Facebook Blog Information for Everyone - Apphire.com

What a crazy week it has been for us.  We have definitely had alot of inquiries and bid acceptances.  It seems that the facebook app market is growing by leaps and bounds.

We were able to sell both of our apps this week and we started 2 big custom app projects.  We were also able to create a new app, named “Before I Get Married” it is a list app that we are going to make as a Turnkey app for people who are looking for this type of turnkey app.  You will be able to make almost any list that you would like, so this will sure be a viral app.

Good Week, Good Week!

We have 2 new apps that are for sale on Sitepoint.

The first app is a list that ask what you want to do “Before I Die“?   This app has gotten over 7,000 installs.

The second app is a Holiday Themed app named “Snow Globe” This app has had over 600 installs in 5 days.  So it is destined to bring in traffic before the holiday.

Troy

Most of my time that I spend talking to a potential client is divided between two different subjects.  First I have to get a grasp of what they are looking for in an app.  You know get some specs, feel out their expectations, educate them about the facebook environment.  The other subject I have to cover is how facebook is different then the normal internet and therefore you have to take conventional  proven internet concepts out of your plans and think differently in regartds to a facebook app.

I have been following Ed Dale for a good while now as he was a instructor when I was in StomperNet.  The one thing I always like about him was his ability to switch gears very quickly.  He sold his internet business for millions and instead of just starting over with the same concept like most people would do, he started making more money in a different avenue.  He is very good with Internet Marketing, but understands that Internet Marketing is not going to work on Facebook at this particular stage.  Sure things might change as Facebook matures, but right now if you throw up a squeeze page or try to get someone to become a lead for you in the ways of internet marketers, you will probrably fail miserably.

Ed posted a great video called “To Market Facebook You Have To Get Facebook“, which is a great video about how you need to understand the landscape of Facebook and not just assume because you have had some success in doing things on the internet you will have the same level of success by doing the same things on Facebook.

I posted a comment to Ed’s video saying how I completely agree with what he is saying and how I have to spend time explaining this concept to potential clients.  Well, someone contacted me in regards to developing facebook applications for them.  They said they saw my post on Ed’s video and wanted to discuss our services.  I assumed (you know what that means) that because this person had watched the video they understood that you had to change your thinking about the facebook community.

My assumption was dead wrong and just proves how people sometimes don’t get Facebook.  This person is an IM, and he wanted to talk to me about teaming up to create some great, “Ninja style apps” that fed people to his Aweber Email list.  I told him that this was not that good of an idea because people are hesitant to give up their email addresses on Facebook.  He said yeah, but with these “Ninja style apps” they wouldn’t even realize they were doing it.  At this point I realized that he just Didn’t get Facebook.  He continued to discuss all of the ways that he wanted to take conventional internet marketing and move it to Facebook.  Eventually I informed him that this was not really possible as Facebook is starting to kill the Spam Apps and that since they control the keys to the castle, then his plans are not really likely to happen.

 So, thanks Ed for trying to educate people, and hopefully the message will resonate with some people.

Troy

I have started a conversation at the facebook developers forum on the minimum server specs that are needed for a Facebook app.  This is like asking “What food would everyone on earth like to eat?” it is a very vague question with lots of possible variables to affect the answer to the question.

Let me start from the beginning.  In our talks to one of the major advertising companies, their CTO requested that we send over the minimum server specs that would be needed to run a facebook app.  I explained to him that we were currently using the Amazon Web Services EC2 instances, but of course he wanted specific details.  So where do you find this information, when there is not a good answer?  Where do you go for information that is not widely available yet because of the infancy of facebook app development?

I searched through the forums before I posted my question and I didn’t find much out there for minimum specs.  This has mostly to do with the fact that it is such a vague question.  Some of the variables that will come into play in regards to server specs for a facebook app are Daily Users, Pageviews, Database Usage, and bandwidth.  So, I figured I would give a basic scenario of an app to see what we could come up with for the minimum specs.

1000 installs, 10% daily activity (100 User) - this is the minimum users needed for an app to consider it viral.  Anything less then this and the app will most likely not continue to add users and then die.

We will see if people agree on a minimum standard that is needed for a Facebook app.  My initial thought is that people will be able to give the specs that they are currently using and others will be able to give their failure scenarios.  If this is what comes out of the forum then I would be happy, because at least I would have a starting point to give to potential customers who think that their $5/month shared hosting plan will be scalable enough to handle a Facebook app because “I run tons of site off of this provider, I love them”.  This is a current issue and I am sure will continue to be an issue because of the basic misunderstandings of the Facebook environment compared to the normal internet environment.Troy 

So, I have written in other places that I am sometimes lazy.  I don’t like the details portion of things sometimes.  Well apparently so are other people.  Case in point.  I created an app that we were going to sell, it was on the borderline of Sexy/Offensive, but was meant to be just fun.  It originally got turned down because they said we weren’t using the Facebook platform.  All of our apps use the Facebook platform, so I was confused and emailed app support.  They responded back that I needed to resend my request and they would approve it.  This in itself was very confusing and showed some internal issues at Facebook.

 I resent the request and then 2 days later, we were rejected again and this time they claimed that the app was “offensive”.  We didn’t have the urge to fight this as we have too many other projects we are working on, so we just let this one go.  We tried listing the app, but it wasn’t getting any bids so, we eventually just cancelled the auction.  We did have a back up plan though. We started working with a major advertising company and offered them to look at the code and how we are interacting with Facebook.  They don’t have time to mess with the facebook development, but they know they cannot completely ignore Facebook.  During their research they decided to resubmit the app, to test out the submission to the directory process.  Well apparently the Facebook Directory Approval Team is trying to rush things for the holidays, because it was submitted 2 days before Thanksgiving and the day before Thanksgiving it was approved in the directory. I am in complete shock at how we got approved after the 3rd submission.  I guess the old saying is true, “Third time is a charm”.  So, sometimes laziness is good.  Well, at least that’s what I keep telling myself.Troy