Well ….. looks like Facebook developers who write applications that everyone likes ….. get wiped out eventually, according to a post in TechCrunch today by Erick Schonfeld - Endgame: Scrabulous Gets Wiped Off Facebook

"…Long outplayed by two Indian brothers, Hasbro finally delivers a massive counter blow to Scrabulous, one of the most loved games on Facebook. Scrabulous fans in North America will see the following message when they try to play the game:

Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here.

Hasbro has long contended that Scrabulous infringes on its trademarks for Scrabble. It licenses the North American digital rights for Scrabble to Electronic Arts, which announced its own Facebook version of the game earlier this month. (RealNetworks owns the international digital rights, and is not taking as aggressive a stance against Scrabulous)."

And what was so bad about letting Scrabulous stay up?   Wouldn't it drive more people be aware of scrable - and probably drive some sales of the game up too?

Last week, Hasbro filed suit against the owners of Scrabulous, Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla. The same day, EA publicly launched its officially-sanctioned Scrabble game on Facebook. (See screen shot below, which I took that day).

I know this is tricky - but instead of taking down an application game off of Facebook that people liked, Hasbro ought to have simply launched their own and let people decide which one they liked better.

I find that brands still don't get it.  People will not be happy their favored application was taken from them and replaced with what is probably a frail copy -

"…Hasbro and EA planned their moves very methodically and waited patiently for their chance to strike. Perhaps EA felt that it could not compete with Scrabulous other than by taking it out at the knees. Scrabulous boasts 509,505 daily active users. EA’s Scrabble Beta has 14,956 (after only five days). Now, the question is whether Scrabulous fans will boycott the official version of Scrabble on Facebook or switch over to satisfy their word lust."

I predict most fans of Scrabulous won't switch of the Hasbro Scrabble application - and I hope they don't.    Brands have to play in a new world - Brand doesn't own anything anymore - they just think they do.

Hasbro doesn't own Scrabble - it just thinks it does, and the legal system agrees, but people don't care  … they don't care about Hasbro, they care about all that garbage the Brand cares about - they care about their relationships - but the don't like a Brand coming in and interfering with their fun.

I think Hasbro made a big mistake getting Scrabulous taken down - and I hope they reverse the decision.

I think How Does Facebook Know I'm Jewish? post by David Berkowitz was pretty amusing and interesting - I've meet David at several conferences and events in New York over the last 3 years or so, most recently, last week.

David saw this ad

I'm Jewish too, but I've never seen that ad, and I'm on Facebook, alot. David was intrigued - was this some new targeting capability that Facebook turned on and he didn't know about yet?  He wrote in his blog post:

"…But how? How did it do it? I don't list my religion (or my politics) on my Facebook profile. I don't even have those Israeli flag Facebook apps.

Some plausible theories are that the marketer used some combination of targeting around my city (New York), alma mater (Binghamton) and entertainment interests (The Daily Show, Seinfeld, Everything Is Illuminated).

Some less plausible theories: top secret Jew-havioral targeting algorithms… perhaps that's what'll be unleashed at Facebook's F8 next week.

Or it's just targeting people who look Jewish. I tried calling and emailing Katan Adventures, which ran the ad."

Turns out the answer was less complicated than one would have supposed - but via the power of Social Media - the targeting worked more powerfully than if it had reached David via some other way, I feel.  According to his blog:

"..Here's what Katan wrote back:

Hey David -

I assume you are from NY?  In order to reach Jews who haven't listed their religion on Facebook (which, by the way, is the vast majority) we run ads in metro areas with large Jewish populations and try to grab their attention with ridiculous lines such as "hey jew" but we obviously get a lot of wasted clicks with this strategy as well.   And some angry emails.

Seinfeld fans is a good idea though.  And maybe Zabar's fans, but I'm sure that is a small group.

Thanks for your interest and if you ever want to pass along any online marketing ideas, we'd love to hear them.

 

So … just by using an established way of targeting, along with Social Networks - the result became more powerful and more personal.

