Facebook Status Updates: 4/07 – Present

January 13th, 2009


Today
Scott is trying to think of a time he's seen his parents as happy as they were when they were playing with Fletch.
11:36am
Yesterday
10:42pm
Scott is noticing that changing your profile picture to an adorable baby makes your price go up in Friends For Sale (and then makes you uninstall it).
12:32pm
Jan 9
4:10pm
Jan 8
8:00pm
10:23am
Jan 7
10:57pm
5:59pm
Scott is Ritual Roasters + Cappuccino + MacBook.
9:44am
Jan 6
Scott is another one of Bruxism's victims. Who will cure this horrible disease?
11:18pm
Jan 5
Scott is synchronizing Fletch's Baby Einstein videos to Dark Side of the Moon. It actually makes them *less* trippy.
8:56pm
Jan 4
Scott is learning French children's songs.
10:51am
Jan 3
Scott is impressed with the new lines of Quaker granola bars. "True Delights" and "Simple Harvest" are both excellent.
7:42pm
Scott is reading "Mouse Tales: A Behind-the-Ears Look at Disneyland" with Fletch.
10:15am
Jan 1
Scott is making chicken stew with cornbread dumplings.
3:23pm
Scott is watching the Scooba map the kichen floor. Hooray for edge detection algorithms.
10:00am
Dec 31
4:48pm
Scott is misquoted: http://tinyurl.com/9k2z69.
9:57am
Dec 29
12:10pm
11:12am
10:33am
Dec 28
Scott is thinking that if he had a pet moray he'd name it "Breakfast" because he'd be the most important eel of the day.
8:41am
Dec 26
Scott is reprogramming his universal remote.
8:34pm
Dec 25
Scott is laughing at Marni for thinking that the store "Heller's For Children" was named after the Pat Benetar song "Hell is For Children."
11:03pm
10:40pm
Dec 24
11:26pm
10:12pm
9:24am
9:23am
Dec 23
4:07pm
4:05pm
Dec 21
8:05pm
Dec 20
4:19pm
2:14pm
2:08pm
Dec 19
Scott is pondering the lack of decent personal finance software for Mac.
8:57pm
Scott is a little peeved that SimCity for iPhone deleted Kleptopia without warning.
4:17pm
Scott is sad that Dave Morey is retiring. Who will be the voice of San Francisco?
10:14am
Dec 17
Scott is trying out our new app for Coupons, Inc. http://apps.facebook.com/couponscom?src=sjk.
10:48pm
Scott is wondering if the pickles feel awkward next to the cucumbers in his sandwich... or would it be vice versa?
1:17pm
Dec 15
4:02pm
Dec 14
11:17pm
10:43pm
12/14/08
Scott is trying to explain the financial crisis to his 8 month old. He doesn't understand why they can't just print more money.
1:06pm
12/13/08
Scott is making vegetable curry.
3:13pm
12/11/08
Scott is ready to have another kid now that there's a womb-to-twitter gateway: http://tinyurl.com/55xcoy.
6:19pm
12/10/08
Scott is so vain he has a vanity url: http://www.facebook.com/contextoptional.
11:36pm
7:04pm
5:41pm
4:27pm
10:07am
12/9/08
Scott is happy to see Claus all over Facebook and proud that we were involved.
5:45pm
3:23pm
12/7/08
Scott And if people should be uncertain as to the meaning of that sign, their doubts ended at nine o'clock, when Captain Jimmy gave the order to "light up the pit"...
7:45pm
12/6/08
Scott is making low fat turkey monte cristo sandwiches.
4:54pm
12/5/08
10:17am
12/4/08
8:54am
12/3/08
Scott is watching BART trains pass by without stopping. 24th street station is packed.
9:03am
11/28/08
Scott is playing Life for the first time in about 20 years. Amazing how a game about the future is now largely about the past.
8:43pm
11/27/08
Scott is proud of our team who put together this campaign for Palm Centro: http://www.facebook.com/claus 4 apps and a Page in 5 weeks!
4:31pm
11/26/08
7:39pm
Scott is sorry that he tagged a photo of a goat as Michael Kleper and framed Marni for it.
5:40pm
11/18/08
3:28pm
11/14/08
7:34pm
Scott is setting aside $5000 for YOU if you help me find a good Rails Developer.
4:27pm
11/13/08
7:59pm
Scott is relieved/disappointed that the guy on the call was not the pornographer we thought he was.
