Today Facebook presented a 6-month developer roadmap. Finally – it’s been frustrating as hell writing a book about Facebook and not knowing what was coming from them and when, not to mention staying abreast of all the changes for our clients. In their presentation Facebook said that there were not many or big changes being announced, but I beg to differ. Some of them are quite significant. I’ll be covering those changes over the coming weeks and how they will affect your business, personal, and application presences on Facebook. What’s great is that Facebook is actually giving developers a heads-up for the next six months, and making that information public to all. That’s fantastic. If only I had this before I started writing the book.

Let’s get to the meat of it.

What’s chopped? What’s not? The first  big change, for both developers and users, center around the Facebook Stream and communication channels. Facebook is offering a new one, which is big news, and taking away some old ones, which is, perhaps, bigger news…

The Stream

Notifications are dead. Both application-to-user and user-to-user. At least the way they work today. Ouch.

For those applications or companies that depend on these for growth this is a blow. What are notifications? They are the little lightweight messages that pop up in the Facebook user interface to let you know of some event happening in an application. They can be sent currently by applications on behalf of their users to their friends or other application users (in the case of user-to-user notifications) or from an application to its users directly (for application-to-user ones.) Facebook collects the recent ones in the bottom right of the Facebook window, as shown in the image on the left (usually filled with messages from Facebook, Living Social, or Mafia Wars.) All user-to-user notifications will be routed to the Inbox; however, there will be no way for applications to send anything on behalf of their users anymore without their consent.  Invitations/requests will also be routed ’somewhere’ into the Inbox. Which is fine since I cannot remember the last time time I have even looked at my requests. When they hit the 300-or-so mark I simply delete them all.  Those are all being routed to the Inbox in the near future.

Why kill notifications, one of the only ways left for apps to communicate with users without their consent? Simply put, they don’t work, except in very specific circumstances. Most of the time they are noise. A LOT of noise. Additionally, most people have no clue they even exist or where they live. Currently users have to keep track of five different communication channels in Facebook: invites/requests, messages (Facebook Inbox today), notifications, Feed stories (the stuff on your Wall and News Feed), and IM/Chat. They say it’s too much and no one is clear where to look for them. They’re right.

So basically one-to-one communications of all types Facebook wants to route to the Inbox: one spot for users to check messages targeted directly at them. Makes sense. Unclear how/if Chat will be affected if at all.

One-to-many communications will be handled solely by the Stream in the form of Feed stories published via the Open Stream API. And the automatically-published one-line stores that applications can publish to your Recent Activity section on your Wall? Also gone.

Honestly I think this is a great thing for users and for applications. Why? Because now more than ever developers and content providers are going to have to think about engagement first, before features, before copying the other guy, before writing a line of code. The only way for apps to really spread through the Stream is for users to interact with the stories that applications post there – meaning stories that application users *allow* them to post to begin with – either via the Like or Comment features.

The other big news on the communcation front is that Facebook will provide a means for developers to prompt their users for, and grant the right to store users’ real e-mail addresses. Also the right to store their first and last names most likely, though at the time of this post the details have not been hashed out. You heard that right. Facebook will allow applications to contact users directly without having to use Facebook as the intermediary. This is HUGE. And a huge boon for Facebook Connect developers for sure.

What do you think?

UI Changes : Dashboards, Counters, and the Death of the Profile Box

Facebook is changing the look and feel of the Home Page, at least. A long, narrow bar will contain entries very similar to the way the Facebook Application menu looks today. The screen shot to the right, though blurry, gives you the idea. It will contain the friend lists like it  does today but will also incorporate Bookmarks. And they’re finally giving developers an FBML <fb:bookmark/> tag so they don’t have to jump through hoops to get users to do so. Finally. They are also introducing UI menus they call ‘Dashboards’ that originally will be of two types: Applications and Games. Recommendations might make the cut as well. These are all in early mock-up stages but will potentially be easier ways for users to find new apps and games. There are no distinctions at this time between them.

To allow users to see when applications have notified them of something they need to act on – the way notifications do today – Facebook is introducing Counters to the right of bookmarked (only?) applications in this new UI bar. You can see them in the image to the right. Counters show the number of things ‘you need to deal with’ in the item their associated with. Presumably this would be user-to-user or application-to-user messages in the Inbox, for example.

The Facebook chrome is going to change (again) as well – new top nav, cleaner layout.

