The blog is on break for a couple more days for legal pursuits, but in the spirit of thinking about the law, here is my Facebook v. ConnectU prediction (keep in mind this is only to see whether to trial will go forward). I know very little about the suit, but it is difficult to get a suit dismissed. If ConnectU has any evidence to support it's claim, the case will not be dismissed. My guess is they have something, even if it is not enough to win a jury trial. People who do not follow the law may find that strange. What if, for example, ConnectU just had a little bit of evidence for their position and even that evidence was of limited value? Would not matter. Any evidence at all should be enough. The reason is simple, in America we let juries decide questions of fact (or judges when they are the fact finder which is not the case for tomorrow's decision). In other words it is hard to make a law suit go away, even one that seems to be almost completely meritless.

Let the record show, I predict no dismissal. We will see what happiness, and see what kind of legal outcome bookmaking skills I posses.

Tags: facebook, facebook v. connectU, lawsuit

There has been a lack of content at Is it Contagious for a couple of days while my business partner at Marlin Internet Holdings and I launched our first Facebook application. It's called Sweet! Gifts. The process of creating the application has been fun. We worked with different artists and programmers to get most everything in place. At the end of the day the application is primarily a learning tool for us. Don't get me wrong, we are like every other application team in hoping it becomes sickly viral. If it does-great! If it does not-no big deal. Regardless of the application's success, it's going to help this site write about the application development community. It keeps me in the loop with what is going on, and it makes me much more familiar with the inter-workings of the applications themselves than I was before. In particular it will help for an upcoming feature on the different monetization options out there for applications since it will allow us to try different ones out. We will have the luxury of experimenting with little too lose since we look at our application as a learning curve tool. Frankly, I can not imagine any other way of getting a legitimate feel, not just for the mechanical operation of the platform, but for what works and does not work.

We will not use this site to push Sweet! Gifts on readers, but a little bit about it should help for future references to it or explain the basis of certain opinions.

Why a Gift Application:
We did not try and re-invent the wheel with our first application. We knew that gift applications worked because Facebook had already created one. We originally were developing a paid version just like Facebook's, but with better gifts. Then we found out that several applications were already doing free gifts. Hard to compete on that price. We still felt like it was worth going forward, but without any type of payment. This probably was a blessing in disguise. The development process was much simpler without trying to integrate micro-payments. Plus, we figured there was still room for cleverness, and some additional unique ideas within the "free virtual gift application" niche.

The Results:
Obviously it is much too early to say anything definitive. We released the application at approximately 2 PM central time, and a little over twenty-four hours later we are at 476 users. The good news is that is far more users than we expected, but the bad news is few of our friends are adding the application. In fact, we have no idea who these people are who are adding the application. I have not had a chance to look into the analytics too closely, but the early sense is that the application is growing steadily with few problems. That is not to say everyone actually likes it. A couple of people took the time to write on the "reviews" section that the application "SUCK!!!!!!!" and another said the pictures were "crap." Luckily for developers there is no way to do anything about such things. Oh well.

Update: I have updated the graph from Appaholic to reflect the one week results of the Sweet! Gifts application. It hit 1,600 users. Is that great? Depends on expectations. The growth was fast for the first five days, but has cooled since late Sunday. It is clear that with a virtual gift application, a steady stream of gifts is required. July 24th.

Tags: facebook application, disclosure

Editor's Note

Reviews will return in about a week. Between now and then the blog will consist primarily of short thoughts and (possibly) rants about what is going on within the Facebook Application community. There are some new features coming in about two weeks that will be of interest. We are pretty excited. Stay tuned.

Yesterday was the first day working with the new copy editor. I made the decision to go ahead and hire a copy editor because I wanted this site to grow into something more than an online version of my diary. For some reason it seems that authors are generally reluctant to trust their writing to someone else. The words become too precious. They think they have found the one special way of writing something. This is typically incorrect, and worse their pride gets in the way of better writing. When I was running the Texas Journal of Oil, Gas, and Energy Law I found this to be the case over and over again. Our staff had far more time than the primary authors to spend making the writing better, yet they often were met with strong resistance to obvious changes. Sometimes common sense prevailed, sometimes it did not. At times I attributed this to finicky lawyers, but it is probably a universal phenomenon. Professional editing at Is it Contagious is currently limited to full reviews. The editor has gone back and fixed a number of issues with grammar and sentence structure that was present in the original reviews. I could not be more happy. It's impossible (you may have noticed repeated confusion between "its" and "it's"). Unless I was having the entire site edited. Oh well for now. Everything else on the site will continue to be written without a net, but hopefully the writing will improve just from seeing the reviews edited.