That reminds me - I wrote a post about just how powerful Social Media can be in

Nikki Shannon LIVE @ The Cutting Room - Social Media Worked!

Would you pay 9 billion dollars for Facebook?  Yes/No?   Actually, that's what Henry Blodget thinks Facebook is really worth - I read about the 9 billion Facebook valuation a TechCrunch post titled Blodget Says Facebook Is Only Worth $9 Billion, Hypothetically Speaking

 "….Today, Henry Blodget & Co. at Silicon Alley Insider try to peg valuations on 25 private Web companies. Facebook is at the top of the list, but it is valued at $9 billion instead of the $15 billion that Microsoft’s investment put on the company. Why? Because everyone knows that the $15 billion is too high, so SAI decided to apply a 25X multiple on Facebook’s 2008 revenue forecast of $350 million. Does that make its valuation correct? Probably not. But in the absence of any true market pricing, anyone can go ahead and make a guess."

I think that sounds right - 15 billion for Facebook sounds too high - not that Facebook isn't worth 15 billion - but who'd pay that much for it? 

While I wasn't there - blogger Tamar Weinberg who I've met a couple of times lately and will be seeing a lot of at Search Engine Strategies next week - wrote a SXSW: Mark Zuckerberg Keynote (the edited liveblogged version) that is the first full account I've come across of the heavily discussed Lacy-Zuckerbert Keynote.

(Photo credit: Brian Solis)

Wish I was there - though yesterday I attened NONE - which was our New York version of SXSW - where we had BBQ's Ribs in an impromptu meeting.

Now, what I want to know is how Tamar Weinberg managed to transcribe the entire keynote session?  That's a lot of work.

By the way, I wrote about the Lacy - Mark Zuckerberg Keynote in a post titled -

Zuckerberg-Lacy interview @ SXSW: Sarah’s not a Geek

Gee, getting 200 friends was never so easy (only 200 friends?) - well .. they're Facebook friends .. that's why.

The "lucky" 200th Friend Michael Lyons Wier who owns and runs http://www.lyonswierortt.com, a well known New York Art Gallery and Dealer.

Ok, I'm not Robert Scoble - I don't have 5000+ friends (yet - that might take a while) and I'm probably not as insecure as I should be (Studies say the more Facebook friends you have, the more insecure you become - with the threshold starting at 800+ Friends). 

So, I'm not insecure yet … and just basking in my first 200 friends. 

Which reminds me, anyone can join WAASOCIAL - The Web Analytics Association Social Network AND … that Blogging and Social Networks are good for your health and good for your Social Life - and if you don't believe me - just read my post on

Blogging good for your Social Life (and other stuff too).

….and it's even "measurable" - like in metrics and web analytics - we're getting there and in the process of defining standards for Social Media - like blogs and social networks, podcasts and vidcasts, the whole nine yards, or part we can do this year.

Noticed the IKarmaYou application to Send Good Karma to friends on Facebook and have been playing with it for the last 4 or 5 days as I've been both getting and giving Good Karma's liberally.  I wrote my final opinion about Facebook Applications in The Analytics of Facebook (I'll often put my synthesis here). 

I was trying to find some stats for IKarmaYou and came across a post titled concerning the "good karma request" on facebook in Earth & Pragmatism blog where it's pointed out that:

"…But but: You can't give good karma. Or receive good karma. This is like requesting that other people send you a good body."

 Actually, Facebook gives stats on the IKarmaYou application:

"…59,067 daily active users 5% of total"

That's not bad (karma)!

Talking about Facebook Analytics - there's actually a site that can chart Applications against each other called Adomomics.  Here's some interesting factoids on Facebook Applications as of today:

• There are 849,142,168 installs across 16,192 apps on Facebook with over 200,000 developers currently evaluating the platform.
• These applications were used 34,175,797 times in the last 24 hours and have a combined valuation of $425,362,656.
• Facebook had approximately 68 million Unique Active Users in the past 30 days and a valuation of $20 billion.
• This translates to $300 per active user.