6:31pm
Scott is having a call with some people who have, uh, "interesting" Wikipedia entries.
1:01pm
11/11/08
Scott is interested in going on a taxpayer-funded junket. Does Expedia list those?
10:03am
11/10/08
1:00pm
11/7/08
12:08pm
11/6/08
11:59am
11:53am
11/4/08
4:56pm
10:22am
Scott is also disappointed that they're out of pens. But not as much as the guy in line ahead of him. Chill out -- we'll all get to vote.
9:12am
10/31/08
Scott is adding the first new feature in like 9 months to 10 Second Interview.
12:16pm
Scott is embarrassed to be one of those guys who wears a tucked in shirt with no belt. I was in a hurry!
9:31am
10/30/08
6:26pm
10/29/08
Scott is going to open a hardware store for infants called "Baby, Cradle, and Awl."
9:20am
10/28/08
2:07pm
2:05pm
10/24/08
2:54pm
10/16/08
1:03pm
11:58am
3:05am
10/8/08
8:57am
10/3/08
5:52pm
5:50pm
5:50pm
3:19pm
3:19pm
10/1/08
4:30pm
4:21pm
9/30/08
1:27pm
Scott is excited about his new roof. Bring it on, God!
1:26pm
9/25/08
10:24pm
9/24/08
6:17pm
9/23/08
1:19pm
9/17/08
Scott is unimpressed with this week's Safeway Super Coupons. 69 cent mushrooms is hardly "super."
5:29pm
9/16/08
Scott is working from Cupertino on Wednesday.
10:50pm
Scott is grateful to have some time in the morning to spend with Fletch.
8:25am
9/13/08
Scott is following Fletch on Twitter: http://twitter.com/fletchkleper.
10:37pm
10:30pm
9/12/08
3:37pm
9/11/08
10:21pm
9/8/08
6:49pm
12:28pm
9/4/08
9:29pm
12:45pm
11:47am
9/3/08
12:19pm
9/2/08
Scott is becoming more useless by the day. Fletch can hold his own bottle now.
11:06pm
10:35pm
9:01pm
9:00pm
8:59pm
8/28/08
9:16pm
Scott is impressed that he can renew library books online.
11:49am
8/27/08
3:42pm
11:44am
8/25/08
Scott is hiring iPhone developers and Rails developers.
6:54pm
8/23/08
9:34pm
8/21/08
10:45pm
8/20/08
6:33pm
12:25pm
8/17/08
9:08pm
6:03pm
8/15/08
11:46am
8/13/08
10:56pm
8/10/08
Scott is trying to teach Fletch to slam his bottles down on the table when they're empty.
1:55pm
8/9/08
Scott is the father of the Jackson Pollock of diapers. Seriously, some of these could be framed.
8:16pm
8/4/08
9:48pm
2:31pm
11:52am
8/1/08
Scott is feeling more confident about watching the baby without Marni around. Why does my sleeve smell like urine?
12:50pm
7/31/08
1:03pm
11:59am
7/30/08
9:29pm
7/29/08
Scott is doing research on tiki culture on Wikipedia. Wiki tiki!
11:13pm
7/27/08
7/24/08
9:22pm
2:58pm
7/23/08
Scott is going to be better at estimating the number of rubber duckies to buy for next year's F8.
10:23pm
7/20/08
12:37pm
7/17/08
Scott is horrified by Marni's use of emoticons to represent Fletch's emotional and regurgitational state.
4:53pm
7/11/08
Scott is aware that Jerry Cain is a fan of Peet's Coffee & Tea. Show me some new Social Ads!
12:08am
7/8/08
Scott is surprised to discover that Milky Way - caramel != 3 Musketeers. The filling is different.
1:54pm
7/3/08
Scott is itchy. Why am I so freakin itchy?
9:37pm
6/30/08
Scott is not sure there's time for lunch this week.
12:48pm
6/27/08
Scott is taking the 8am call in his PJ's.
7:47am
6/26/08
Scott is forgiving Specialtys for the "cilantro incident."
2:07pm
Scott is ordering a vegan lunch and it actually sounds really good. wtf?
11:22am
6/25/08
Scott is aware that his son has John McCain cheeks.
6:09pm
4:56pm
1:52pm
6/22/08
5:04pm
5:01pm
4:49pm
4:49pm
4:47pm
4:40pm
Scott is amused by this line of code he just wrote: validates_presence_of :personality.
1:34pm
6/20/08
Scott is calculating the optimal way to order a Turkey Cranberry sandwich from Specialtys online.
1:13pm
6/19/08
Scott is willing to give you $1000 and cook you dinner if you find us a rails engineer.
8:38pm
8:32pm
Scott is surely not the only one who thinks iCal blows.
3:00pm
9:34am