And oh the poor Boxes tab is finally meeting its maker. As developers we called it ‘Siberia’. If an app had a presence there its engagement was dismal, so this should be of no big surprise to anyone. One other interesting change is the change to profile or application tabs – they are going to be given much less real estate width-wise. I assume this is to compensate for the new left nav idiom? Anwyay they are going from 760->560 pixels in width.

Ethan hinted at some other (seemingly very significant) changes to the Profile page as well. They want to allow more sharing of content that makes your Profile more unique. That’s great – right now everyone’s looks identical except for the profile pic and potentially the one application profile box below the friends widget. They could not elaborate on these changes but suggested that they would involve some work for developers.

Platform Policies and Programs

Highlights here included an entirely new Facebook Developer site with completely rewritten Platform documentation, more social features focused on community. That’s great: the existing wiki is weak at best, pathetic at worst. Many of the most important pages became woefully outdated yet were locked from public editing (<cough>FBJS</cough>). They will be providing comprehensive how-to guides and walkthroughs and will also provide all the content they covered in the demo today. One other interesting thing is that they will be providing a ‘Health of the Platform’ section that will show how all (?!) the APIs are currently working in the wild and the current top bugs they are working on fixing, and those they expect you to work around. This will undoubtedly lessen the massive forum threads that alternate between ‘it works’ and ‘it doesn’t’ posts.

The gargantuan 14-page opus that comprises the Facebook Platform policies have been shrunk to 3. With screenshots showing best practices and examples of flagrant violations of policy. Fantastic!

Application and Page Insights will be updated and accessible through APIs. Darn, just about finished the app to scrape them dynamically.

Open Graph API

This is the next evolution of Facebook Connect it sounds like. Basically it was pitched as a way for ‘any web page’ to become a Facebook Fan Page/Public Profile through the use of what I assume are custom widgets or code in the Facebook Connect or Facebook JavaScript Client Libraries.

For example, let’s say as a brand I don’t want a Facebook Page. I’ve spent a lot of time cultivating an audience on an external site that I control and don’t want to fragment them by investing in a Facebook presence as well. The Open Graph API will allow me to add Facebook widgets and access their entire API allowing my users to become Fans of my EXTERNAL page – and have that show up on their Profiles WITHIN Facebook. These external pages will also show up in Facebook Search from within Facebook, just like they were Pages within the site. Developers will be able to publish Streams targeted directly at these Fans on the external site(s) that use the API. This will undoubtedly be an interesting area of development in the coming months. Along with direct email communication this will probably jolt Facebook Connect implementations into the stratosphere.

Questions Asked By the Audience

Some of these were very good so I’ve included them to the best of my knowledge:

Q: As part of it’s new interactive developer site is Facebook going to give developers a ‘vote’ on features for Facebook to add?

A: Um, no.

Q: What’s up with Facebook’s currency system? Any news?

A: Facebook credits (used in past to purchase Facebook Gifts) are still in use, but they have no ‘real’ announcements. They are testing whether or not to allow developers to use or accept them as currency in their apps but that’s about it for now.

Q: How are apps going to prompt for user email addresses? Extended permissions are painful today.

A: They know, they are going to collapse them into a fewer number of them that allow users and developers a more clear view of how they work and what they grant.

Q: Will counters only show up for bookmarked applications?

A: Yes

Q: Will ‘Publish to a Friend’s Wall’ still work?

A: Not been addressed; only changes they’ve made to the Stream have been the Open Stream API and that’s just been a week ago – no changes planned.

Q: Is Facebook killing the verified applications program altogether?

A: Yes! They are going to spend a lot of time and expense making sure ALL applications are up to the same level of quality as verified ones were.

Q: Any idea in the new Stream of which messages will get more visibility or prioritization (popularity?)

A: Likes and Comments are key – make sure that people want to Comment and Like them. This will ensure their spread. He was unsure of how this affects search rankings within Facebook search.

That’s about it, in a nutshell.

Thoughts? Questions?

Twitter is very popular now – getting mentions on daytime talk shows,  spurring celebrity competitions, and even receiving governmental uptime requests. People and companies are jumping on to the service because everyone else is. But should they be?

The answer for most companies is probably no.

Using social media isn’t about checking a box or matching the competition. It is about finding new ways to enhance a company’s relationship with its customers, whether is it just listening to them, giving them more information, or truly engaging them in conversation or even brand development. Twitter is a medium that can enable this in a low cost way, but it may not be the right place for your company.

