Facebook is rapidly catching up with Myspace in becoming the largest and most popular social networking site. It took me quite some time to join an invite from a friend and thereafter, I was addicted!
I am still exploring and testing some of the applications. Join me in my journey of exploration and discovery in Facebook.
I have recently found some money making applications on Facebook and would like to share some of the application that I am currently using them to earn some free cash on Facebook.
Cash Cliques
Cash Cliques allows you to earn free cash everyday in less than 5 minutes of your time. Install this application on your Facebook with a few easy steps. For every ad you click on, you will get paid!
It is simple and there are also random cash prizes to win up of $100. You can also refer your friends and get paid when friends you referred click on ads too! Payment will be made through Paypal or Check. Minimum payout is $10.
Clixcash Clixcash is a similar program to Cash Cliques. This is also a paid per ad viewed program. The difference is that you only need to view the ads for 20 seconds instead of 30.
Payment is also done through Paypal or Check. Minimum payout is $5 instead of $10.
One of the Web’s entertaining conspiracy theories about Facebook is the idea that the CIA helped found Facebook as its latest information-gathering tool. With recent outrage of privacy invasion of Facebook’s advertisement technology, this theory resurfaced and there was another round of fear and concerns on privacy invasions.
This conspiracy theory was first sparked off when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) started using Facebook as a platform to recruit potentional employees into its National Clandestine Service in December 2006.
The CIA's Facebook page (login required) provides an overview of what the NCS is looking for in a recruit aim at potential college-aged applicants. U.S. citizens with a GPA above 3.0. The NCS, one of the four directorates of the CIA, was established following 9/11 to gather intelligence from sources both domestic and abroad. However, both Facebook and CIA deny the accusation. They claimed that CIA had setup the Facebook profile mainly for recruiting and marketing purposes, CIA has no direct access to member’s profile.
Facebook's privacy policy states that outside companies sponsoring groups don't have access to personal information or profiles. However, it does say that information may be shared with "other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies," in order to comply with the law.
There are also theories that outlines the supposed CIA effort and tries to connect dots between the CIA, the U.S. Department of Defense and Facebook’s investors.
It was known that Facebook's first round of venture capital funding ($US500,000) came from former Paypal CEO Peter Thiel. Author of anti-multicultural tome 'The Diversity Myth', he is also on the board of radical conservative group VanguardPAC.
The second round of funding into Facebook ($US12.7 million) came from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Its manager James Breyer was formerly chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and served on the board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the CIA in 1999. One of the company's key areas of expertise is in "data mining technologies".
There can be many associations between Facebook and CIA, however Facebook is only as powerful as the information people voluntarily add to it. If you’re worried about privacy, don’t create a profile on Facebook, and if you must have one, omit any aspects of your life and actions that you don’t want others to know about.
Will Facebook become the standard social networking platform on the net? When Facebook launched it’s new platform for developers, there are some who doubted if they can really make money on Facebook. With many uncertainties ahead, some businesses are hesitated to used Facebook as their marketing tools. There are concerns that Mark Zuckerberg might sold off Facebook and that the future of Facebook is uncertain.
To date, Facebook have already launched a Facebook Platform for BlackBerry Smartphone, followed by iPhone-specific version of their site, http://iphone.facebook.com. Admob, a leading mobile ad publishing solutions company already announced that their publishing solutions are optimized for Facebook.
Mike Lazaridis, the Co-CEO of Research In Motion is quoted saying
“Facebook is one of the fastest growing web destinations among BlackBerry smartphone users and it has become an important element in the evolving fabric of personal communications.”
With close to 30 Million users worldwide on Facebook and growing at a rapid rate on a daily basis, we can expect to see more and more integration of Facebook into the business arena. We can see the big players like Ernst and Young, Johnson and Johnson, Coca Cola already in the lead to integrate Facebook into their marketing strategies. Blockbuster has also built an application that lets Facebook users search thousands of movie titles, create lists of movies they want to see and share movie reviews.
While some are already starting to make money on Facebook, some are still experimenting their applications. The real profit will only be seen in the near future when Facebook platform is fully exploit.
