One of the more commonly used functions is getInfo(), which returns almost any piece of information from a user’s profile page; gender being one of them. The value returned for gender is either “Male” or “Female,” which is fine – but they are localized in the user’s language. So does this mean you have to check for “Female” if the user is using Facebook in English and “Weiblich” if the user chose German? Yes. It also means you have to check for imaginary languages. “Lass” is what you get if the user has his language preferences set to Pirate (English). You can see the headache this causes a developer if they are asked to report on the demographic of users of your app.

Another problem plaguing developers is the lack of organization for the documentation. The bulk of documentation exists on their developer wiki. This works well enough if you know exactly what you’re looking for, but if you don’t know the name of a function you’re better off using Google. A wiki format is more conducive to separate pages. So for a new developer stumbling on to the wiki, aside from a few copy-paste tutorials, there is no clear path of where to go. Only recently, with the release of their Javascript SDK, have they created a concise page containing documentation. Facebook officially supports 5 client libraries. For some of the libraries, documentation exists on the wiki and is shared amongst one another. All of the functions are typically the same for every language, so only one wiki page exists. PHP as well as Connect for the iPhone use the wiki pages, while the ActionScript library documentation is housed on Google code. This is because a lot of these libraries were contributed by the community and not officially created by Facebook, but this can be a large annoyance if you automatically assume that the function you’re using in a particular language is described by the wiki. Forcing people to scour multiple sites and forums for documentation is never a good idea if you are trying to build a good developer community around your platform.

The Facebook Platform status usually states “Facebook Platform is Healthy”. Occasionally it displays messages about performance issues, but that doesn’t help you much. Chances are, if you’re looking at Facebook platform status, you noticed the performance issues on your application. Looking at the “Average API Response Time” and “Error Count” doesn’t reveal much because there are no units on the y-axis. However looking at Developer Updates and Top Life Platform Bugs mights shed a light on the current status of Facebook. So what is the state of Facebook? Developer Update states they are changing profile picture sizes. So everyone who ever uses a profile picture in their application should go and double check that the new sizes will work. Existing Facebook applications constantly need to be updated to simply work. The bug list is as expected; there are a few major bugs, e.g. suggest to friends does not work (opened 29 December). And less critical but still annoying ones, e.g. request-form action opens a new window (opened 07 April 2009). The platform is in a state of constant flux with backwards incompatible updates being released and bugs for old features being introduced. If you create a Facebook app, you can’t just “set it and forget it.” You must monitor for changes to the platform and update your app as needed. You must also expect that there will be periods where your app won’t operate due to internal problems with Facebook’s system.

So where does this developer hell leave us? It actually promises a brighter future. The reason the API is broken is due to Facebook constantly working on it and bringing more enhancements to users and developers. They are rolling out new features such as allowing applications to gather a user’s email if given permission and giving more control to users over their privacy settings. Yes the platform is immature, but it’s certainly not stagnant. So what can a developer do to make things smoother? There are certainly enough complaints out there, so that path won’t lead anywhere. Trying to write more on the wiki and help the community won’t be very fruitful, because the API changes quickly enough that your notes may be soon outdated. In fact, the abundance of notes like this on the wiki makes it confusing as to who is right. Here are some suggestions for developers to cope with the situation:

1. Manage your client’s expectations. Make them aware that Facebook encounters issues periodically and this is out of your control. Give them the link to the Platform Live Status page so they can check that before coming screaming at you.
2. Subscribe to the Platform Live Status Feed, Developers News Feed, and Facebook Pages Notes. This way you should always be aware of a problem or an upcoming change before your client. The feeds are available via RSS or email except for the Pages Notes which seems to only be RSS.
3. Stay up to date with the Developer Roadmap in the wiki. You can create an account in the wiki and “watch” this page to get notified of changes.
4. If the client library you’re using has a svn repository, you can check the log to read about changes. For example, this command works for the PHP library – svn log -v http://svn.facebook.com/svnroot/platform/clients/php/trunk/. The ActionScript library on Google code page has a web interface for browsing changes – http://code.google.com/p/facebook-actionscript-api/source/list. There are some tools for automatically getting notified of an update to the code: SVN-Monitor, CommitMonitor, and SVN Notifier. Unfortunately, these are all Windows programs. Leave a comment if you know of one for Mac or Linux (yes, we know you can easily write a cron script to do it

In summary, at this stage if someone says “We want to do this and that with Facebook,” the best thing to do is say “I can try but I make no guarantees” instead of “Sure, it’s totally possible” because with Facebook you never know if what is available today will be still available by the time your application is ready to launch.