6/18/08
Scott is willing to give you $1000 and cook you dinner if you find us a rails engineer.
4:30pm
6/17/08
Scott is an uncle. Or whatever your brother in law having a kid makes you.
2:50pm
6/16/08
Scott is celebrating the cancellation of a 7am call.
9:27pm
Scott is ; DELETE FROM users; # just checking.
1:28pm
9:58am
6/14/08
Scott is making strawberry frozen yogurt with the starberries he was tricked into buying at the farmers market.
5:28pm
6/12/08
Scott is pissed off that Stanford left personal employee info on a laptop in the first place.
10:14pm
9:31pm
6/11/08
5:16pm
Scott is saving money on his PG&E bill because Fletch's smile brightens the whole house.
11:45am
6/6/08
4:51pm
6/5/08
Scott is a Dustbunny Diva, according to the app we built for Borax. Duh!
12:27pm
6/3/08
Scott is wondering why Facebook took down the app we built for Miller, but they'll let him send a Coors gift to his underage cousin.
11:26am
5/27/08
11:51pm
Scott is making asparagus pasta with smoked mozzarella.
10:17pm
5/26/08
11:50pm
11:12pm
11:11pm
5/25/08
Scott is making cherry frozen yogurt with fresh cherries.
12:02pm
5/22/08
1:13pm
1:12pm
12:37pm
12:35pm
5/21/08
Scott is looking for someone with a functional PlayStation 2 he can borrow.
3:17pm
5/15/08
Scott is surprised that the word 'plenary' doesn't mean what he's always used it to mean.
9:25am
5/12/08
9:24pm
4/15/08
9:00pm
4/12/08
11:33am
Scott is a father. 8 lbs 6 oz. Benjamin Fletcher "Fletch" Kleper.
11:20am
4/11/08
Scott is a father. 8 lbs 6 oz.
10:03am
4/8/08
2:15pm
3/19/08
2:24pm
2/27/08
11:41am
2/25/08
10:14pm
2/13/08
2:02pm
2/3/08
Scott is in yer sql optimizin yer quereez.
2:08pm
1/29/08
Scott is wondering where all his profile boxes went.
1:37pm
1/14/08
Scott is deciding between teddy bears and duckies.
1:51pm
12/31/07
Scott is hand tweaking corrupted svn revs -- successfully!
9:00pm
12/14/07
Scott is still going to start every status update with "is."
6:15pm
12/6/07
2:00am
11/17/07
Scott is looking for people who want a job writing compelling Facebook and OpenSocial apps.
11:55pm
11/16/07
Scott is attempting to cook dinner every night this week. Tonight: Shepherd's Pie.
12:42pm
11/14/07
Scott is attempting to cook dinner every night this week. Tonight: Vegetable Curry.
10:04pm
11/13/07
Scott is Sliding to unlock.
1:59pm
11/12/07
Scott is attempting to cook dinner every night this week. Tonight: Chicken Piccata.
2:16pm
11/11/07
Scott is attempting to cook dinner every night this week. Tonight: Spaghetti and meatballs with homemade sauce.
8:52pm
11/10/07
Scott is at SuperHappyDevHouse21.
5:03pm
11/9/07
Scott is the proud father of four cherry tomatoes.
1:26pm
Scott is seeing a lot of failed profile updates. Vote for bug #687.
2:31am
Scott is seeing a lot of failed profile updated. Vote for bug #687.
2:20am
11/8/07
Scott is amazed that someone has reached Level 8 in Smarty Pants already.
11:36pm
Scott is seriously considering it.
2:29pm
11/7/07
Scott is wondering why SHDH21 is being held in the ghetto.
2:21pm
11/6/07
Scott is frustrated.
3:25pm
9:33am
Scott is wearing his Smarty Pants.
9:32am
Scott is very pleased with how things have turned out.
1:04am
10/27/07
Scott is excited to launch two new apps next week.
7:46pm
Scott is coding through the sneezes.
12:30am
10/4/07
Scott is working on a new app.
1:04pm
10/2/07
Scott is being told to replace his profile photo immediately.
10:58am
10/1/07
Scott is in need of a haircut.
8:58am
9/24/07
Scott is a left outer join where right_table.id is null.
6:01pm
9/23/07
Scott is intending to do some laundry.
11:12am
9/18/07
Scott is not going to fall into Steve Jobs' trap.
11:05pm
9/16/07
Scott is pretty sure any flash security restriction can be circumvented with a proxy and thus they're all pointless. and frustrating.
