Coming up in the first week of March you'll be able to find me doing one of my three favorite things (right behind, writing code and sleeping), I'll be talking, in front of people, about Facebook, Bebo and "social applications." If you are one of the four people that have gone on record has having actually subscribed to my RSS feed, you might know that I spoke at something called "Graphing Social" in the past, but this time I'm speaking at "Graphing Social Patterns West" which will be occurring in parallel to O'Reilly's "ETech (Emerging Technology) Conference)" in San Diego March 3rd and 4th.

I'll be talking briefly, in front of people, on tuesday March 4th about during a joint session on "Social App Development 101: Elements of Style," where I'll be discussing some of keystone pieces of building an application that "pops" on Facebook and Bebo, and designing for portability, etc. My session is going to be brief, so I will most likely be employing my crouching-ninja-presentation technique, where the slides rotate every quarter-second at such a fast pace that the content becomes melded into my audiences' subconscious. It's been rumored to cause brain hemorrhaging, but that's nothing but an urban legend, I promise.

In general the entire event should be lots of fun; I'm looking forward to schmoozing with the speakers lined up for the event, as well the time-honored tradition at O'Reilly conferences, playing a good old game of "Find Tim and tickle him until he pees himself."

Overall the combination of GSP West and ETech looks like it's going to make for an interesting couple of days in San Diego, go ahead and register now to make sure you can get in.

I don't feel quite as awesome as I did last summer when I tell people that I "develop facebook applications." Despite personally being really happy with my applications, I get the feeling that users now perceive facebook apps as spammy, poorly designed, and pointless. Sure, there are some applications that are knowingly like this (and they are probably making some quick cash), but to many new developers they just don't know any better.

The points in Tyler's post, as well as the ones below, will help new developers start on the right track and then we can all feel awesome again to be a facebook application developer. I am staying away from saying "don't spam" because that is a topic in need of it's own post.

Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it isn't there. Do a little research on existing applications with the same idea before you start development. This will help you decide whether you should pick up their best features and improve on them, or just scrap your idea altogether. There is definitely room for similar applications, but don't build a product if you can't make it better.

She may be hot, but she has no brain. Looks are great, but make sure you have a well built application to support your idea. Users love to uninstall when they see error messages.

Keep improving and adding features to your applications based on user requests, they really know best. I may be crazy, but I like to read and respond to nearly every (positive) comment and suggestion on Free Gifts boards.

Tyler pointed out that the one year mark is approaching, and the amount of progress the developer community has made is really amazing. Over the next few months there are a few things I really hope to see: inter-application collaboration, more functional user interfaces, and a decline of "one timer" apps (quizzes, etc).

In a vain effort to try to monetize all of the incredibly witty things that I do and say on this ridiculous excuse for a blog, I've started experimenting with Google AdSense mixed in with some of the content on the site. They don't insert themselves into the RSS feeds (as far as I know) and they only show up for anonymous users to the site so I'm willing to bet that the majority of where my traffic actually goes won't be affected.

Unfortunately, since Slide has infected me with this weird disease where I obsessively watch numbers, I'll most likely be obsessively watching a large number of zeroes in the coming weeks. That said, you could totally screw with me by clicking around on a lot of the advertisements...seriously, that would totally irritate me...you should try it.

I am starting to see more and more novice developers on the Facebook forums as well as the IRC channel asking fewer and fewer "development" questions and more and more "product" questions. I find this incredibly interesting because it means one of two things: either everybody has figured out how to use the Facebook platform or an increasing number of people are putting the proverbial cart before the horse when it comes to developing Facebook applications.

Call me cynical about the first option, but I find it highly unlikely that everybody figured out how to use the Facebook Platform; despite its low entry barrier many people are over-thinking it or simply trying to develop a Facebook application before they figure out how to build a web application in general.

The second option is far more likely, Facebook applications have reached such a level of ubiquity that "everybody and their mother" wants to write a Facebook application these days. Right now at a small consulting firm in Omaha, Nebraska some middle manager is asking his lead developer if the firm can reinvigorate their collaborative synergies and utilize the social graph to further meet their clients needs.

Facebook is the new Windows, and the Facebook Platform is the new Visual Basic and I feel as if there is a burden on "us" (the existing "top developers" on the platform) to start to cultivate a community that will encourage stylish, functional and ultimately useful applications on the Facebook platform, to ensure that there will never be a "Facebook 98" or a "Facebook ME".

