2009 Review: Huge Year for Facebook (Poll)
Going into 2009 I think we all knew that social media was going to transform the web as we knew it but I don’t think that any of us expected it to explode into the mainstream as fast as it did. The 3 big social networks, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace all entered 2009 with some impressive numbers already but by year end, I bet they were just as surprised as we were. In this year in review post I am going to focus on Facebook and some of the changes that we witnessed from them this year…
The Facebook Connect Rollout
Facebook expanded their social network domination by rolling out Facebook Connect in a big way this past year, I blogged several times on this topic, you can find those posts here. In a nutshell, Facebook Connect allows Facebook users to authenticate themselves on external websites with their Facebook accounts, therefore taking their identity with them to external websites. This has rapidly become a preferred method for authentication for users that don’t want to manage separate logins for every site or web service that they use. This functionality gave Facebook another huge boost in surpassing MySpace, in my opinion, because of the openness of their connect platform versus MySpace’s.
Facebook Design Changes
2009 also saw at least two design changes to the user interface for Facebook. These updates were met at first with opposition but I think eventually they were accepted. Here is a post I did back in March regarding one phase of their rollout that affected their home, profile, and activity streams. Facebook pages also underwent some changes, I blogged about those edits here if you are interested.
Changes to TOS (Terms of Service)
Some other big stories for Facebook this past year had to do with their TOS (Terms of Service) changes, I blogged a few times on this topic if you are interested, see here and here… For the most part I think that this was a whole lot to do about nothing, but I do know of a handful of people that disappeared forever as a result of these changes.
A Huge Year for Growth
Facebook is the king of the mountain in terms of users with over 350 million. Of the 350 million Facebook users, 50% of these users are active on a daily basis. The word Facebook can be heard on just about every newscast you watch everyday as well as an appendage on the marketing materials for just about every major company out there, this probably hasn’t hurt Facebook’s growth one bit. Here are some additional statistics provided by Facebook, some of this is extremely interesting:
Here are some additional statistics provided by Facebook:
- More than 350 million active users
- 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
- More than 35 million users update their status each day
- More than 55 million status updates posted each day
- More than 2.5 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
- More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
- More than 3.5 million events created each month
- More than 1.6 million active Pages on Facebook
- More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
- Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans
- Average user has 130 friends on the site
- Average user sends 8 friend requests per month
- Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook
- Average user clicks the Like button on 9 pieces of content each month
- Average user writes 25 comments on Facebook content each month
- Average user becomes a fan of 2 Pages each month
- Average user is invited to 3 events per month
- Average user is a member of 12 groups
- More than 70 translations available on the site
- About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
- Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application
Facebook is Finally Profitable
For someone not familiar with how the web operates, this next point is probably going to come as a shock. Up until 2009 Facebook had not ever turned an actual profit. Yes, the company grew, but it’s growth was a direct result of angel investors that were able to get in on the ground floor of this emerging fireball. I did a blog post back in September where I discussed Facebook’s announcement that they were finally profitable if you are interested.
Incorporated into Search Engines
When we learned back in September / October of this year that Bing and Google were planning on adding social media to their search results I think a lot of us already saw this coming. While it’s really early to predict how Facebook is going to play in terms of the search equation at this time, I think we will learn a lot more about that in 2010. I did a few posts in relation to this topic here and again here if you are interested.
Facebook Usernames & URL’s
Facebook launched Usernames and URL’s this past year for both users and businesses inside their network. There was a silent goldrush as companies battled to secure their Facebook vanity urls. This “goldrush” just solidified Facebook’s position as an online marketing outlet for corporations in my opinion.
What’s Next for Facebook? Marketplace?
I think that a couple of things are going to be big topics for Facebook followers in 2010. One of these issues will be privacy controls. Facebook has already implemented some changes to their privacy controls in 2009 but I think we will see some even more detailed streamlining on tap for 2010. I think that another area worth watching for 2010 is the Facebook Marketplace, I posted on this topic recently if you are interested, I suspect that as Facebook rapidly approaches an IPO the marketplace will be one area that they will focus a lot of their efforts.
Head to Head w/ Twitter?
Personally, I still don’t see Facebook and Twitter as direct competition to one another, so I won’t weigh in on any strategies Facebook might have for going after Twitter, but I will say that their recent move to get into the URL shortening market has me scratching my head wondering why they would want to venture into that direction.
Developers, Developers, Developers…
I think that the openness of Facebook API will further encourage developers to roll out more fun and useful applications for the network. Since I am not a heavy application user in Facebook I don’t have any predictions as to what kind of applications just yet, but I suspect there will be a Farmtown on Steroids that all of our mothers can’t live without at some point in 2010.
What About FriendFeed?
One last thing to watch for in 2010 from Facebook is FriendFeed. This past year we saw Facebook purchase this company, and for the most part a lot of us inside the industry slapped our hands on our foreheads and asked “why??”… FriendFeed is an extremely popular social aggregator / network that has tremendous user loyalty. It will be interesting to see what Facebook does with this purchase. I blogged about the purchase of FriendFeed back in August if you are interested…
In closing, please take a second to let us know which social network you will spend the most time inside 2010. Also, I still maintain a pretty active presence on Facebook, if you are a Facebook user be sure to add me as a friend…
Facebook Usernames and URL’s
Tonight I was going through my tasklist knocking off projects for the week and realized that I hadn’t gotten around to securing our custom URL or username for Facebook yet for our Pleth page. The truth is that we have had a page on Facebook for a while now but we haven’t really promoted it a lot because we have been very busy as of late working on client projects, but I will admit that that’s not a good excuse, especially since Facebook is where a lot of our new clients have been finding us. I have even advised some of my existing clients this past week to get online and reserve their usernames and URL’s before they were grabbed up. Here’s a description of what usernames do for you that I found on Facebook’s FAQ’s
Usernames allow public entities to easily promote your presence on Facebook with a short URL (http://www.facebook.com/companyname). This username can be used in your marketing communications, company website and business cards.