8:49pm
Scott is coding in Flash with the Flash Gordon theme song stuck in his head. And now it's stuck in yours.
8:27am
9/14/07
Scott is attempting to install Tiger on an ancient PowerBook G3.
4:34pm
9/12/07
Scott is trying to think of a good reason not to buy an iPhone.
5:31pm
8/27/07
Scott is in Rochester.
1:33pm
8/20/07
8/17/07
Scott is so freaking wired.
12:47am
8/10/07
8/8/07
Scott is a freak for multi column indices.
2:15pm
Scott is running unit tests on the production database. Wait, I'm doing what?!?!
12:37am
8/4/07
Scott is grateful for another successful Shark Week on Discovery.
1:34am
7/23/07
Scott is experiencing unusually high call volume.
10:29am
7/22/07
Scott is updating 110,000 facebook profiles.
11:26pm
7/16/07
7/10/07
Scott is unsure why a delete query with no 'where' clause is taking 8 hours and counting...
9:17am
7/3/07
Scott is never going to do an ALTER TABLE on a 3.7 million row table again.
10:36pm
6/29/07
Scott is a two day park hopper.
3:25pm
6/28/07
Scott is unable to find a way to game the Disneyland ticket pricing system. It's the only thing I'll pay full price for.
11:27am
6/18/07
Scott is trying to keep the 10 Second Interview server alive.
6:32pm
6/13/07
Scott is not impressed with the Orange Mocha.
9:39am
6/10/07
Scott is sneezing.
4:16pm
6/9/07
Scott is learning that the Rails "development mode" breaks down at around 2000 users.
12:13pm
Scott is noticing that for the first time, more friends uninstalled Facebook applications than added them today.
1:34am
6/8/07
Scott is witnessing the amazing viral effects of a Facebook app.
7:17pm
6/6/07
Scott is pleasantly confused over the large number of Jewish Canadians who seem to be using his Facebook app.
10:37am
6/5/07
Scott is on the train wondering why they don't have wifi yet.
9:53am
6/3/07
2:23pm
5/28/07
10:16am
Scott is going to buy a MacBook.
9:47am
5/24/07
Scott is the co-author of the second most pirated book on mininova.
12:23pm
5/23/07
Scott is cautiously optimistic about the Lost finale.
9:38am
5/20/07
Scott is happily reunited with his lost wedding ring.
2:28pm
5/18/07
Scott is having post-SuperCuts regret.
3:25pm
5/17/07
Scott is happy to pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.
8:48pm
5/15/07
11:52pm
Scott is not sure how he feels about Adobe Flash.
1:00am
5/11/07
Scott is an edible root vegetable of the Brassicaceae family.
6:50pm
5/6/07
Scott is convinced he's going to grow a vegetable garden this year.
10:57pm
5/1/07
Scott is feeling better thanks to Day Quil and Daiquiri Ice, which are almost anagrams.
6:38pm
4/28/07
Scott is learning the difference between a "roll arm" and a "track arm."
8:21pm
4/27/07
Scott is disappointed with this week's episode of Lost.
1:05pm
4/26/07
Scott is happy for the increasing popularity of steel cut oats.
10:58am
4/25/07
Scott is surprised there's no wifi at Cafe Borrone.
8:13am
4/23/07
Scott is feeling much better. Thanks for the soup.
5:33pm
4/21/07
Scott is sick. Send soup!
7:24pm
4/20/07
12:44pm
Scott is glad for Tommy, sad for Johnny.
12:35pm
4/19/07
Scott is sneezy.
3:46pm
Scott is working from Cup O Java today.
9:43am
4/18/07
Scott is unable and unwilling to pay for decent coffee when free lousy coffee is available upstairs.
10:09am
4/17/07
Scott is fed up with the LookSmart coffee.
12:30pm
4/16/07
Scott is overdue for a blog update.
2:13am
4/14/07
Scott is kind of wanting to clean the house, but not really.
2:26pm
Scott is the only person at Cup O Java right now.
10:14am
4/13/07
Scott is definitely coming down with something.
7:30am
4/12/07
Scott is being forced to watch American Idol this season by an evil dark haired girl.
10:55am
4/11/07
Scott is as Scott does.
7:42pm
4/10/07
Scott is wondering if there's a rash going around.
6:36pm
10/5/06
11:36pm

