to donate their status's to help spread the word about Red Nose Day this week - the app has launched today. Click here to go to the app and donate your status!