iPhone4idiots » Facebook

Facebook Peaked Last Year

hirtme — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:49:05 +0000

One good sign a tech company may have peaked is when it goes public. Yesterday, Facebook filed an initial public offering (IPO) for $5 billion worth of stock that will put a valuation on the company of around $85 billion. Despite its’ massive user base of 845 million users every month (over half of those are daily and almost half are mobile) this stock will be expensive. Facebook made a little over $1 billion last year on $3.7 billion in revenues. Of course the vast majority of that revenue comes from advertising and a whopping 12% comes from Zynga (the makers of Farmville and dozens of other popular games). IMO, the problem with Facebook is how far can they push things. See you are the product they are selling. Most Facebook users still don’t realize this and at a certain point it’s gonna be a major problem. Facebook’s filing mentions “privacy” 35 times. The truth, however, is the less privacy you have the more money Facebook makes.

I’m one of Facebook’s users, but hardly use Facebook these days. I do update my website’s Facebook page weekly, but I haven’t been on my personal page in over a month. I don’t care to see my mother’s updates in my stream nor do I care for the half dozen links that over posters put in my stream daily. The only way to manage it is to unfriend but that has its’ own potential pitfalls. Facebook is a monster, but what can it do going forward to grow? They’ve tapped out the United States market already.

It seems they really want to take on FourSquare in location sharing based check-ins. They recently purchased Gowalla to try and beef up this service but to me all that proves is they realized Facebook Places was a total fail. There are the rumors about a Facebook phone? Really. Google already failed at this so what makes Facebook think they could do it better? No Facebook has peaked. While I don’t see it going the way of MySpace anytime soon, the IPO should be similar to LinkedIn or Groupon’s 2011 IPOs. Great for the existing shareholders to cash out on, but a horrible investment for anyone silly enough to buy stock once it starts trading.

Facebook Releases iPad App

hirtme — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 21:09:28 +0000

Facebook has finally released their iPad app. What the heck took so long? Anyone that owns an iPad can tell how annoying it was to open the Facebook app and see it only fill a small iPhone sized portion of your display. Yes, there were jailbreak apps like Retina Display which fixed this, but for most people this was just ridiculous. It has been reported that the developer of the Facebook iPad app (who recently left for Google) said it was ready for release months ago. It is rumored Steve Jobs was pissed Facebook introduced a tablet app on the HP Touchpad first. Remember the integration of Twitter into iOS 5? Could this possibly have been Steve Job’s response to Facebook not putting Apple first?? We’ll probably never know for sure, but the bottom line is Facebook and Apple are major competitors that won’t play nice just to benefit the consumer. Anyway, thank goodness that is in the past and you can now use the Facebook app on your entire iPad screen! I’ll check it out tonight. Let me know what you think.

Facebook Adding Timeline & Open Graph – Users to be Pissed

hirtme — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:55:07 +0000

Since I rarely use Facebook anymore I wasn’t going to write about this, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced some major changes today. With 800 million users (half a billion daily users) I’m clearly in the minority thinking Facebook is going the way of MySpace. Anyway, you might have noticed over the past month that Facebook has revamped the Friend Lists, added a real-time ticker, launched changes to News Feed and rolled out a Subscribe button for following anybody’s public updates. This is nothing compared to what is coming – Timeline and Open Graph. Facebook is going to look dramatically different with Timeline. Zuckerberg, descirbed Timeline as a place to share your stories, apps and express who you are. It’s quite interesting but has me convinced Facebook is moving in the wrong direction!

No they are gonna be a major player for a long time, but a lot of people are gonna hate this change. That said, remember this is coming from someone who already doesn’t like Facebook too much. One cool thing about Timeline is it goes back to your birth! That’s right, all you Facebook fans better get ready to do some major updating. Get all those cute photos from your childhood ready. You can try and give your Timeline a personal feel with large wall photos, but I think it’s too radical a change and people will want to stick with what is familiar. I’m pretty confidenct about that. In your Timeline you can show what you’ve eaten or where you’ve been. You can view the Timeline as just photos if you choose. It’s hard to explain because as I mentioned it’s very different from what you’re used to. You essentially star your updates to rate how important they are to you and Facebook determines where to place them. In addition to the News Feed, Facebook will introduce Ticker which is a lightweight acitivity stream. Thus, if you place one star next to an update like, “just ate tacos”, it will go into your Ticker stream which is small and to the side. This is potentially a great thing as it will clear a lot of the crap out of your News Feed. However, it all depends on how well Facebook’s filtering software works.