Here are some reasons why not:

• You don’t know if your customers are actually on Twitter. This is pretty simple to find out – go to search.twitter.com, and run some searches with your company name, your brands, and other keywords and it should be pretty obvious whether your customers are talking about you. You might also search for your competitors – are they getting mentioned? If your customers aren’t there, then try to spend your resources somewhere they actually are.
• You haven’t committed time and resources. Social media takes time, and Twitter is no exception. A good Twitter strategy would involve daily searching and interacting, production of useful content, effective resolution of issues, and a plan for incorporation of useful feedback. If your company isn’t prepared to allocate these resources and commit to following through day after day, then your Twitter outreach is likely to fail.
• You are just checking a box. People can sense a lack of authenticity. Oprah’s total of 5 tweets in June have turned the positive feelings of many supporters into disillusionment. The negatives of a ghost town far outweigh the benefits of just having an account.
• It doesn’t fit into your marketing plan. You need to have a plan to make your social media efforts succeed and it needs to be part of your overall marketing plan. If everyone isn’t moving in the same direction, it is likely that your social media efforts might contradict or change the effects that the general marketing plan is trying to achieve. It is much better to get everyone lined up under the same set of goals, and use each medium to its full potential to reach those goals.

If you don’t have the issues above, and are ready to start, but don’t know how – don’t let that stop you. It is better to start and have an open mind to learning and adjusting than to wait on the sidelines.

The Other Side Group recently wrote a blog post about Keeping Social Media Social. She said that people can get to a state with social media where they subscribe to a large number of people, but filter out everyone but a select few to compensate for the information overload. Participation with the masses goes down, and results in one-way conversations that are no different from traditional marketing.

I think there are two benefits to social media that are different than traditional media. The first is listening – companies now have the ability to hear what people are saying in ways they never could before. Blogs, forums, Twitter search, and Facebook status updates all create a stream of searchable content that companies can use to get feedback and keep abreast of perception shifts. They can do this without creating accounts or participating.

The second benefit is engagement with customers. This can affect product cycles, help with PR and marketing, increase sales, help identify trends, decrease support costs and empower fans to help spread the word. Engagement also provides an answer to the question “Is anybody listening?”

A common perception of many of these social media outlets is that they will be a gigantic time drain on already strained resources. This can actually be true – truly listening and interacting with customers can and should take time. That is why it is really important to understand up front what a company’s goals are and what resources they have to commit to the process. Everybody hates finding out that companies aren’t truly involved; that they aren’t really interested in putting in the effort, but are merely checking a box. Lack of authenticity leads to outrage and abandonment. Sites become ghost towns.

Just listening to customers is a great first step. It helps companies to understand how and where they might engage in the future. However, it is important to let people know that you are gathering feedback and it also very important to have a plan to address that feedback, even if that doesn’t happen via social media channels. Customers will appreciate this and will be happy to know that someone is hearing them.

Yesterday, Cappy Popp spoke on a panel hosted by the panel hosted by the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce on “LinkedIn – How to Increase Sales.” The panel also included: Mike Langford, Jeff Cutler and Eric Guerin.
The audience was already reasonably informed and engaged in some type of social media, having the most familiarity with Facebook and LinkedIn, but some with Twitter as well. Their questions focused on the whole of social media as well as specifics about LinkedIn.
Here were some key points from the panel:

Cappy Popp will be speaking at a MITX event Wednesday, June 24, 2009 on a panel titled,  ’Web Marketing on a Shoestring – Being Scrappy in a Down Economy‘.

The second installment of the MITX Marketing Technology Series, an educational series designed to explore the platforms, systems and infrastructures that allow marketers to execute efficiently, will be held  at K&L Gates at the State Street Financial Center in Boston from 8-10AM.

The following industry experts will be joining Cappy:

• Jeff Cram, CSO / Co-Founder,  ISITE Design
• Mike Volpe, VP Marketing, HubSpot
• Greg Slama, Manager of Contextual Marketing, One to One Interactive

Click here for detailed information about the event, or here to register.

Click here for directions. (or via Google)

MITX – the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange – today is the leading industry association in the country, bringing together digital technology, marketing and media professionals, to engage in what is next for the web and how it impacts the marketing and business worlds. With 250 plus member companies representing over 7,000 digital professionals, it is a dynamic and growing community of thought leaders, collaborators, and individuals in search of insight, education and opportunity. Check them out – or even better - join!

Mike Langford, fellow panelist and CEO of Tweetworks, has posted video of the panel discussion from the Girls in Tech Boston event held on May 6th, 2009 at Microsoft’s Cambridge Research Center.

You can view the video here.