Did I read that right?  Each user on Facebook is worth, to advertisers, about 300 bucks.

Ask yourself what the average user is worth on each social network site?  How much would you spend, how much value, attention, is there to monetize?

I charted 3 Facebook Applications - Send Good Karma, Art of War Quotes and My  Personality.

 A couple of lessons here -

1. if you get a good valuation for your application - sell it quickly - as I'm not sure how long people will want to send Good Karma's to each other - I'm already getting tired of it and I've only been doing it for a couple of days.
2. Viral Applications are a pretty good way to introduce other content, like what I just wrote about in SocialRiots with the Bad Karma and Good Karma Series of Facebook

And here's the Viral Content that was pushed out today - a pretty good video if you ask me.

I was just reading Jeff Pulver (who I met at LeWeb3 last month) found he uses Facebook, more and more, as his email messaging:

 "..While I have no plans to ever give up my jeff@pulver.com email, as each week goes by, more and more business messages are being sent to me and replied to on Facebook.

Seems to me Facebook may be well positioned to make a move on Google and Gmail. Things may get real interesting when/if Facebook decides to upgrade their messaging platform and offer a better messaging experience. This could be a real test to see just how sticky Gmail really is.

Being on a platform where I receive messages only from my friends and friends of friends does have its advantages."

I'm doing the same thing - as I have more people on Facebook, it's becoming easier to communicate via a Social Network than use email.

Any thoughts from my readers on this? 

Well…. it happens -

Scobleizer Oh, oh, Facebook blocked my account because I was hitting it with a script. Naughty, naughty Scoble! about 13 hours ago from im  

 Right…   and it quickly became news - Facebook Bots Disable Robert Scoble

 

 

But Scoble admitted  that it was Plaxo that was running a script on his behalf - Robert comes clean. He was using a version of Plaxo Pulse to try to migrate his contacts over into outlook.

I guess that's what happens to you when you have 5000+ Facebook friends and you try something a little different ……. and all of a sudden… bang, your locked out of Facebook.

Not that I think pulling all that data into Pulse is really worth the effort or punishment -and I bet he'll be reinstated pretty soon. 

I found this funny parody about Facebook that also called MySpace a Social Network from Strippers who work from home on SocialMediaToday blog:

Fun!

Ha Ha Ha…. I was just reading that Scoble is insecure, researchers say according to a post on his blog Scobleizer.  

"..Heheh, here’s proof that I’m insecure. At least it’s true if you look at a Guardian article that says that research is showing that people with more than 800 Facebook friends are seen as insecure. I guess having 4,999 friends makes one really, really insecure! Shhhh, don’t tell the Guardian that I have 1,148 friends waiting to get in (Facebook doesn’t let you have more than 4,999 friends)."

Facebook is limiting our insecurity by telling us we can only have 5000 friends … 

"..S. Shyam Sundar, a professor and founder of the Media Effects Research Laboratory at Penn State, has led students in several Facebook studies exploring identity. One involved the creation of mock Facebook profiles. Researchers learned that while people perceive someone who has a high number of friends as popular, attractive and self-confident, people who accumulate "too many" friends (about 800 or more) are seen as insecure."

Interestingly enough, I've just read, on Jeff Pulber's Facebook page, that a new feature for "Invisibility" could be the next "killer app" (that way you don't have to be insecure worrying about being preceived as being insecure):

 "…Yossi Vardi recently commented he would join Facebook if he had the ability to be invisible. And after thinking about this, I realized that invisibility is a killer feature that could bring another wave of people into Facebook and could also help protect our kids against predators on social networks.

The way I imagine invisibility might work would be if I choose to be invisible, I would show up on my friends friend list when a friend looked at their friends list, but when a friend of a friend looked at the same friends list, my name would not appear. Invisibility is something that could help some people deal with the social awkwardness created by social networks.

It would be great to be able to optionally apply invisibility both globally and locally so that if I choose, I could identify specific friends whose lists I want to appear to be invisible and still appear on the friend lists of others."