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KlepCal: The Fastest Way to Enter Items into iCal

December 23rd, 2008

I was looking for a really quick keyboard-driven way to get items onto iCal and decided to write something instead. 1 hour later, I introduce KlepCal. Just launch it using a keyboard shortcut or Spotlight, and type in a natural language time, an event description, and a calendar name. It fires off an AppleScript to add the event to iCal and shuts itself down:


It uses Cocoa’s natural language date parsing, so you can enter your time as “2 hours from now” or “next sunday at 11am”. The exact format of the input string needs to be:

[natural language date/time]:[calendar item name] @[calendar name]

If no calendar name is specified, it defaults to “Work”

Need fast iCal entry? Get KlepCal here.

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Facebook Regulates Your App’s Emotional Effects

June 8th, 2008

You know it’s going to be a good one when a Facebook developer blog post starts with “At Facebook, our passion for serving users…”, so I wasn’t particularly surprised by this declaration that Facebook’s new policy aims to regulate the emotion of “surprise”:

Users must not be surprised by the outcome of an action they take.

Granted, everybody knows what they’re referring to. You click on a random tab in SuperPoke and suddenly you’ve accidentally notified your friends that you’re gay. Surprise!

I think it’s a dangerous trend to regulate the behavior of applications through anything other than technical means. Ultimately, the guidelines will be useless if they are full of arbitrary passages like this that are subject to interpretation. I now feel the need to sprinkle my apps with comments to avoid surprise — “Just so you know, when you click this button, the page is going to reload. Please don’t be surprised. Maybe grab a friend to calm you down in case you start getting nervous.”

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Pedantic

February 6th, 2008

I hate to be pedantic, but I find something lacking in the Mac OS X Dictionary’s definition of pedantic:

pedantic |pəˈdantik|
adjective
of or like a pedant : many of the essays are long, dense, and too pedantic to hold great appeal.

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Crossed Wires

February 1st, 2008

Marni: Brett Hilton recommended Baby Depot.

Scott: Is that a web site?

Marni: No, it’s someone I work with.

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Startup Tip #2) You Will Always Be One Step Away…

December 8th, 2007

Especially early on, starting a company is about addressing one overarching concern that, if solved, will totally make everything so much easier.

When I first started thinking about SpotDJ, I had a job. Being a loyal employee not looking to get sued, I only worked on the project during nights and weekends. Which is to say, I didn’t really work on it at all. I can’t remember what was filling up all my free time back then, but I knew that I could build and launch a product if I just quit my job and devoted all that new found time to it; that was all that was holding me back.

After quitting the job, I realized that I couldn’t possibly go on without a cofounder. If I had somebody else, particularly someone who understood all that business stuff and could worry about money, everything would fall into place. Once I found a cofounder, I needed money. After all, I had quit my freakin job and hadn’t had a salary for weeks now! We were just one step away from success and that step was raising a small seed round.

Okay, round raised. Now if we can only find another engineer. Because it’s very risky to build something solo… Then we needed a designer, because I sure as hell can’t draw….

It went on from there, and still continues. There’s always just this one thing that’s keeping you from success. The only thing that changes is that eventually you figure out that once you get that one thing, there will always be another. Nothing really makes things that much easier — it just reveals the next challenge.

Up next: Your Friends Won’t Be the Rabid Beta Users You Think They’ll Be

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A Facebook Glossary

December 3rd, 2007

When we write proposals for Facebook applications, we typically include definitions for the Facebook-specific terms we use, like wall, mini-feed, and notification. Facebook doesn’t provide much in the way of official definitions for these features, and new users are often confused by the similarity between the wall, messages, notifications, requests, and emails.

To clear up some of the confusion for people new to Facebook or new to Facebook applications, here is my unofficial guide to some select Facebook viral features. For each feature, I’ve provided a description, the “intended” usage, the common usage, and some comments. Note that for most features, there is no “official” usage so the “intended” usage is what I’ve distilled from talking to other developers, both inside and outside Facebook.