I bring this topic up because this site is read primarily, from what I can tell, by the application development community. Here is a suggestion: spend a few dollars and have a professional copy editor review your application's copy. At the very least get a professional to proofread every word that appears within the application. That will eliminate any typos that slipped through. While typos are a relatively big deal, the real benefit to be gained is with better writing. No where is good writing more important than the one sentence description of the application. Because users have to install the application before they can see what it does, the description that appears is essentially the only way someone has to understand what the application does. I look at dozens of application descriptions every day trying to decide which ones are worth checking out, and eight times out of ten the description leaves me clueless. Sometimes I will go ahead and check the application out, but usually I do not. A good editor is going to shine most when faced with a situation where words are very important, and space is limited. They will turn the description into an asset. They will turn people deciding between ten applications that do the same thing, into your users.

The other important area where words matter, and should be entrusted to a professional, is the news feed. Inside Facebook's Justin Smith has a must read article on the importance of the news feed. He calls it News Feed Optimization (NFO). In terms of importance, he makes a persuasive case that it is the Facebook application equivalent. to SEO. He is probably correct. They generally do not teach headline writing, persuasive writing, or how to use the English language effectively in computer programming classes. That means (generally) the people who know how to build Facebook applications will not be the best people to do NFO. Get some help. People who are good at writing Google Adsense ads will likely be excellent sources to consult for NFO.

Is it Contagious is on a trial basis with freelance editor Abby E. Alderman. Visit her site at www.freelance-editor-writer.com. Abby seems to have a real feel for the kind of words needed in the online community. In addition to typical editing she can help with SEO, web copy, and press releases. Her rates are very reasonable, and she can turn a project around quickly. I thought she offered the best combination of experience, affordability, timeliness, and understanding of what the site is all about. Hopefully things will work out and editing will expand to cover the entire site.

Help Sources:
1. Me. I am free, and enjoy working with others in the Facebook user community. That is why this site exists to some degree. Unless your application is a gift giving application I am happy to give some input (I have my own gift giving application about to debut). I have written for a several different publications, run a sixty person law review, and understand exactly what a Facebook application is.
2. Get a friend. Anyone with another set of eyes can give a different perspective. They are removed from the development, and in most cases are the type of person the application is targeting.
3. Get professional help. There are a plethora of freelance sites out there, and a shocking number of highly qualified copy editors in the freelance market. Some are full-time freelances, and others work for companies that take on small editing jobs. Prices will vary across the board with some charging a flat fee, others charging by he word, but most have an hourly rate. Find someone who is a bit tech savvy. They do not need to know exactly what Facebook or social networking is. These are smart people, they will figure it out quickly. Elance and Guru are my two picks. You will get a warm reception, not just because you are a potential client, but because this is a fun project for them (would you rather edit technical manuscripts or Facebook applications? ).

Here are several professional editors to consider (in no particular order) who are all tech savvy, reasonably priced, and will make your application better:
A.) Amber Goddard
B.) Mary Ellen Schutz of Gentle Editing, LLC
C.) Robyn Jasko of Red Ink Editorial
D.) Catherine Van Herrin

Tags: quick thought, copy editor, freelance, guru, elance, blog editors

Note:
Quick Looks is a new feature spotlighting applications or services that are too new for a full review, but have a strong underlying premise. The idea is to take a "quick look" at the simple basis of the application and the people behind it. It is less about what the application is now, and more about what it could become down the road. Mosoma is the first application in Quick Looks. It is a social networking auction application, but it is too new to truly evaluate how well it works. The Facebook version currently only has a few items up for auction. If and when the site has more users, Is it Contagious will return for a full review.

The Pitch:

Mosoma's auction platform allows Facebook users to auction to the entire Facebook community. You will be able to execute each step necessary in the auction entirely on the Facebook. Mosoma is cheaper than E-bay for items worth more than $10.

