Do You Miss Chat? Facebook May Have The Answer.

Brian Solis over at bub.blicio.us (who is one of my new March subscriptions) posted an article on Facebook adding a new chat feature, with a link to the Facebook blog telling users about the new feature.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be available on my Facebook yet, perhaps they’re starting with North America. Nonetheless, I’m excited to start using it.

My first reaction: great! I already think Twitter is so powerful because it almost emulates that “water cooler” or “chatroom” function that the internet used to have (I do miss the chat rooms because MSN is usually just one-to-one) and Ping.sg, a community-focused aggregator already has a chat function on the page as well. It’s almost like we’ve come full circle back to the era of chat.

The second reaction: I’m assuming that you have to remain logged in on Facebook to use the chat and see who’s online. This leads to longer time on the Facebook site, presumably more exposure to the increasing number of Facebook ads, and a way to combat Facebook Fatigue?

What do you think?

Icio Week 10

• A terrorist escaped from a Singaporean detention centre last week. Nabilah tells us how Facebook groups help to hunt him down, even if some are tongue in cheek.

• Want more subscriptions? Do what Chris Brogan does: Ask!

• Comments? Discussions? The debate continues

• Chris Clarke tells you why you should be an expert in some field to bring something special to the table. (Told you this guy only writes good stuff)

• Maybe we’re not facing Facebook fatigue? Statistics suggest there are still plenty of unique visitors on Facebook. Maybe it’s the early and/or late majority catching up?

Facebook Developer Garage

It’s today and I got invited by Bjorn via Facebook.

I have to admit at first I was a little lukewarm because, well, I’m not a developer per se. I’m a social media junkie.

Then I got to see that marketing and monetisation of Facebook will be the topic of a panel discussion and now I really want to go because I’m really interested to know whether other people think Facebook is slowly dying out and if we’re really facing Facebook Fatigue, even here in Asia.

My personal guess is that in Asia it’s not as obvious as in the US, because if the whole world were mapped on to an adoption curve, I think people in this part of the world would probably fall under early to late majority. So there’s plenty of room yet for the m to jump on board.

Unfortunately, I strongly doubt I’ll be able to attend the event because I have a fairly important exam the next day. How much does that suck?

Anyone else going? Can I get Twitter updates?

New Entrants To The Blogosphere

While the discussion about Facebook fatigue is making its rounds on the internet, I thought I’d post something of cheer and invite you to welcome two friends of mine to the Blogosphere:

Amelia is hosting a food blog, and I assure you that you don’t have to be a foodie to check out her blog. I actually enjoy messing around in the kitchen from time to time, so this is going to be a favourite of mine.

Next we have Jacqueline who is hosting a photography blog. Photography is something I’ve picked up only recently in November 2007, and Jac’s pictures continually blow me away (not to mention I’m insanely jealous of her fisheye lens).

Both Jac and Amelia were fellow travellers with me in New York over the December holidays, and I’m hoping you’ll enjoy their blogs as much as we enjoyed food and photography together in New York. We’re all also current classmates in a social media class in SMU, and I’d love for you to join their communities and enjoy their passion!

Facebook Fatigue?

I’ve been suspecting that Facebook’s been seeing a decline in activity for sometime. Just about half a year ago, the ‘home’ section with updates from my friends would be flooded hourly. Now I can login after 8 hours, and find that almost nothing has changed.

Suspicions have been confirmed with this article from ReadWriteWeb (once again picked up by Readburner, have I convinced you of its usefulness yet?), which says

There are now 15,422 apps on the Facebook platform — how many of them are truly useful? Anecdotal evidence would suggest that the novelty has worn off and users are finally starting to demand more of the applications they install.

The article also has statistics about the number of Facebook app users at their peak, and now:

	Peak	Today
Funwall	5800	2500
Superwall	4800	1800
Top Friends	2900	2200
Likeness	821	181
Super poke	1500	500
Movies	814	500
Compare People	1000	471
iLike	941	372
Causes	469	110
Superlatives	320	110
	All figures in 1,000s

There have been criticisms of Facebook in recent weeks: Marketing Pilgrim discusses a partnership between Facebook and the Wall Street Journal signalling desperation from either/both parties, and Jaffe Juice #101 has a comment on how disappointing it is that Facebook is not engaging the new media enough moving forward.

Applications are seriously beginning to rub some people the wrong way, and Facebook isn’t exactly providing the innovation that people want,  but I don’t think that’s making people tired of Facebook, or making them want to jump aboard the next new platform when it occurs.

Personally I think even with most apps stripped away, the Facebook interface is still superior to Friendster (for sure), and at least for network externality reasons, more popular here than MySpace. There are statistics to prove that MySpace is still dominant, but given that it never really caught on in Singapore, it’s not that relevant.

It would be great to hear what people here think, and maybe get a general idea of how the social networking scene is like in Singapore, and then publish some thoughts on that. My guess on where it’s going is the more frivolous applications (Grow a plant, hatch an egg?) will slowly die off, and the real social applications like iLike and Feedheads will gain popularity, as users begin to realise that Facebook can and should act not just as a Friendster clone, but a place to share information and interests in one central space.