Thoughts 2.0

Facebook – “Promote”

Vep — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 22:31:41 +0000

This post is about : “How I would have gone differently about mixing commercial feeds in Facebook timeline for accelerating revenue”.

Recently, Facebook introduced the “promote” button/link below the feeds in timeline. I guess they have rolled it back for Individual users and have restricted it now to Businesses only. Facebook also charges something like $7 for promoting any particular feed/post. Along with this Facebook has also started mixing the commercial feeds/posts with the feed from your friends.

I believe currently most of the people don’t even watch the ads on Facebook. A large number of people just simply ignore those areas on the webpage. The way I would have handled these two things would be different. I would first offer the “promote” feature to the individual users and not only just offer it for free but also make it relevant to them. This is how it can be tried. Facebook could craft something like “JetPost” or “SpeedPost“. This would be a different kind of post and Facebook will promote this kind of post faster in your connections. Facebook will show it not only to your friends but also to the friends of friends irrespective of they share it on their timeline or not. These JetPosts would look like what facebook ads look today. So users could use these posts effectively for following kind of posts on purposes

Emergency : Need particular type of blood.
Need Help/News : People posting / sharing the images of lost children and asking others to help them.
Classified Ads : Resale of items like on Sulekha / Craiglist / Locanto or sharing the cab.

These posts will come in the forms of ads and will appear where ads come on its web page. It would help Facebook in two ways. First it will mature their “promote” feature. Second, and more important, people will get accustomed to watching these promoted “JetPosts”. They will take it as something useful to them. This will make people not just ignore these ad based posts but watch it as it could be probably something worthy for them e.g. a used car from 3rd level connection, a trip to vegas with someone who is not a 1st degree connection but still not completely strange, it could be the job at a friend’s friend’s restaurant. And once people are accustomed to taking these ads as something useful then I would push for commercial ads in between.

May be this approach would have given Facebook better results or may be that this approach has some faults that Facebook team is already & only aware of. But nonetheless I hope you enjoyed reading this.

Magicjack ++

Vep — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 03:10:50 +0000

Magicjack is a device which helps users make the VoIP calls.

Magicjack, in its first version, required to be connected through USB port into a computer and through jack to the telephone handset and then you could make the calls anywhere. In its the next version, MagicJack Plus, an important advancement was made where you didn’t need the computer. You could directly connect the MagicJack to Handset, Ethernet cable & power supply and you could make the calls.

The proposal of idea here is to add the Bluetooth capability in MagicJack. It can remove the need of ( buying and ) connecting the telephone Handset also. This can provide some good ease of use to the user for the following reasons.

Currently, you have to buy the handset separately. Most of the times even the best options like Uniden and Panasonic have a decade old black & white LCD display. It is very uncomfortable to navigate through them. Their display density is very less, they don’t have touch screens. In general, it becomes like managing with Nokia 6600. For example, to call the last number, to see the call history and other simple things also require you to navigate through 3-4 levels.

With Bluetooth You could use any of your old cell phones which is not in use anymore.

You could potentially connect your iPad or Tablet or iPhone itself. MagicJack will have to provide an app for this but it will be quite cool.
You need not maintain phone directory / contacts in two places.
It could be handy when the cellular signal is weak at home. You can just switch to MagicJack via Bluetooth and make calls.
Can save costs for end user for not buying separate phone, Bluetooth adapter etc.

Overall, it seems worth a try as it will give them competitive & innovative advantage over Vonage and others.

Btw, the story of it’s inventor is also pretty interesting and inspiring.

FaceTube

Vep — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 07:48:00 +0000

Feature : To add the option of adding voice based comments in facebook comment plugin. Currently users can involve in discussions by typing comments only. Idea in general is to add voice for “discussions”. Details of the feature are discussed further in the last section of the post.

General Observations about facebook comment plugin : Facebook comment plugin is going to become an awesome and important product for Facebook. It is gaining more and more attention among the developer community. In fact, on this Ideas Blog itself, after using highly stable JetPack plugin for comments for quite a while we have switched to Facebook Comment Plugin eventually. And following are the reasons / observations about this change.

Pros

Fonts and comment style is like that is in facebook. People have become very much used to it, particularly while involving in discussions.
I find most of the other comment plugins less space efficient. With facebook comment plugin, you can see more comments in same space.
It has the “Social” factor. You can like individual comments. Count for likes is shown for all the individual comments. Likes are shown through, probably patented, Thumbs Up icon. Some other plugins use “^” character for the same but still it doesn’t give that feel.
Reply to the comments appear at appropriate spacing. Reply to your comments come as feed in your facebook news update feed itself.
It also takes into consideration your “facebook privacy settings”. If You have put appropriate control in your facebook profile to avoid strangers stalking your profile, then strangers can not view your profile in any discussion too.
Like other plugins, facebook comment plugin gives you an option too to put the comment using yahoo or other mail accounts too. Although (on Techcrunch) I have seen <5% people using anything other than their facebook account.
People tend to involve in discussion more with facebook plugin. An example of this is the comparison of comments / discussion on tech-sites. Techcrunch uses the Facebook comment plugin and many of the other tech sites are still using the old one. TechCrunch gets significantly more discussions ( and hence traffic ) on their site.

Cons

Discussions on you post is your content. You should be able to take it away with you. I am not sure if you can take away facebook plugin based comments with you. Or if you did what legal implications it will have.
Stability – JetPack from WordPress was much more stable. Using Facebook plugin adds the overhead of connecting with facebook servers.
Visibility. When you are putting the comment from your facebook profile, you are becoming more visible. What becomes serious is the matter when facebook says : “xyz posted 6 seconds ago.” It has not been very long ago when some xyz lost his job for spending time on facebook. Unfortunately there is no way to control post time

Now, Let’s talk the Idea. Well, I would admit it is *NOT* anything like a super innovative idea or next big thing. But 2 years back, when I used phpBB for forum on one site I was thinking if we could have a “voice based forums“. Basically people instead of typing text could just leave their reply like in voice mail. So it would be a text + voice based forum. Since facebook is already getting more and more people accessing facebook on mobile phone it makes a perfect sense for them to add this feature. It will be just like people leaving the voice mail. To me it looks like worth a try for facebook.

Google when acquired Youtube , they got hold of 80% of video traffic on the web and today it is one of the most revenue generating product for them. Facebook is already the king of social and I guess comment plugin will certainly help them get 30-40% of overall discussion based data in next 5 years. I was just thinking if adding voice to their comment plugin is worth an idea like giving them FaceTube. Google groups once snatched the big byte from Yahoo forums. May be it is time for facebook to give Google the taste back.