Quite an interesting question indeed. With Social Media being a super hyped little pair of buzz words, every agency, self-promoting fameball, or major brand who follows trendy little buzz words has jumped on the tweeting, wall-posting, super-poking bandwagon.

While they are most definitely right to be on the wagon, the deployment of a Social Media initiative is not something one embarks upon without any planning or experience. It is one thing to be a celebrity building your own online brand, but even then you have to be wary. The room for interpretation on the context of your tweets, blog posts, or status updates is a pretty big room and the elephant in it is that whether you are a brand or Demi Moore, the online world of snark just wants to see you stumble.  Just like that photograph of you on Page Six in your unflattering sweats or that consumer complaint about an experience with your brand or one of your employees that now has 50,000 views on Consumerist, dipping your toes into Social Media has to be done clearly and with purpose.

Even without the fear or risk of negative backlash, in order to make a lasting impression that positively supports your brand and that has a trajectory for growth and “viral” legs, one must have a firm foundation based on knowledge and experience, on what works and what doesn’t.

Which is why, as with every other marketing tactic or medium, having a strategy is important.  Your Social Media initiatives should be integrated with your overall brand strategy, whether you are trying to peddle a product, fameball, celebrity, or brand.  There should be goals, objectives, benchmarks, and a thought out approach that makes sense for what it is that you want to communicate and how you wish to communicate it.

In this Marketing Sherpa study, they concluded that ” Two-thirds of marketers who work for organizations that have not used any form of social media marketing or PR consider themselves “very knowledgeable” or “somewhat knowledgeable” about this emerging strategy. Their overconfidence in unproven ability can doom social media initiatives to failure.”

It is a mistake to believe that if you build it, they will come.

To believe that you can set up a YouTube channel, upload a few videos, and boom, there you have viral video is about as logical as believing that people with a video camera can create a Super Bowl commercial. Although in some cases, the former does happen, more often than not  it doesn’t and won’t.

In the same manner, it is foolish to believe that just because you create a Facebook or iPhone application and put it out in the universe, people will use it. The application directory on Facebook is flooded with applications, most of which (the most recent stat I heard was 99%) are basically inactive. Even the top Facebook applications that were previously deemed “successful” have seen a decrease in usage that averages between 15-24% with the new Facebook redesign.

While I do believe that it is possible for some brands to embark upon a Social Media plan “in house”, it is increasingly important to do so with someone taking the reigns who has Social Media experience and expertise. If you want to cut through the clutter, ward off any potential viral embarrassment, and most importantly, have a successful initiative having someone on board who knows the space – not as a user, but as a marketer, is key.

As an employee of an agency that dipped its own toes into Social Media before it was so totally trendy and part of a majority of Fortune 1000 marketing budgets, I can say that the overzealous nature of marketers to believe they fully understand Social Media is partially exciting. It is nice to have these mediums & tactics that we believe (and have for quite some time) to be viable be recognized and appreciated by the more traditional marketers.

I just urge you to remember that just like other traditional and existing non-traditional tactics, strategy is key. While a rogue effort by someone with no experience could prove to be successful, lightning rarely strikes in the same place twice.

It is best to consult with, hire, or bring to the team, someone(s) with a true passion for and expertise and experience in Social Media.

These two buzz words are best buzzed about by someone who knows how to properly buzz them.

Upon reading the list, I was especially struck by the top two brands, the iPhone and CNN.  While one is a relatively new product that has revolutionized the way we use mobile and, most recently, doubled its Q4 sales over the previous year, the other is a nearly 30 year old news network competing with countless other organizations producing much the same product.  So why their congruent success?

