Facebook Connect: The Next Great App War

Marketers Should Make Things That Work With the Social Graph

Posted by Ian Schafer on 01.28.09 @ 06:48 PM

Ian Schafer

We've witnessed zombies, vampires, sheep, parking spaces, kidnapping, pushpins and hundreds and hundreds of other silly Facebook apps take our time and waste it like nothing in recent history.

But ever since Facebook's redesign, those apps have been relegated to other sections, and their popularity has waned. It's become tougher for developers to launch new apps successfully, and even tougher than that for brands to do the same.

But don't be so quick to write Facebook apps off just yet. There is a new breed of app that may very well be more powerful than several poking and parking apps combined -- and draw even more attention to Facebook's split personality as both a media property and a platform.

Facebook Connect has actually made Facebook apps more important than ever. But these apps are a different breed. They are meant to facilitate connections, not waste your time. It's what they help you do, not what they do themselves, and they represent the first entrants into the next great Facebook app war.

These apps sit behind the scenes, and are usually invisible to the end user until they need to accept their "installation" to make the function they've requested work.

Confused? Here's a quick explanation.

Let's say I just reviewed a restaurant on Citysearch.com. Now that Citysearch uses Facebook Connect, I can instantly ensure that that review (and all others in the future) are shared with my Facebook friends. After I submit my review, and I opt to "Connect with Facebook," a window pops up that allows me to grant permission to the Citysearch app to connect to my Facebook profile/network.

Once I grant permission to the app, I approve the publishing of my review and it appears on my Facebook profile and in the newsfeed of many of my Facebook friends.

Facebook Connect makes it easier to do what 50% of the battle was when branded apps were all the rage: Act as a Trojan horse into the newsfeed -- the "holy grail" of Facebook marketing success, and the best way to realize the potential of Facebook's famous social graph.

With the success of CNN's Inauguration Facebook integration, companies, properties and brands should be asking how they can put Facebook Connect to work for themselves -- and their marketing programs.

That's why it is not only the site developers who should be thinking about how to integrate Facebook Connect, but media and creative agencies as well. When it comes to social media, well placed, engaging creative that sparks connectivity is more likely to help generate "earned" media.

Facebook Connect is arguably the biggest thing to happen to online marketing in 2008. And 2009 may be the year we finally figure out how to make the Facebook social graph work for us -- by making things that work with the social graph.

~ ~ ~
Ian Schafer is CEO of Deep Focus.

10 Comments

By UNBOUND_TECH | Palo Alto, CA January 28, 2009 09:15:05 pm:

Ian great post, we are major believers in social graph as UNBOUNDTech.com and doing social inspection to get the most of out Facebook Connect -FC. The big challenge for brands is understanding their audience on the graph what's their passion points and creating a true conversation with the consumer. Finding your Super Customer or influences to engage making FC a fast way to spread the collective experience is critical and the incentive to participate is a must have. Dynamic representation of relevant content base on the graph will be the next step.

Chase

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By ryanmoede | Falls Church, VA January 29, 2009 09:11:48 am:

Well said, Ian, and I couldn't agree more. Now it's time for digital marketers and brands to step up with some real creativity on how to shape their apps and websites with Facebook Connect. http://www.viget.com/engage/facebook-connect-gives-digital-marketers-huge-opportunity-in-2009/

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By nickkinports | Chicago, IL January 29, 2009 09:40:33 am:

Facebook connect speaks to the idea that the near future (Web 3.0) will provide more connectivity with less effort on the part of consumers. It will also provide ways for agencies and brands to hyperlocalize content and provide more meaningful interactions.

CNN inaugural coverage was a great move in the right direction. 2009 should see a plethora of apps and services that take advantage of Facebook Connect and it's competitors from Microsoft, Google, and MySpace.

http://www.twitter.com/admaven

http://admaven.blogspot.com

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By richgordon | EVANSTON, IL January 29, 2009 09:56:16 am:

Facebook Connect (and comparable services available or coming from MySpace, Google, and others) offer some very intriguing possibilities for sites seeking to leverage people's social connections to improve the user experience.