Requests
Description Linked from the user’s home page as either an “invitation” or a “request” for a specific application (e.g. “5 smarty pants invitations”). Users view the detail of the request and can choose to take an action or ignore it. Requests are sent from a specific user (e.g. “Larry Magoo sent you an invitation using Smarty Pants”).
“Intended” Usage Requests are intended for cases where a user is asking another user to take an action via an application. For example, inviting a user to add the application, or challenging the user to a game.
Common Usage Many applications have a “forced invite” page that users are taken to when they install the application where the user is prompted to invite their friends. These pages usually send requests. Requests require explicit confirmation on the part of the sender so they are typically used as-designed.
Comments There are benefits and drawbacks to using Requests versus Notifications (below) that we balance carefully when building an app.
Notifications
Description Show up below requests on the user’s home page as a single link (they are not broken out by application) and take the user to a page where they can read all of their notifications. Notifications are text messages that can contain links. They do not necessary come from a particular user.
“Intended” Usage Indicates that something has changed that affects the user, likely without the user being directly involved in the change. For example, “Larry just moved 3 spaces ahead of you” or “You have a message waiting. Click here!”
Common Usage Often used interchangeably with requests since Notifications currently have the advantage (soon to disappear) of optionally being sent via email. The metrics for how many notifications an app can send also make them often more attractive than requests, and they often don’t require sender confirmation, but they are easier for users to mark as spam and also easier to ignore.
Comments The email functionality built into notifications is being removed soon. Due to the spam controls and the ease of ignoring them, our applications tend to use notifications as-intended and thus aren’t blocked for being spammy.
Email
Description Once a feature of notifications, emails are now Their Own Thing. Applications can send email messages to users, including some basic HTML content. These users must already have the application installed, preventing applications from spamming random Facebook users.
“Intended” Usage Likely intended to offer basic off-site messaging for applications that need to alert users about something deserving more attention than a Notification. For example, a gambling app could offer users an “email me when the pot reaches XXX dollars” feature, which would bring them back to Facebook.
Common Usage Yet to be seen. Few applications are using the new email feature because email through notifications still works (for now).
Comments Some developers have expressed frustration with the limitations of this feature, both for testing and for real usage. Expect the mechanics and real-world usage here to change over the next few months.
Mini-Feed
Description The small area in the upper-right of a user’s profile page that contains updates, including new friend connections, new applications installed, and messages sent by applications. Mini-feed items can contain links and images.
“Intended” Usage To indicate that the user has performed an action with the application, created something new, or their status within the application has somehow changed. Examples: “John just created a new taco using Taco Shoppe”, “Juliana just attained Master Chef status in Wild World of Cooking”.
Common Usage Varies a ton — there are a lot of clever feed items. The feed is pretty loosely defined so that anything that changes within an app is viewed as a legitimate news event. There are metrics that limit feed item posting from a particular app for a particular user.
Comments Users can now mark feed items as spam, which is a relatively recent change.
News Feed
Description The long list of updates you see in the middle column of your home page. The feed items include updates from friends and advertisements. A feed is just a partial rendering of all of your friends’ mini feeds (above). In other words, it picks out the most “relevant” items from all your friends’ mini feeds, adds in some advertising and serves it up to you.
“Intended” Usage It’s supposed to provide you with a quick view of what’s going on with Facebook and what your friends are doing.
Common Usage Reading through feed items is one of the main draws of Facebook, and a feature that other social networks are beginning to emulate. It gives the sense that there is lots of activity and always gives the viewer new things to try out.
Comments Clients often ask us if we can “post to a friend’s feed.” It doesn’t really work that way. You don’t post to the feed; you post to the mini-feed. If you’re lucky, and the feed item is relevant, it will be seen on friends’ feeds. If it’s something that’s intended for a particular user, it should likely be a Notification or a Request.
Wall
Description The wall is a section of a user’s profile page where other users can write messages, leave gifts, or attach application content for others to see. The recipient can “reply” to the sender’s wall, creating a “wall-to-wall” interaction that’s cute in theory, but results in bizarre half-conversations on each person’s wall!
“Intended” Usage Ideally, used for leaving simple “hey, what’s up?” messages, and giving users publicly-visible pictures and gifts. The half-conversation functionality, while strange, is there by design, likely in response to how users ended up doing it.
Common Usage Applications can “hijack” the wall in a way by offering attachments. For example, our Music Mixes application gives users the option of giving a mix to their friends by posting it on their wall for anybody to play.
Comments The Wall is one of the many features that various applications have “replaced” by offering improved versions. Two of the most popular Facebook applications are SuperWall and FunWall, which provide a wealth of features that the built-in wall does not.
Messages
Description Simple web-based email. Users are notified via email that they have a message on Facebook. Messages can only be viewed on the site and users can Reply, but there is no forwarding or other email-like features.
“Intended” Usage Messages are threaded, so they are probably intended for users to carry on an ongoing conversation. There are no folders, forward, or cc, so messages were likely not intended to replace email.
Common Usage Messages have replaced email! Many users on Facebook prefer Facebook’s messaging to email because there are fewer spam concerns (senders are generally who they say they are) and all their friends are already there. Applications can add attachments to messages, just like they can with Wall posts.
Comments Look for more advanced email-like functionality as messages take over email.
Gift
Description An item given from one user to another.
“Intended” Usage Originally, gifts were more specifically small graphical images that you could buy on Facebook for $1 each and give to a user with a message. Gifts could be public or private.
Common Usage The term has widened in scope to include other types of virtual goods that are exchanged on Facebook (and other social networks). One of the first apps to take off was Free Gifts, which offered functionality nearly identical to Facebook’s gifts but without any charges. Facebook’s feature still exists, but gifts now range from free artwork to user-generated gadgets.
Comments Gifting is a great way to get new users if done right!
Poke
Description A no-effort form of messaging. Users can click a link from another user’s profile to “poke” them. The poked user gets a message saying they’ve been poked.
“Intended” Usage Depending on the poker and pokee, it could be a flirt, a request to chat, or just a hello.
Common Usage Largely replaced by applications like SuperPoke and the general sense that the whole poking thing has played out and isn’t that interesting anymore. People today apparently prefer to throw sheep at each other.
Comments Applications don’t directly interact with the poke feature, but I’m including you on the list so you’ll know what it means if you get poked.
Event
Description Similar to a Request but for a specific thing happening at a time and place. Users can invite people to an Event and the event’s page tracks the responses.
“Intended” Usage Built as an informal way to throw a party and invite people on Facebook.
Common Usage Events are huge! Facebook does more events than Evite. There is currently no way for applications to interact with the event system, but we’re hoping it’ll come soon!
Comments
Page (a.k.a. Business Page)
Description Similar to a user profile, but for a business or group entity, like a restaurant or band.
“Intended” Usage Intended to avoid the problem of businesses signing up as users and marketing running amok on Facebook. Users are supposed to become “fans” of the entities on pages and can go to the Page to interact with applications, talk to other fans, and learn more about the business entity.
Common Usage Too early to say. Signing up as a fan doesn’t seem to have taken off and few business pages offer a compelling reason to come to their Page. Pages can add applications, and developers can build applications specifically for Pages, but few developers have experience in this area at this time.
Comments Context Optional built one of the first Pages applications, an OpenTable Reservations application that restaurants can use to let diners book a table right from Facebook. The app has been publicly described as “one of the best examples of an application for Pages” by representatives of Facebook. Woo hoo!