Along with Mike, Cappy was joined by the following panelists:

• Rachel Happe, Co-Founder, Community Roundtable
• Karen Rubin, Product Owner, HubSpot and co-host of HubSpot TV

The event, Using Social Media in your Organization , covered many aspects of using and improving social media for business. Case studies from several companies were presented which the panelists reviewed and applied their knowledge to help them improve their reach and results.

Thought Labs’s Cappy Popp will be speaking on a panel titled, “Linked in – How to Increase Sales“ on Thursday, June 18, 2009 from 11:45A – 1:30P at the Clark University Graduate Management Center in Framingham, MA. This should be an interesting event; it will undoubtedly be covering a much broader range of topics related to developing a brand and increasing your presence using all forms of social media. Please attend and bring some of your most pressing questions.

The following industry experts will be joining him:

• Mike Langford, CEO of Tweetworks
• Jeff Cutler, writer, JeffCutler.com
• Eric Guerin, founder SmartMarket media

The panel is sponsored by the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce. Many thanks to Ed Nunes, Business Banker with TD Banknorth for organizing it.

Click here to register for the event.

Click here for directions.

Today I attended the TechTarget Online ROI Summit. Great seminar: most importantly one of the panels was focused on ‘Understanding the CIO’s Agenda and Making Sure you are on it.’ Interesting panel. Panelists included the following CIOs: Jay Leader (iRobot), Paul Neilsen (PlumChoice Online PC Services), and Stephen A. Morin (TAC Worldwide.) Interesting questions were asked and important points raised.

The biggest question asked was how to sell to a CIO. The simple answer: good luck, you’ll damn well need it.

Bottom line: you don’t get the opportunity to sell to the CIO, and if you do you better realize you’re damn lucky to do so. They are busy. REALLY busy. If you think for one second that you are going to sell them on the technical merits of your product or solution you’ve already lost. They have people waaaay down the hierarchy from them with the technical expertise will vet your solution or product before it ever – I mean EVER – hits their desks. They care about three things:

• Does it solve a BUSINESS problem I care about? What problem? SPECIFICALLY? You damn well better know that problem COLD ahead of time – I better not need to ask you. Can you prove it?
• Don’t sell me on technical details or superiority. I DON’T CARE. At my level, it’s all about business value. What and how will your solution affect my bottom line? Green tech? Great. Save the planet, just not on my dime. I’m a capitalist, first. Unless I use megawatts of electricity look elsewhere. You get the idea.
• You better KNOW my business,  KNOW my company and business model (cold), KNOW my products, KNOW my customers, KNOW my pain points. Biblically. If I know more about the tech your are offering you’ve lost. Get out. Now. You better not only know your tech COLD but be able to answer every one of my challenges to your arguments as to why you think your solution is better than what I have. Especially if what I have is free. Get ready to throw down if you think otherwise. And guess what? You’ll most likely lose.

Sounds harsh, but to be honest it’s totally and invigoratingly enlightening and starkly honest. Bottom line: CIOs have NO TIME for BS. They have powerful filters that ensure that whatever hits their desk is damn well important. And when it hits their desk you had better be seriously prepared to deal with the barrage of questions they are going to ask to prove the ROI your solution offers over what they currently have – if anything – and why they should spend the next 2 minutes listening to you. You think you’re going to get them on the phone using the standard pitch? Think again.

They have problems to solve, and those problems are BUSINESS problems, not technical ones. Make sure you’ve done your homework on not only your offerings but also their company. They don’t have time for BS. Make your case, make it quick, and make it compelling from a business value – NOT a technical superiority – perspective.

To sum up: CIOs don’t care about technical excellence. They have people to tell them what technical excellence means. They care about business value. Botttom lines. Solve my pain. Prove the ROI. Master these and you’ll win.

One of the biggest fears in dealing with social media (especially on a service as public as Twitter) is how to deal with inevitable negative comments about you or your brand. There’s a right and wrong way to deal with it. Replying immediately to your detractor may not always be the best solution – in fact it rarely is. You must maintain a position of strength and honor whenever dealing with criticism. This may not always be possible, but it is always possible to make the problem worse by handling it incorrectly. The Air Force Web Posting Response Assessment is a great reference.
When a negative tweet (or blog comment, etc.) is posted there are several steps to follow and questions to ask yourself:

How Bad is it, Really?

This is a subjective measure of how important the message is in context. Are they joking? Being amusing? Using satire? If so, is it worth responding? Or are they angry or raging? Has a product failed in the field? Have they lost money (and time is money) because of it? Have they had a terrible support experience with your brand? Do they simply dislike you? With popularity and readership come trolls – you may just want to let them pass.