A Medill School (Northwestern University) innovation class this fall came up with a demonstration site called News Mixer that takes advantage of Facebook Connect (and some other cool features) to reinvent the way people have conversations around news.

For more info, check out the site at http://newsmixer.us ...
... as well as this overview of the project:

http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/studentwork/archives.aspx?id=110531 ...

... and my posts to the PBS Idealab blog about the project: http://www.pbs.org/idealab/rich_gordon/

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By LIZA | PALO ALTO, CA January 29, 2009 12:47:58 pm:

Ian, great post. The trend of platform openness is significant one. Marketers also need to remember that Facebook is not the only platform out there - MySpace is also heavily used by key target audiences and is often more brand friendly.

Gigya's Socialize enables Marketers to incorporate not only Facebook Connect but also MySpace Open ID to make their brand experiences social and leverage these social networks powerful promotional systems like newsfeed and notifications. Users shouldn't have to choose - they should be able to access their friends no matter what platform they use - and more often this means multiple platforms.

http://www.gigya.com/site/content/socialize.aspx

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By cventura8 | NEW YORK, NY January 29, 2009 01:24:23 pm:

Great post, Ian. It's amazing how quickly our minds keep pace too. I'm already annoyed if a "share" button doesn't include Facebook or Twitter. Your post, for instance, doesn't, hence I have to cut and paste to tweet it (which I've done!)

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By filmicnyc | New York, NY January 29, 2009 03:44:09 pm:

Great post...although I find it pretty ironic that Facebook isn't one of the "Share & Save" options below.

Tarah Feinberg, Creative Director, Brand New World

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By michaelburke27 | new york, NY January 29, 2009 07:14:28 pm:

Good article Ian. The Facebook redesign created a healthy shakeout of the one time usage applications you mention to more useful applications.

People now join apps because they get something out of them, be it connecting with people around a specific interest, playing a game against friends or usage to better plan daily life. With that said, just like people who rushed to build an application, I do have concerns about the all of a sudden influx of Facebook Connect users and my news feeds and updates – talk about clutter!

To use your Citysearch example, that's great for your friends who live in New York, but if you have a friend who lives in San Francisco, they might not care. At the same time, if every brand starts syncing up its landing pages to Facebook Connect, the floodgates of updates as far as online contests, causes, etc., might be a rather large nuisance.

Facebook Connect needs to enable people to join, reach out and create community around interests, passions, etc., the same way the best applications do. Therefore, when speaking to brands, it's important ask them if they have the facilities to create this themselves or is it better to partner with someone already leverage the social graph in these ways?

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By adebuche | Paris January 30, 2009 08:55:56 am:

Thank you for your very interesting analysis. Facebook succeeded with this API what they failed to do with Beacon a year ago as they missed a clear opt-in path http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=7134 . They are most probably considering changing the FB Connect Developers Policies in order to benefit financially from such integration, as is suggested on their wiki http://tinyurl.com/asww4q . They will surely include different levels of service, from free to ... quite expensive as I am sure major TV networks will rush to take advantage of their viral power and broad usage in young populations (eg 60% of 18-24 have an account on FB in France !! see ifop survey for details http://tinyurl.com/8afb5v
No doubt we have here some great potentialb, both for TV networks and live event organizers, as well as for Facebook :-)

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By paeisenman | New York, NY January 30, 2009 09:36:35 am:

There is an important difference between social applications/widgets/mobile apps deemed trivial (adding no real benefit to the community or the user) versus those deemed utility based (adding value). This is a very interesting dichotomy for advertisers to understand when creating an application for a specific platform. Do they want an application that will hopefully gain a lot of buzz and installs very quickly or do they want to invest in something long-term, providing value and utility.

Please click here to see my presentation - http://breakinghabit.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/applications-triviality-vs-utility/

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