Zuckerberg spent a lot of time talking about Open Graph. This is basically Facebook’s software filling your timeline with patterns based on alogrythms. You have to opt-in the first time with each app you want to add to your Timeline. Think of you and your friends sharing everything you watch, listen to, read, eat and more. Open Graph might show you that five of your friends just watched True Blood. Couple that with a Hulu app and you can watch the episode with them in a video chat like screen. I like the potential of this a lot, but think it won’t catch on very quickly. Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, took the stage to say his own software had been telling him he would like to watch the show Breaking Bad. However, he never did until he recently was using the new Facebook. His News Feed with the Facebook Netflix app showed a friend who he would see the next day was watching Breaking Bad. Thus, he finally clicked on his Timeline and watched the show. Spotify’s CEO also briefly took the stage stating similar things. His most interesting comment was that Facebook users of Spotify are twice as likely to purchase music. Open Graph will also show you what news articles your friends are reading or what games they are playing if you choose to use those apps. It’s incredibly powerful, but I don’t think soccer moms and grandmas are gonna be too thrilled with it. There are also lifestyle apps like running, eating, biking etc. Any of you that thought Facebook knew too much about you already – just wait for all the apps. When I think about Facebook and a TV app, I keep hearing the line, “My Tivo thinks I’m gay!”

Timeline is launching now and will rollout over the next few weeks. Open Graph will follow shortly after that except for the media apps (music, movies, tv shows and news) which will go live now as well. They didn’t address if you could stay with the old Facebook if you want or how they’ll be managing privacy.

So Facebook has been busy doing a major makeover. There partner list is impressive. I’m sure every business in the world wants to tap Facebook’s 800 million users. It certainly has potetnial. The future of scrapbooking, productivity and even real conversations looks a little bleak to me. My initial impression – they should have spent more time launching their iPad app and treaded more slowly into the Open Graph waters.

Are you excited or neverous about the upcoming changes??

Whose More Evil – Apple, Google or Facebook?

hirtme — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 19:26:23 +0000

So if you love tech/social media like me you probably realized Microsoft died a long time ago. Death to the Darth Vader of tech. The company that was easy to love to hate. Sure they are still a player and Windows isn’t going to disappear anytime soon, but about the only product they have with growth potential is X-Box. The three companies I see battling to be the dominate player are Apple, Google and Facebook. While I love all three in many ways there are also things I can’t stand which got me thinking – which do I consider more evil? Now as you can tell by my writing I use words, punctuation and spelling very loosely. I don’t think they are evil, just some of their business practices are annoying. Let’s start with Apple. Two things piss me off. First, they always are holding back something from their products so they can add it a year later to make you want to upgrade. The current example is the camera on the iPad. There is one on the iPod and iPhone so you know they could have easily added it to the iPad. The only reason they didn’t is so you’ll want to buy an iPad 2.0. Evil genius I guess. Second, they are really greedy about credit card information. Don’t believe me? See this article that explains why there haven’t been too many newspapers and magazines coming out on the iPad. Your favorite print publisher probably has something ready to roll, but if you pay the small fee for it through iTunes Apple wants to keep that information (your name, address, credit card) while the publisher feels it should be theirs. Apple doesn’t need any one publisher so my guess is they will slowly have to give into Apple’s demands. Again, evil genius I guess. Heck, they might be convincing Verizon to pay them just to prevent the iPhone from coming to other carriers. Not to get the iPhone mind you, just to prevent Sprint or T-Mobile from getting it. Sounds kind of like buying insurance on your business to make sure some Mafia Wars characters don’t destroy it.

Now when it comes to protecting their data Apple is not alone. Facebook realizes all its power is in its 500 million users. That database is filled with all kinds of goodies everyone wants. Well, they aren’t just gonna give it up and is why they blocked Apple’s Ping from accessing it. You can’t create a social network unless you have massive amounts of people interacting in it. Facebook has it and will fight to the death to protect it. Can’t blame them. The other evil part of Facebook is protecting privacy. Do they care? I’m not so sure. Facebook is a stalkers or worse yet, pedophiles, dream come true. It’s not easy to understand where you’re status updates, wall posts, messages, places check-ins and everything else is going. Ever have someone confirm a friend request that you had no clue who they were? Yes, this awesome social network is a massive zombie filled wild west. Honestly, this doesn’t bother me too much as almost all this information is out there anyway. People are more aware of it now and have better access. It’s up to you to not be so paranoid. Thus, I’ll say Apple is more evil than Facebook especially since Mark Zuckerberg said he would donate most his wealth to charity.