I have probably 20 or so pages that I am an admin for inside of Facebook and I went through and set most of them up that I could tonight, but when I got to Pleth’s page it wouldn’t let me set it up so I went to the FAQ’s section to find out why. We didn’t have 100 fans yet on our page, as I mentioned earlier I haven’t been promoting our presence on Facebook hardly at all. One of our projects recently had over 20,000 fans so I should be ashamed of myself I guess. Here’s what I found on the FAQ’s:
Your Facebook Page must meet two requirements: it must have been live on Facebook prior to the May 31, 2009 cut-off date and have had a minimum 1,000 fans at that time. This limitation is temporary. All Pages created after May 31, 2009 or that had less than 1,000 fans on that day will be eligible to claim usernames on Sunday, June 28, 2009 if they have more than 100 fans.
In an effort to reach the 100 fan mark I went out to Twitter and posted a request and also sent messages to a group of my Facebook friends asking them for their help in getting us to the 100 mark, hopefully we will get there sometime tonight so I can knock this last project off of my tasklist… If you have a few minutes and are on facebook, I would appreciate the love, http://www.facebook.com/s.php?q=pleth&init=q&sid=ec50f898d1747e133d9d81ad83aaaa22#/pages/Batesville-AR/Pleth-Networks-LLC/14932808682?ref=ts
If you are interested in setting up a username or custom URL for your business, click here.
Facebook | Usernames: Facebook Pages
Facebook Vanity URL’s Possibly Coming This Weekend…
Facebook is scheduled to release vanity URL’s this weekend for those that are interested. I strongly recommend businesses and individuals looking to do self promotion take advantage of this feature. When I first heard of this plan for vanity URL’s I assumed that Facebook had figured out a way to charge for this service and to generate some revenue, but from what I have gathered on CNN Money this morning, that is not their intention, and like everything else on Facebook, this service is slated to be free.
At some point Facebook is going to have to start looking at ways to generate revenue from their social networking platform, unless of course there is some method they have in mind that the rest of us in the industry are missing. Ad sales are great, and Facebook has one of the best ad platforms out there, but ad revenue alone isn’t the answer in my opinion, for long term stability…
From the beginning of Facebook, people have used their real names to share and connect with the people they know. This authenticity helps to create a trusted environment because you know the identity of the people and things on Facebook. The one place, though, where your identity wasn’t reflected was in the Web address for your profile or the Facebook Pages you administer. The URL was just a randomly assigned number like "id=592952074." That soon will change.
We’re planning to offer Facebook usernames to make it easier for people to find and connect with you. When your friends, family members or co-workers visit your profile or Pages on Facebook, they will be able to enter your username as part of the URL in their browser. This way people will have an easy-to-remember way to find you. We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook username in the future.
Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names. Your username will have the same privacy setting as your profile name in Search, and you can always edit your search privacy settings here.
Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you’ll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/. You’ll also see a notice on your home page with instructions for obtaining your username at that time.
Facebook usernames will be available in basic text forms, and you can only choose a single username for your profile and for each of the Pages that you administer. Your username must be at least five characters in length and only include alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9), or a period or full stop ("."). While usernames are currently available only for Romanized text, we’re looking at how we might support non-Romanized characters in the future.
Think carefully about the username you choose. Once it’s been selected, you won’t be able to change or transfer it. If you signed up for a Facebook Page after May 31 or a user profile after today at 3 p.m. EDT, you may not be able to sign up for a username immediately because of steps we’ve taken to prevent abuse or "squatting" on names.
Be sure to check out this FAQ for answers to common questions, and if you’re an administrator of Facebook Pages, get more details here. If you want to ensure you keep the rights for a trademark or other protected name, contact us here.
Coming Soon: Facebook Usernames | Facebook
Facebook Vanity URLs
My partner Stephen sent me a tweet he saw this morning about Facebook vanity URLs. Now, I typically spend about an hour or two in the evenings inside the Facebook Developers area and this was the first time that I had heard anything about it.
I searched the forums and didn’t see not one single mention about them, but it’s true they do exist for a few folks that Facebook has apparently brought in to help them test this offering before it goes public. Just like anything that is tied in w/ Facebook, you can bet that whatever this vanity URL service turns out the be, we are all going to want it…
Facebook is getting wise to something MySpace has known from the start – users love vanity URLs. When you tell someone your MySpace page, you just say myspace.com/[user/brand/band/etc.] (I’m myspace.com/mikearrington)
. On Facebook it has always been more difficult.
My profile isn’t Facebook.com/michaelarrington, it’s facebook.com/profile.php?id=500065899
Facebook’s policy on this is clearly changing, at least for Pages (where bands, celebrities, brands, etc. have their Facebook presence). Facebook has always had a few vanity URLs associated with Pages, like Facebook.com/U2
Unfortunately we are not currently able to approve requests for vanity URLs. The only Pages that presently have vanity URLs are bands and businesses that partnered with us for the initial launch of this new product. We hope to make these URLs available for everyone to have on their individual Page(s) in the future. When this feature is available, we will provide instructions on how to obtain a vanity URL at http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=60. We apologize for any inconvenience in the mean time.
Now, though, Facebook seems to be letting more people have vanity URLs. Kevin Rose
Facebook Getting Serious About Vanity URLs