Social networking+auctions+mobile technology=Mosoma. Actually the name stands for ""Mobile Social Marketplace" (Mo=Mobile, So=Social, Ma=Marketplace). The hook is pretty simple "why trade with strangers on E-bay when you can trade with people you know on Facebook?" The setup is actually closer to Facebook's own Classifieds application than to E-bay, and that is a good thing. Adding an item is straight forward, and afterwards it's possible to include more pictures, blog entries, easily answer questions, and there is a rating system to (hopefully) keep people honest. It looks like once an auction is won the parties can work out the payment method. Mosoma started as a stand alone site for campus specific auctions, and the current payment model suggests that is probably still the target market. Buy a tv from someone in a nearby dorm room, and walk down the hall to pay him and get the tv (see 606Tech's look at the old site).

They have covered most of the standard features one would expect with a legitimate online auction site: watch lists, bid history, user ratings, friend's items, ect. The original site included Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) capabilities to monitor and communicate through cell phones. It is unclear whether they have been able to integrate those options into the platform. Presumably there will also be ways to highlight items up for auction, though there is not much need to now with very few items for sale (it appears to be a buyer's market for old biology and chemistry books).

Creators:
The guys behind Mosoma are the father-son team of Jeff and Devin Hendricks. Devin, 22, is clearly a talented software developer who has already worked on a variety of cutting edge technology projects, while Jeff, the father, has a background in management/business analysis on software projects for large financial entities (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and World Bank). They decided to combine their software development and business management experiences. Mosoma is the result.

Outlook:
The success or failure of any auction business, internet based or traditional, depends more than any other factor on the quality of the items up for auction. Yet, it may be a chicken or the egg problem. The application needs sellers to put quality items up for sale, but it needs buyers for those items to entice sellers in the first place. My guess is that the "Field of Dreams" rule applies: if you list it they will come. If quality products show up on the site, the Facebook community is going to find them and buy them. At this early stage there are only a handful of items up for auction, meaning Mosoma is going to have to figure out a way to attract more sellers. The $1 flat fee listing is tough to beat, but is probably too low to sustain the site without other revenue streams (probably extra fees to "highlight" an item are forthcoming). A potentially huge market exists within the Facebook site itself: auctions for Facebook applications. That is an unclear market for now, to say the least, but the possibility of a fluid market is a real possibility given the skyrocketing number of applications (almost 1,800 are now listed in the main directory).

At the very least give the team at Mosoma credit for attempting to compete with two of the biggest players on the internet in E-bay and Facebook's Classifieds. Third party developers have already come up with several applications that plug E-bay into Facebook, and with an easy API it is likely more will follow. Mosoma offers more features than Classifieds, and the Free Gifts application has proven that it's possible to prosper in the same space as one of Facebook's own applications. I hope Mosoma finds success. The technology and design they have been able to integrate into the Facebook platform is as impressive as anything on Facebook. While simple applications that generate Grey's Anatomy Quotes or Detect Lesbians rise in popularity, Mosoma proves that useful applications can be developed. Whether that turns out to be what the Facebook community wants remains to be seen.

Tags: quick looks, facebook application, business, classifieds, auction

Looks like Lookery is set to launch next week. Lookery's Scott Rafer notified Facebok Application Publishers this morning that the service is set to launch next week. As expected, the service uses CPM banners of the standard variety. The good news is Lookery is going to take advantage of the data available to publishers about users (the single most valuable distinguishing feature Facebook has over any other portal). The bad news is initially it will be limited to country-by-country (presumably meaning ads can target specific countries). Plans are to then add state-by-state, age, and gender. The possibilities are pretty exciting from there, including when an application publisher, or any other advertiser can begin targeting specific groups (couples/singles, specific degree holders, people who like particular genre's of movies,ect.). It will also be interesting to see if there is a way to test Malcolm Gladwell's "Connector" theory. Will advertisers, either through Lookery or Facebook directly, be able to target users with a high number of "friends?"

The service is obviously a promising proposition for application publishers. It is not clear that this will necessarily work for all kinds of applications, or that Facebook is on board. So far they have taken a hands off approach, allowing developers and service providers to explore the space.

Gigaom took a quick look at Lookery last week.

Tags: facebook, advertising, cpm, developers, banner ads