Which brings me to Google. They seem to be in everything. They own search, Android will soon be the Windows of smartphone OS, have a decent email platform, are the big player in mobile advertising, own YouTube, are moving into TV and I’m sure I’m forgetting a thing or two. Google Voice is out there as well. I just have this feeling that Google may somehow be able to offer a package of products that no one else can at a price that will have them own the world. I mean Google Earth seems to videotape most of the Earth 24 hours per day anyway. How long do they keep this data? Not to mention all the email stuff too. I bet the Google toolbar is spyware. Right, I mean isn’t a cookie spyware in a way? Man, these guys scare me. But then again “Don’t be Evil” is their moto. So tell me what you think. Whose more evil??

Facebook Places – Major Change to iPhone’s Biggest App

hirtme — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:15:35 +0000

Last night Facebook released version 3.2 update for the iPhone. Open the App Store and you will see it available for Update. There are a number of big changes the elephant of which is Facebook Places which you’ll see right in the middle of the Home page after you Update the app. Places lets you see where your friends are and what they are up to. Sounds like Foursquare you say, we’ll it should as Facebook has partnered with Foursquare and Gowalla for this ambitious change. Like Foursquare you can check-in to places so your friends can see where you are in realtime. Curious if any of your friends are at a big sporting event, concert or airport? Well, Facebook Places will answer this question. A less publicized new feature is you can now see all recipients of inbox messages. Think of it as the cc line of an email. Facebook never had that ability in Messages until now. Thus, you can see if you are the only one receiving a message or if it was sent to two or two thousand of your friends. Be careful, a reply will go out to everyone, not just the sender. I’m sure people will make that mistake a lot! For more on Facebook Places and how to opt out so your friends can’t check you in and let everyone know where you are – That’s right. Through its photo tagging feature your friends can check you in places and let everyone know where you are. This can be a problem if you told your boss you were sick and instead are in Las Vegas. This is an interesting privacy issue that I’m sure many will complain about. The solution is simple. Just goto your Privacy settings and click the “customize settings” link. Scroll down to “Things others share” and disable “Friends can check me into Places”. Also the first time someone checks you in somewhere you will get an email notification. So don’t freak out if you get that email. Just remember its a feature you can easily turn off. So what’s the point of all this?? Well, mobile plus location is future and Facebook wants in on it. Most people might like to be able to see where there loved ones have checked in during the day. For businesses, however, this could be huge. Slow day at the restaurant. Send out a 50% off coupon to everyone within a five mile radius if they come within in the next hour. Yes its small now, but when a hundred million people are using a feature like this everyone is going to want in on it. I have to give a shout out and say, “Nice Job Facebook, releasing the app before it was ready.” As you can see here on the right it’s not yet working in Nashville and many other areas of the country but it will be soon I’m sure. So if its working in your area of the USA let me know what you think. My guess is Nashville will be one of the last regions to go live.

Twitter for iPhone and Facebook Boycott

hirtme — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:26:17 +0000

Twitter for iPhone app was released today. I won’t bore you with a review as most of you don’t use Twitter despite my efforts to tell you why you should. Anyway, there are many Twitter apps for the iPhone, but Apple bought Tweetie a month or so ago and Apple’s Twitter app is essentially Tweetie 3.0. If you want a review check out my Tweetie 2 review here as this is basically the same thing with a few minor tweeks. However, the best thing is that its FREE! So now is the perfect time to stick your toe in the Twitter pool. Download the app to give it a try. You don’t have to sign up or sign in to search, browse uders, see trending topics or top tweets. It’s a great way to get a feel for Twitter. To get Twitter just launch the app store and tap on Top 25 Free apps. It’s been climbing all day is currently number 7 (it was number 10 when I started this article) and should be number 1 by tonight.

What do you get when you couple a Seattle-based cartoonist named Molly Norris decree that May 20th be declared “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!” and Facebook?? Well, over 100,000 fans of both pro and con Facebook Fan pages regarding the idea and a Pakistani court has ordered parts of Facebook be blocked. You can read about it here. All of this seems way too emotional to me. I mean Salmon Rushdie was signing books in New York yesterday despite the fact that Iran still has a death sentence on him. I guess Ms. Norris is hoping this story doesn’t get any bigger.