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Startup Tip #1) Don’t Listen to Me or Anybody Else

December 2nd, 2007

I’m putting this first because I know you’re busy starting a company and I can save you a lot of time by telling you to skip all the other tips and listen to this one. Or don’t. That’s the whole point.

When I, and later we, were first starting out, we sought a lot of advice. We talked to friends, mentors, other startup veterans, current founders, VC contacts, teachers, etc. Most of them had really good advice, but the problem was that we talked to too many people. For every smart person who gave a given piece of advice, we could find an equally smart person who said the exact opposite. I remember one drive down the Peninsula where we mapped out exactly who was in which camp on each issue.

The fact is that when people give you advice, they’re basing it on either something that worked for them, or something that went horribly wrong for them. If they never got to a million users, they’ll tell you, “Don’t bother building in scalability up front — just get the product out there.” If they were bought by Google for their caching technology, they’ll tell you, “Focus on the platform, keep the product simple.” On financing especially, you get advice all over the map. “Take as little money as possible to get to your next proof point.” “Take as much as you can right now in case things don’t work out right away.” “Don’t take money from the A-list VCs because they’ll pressure you into taking a bigger risk.” “Don’t take money from some no-name VC because it’s all about the smart money.”

It’s not that the advice isn’t helpful, it’s just that following any one person’s advice is almost certain to be wrong. They started their company in a different time, a different space, with different constraints. You should listen to as many people as possible, but also realize that they’re not really giving you advice, they’re giving you their own biases. Many of the best advisers realize that and will be upfront — “…of course, that’s just what worked for me.” But if you’re talking to someone who doesn’t add that disclaimer, be sure to add it yourself as the advice enters your brain. Or don’t — that’s just what ended up working for me.

