Flavio about Business 2.0

The much hyped facebook apps also has it’s downsides. Not all the users seem to enjoy facebook apps that much:

1. The number of groups against facebook app (not to mention all those that might just be hidden by facebook)

2. Even more significant: tools to remove junk on facebook (and myspace)

There is a general impression that Myspace lost much of the geek/elite users because it is so cluttered. Now the rapidly increasing number of applications on facebook is certainly cluttering up your profile page. Or maybe you’re simply annoyed by all those silly app invites you get everyday, each of them requiring action on your part.

Will this drive users away from facebook? Maybe not drive away, but severly increase the immunity of users against all sorts of requests and messages: friend requests, group invites, app invites, group messages for marketing purposes etc.

The first counter-reactions already emerging (above), there could very well be a major move by facebook that allows users to increase inaccessibility of their attention. This again wouldl probably severely impede apps virality and marketing effectiveness of groups.

Watch out when building facebook apps: They changed the from being able to invite 10 users at a time to 10 users a day per user, severally limiting the viral distribution of facebook apps:

Inside Facebook’s take

While reading Seth Godin’s book Small is the new Big, I just realized how effectively and smart Facebook is applying Seth’s Theory of Flipping the Funnel is (in fact right now I am being Seth’s salesperson as his customer. Well done, Seth!)

When you upload pictures to facebook, you can tag people on the photo, providing additional information to facebook. Facebook will intelligently propose the friends that are most likely on the photo, according to people you tagged in previous photo of the same album.

If a friend is not on facebook, facebook proposes you to add their email address so your friend can sign in to facebook and check out the picture.

You nearly can’t give a bigger incentive to someone than receiving a message:

“Melissa tagged a photo of you on facebook. Click here to view it.”

The person will most likely click on the link. Everyone is obsessed with photos (and everything else) about themselves.  To see the picture, there is no registration necessary, but in most cases people want to see the rest of the album, with pictures of them and their friends, so they will likely sign up for facebook.

Literally everyone who tries to build a network or platform uses viral marketing. But Facebook does it in a very smart and effective way.