Facebook Groups versus Fan Pages

hirtme — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 05:08:05 +0000

I know, not exactly about iPhones, but everyone knows Facebook and Twitter apps are some of the best on your iPhone so they warrant discussion. Anyway, I love Facebook and Twitter, but managing them can be a pain. Here I explain the difference between setting up a Facebook group versus a fan page and getting a user friendly url. I learned the hard way – the idiot way If you use Facebook and like this website,please consider becoming a fan of iPhone4idiots here!OK, so I wanted to create a fan page for iPhone4idiots just to have another outlet to reach out there in addition to our YouTube Channel. So first you have to decide between setting up a group or fan page. This article by mashable explains the differences well and sums it up best, “Groups are great for organizing on a personal level and for smaller scale interaction around a cause. Pages are better for brands, businesses, bands, movies, or celebrities who want to interact with their fans or customers without having them connected to a personal account, and have a need to exceed Facebook’s 5,000 friend cap.” While I doubt I’ll ever hit the 5000 number the other big advantage to a Fan Page is that they are public. That is, you don’t have to login to Facebook to see them. Thus, search engines find them and give you credit for them. That probably doesn’t matter to most of you, but if you are trying to build a website, the more public links the better. Lastly, with a Fan Page you can assign it a username so I thought it would be great to have http://www.facebook.com/iPhone4idiots. Now to do this all you need is 25 fans. To register your username all you have to do is login to facebook and goto http://www.facebook.com/username. Once there you will see the image here above on the left. See the red arrow pointing to Set a username. Well, that wasn’t there and I couldn’t figure it out for a few hours. Idiot! I created a group not a fan page so I started over. Once my fan page had 25 fans the option to give it that username finally appeared. Which brings us to the next annoying part. You can register a username like iPhone4idiots, but wait til you have your fan page setup or it will save to your personal profile. I didn’t do this and had http://www.facebook.com/iPhone4idiots pointing to my personal wall. Luckily you are able to change it, but only once. Thus, I changed my personal username freeing up the username iPhone4idiots which I was able to assign to the fan page! Now once you are setup to monitor the fan page you can find it by logging in, going to your home page and clicking Ads and Pages link seen here on the left. After that, just select Pages between Ads Manager and Help at the top. One last thing. Once you name your fan page you cannot change it. Thus, if say your company changes names you either have to stick with the old name or start a brand new fan page with zero fans and ask everyone to move with you. The iPhone Blog just ran into this very issue.

Google Buzz – Not For Your iPhone

hirtme — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:41:18 +0000

Last week Google launched Google Buzz, which is their attempt to enter social networking and take on Facebook. Why, well Facebook has somewhere north of 400 million users which is a twice that of Gmail. Just like they are going after Apple and the very profitable smartphone market with Nexus One, Google wants to take on Facebook as well. So what is it? Basically, its Gmail with status updates and photo and link sharing. I’ve been playing around with it for the past week and thought I’d give you my initial thoughts. I know, what does this have to do with the iPhone? Well nothing really other than social networking apps are among the most popular on the iPhone. Whether Facebook or the numerous Twitter apps, they both look great and are so simple to use on your iPhone or iPod Touch that even my mom does it. So how does Google Buzz stack up? Well, the experience on your iPhone is not great. In fact, compared to Twitter apps and Facebook its just plain bad. The biggest problem with Buzz – its not chronological. So if you’re involved in a conversation that gets a lot of comments it keeps popping up to the top your updates. Thus, if you are following just one person that is hugely popular and gets hundreds of comments they are pretty much always on top and your friend’s and family’s post are hard to find. I’m sure Google will fix this or else the Buzz will die faster than a bumble bee on my deck. Buzz also has a Nearby feature which shows you conversations near your GPS location. I like seeing this feature, but the actual map has tiny bubbles that very difficult to tap. IMO, its not nearly as easy to use as the same feature in Tweetie 2 and therefore, not as fun. While it has some problems, Google Buzz has only been out for over a week. If they correct this major issue and tweak some things it has potential. One thing I love is that you can easily integrate Twitter and Facebook into Gmail. I did this a few nights ago and it took less than five minutes. Thus, when you open Gmail you have all three on one page. You don’t have to login to three separate sites! My gut tells me this is a big advantage for Google. I’m not sure how big as personally I rarely login to Facebook or Twitter on my Mac or PC anyway. I use both 95% of the time on my iPhone. Compare this to Buzz which I’m never using on my iPhone (at least until they change the chronological issue). However, since its just a link right under your inbox in Gmail, I have Google Buzz open on my Mac or PC for many hours per day. So tell me what you think about Google Buzz. If you are using it just buzz me at iPhone4idiots