Up next: You Will Always Be One Step Away…

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37 Things I Wish I Had Known Before Starting a Company

November 21st, 2007

When I started a company a year and a half ago, I also started a list of things that would’ve been useful to have known ahead of time. My plan was to publish the list several years later in hindsight, but now that I’ve reached a nice round number (37) and half of my friends are starting companies, I thought it would be appropriate to start blogging a few of the less embarrassing ones.

I’ll be focusing on one item in each post, but don’t worry — after you read tip #1, you won’t have to read any of the others. Here are the first five I’m going to write about:

  1. Don’t Listen to Me or Anybody Else
  2. You Will Always Be One Step Away…
  3. Your Friends Won’t Be the Rabid Beta Users You Think They’ll Be
  4. It’ll Never Be “Obvious” in Six Months
  5. Technical Cop-Outs are Lame
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OpenSocial’s Rhetoric About Open Standards is Disingenuous and Misses the Point

November 18th, 2007

Many of the prominent blog posts and press pieces about OpenSocial have touted its use of open standards a key benefit for developers. Focusing on HTML and JavaScript is not only inaccurate, but it actually makes the platform less attractive for developers.

We Like FBML
As a developer, I am far more interested in coding in FBML than in HTML for the following reasons:

  • It’s a superset. FBML isn’t a “proprietary language,” it’s a set of tags added to HTML that make it easier to write social apps. With FBML, I can show or hide elements of the page based on whether two users are friends — it’s a simple tag that Facebook handles on their side. If I were using HTML, it would be up to me to figure out if the two users are friends through an API call.
  • It’s high performance. With FBML, I can add features and logic to a page without my server doing any work. This is because certain features of Facebook (ranging from friend links to wall functionality) are just built in and are reduced to simple view elements.
  • It’s a view layer. If you knew nothing about CSS, you could still create an attractive Facebook page with an appearance consistent to the rest of the site just using the built in tags.

As a developer, FBML is handing parts of the logic of my app, most of the appearance, and offloading work from my server. OpenSocial, as we currently know it, offers none of these features and touts that gaping hole as a key advantage!

Facebook Applications Can Be Written with HTML and JavaScript
Even if you were convinced that a social application platform that requires nothing more than HTML and JavaScript was somehow desirable, you’d be wrong in saying that it’s not something Facebook offers. With an iframe app, or even an FBML app that only uses the HTML portions of FBML, you can essentially do the same things. If you needed to make API calls, which are done in JavaScript in OpenSocial, you’d either dip a bit into FBML and realize that it’s much easier than writing code, or you’d do it on the server side, where controller logic actually belongs!

OpenSocial is Java
I’m far from the first person to compare OpenSocial to Java, but I agree that the comparison is apt. When I was in high school and read about Java, I was excited that there would finally be a platform that would run all the world’s software regardless of the hardware and OS it ran on. Java made a huge splash but it took a long time for the reality to come anywhere near the hype. The challenge for OpenSocial will be to get real apps running in real containers in a way that resembles something more than some interesting demos. That plus a real security model would do the trick.

A Press Piece Masquerading as a Technical Feature
If Facebook developers aren’t excited about a platform that uses open standards, who is all the talk about open standards aimed at? Developers who haven’t written social apps yet? The ones who have been chomping at the bit with some really great ideas, but have been waiting on the sidelines because Ning didn’t have a platform yet? Obviously, it’s something that sounds technical, but it’s PR. Open standards sound good, proprietary language doesn’t. Which makes it too bad that…

OpenSocial Needs Its Own Markup Language
OpenSocial needs its own markup language to be successful. There needs to be a clean way for containers to extend that markup language and API calls in a namespaced and gracefully degrading way. It would be a significant change in the architecture of OpenSocial to do it, but I believe it’s necessary. Otherwise, all we’ve got are iframes — widgets with some small degree of integration into the container.

OpenSocial is an Opportunity
I’m annoyed at this one aspect of how OpenSocial is being positioned, but at a higher level, I still think it’s a good idea with lots of potential. I don’t believe for a moment that developers will be able to write once and run anywhere if their app has any interesting functionality. But I also don’t think it’s necessary to have 100% parity on all containers. The best thing about Facebook apps is how well they integrate with Facebook. To write a really good OpenSocial app, it should be focused on particular containers and integrated with the unique features those containers offer. I’m also glad to see other networks start to open up and offer a little healthy competition against Facebook’s platform. As Facebook app developers, we’ve already received inquiries about OpenSocial development and intend to pursue it aggressively. Should be pretty easy — it uses open standards!

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