Here's a couple of the best tips I can offer, and maybe Zach (developer of Free Gifts) can help expand.

Learn by example: Currently Slide has many of the largest applications on the platform, and we've worked extremely hard tuning and tweaking our apps and understanding our userbase. When thinking about developing your application, it certainly won't hurt to check out some of the existing apps that have succeeded on the platform. Stand on the shoulders of others who have spent far more time researching and testing what works and what doesn't work on the platform than you'll be able to spend.
Learn the vocabulary: Make sure you read up on what FBML, FQL, FBJS all are.
Understand the difference between the Profile and a Page on Facebook.
Check out some demos: There are a few demo applications that you can dig through to better understand the basics of what makes a Facebook application.
Just code already: By far the most common mistake I've seen thus far is over-thinking things, the majority of your questions will be answered by simply trying stuff out on the platform. This isn't high school calculus, you are allowed to guess-and-check. I am willing to help developers who obviously need it, but if you can't be buggered to try something out, I can't be buggered to point you in the right direction on where you went wrong.



With the first year anniversary of the original F8 event right around the corner in May, I feel we as a community of developers have made tremendous progress in establishing ourselves, but now I feel it's time for some introspection and self-improvement as a community.

This has been a whirlwind year for startups across the bay area and my startup, TY-Combinator really is no different. Barely a month into 2008, Slide, Inc announced it had received funding, the recent news about the bid from Microsoft to purchase Yahoo! for just above the GDP of Croatia and now great news for the TY-Combinator.

I'm pleased to announce that the TY-Combinator has received an unsolicited bid from Microsoft that values TY-Combinator shares at over 400% under market value. Microsoft is willing to offer TY-Combinator a half-eaten sammich in exchange for 85% of TY-Combinator outstanding shares. This is an exciting time to work for TY-Combinator, with the prospective addition of the capital Microsoft is willing to offer we will be able to finance new projects to expand our global reach over 1000%, up from our reported reach in the 2007 fiscal year of 1.


Microsoft's bid for a stake in TY-Combinator

Facebook has been pretty nice to Free Gifts in the past, despite originally being a blatant rip-off of the real Gifts application. Prior to today, I have only received one complaint from Facebook regarding Free Gifts practices. They asked me to remove a gift that looked similar to one of their gifts. I was okay with that even though mine was a lemon and theirs was a lime; maybe it was tough for the color blind audience to decipher? Today, I received my second complaint from them, which stated:

Your Facebook application, Free Gifts, is currently in violation of the Platform Application Guidelines section I.3 (see http://developers.facebook.com/guidelines.php). Specifically, please note that the Terms prohibit applications from acting in a manner that is misleading, deceptive, or fraudulent.

The application's link under the profile picture uses the same wording as Facebook's Gift application (please see attached). Please change this to reflect your application's name to differentiate Facebook's Gift application and "Free Gifts" application, as it is currently misleading users to think that this refers to the associated Facebook features.


I will admit it is relatively the same wording, but they failed to explain how using "Send xxxx a Gift" is deceptive or misleading to users. First of all, Facebook provides a tool tip when you hover over a profile action which says "Provided by the xxxxxx Application," which immediately makes a distinction between Gifts and Free Gifts. Second, as far as I know, users are still sending a gift when they use Free Gifts. Third, I have been using this text for longer than I can remember now with no complaints. With over 50 million gifts sent, I have never had a user say they were "trying to use the real gift" application.

I did comply somewhat by making all future profile actions say "free gift" instead of "gift," but there is no easy way for me to fix the 8 million profiles already containing the text. As of now they have failed to respond to my question of how exactly I was deceiving users, but I am really interested in hearing their reasoning.

I'm not proud of it, but I do read TechCrunch every now and again, if for only the occasional gem that comes across that causes me to hate buzzwords and everybody that uses them.

In the second paragraph of this article almost caused an entire system shutdown in my central-buzzword-processing unit (CBU):

"Both Imeem and Anywhere.FM saw a lot of synergy in the deal."

I couldn't read any further into the article after reading that, whenever anybody uses the word "synergy" seriously I have a tendency to tune out completely and think the absolute worst of them until they offer me chocolates, caffeine or other goodies.

Courtesy of Adonomics

We've been working pretty hard for the past month (well, for the past 8 months too) but I'm particularly proud of the work that my co-conspirator and I have been putting in on Top Friends (we're that green line that creeps up from behind on FunWall and Super Wall).