It’s easy to understand why iphone topped the list.  The iphone has enabled the use of social media applications mobilely unlike any phone before it, and with a large majority of tech journalists and early adopters utilizing social media tools like Twitter, Digg, and Facebook, it makes sense why the internet was abuzz with the iPhone in 2008.

CNN, on the other hand, is a bit different.  Its product, journalism, is ubiquitous.  While there can be discerning attributes to the network’s journalism that may set it apart; journalistic integrity, un-biased coverage, evocative subject matter, it is only marginal in scale and certainly not enough to create large amounts of buzz, as the news is a product reproduced by myriad publishing organizations.  So why does CNN beat all but the iphone in social media mentions?  What makes it nearly as buzzworthy as the revolutionary iPhone?

I like to think of it as the “what” vs “how” differentiation.  The iPhone’s success is the iPhone.  It’s a product that’s buzzworthy for what it is and how it changes our everyday interactions.  Congrats to Apple and Jobs for developing such an amazing product.  However, CNN can’t rely solely on it’s “what,” the quality of its journalism.  Instead, CNN must rely more heavily on the “how,” the way it is delivered and the experience they provide.

This is where CNN levels its competitors.   CNN has joined the social media space in an innovative way that provides utility to its audience.  Case in point: the presidential inauguration.  CNN, like most other major networks, streamed the inauguration live on their website.  But while the majority focused on the quantity and ease of access to coverage, CNN focused on the social media integration.  CNN allowed their audience to connect and interact with their Facebook friends with a click of a mouse.  After the inauguration, CNN set up “The Moment,” a Microsoft photosynth experience encouraging inauguration attendees to submit their photos, creating a 3D image experience created by the people, for the people.  Gimmicky, sure, but it’s buzzworthy.

I recognize that the particular examples cited previously occurred in 2009, I cited them as the freshest examples of CNN’s innovation.  In 2008 CNN impressed us with Rick Sanchez et al. incorporating Twitter into on air segments, iReports, and essential tools and features such as RSS, bookmarks, and embeddable video (not to mention tech-geeky stunts including holograms and complex touch-screen maps.)

CNN continues to pursue what gives them that ‘purple cow‘ effect that inevitably draws the spotlight on a brand.  While their ‘what’ may be good, it’s their ‘how’ that is exceptional.

The videophone was a revolutionary product that was featured prominently in the 1964 World’s Fair. Huge amounts of time and money were spent creating it and just because it was technically possible, it was predicted that there would be an enormous demand for it. But it turned out that no one actually wanted a videophone. In fact, that the parties cannot see what each other looks like is viewed by most people as a major benefit to voice-only communication not a limitation.

When I worked in Interactive Television, every year there would be two or three companies that invested a large amount of effort in developing systems to allow users to click on a person on the screen. The envisioned killer app for this was inevitably buying what the person was wearing, the example being whatever happed to be the hit show of the moment such as Sex and the City. Even ignoring the difficulties of coordinating the business cycles of television and fashion to have products on shelves when a show airs, it was always a cumbersome user experience. TV shows are edited (such as cutting between two people having a conversation) so timing a click to be on the intended person is difficult. It would be much easier to simply select that actor from a menu. The hubris of these technologists is such that one company even blatant stated that TV shows would no longer need to be edited as if it were a flaw that would finally be corrected with their product.

Now with location based services, the holy grail is evidently walking down the street and getting beamed a coupon when passing by a certain vendor, usually Starbucks. Apparently the technologists’ vision of the future is being bombarded with offers as we stroll down a city street, even though everyone at the conference admittedly had no desire for this much less the average person. But these efforts perpetuate because it makes a good trade show demo and an even better pitch to a client or venture capitalist. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen in a previous post, selling the client on the presentation rather than the result usually leads to something that no one actually uses.

Modern humans evolved about 200,000 years ago and we all have the essentially the same brains as our ancient ancestors. It’s amazing that something like a film can deeply emotionally engage us, but it somehow taps into the way our minds work. Social interaction whether around a campfire or on Facebook hasn’t changed much; people still want essentially the same things whether it’s to flirt or boast or establish social hierarchies. Technology and media that address human needs or solve human problems can be very successful. Some companies like Apple are amazingly adept at this. Products that simply demonstrate their technical capabilities are doomed to fail.