I visited a friend’s facebook page on their birthday recently (typical, I know), but this time I noticed something interesting. Previously I when you visited a facebook profile you got a page opened to that person’s wall activity that looked something like this:

a typical facebook profile page

On this day however, because it was my friend’s birthday the profile page opened up automatically to the gift tab:

The gift submenu of the Wall tab on the facebook profile page

This experience was kind of jarring because (like everyone else) I was just expecting to write on the wall and move on with my facebook life. This time I had to figure out what had just happened, and how to get to the wall to do what I had intended. It was an unexpected experience, but I can see how this change it makes sense for facebook, because virtual economies make money, and facebook is no exception.

Tara made a comment on my previous post about ad targeting. I had mentioned that I suddenly was getting Burberry ads on facebook. What Tara said is that a lot of the ad serving is done cross sites and is based on browsing history, something I had come across while doing research for a paper on an entirely different topic recently.

So how it works is, when you visit a site, whoever serves the advertisements on that site stores a cookie on your computer.  It’s basically just a tiny text file that stores information.  So what it does is tracks what sites you visit, and when you show up on another site that uses that company to serve ads, they use your browsing history to show you ads they’re algorithm determines you’ll have a high probability to click on. 

In this case Tara was exactly right, and I came across the proof just now.  I was reading digg, and there again appeared the Burberry ad.  This worked out because the ad service run by my future employer, Microsoft, has the advertisement contracts for both of these sites, Digg and Facebook.  So for whatever reason, my browsing history indicates that I’m likely to buy expensive clothing (or at least click through the ads).  It’s pretty creepy, but also pretty clever/cool, and it’s definitely not as evil as Google reading your email.  But that’s a conversation for a whole ‘nother day…

I don’t know what happened, but suddenly I get Burberry ads served to me by facebook. I’m not sure what I did…

I’m really not sure why, but I find the compare people facebook application very interesting.  I’ve had a number of friends tell me it’s pointless and stupid (I’m inclined to agree), yet I find it intriguing.  Perhaps I’ve yet to remove this app (like almost all other facebook apps) from my profile because I find the social interactions it provides unique.  That doesn’t mean however that I think the app is well run or perfect, and I have an example.

Compare People sends it’s users emails a couple times each week to update them on their rankings. The rankings compare you against others in questions such as “Who’s hotter?” or “Who’s would win in a fight?” and then give you a ranking (no real science involved) among your friends.  The emails users receive tell them what their rank is at a given time and whether that ranking as decreased or increased recently.  Much of the time user’s are not voted on for many of the questions.  While you are not voted on your friend Bob might get a positive rating for his good looks which inadvertantly bumps your rank in good looks down.  Meaning you’re likely to get a lot of emails from Compare people telling you your rankings have dropped, or in other words:  “You Suck”.

Clearly I get no love on the Compare People application, but they don't need to tell me that all the time.

I happen to find it funny that an application with such a large user base continually reminds the users that they are not doing well. Perhaps compare people uses this to motivated users to utilize their service more often, or maybe they should just start sending you emails when a ranking of yours goes up.  If they did that every email from Compare People would be telling you “You’re Awesome!” which I think most users would prefer.

I mentioned yesterday that I’ve never been very inclined to send the same status messages to every online service I’m registered for (twitter, facebook, pownce, plurk, etc.). My reasoning for not doing this is that each of these services has a different expectation attached to the status message incorporated within it.  A while ago I had an interaction with a then-acquaintance that highlighted this issue of expectation very clearly.
I was hanging out with a bunch of friends at the house back in Boston and walked up to say hi to a girl I knew, and not to be rude I greeted her friend (a girl I had met briefly before but not spoken to at great length) as well.  Now as I just mentioned I didn’t know the second girl that well but I knew her well enough to recognize her, know her name, hold a conversation with her, and most importantly, already have established facebook friendship with her (sending my activity in her news feed).

Quickly the second girl recognized me. This recognition came in the form of “You’re the guy who updates his facebook status all the time”  (read: “you’re the weird who changes your facebook status <strong>wayyyyyyy</strong> too much”).  At that moment I had a realization.  The reason she had commented on my over-updated status was because I had a facebook application installed to send my twitter staus updates to my facebook status.  I was clearly aware that this was happening but I had overlooked the notion that the established status updating behavior of twitter was not the commonly accepted behavior on facebook.  I had now become the creepy guy that spends way too much time on facebook (I do) and updates his status so much something has to be wrong with him (something is).