One of the most helpful "tools" that's been available to me has been Slide's competitive spirit. In addition to the 2,000+ developers on the Facebook platform we have some pretty healthy competition going on inside Slide as well. Between Top Friends, SuperPoke and FunWall there is plenty of trash-talking and "friendly competition" (read: if it weren't an HR violation, I'd of already resolved to dirty tactics). In doing so we've cultivated an environment where some of the most often heard phrases are: "Is Facebook down again?!" and "OH SCHNAP!"

Another key factor to our team's enjoyable demeanor has been (in my opinion) our liberal use of the "rubber chicken" as part of a sort of group hazing. In essence, when you have glaring mistakes that somehow get pushed to the live site, you will come into the office the next day with rubber chickens adorning your monitor. This group acknowledgement of when we "fuck up" encourages more of a social-pressure to write good code instead of relying on policy, etc to ensure code quality, especially on the rapid release schedules we adhere to. Rubber chickens are the truly quintessential gift at Slide, it is always feels better to give than to receive.

As we near the end of the first month in 2008, I wish Facebook and Bebo continued success with there platform(s); not because I love FQL and FBML oh so much, but because I work for Slide, on the Facebook team, where competition and rubber chickens reign supreme in the land of embedded videos, sortable friends and flying sheep.

(Now seriously, Slide is hiring)

Recently the bank that financed my car switched their phone payment systems over from their more traditional "press a number to do stuff" to a "talk to a computer and try to do stuff" interface, and my reluctance to pay my car payments has increased tenfold.

Before they switched the phone interface, I almost had the correct sequence of numbers to press entirely memorized to where I could press 3-5 numbers in sequence and be done with my "payment session" in under two minutes. Meaning in a matter of two minutes, I could initiate a transaction from my checking account, to send almost $300 to Chase, in two minutes. I hated losing the money, but I loved the efficiency.

Recently however, they've "pulled a Vista" and replaced a wonderfully functional system that "got the job done" with a bloated, slow and buggy system that infuriates me everytime I need to talk to the computerized woman at the other end of the line. A rapid mashing of touch-tone keys on my phone has been replaced with:

PaymentBot: Welcome to Chase Auto Finance!

*pause*

PaymentBot: If you would like to make a payment, say "make a payment." If you would like to check your payoff balance, say "payoff balance." If you would like to blow a goat, say "baaaaaaaa."

Tyler-Unit: make a payment

PaymentBot: It looks like you want to make a payment, if this is correct say "yes."

Tyler-Unit: yes (at this point I'm usually irritated that I've past the two minute mark)

PaymentBot: First I need to find your account, please say your account number or your social security number, or enter them into the phone

Tyler-Unit: *mashes on keys*

PaymentBot: The number you entered was 1-2-3--4-5--5-6-5-4, if this is correct, say "yes."

Tyler-Unit: YES

PaymentBot: I'm sorry, I didn't catch that, if the number you entered: 1-2-3--4-5--5-6-5-4 is correct, say "yes."

Tyler-Unit: YES

PaymentBot: Okay, if you would like to make a payment over the phone, say "phone." If you would like to make a payment via mail, say "mail."

I could continue, but I won't .

Just to get to the point where I finally need to enter my payment details (because Chase couldn't update their system to, god-forbid, remember the same information I've been mashing into a keypad for the past two years) takes close to five to eight minutes.

Between the various financial institutions that I need to deal with every month I get to fight with terrible websites, miserable phone interfaces and idiot-customer service representatives, it almost makes me regret being fiscally responsible (our government isn't, why should I have to?). I'm hoping there's a special portion of hell reserved for whichever numbnuts in middle-management at Chase decided "OMG! Voice interfaces are TOTALLY kewl!!!!!"

Are there means of consolidating smaller (think below $10,000) loans from one bank to another? While it's pretty obvious that Chase can effectively handle its finances, they certainly can't handle "user-experience", if your customers' only interaction with you as a company is over the phone, or over snail-mail, it's usually in your best interest to make sure those "interfaces" to your customers are top-notch.

I hate voice interfaces.

It was recently announced that Slide (this little start-up that I work for) raised some more money. Neato.


Since Max isn't the aeron chair kind of CEO, it looks like we're going to spend that money on things like "engineers, hardware, etc." Bummer, I've always wondered how an $800 chair can exist that doesn't rub your feet and write your code for you.

Regardless, should be a fun year.

(p.s. we need more engineers)