Identify the user

If the message is deemed important enough to respond, then go to their blog/Facebook/Twitter profile and review their latest content manually or by using some of the countless free tools provided on the Web. Tweetstats and Twitalyzer are great for Twitter. Use Google or LinkedIn to get a quick feel for their background. If they have a blog, glance through the topics of their posts. This should not take long – 10 minutes is plenty. You just want to get a sense of who they are to give you an idea of what type of person you are dealing with. Are they a decision maker? An influencer? Or just trying to stir up trouble to get noticed?

If the comment came from Twitter, follow them on Twitter

If you are not already following them, do so. This allows you to open the possibility of private direct-message (DM) communication with them. The idea is to get them off the public time line (the public stream everyone sees in Twitter) and into a one-on-one conversation to mitigate the damage they could cause.

Resist the hasty reply – seriously, just calm down

The gut feeling is to defend immediately and publicly. Perhaps via a public @reply on Twitter if that’s where the comment originated (which would be your only option if there is not a mutual follower relationship which allows DMs.) On Twitter especially, quick reactions can be seen as defensive actions, especially for brands. Competitors will be watching. Usually what the person wants is an audience or a soapbox. Do NOT reply defensively. If they already have a bad impression of your brand or are angry, replying immediately and defensively will just amplify their feelings. Remember they don’t know you, and you don’t know them. Rapid replies may literally make them feel like you are stalking them (especially in cases where they’ve already dealt with your support organization and are venting frustration!) They’ve spent hours on the phone with your company with no result and suddenly with one message they have the brand at their feet? Take time to come up with an appropriate response. Remember that all public responses will be seen by all of your followers as well! Don’t get caught with your foot in your mouth or pie on your face. The same logic applies to other venues: blog comments, Facebook status comments, etc.

Play nice and come up with a ‘remarkable’ response

Even if you are completely convinced the person hasn’t a clue what they are talking about make sure you treat them with dignity, respect, and courtesy. Treat it as a golden opportunity to reinforce the dominance of your customer satisfaction (or your genuine humanity if it’s You.) On Twitter, apologize publicly then ask them to DM you to explain the problem. Once you are in DM contact, listen to their problem and make sure their issues are addressed, if possible. DO NOT send them through the same channels your Web site would. Get them to someone that can make decisions and help them. Work with whatever resources at your disposal to come up with an appropriate response if time allows. But you should not wait longer than a few hours to reply. Make sure that response is not only good, it’s remarkable. You want them to not only be happy: you want them to relay the experience to others if possible.

If others are involved, find, follow, and research them as well

Sometimes a problem grows quickly or many are involved to begin with. Make sure you follow and research all the friends of the original sender if they are part of the conversation. Many times these people will become brand advocates if they feel you have handled a situation well and help to alleviate the problem for you.

No matter the outcome, be gracious

Thank them for contacting you. Be sincere. Give them something free if you can (or are in a business that has product at all) for their trouble. Make sure they realize and come away with the feeling that you gave it your all to make them happy, even if the outcome does not make them so. Sometimes, you cannot. Products have bugs, hardware has failures, calls get dropped, stuff happens. But most of the time people just want to know you care enough to help them or listen. If the problem the person refers to is a known issue, ensure that you will personally follow up with them when a fix or solution is available – and do so.

Jerimiah Owyang posted a new article on Personal Brands. In it, he talks about how some companies fear personal brands because the people might get recruited once they develop themselves. Jeremiah details how companies respond to this risk – by either rejecting it outright or by embracing it. My guess is that the companies that reject it are the same companies who are also reject the social media explosion.

I think the concept of personal brands started with Tom Peters’ article in Fast Company “The Brand Called You“. Tom says that people are being branded all the time by others – by what they wear, where they go, etc. People need to take charge of their brand, to view themselves as CEO of “Me, Inc.” and to make sure that their branding takes them where they want to be.

If employees actually follow this advice, they are likely to be happier and more productive. Not only that, but they are likely to create new innovations in an effort to improve themselves. Building a brand takes hard work, and employers can offer their employees opportunities to reach their goals inside the company. Companies that do this are likely to reap the benefits of their employee’s new skills and retain these employees longer.

The benefits of personal brands are shown by the teams of the NBA. Why do kids love a particular team? Because of the players with the big brands. They buy their jerseys and autographs, discuss the players with their friends, and attend games or watch them on TV. All of these actions benefit the team. Personal Brands rub off on the company that has them.