So will Facebook be the real platform? It still seems early to determine at this point in time but certainly a lot of businesses and investors are already looking into ways to tap on the hugh members on Facebook. So if you are not at it, you might be losing out this big pie!
As you can see in Facebook’s directory, there are thousands of applications to choose from, so which one should you choose? Here are a list of popular fun applications that you might want to explore.
Vibrating Hamster The vibrating hamster is a simple picture of a lovable rodent you can put on your profile. As the name suggests, every time you click the picture, the hamster vibrates violently while playing the Web meme-famous hamster dance song. To keep anonymous hamster vibrations at bay, the application will track who was the latest to click and display it prominently on your wall.
ILike iLike lets you add music and videos to your profile, dedicate songs to your friends, and see who’s going to what concerts. You can create an artist page, upload your music and events. Pretty cool application! However, they currently don’t have the full song uploaded, only 30-seconds samples but they claim to be working on it to get full songs catalog.
Superwall Superwall is a creation of RockYou, they have successfully created popular applications such as Vampires, MyGifts etc. Superwall provide more flexibility compared to the normal wall provided by Facebook. It allows you to write messages, post photos, and post videos on your friends superwall.
Vampires Vampires is an application which allows you to attack your friends turn them into bloody vampires. Bite all your friends with the curse of the vampire and see if you can turn them into undead, just like you. With this application, you can choose to fight your friends’s vampires, zombies and WereWolves.
Superpoke Superpoke provides more actions you can do to your friends than the normal poke provided by Facebook. You can throw a sheep, bake a cake or throw a snowball at your friends. The more you take action, the more new actions you will uncover in superpoke. Pretty addictive and fun to say hello to your friends.
My Aquarium This application is a fish tank simulator gone social. You start out with 250 coins to buy new fish, and earn an extra 100 every day. Each fish has a specific price and lifespan, with the more expensive and exotic creatures lasting longer than the cheapies. You can share fish with others, by sending them to your friend's tanks, and display them lovingly on your profile. The application will also publicly display a history of the fish you've sent and received. Unfortunately there's no animation or movement; the fish just sit there.
Where I’ve Been Rumored to be the largest acquisition for a Facebook Application to date. Travel company TripAdvisor has reportedly acquired Where I’ve Been from Craig Ulliott for $3 million. Where I’ve Been is an interactive map that allows you to add all the places you've been and where you want to someday go. Then you can compare maps with your other friends.
With Facebook’s launch of f8 platform, developers are able to develop their own applications that integrate tightly with Facebook. This has opened up many doors of opportunities to software developers. If you are a software developer, this will be a great time to put monetize your skills. Many companies are starting to tap onto this opportunites and they will require your expertise to build an application that can help promote their business on Facebook.
Till date, there are already over 10,000 applications added to Facebook and this number will keep growing. Most of the applications are for fun and entertainment. But I would expect more commercial applications to be seen in the near future.
You can find a list of applications on their application directory. This directory shows the newest and most popular applications, along with a counter of how many people are using them. You can add or remove these applications anytime. Once you've found the one you like, you can simply add it to your profile. Likewise, if you find one of your friends using an application, you can click the link to its name to find out more about it. After adding the application, you can invite your friends to add the application on their profile too.
Once you have set up your profile, set your security and added your friends to Facebook, how do you start saying hello to your friends?
You can send your friend a message. Your sent message will be stored in your inbox. The replies from your friend will also be stored in the inbox. You can view your message under the “Inbox” tag.
You can also click on your friend to see their profile and write a note on their wall. The wall is a place to leave a note on everyone's profile page. You will be able to leave attachments on people's Walls, including photos, videos, and all sorts of rich media items that have been integrated with Facebook.
Alternatively, you can poke him! The poke is a subtle, wordless way of saying hello to someone you know. Your poke will show up in their notifications box when they log back in, and they'll have the option to poke you back, or ignore it. Poking is ultimately useless, although many would agree it's one of the small charms and reminders that differentiates Facebook from other social networks.
