I admit this might sound a little crazy, but last night I woke up after having a dream about a brand new device that I was able to “imagine” up. I called it the Facebook Phone, and even though it is firmly grounded in my imagination, i think it really could be a real product.
It may have been the near infinite number of droid and “Google” phone ads that have peppered the television lately that got me on this train of thought. Why couldn’t there be a “Facebook Phone?” And, what makes Google such a logical choice for phone provider?
If we’re talking about services, then lets compare offerings. True, Google has a stranglehold on the search market, and yes, they make some nifty tools like Google maps that work so well on a GPS enabled phone. Don’t forget about Google mail either, the gold standard for free webmail.
Facebook on the other hand, well, its becoming the hub for everything.
- Real time communication (via Facebook chat and push notification)
- Address book
- Social gaming
- Calendar
- Accounts (via Facebook Connect)
- Photos and Video Sharing
My theory is that Facebook has as much claim to its own mobile device (phone is the logical choice, but technically it could be some other form factor) as Google does.
I believe it is only a matter of time before Facebook search becomes as valuable as Google search. It would be interesting to see a study on this, but I’ve definitely noticed myself using Google search less over the past year as I have been pushed interesting news, content and updates from the sources I care about via Facebook (via facebook page updates, etc).
Would you buy and use a Facebook Phone if it were on a decent carrier? Has Facebook become as essential to your communications as Google?
Categories: Facebook.
Tags: Facebook, google, phone
By admin
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January 19, 2010 at 9:07 am
Today brought a new tool for Facebook page administrators as well as just ordinary users. Nutshell Mail is a service which allows you to offer email based “newsletters” to your fans. The way it works is simple – Nutshell emails your a HTML formatted “digest” of your Facebook activity.
Nutshell allows you to configure numerous things in your newsletter subscription -
- Delivery times including separate day and night times, days and email types
- Updates that include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace
- Specific configuration of the types of updates from Facebook and other sites (which specific pages you want updates from, inbox, wall, threaded conversations, photo tags, etc
The output is what you’d expect from an HTML email message – it looks rather like Facebook. There are also links in the email message which let you reply to comments left on your page or even “reload” the data in the email to show you the latest (buttons marked in red below)
From a Facebook perspective, this is how Nutshell looks if you add the application to your own page. Basically, it is more or less an email sign up form.
Check out this free service from Nutshell Mail to offer a little something extra to your Facebook page fans who may not be checking your page or feed every day.
Categories: Facebook.
By admin
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January 18, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Ran across a link to a new site that scans myspace (yes, it is still around) and presents real time updates on your keyword searches. Really liked the look and feel of the site, I just wish it would scan say, Facebook or Twitter which would be far more useful for my day to day work!
Here you can see results from blog posts, videos, photos, comments and status updates made on myspace on the topic of “avatar.” As new mentions happen, the list updates in real time.
Categories: Myspace.
Tags: Myspace, real time
For the past few months I’ve been following the trending of traffic to Facebook and Google closely. In some of the presentations I do for clients who are wanting to learn more about social media, it is one of the slides that always surprises people most – a trending of traffic between the search giant and the social networking giant.
While Google still reigned supreme in overall traffic, Facebook had been slowly catching up.
Now, Hitwise is presenting data that suggests that over the Christmas holiday, Facebook surpassed Google in traffic. To be clear, that is traffic to facebook.com compared to google.com (not gmail.com, youtube or other google properties).
When you stop to consider just how many people use search (and specifically, Google) this number is astronomical. It just goes to show how powerful Facebook has become.
Categories: Facebook.
Tags: Facebook, google, traffic