This issue arose because of differences in the principal value of each service.  Twitter is about status updates, your updates, friends’ updates, just updates.  On twitter connections are important but secondary, because without status updates connections on twitter serve no purpose.  When you evaluate the principal value of Facebook, connections are the priority, status is simply a small side-capability.  Think back to the beginnings of facebook, status updates didn’t even exist.  To any established facebook user status was not a motivating factor in joining the site, and for that reason established users don’t utilize it as a primary function of the site.  I don’t find it surprising that as an introduced feature, facebook status has taken a time to find a foothold among users.  As time passes and facebook’s user base grows more users will start their facebook experience with status updates, and expected behavior will come to include more frequent update of status.  For now though, updating my status fequently gives me cool points, while updating my status that much on facebook just makes me “that guy” (and I don’t mean in a good way).

With the release of the iPhone/iPod Touch App Store and the new Facebook App for iPhone, there’s a cool new way to update the contact pictures for you friends, that’s both quick and pretty easy.  Here’s a quick run through of how to do this on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

First you’ll want to have the Facebook App installed.  Here it’s located in the top left corner so let’s touch it to launch the Facebook App.

Once you’re in the facebook app you can just touch the friends icon at the bottom of the screen to view a list of all your facebook friends.  I want to add a contact photo for my buddy Andrew Mager, so I’ll touch his name to bring up his facebook profile.

No we see Andrew’s profile page, where I can get his current status, chat with him, send him a message, or find his phone number.  It’s too bad I can’t write on his facebook wall, that is a terrible mistake by facebook and I can’t believe they didn’t add that functionality to this app.  I suppose we’ll have to wait for an update to post on people’s walls.  Here I just touch Andrew’s photo to bring up pictures of him.

Once you’re looking at pictures, you can just flick your finger across the screen right or left to look through all the different photos of your friend.  I’m want to set this picture of Andrew as his contact photo on my iPhone.  Once you’ve found the photo you want, just hold the round home button at the bottom of your iPhone and press the power/sleep button on the top of the iPhone.  This will make the screen flash white and take a screen capture of the photo.

Now let’s go back to the iPhone home screen, just press the round home button.  To add Andrew’s picture to his contact info on the iPhone just touch the Contacts icon.

In the Contact listing scroll to find Andrew Mager and touch his name.

Now you can see Andrew’s contact info listed on the screen, touch the edit button on the top right to make changes or add info.

Near the top left of the info screen you can now see a square that says “Add Photo.” Touch it to add Andrew’s photo.

We’ve already captured Andrew’s photo from the Facebook App so touch “Choose Exisiting Photo”

Touch Camera Roll to see all the photos and screen captures you’ve taken on your iPhone.

Find the image you want to use for Andrew’s contact info.  He’s the third picture on the top row, touch it to select the photo.

Now just touch to move the photo around and pinch to contract or expand the photo just the way you want it to appear and touch Set Photo

Now we see Andrew’s picture in his contact info page and we’re all done.

Now you’ll see this the next time you have an incoming phone call from Andrew Mager!

i was thinking it over and came up with this map of what a person’s relationship status as listed in their facebook profile actually means in real life. Leave a comment and let me know what you think

single -> i’m not dating who you think i’m dating, and i want you to know it

in a relationship -> i’m probably in a relationship

engaged -> i’m engaged, or maybe i’m joking

married -> i’m joking, or maybe i’m married

it’s complicated -> it’s not complicated, i’m joking

open relationship -> my girlfriend and I find this funny

(blank) -> it’s complicated

So I successfully submitted my first story to digg.com today. If i haven’t told you before digg is the premier social news bookmarking site out there today. Founded by our buddy Kevin Rose, formerly of The Screen Savers fame, I got snatcher and he in turn got fitzy hooked on it a couple months back. My submission, which is included in this post as i’m using digg’s blogging feature, was a link to facebook’s newly released API. The facebook API has a lot of potential to enable the production of some really sweet/cool/fun third party apps for facebook, though the method list looks a little bit light right now. If they add some more functionality to it I think it could be really powerful in the future, though security will of course have to be the forefront concern in their modifications of the API. The story hit the top spot on the front page of digg a bit after 3pm this afternoon and got dropped to page two around 9pm, so I was able to bask in the glory of the holy grail of geekdom for a good six hours or so today.� It looks like the post will be able to break through a thousand diggs, and if i’m really lucky, they might feel the need to mention the facebook API on diggnation this week and drop my name on the podcast. Maybe i’ll frame the screenshot once I get back to Boston, only time will tell.

facebook has an API!

The Facebook Development Platform allows you to create applications utilizing profiles, friends, photos, and events from facebook.

read more | digg story