You can add more applications to your Facebook and invite your friends to add the applications to their profile too. I will talk more about application on my next post.
There have always been concerns regarding Facebook’s privacy. In 2006, Facebook implemented a new feature called 'News Feeds' that would display every action you took on the site to your friends, without giving the users the option to hide that information from anyone. This resulted in outrage on the social networking site. Members created petitions, groups on the site (some with hundreds of thousands of members), and many wrote about it on their own blogs until they were issued an official apology in addition to strict privacy options from the site's founder.
Sometime this year, some code used on Facebook's home page and search page was accidentally exposed due to a configuration problem on the site's server, which raised concerns about how secure your private data on the site really is.
Just last month, Facebook users raises another spark of privacy concerns when Facebook’s two-week-old marketing program is publicizing some users purchases for friends to see.
Nonetheless, Facebook has once again emphasise their commitment to safeguard users’ information and is working on giving users additional privacy options.
Thus it is important to note that it is not recommended to provide personal information such address, phone number or other private information on Facebook. There are also some recommended privacy setting that you could take note to protect your information.
Once you have logged in to Facebook, on the left hand corner of your Facebook, you will find “privacy”. Once you enter the privacy page, you can set the your security levels of privacy.
Under each of these setting, click on edit. On this edit page, you can decide who can view your profile, who can contact you, who can view your photos and messages. It is recommended that you set all to “Only my Friends” or “No one”.
Getting started on Facebook is easy. Facebook, like other social networks, is all about getting in touch with others. Once you have registered your account, you can start by filling out your own profile. You can also choose to upload your personal photo. You are not required to include anything about yourself, so don't feel too inclined to fill out information you don't want others to see; which brings us to the topic of privacy. I will explain more on privacy in my next post.
Next, you can start to add your friends to your Facebook. You can find your friends on Facebook by using their search feature or their built-in friend finder.
To get started adding friends to Facebook (many of who may already be on the system), use your most active Web mail account (Hotmail, as one example), and your AIM buddy list, which in some cases could pull up nearly everyone you know. Since everyone needs an e-mail address to sign up with Facebook, giving Facebook permission to use your existing address books should make it possible to track down everyone with whom you communicate.
If your friend is not on Facebook yet, you can also send their an invitation from Facebook to invite them to join you. You can also choose to join any networks that you think might be interesting to you.
While adding your friends, you can also choose to add details on how you get to know your friend and once your friends had receive the request and confirm that the details are correct, you will be able to see your friend under “Friends” in your profile.
Facebook is a social networking site designed to connect users. Sites such as MySpace and Friendster are similar, Facebook allows individuals to create profiles that include personal interests, affiliations, pictures. Launched in February 2004, they have attracted over 8 million users in US alone.
Facebook was founded by former-Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg. While he was studying at Harvard, he was doing this as a hobby, using Facebook as a way for him and his friends to better connect with schoolmates. It was well received in Harvard and it soon exploded to other campus. It became so popular that before he knew it, it had become a national student network phenomenon. Thereafter, Zuckerberg and his fellow Harvard student dropped out of Harvard to run Facebook fulltime.
Because of his Harvard background, there are a lot of comparisons between him and Bill Gate. And the big question being raised, could he be the next Bill Gate?
Earlier, there were some reports that Yahoo wants to acquire Facebook for $1 Billion dollars. Mark Zuckerberg rejects the offer and told Yahoo that his website is more than just a billion dollar.
On 24th May 2007, Zuckerberg held a massive press/developer event today in San Francisco to officially launch Facebook Platform, a set of tools that lets designers and businesses create their own applications for the site, A number of third party applications will also be announced, including Microsoft, Amazon, Slide, RockYou, Box.net, Red Bull, Washington Post, Project Agape, Prosper, Snapvine, iLike, PicksPal, Digg, Plum and others. Seventy companies in total are currently developing applications. Facebook’s new platform reportedly attracting 1,000 developers a day in its first month.
On 24th Oct 2007, it was announced that Microsoft had bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million, valuing the social utility site at roughly $15 billion. The deal makes geeky twenty-three-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, at least on paper, worth $5 billion!
