Valleywag
developers, developers, developers
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developers, developers, developers
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developers, developers, developers
mark zuckerberg
Facebook delays site redesign, again
Originally scheduled for release in April, pushed back to June after developers freaked out, Facebook's site redesign is now delayed until July. "Launching in July gives us more time to make sure we release the best possible profile design to our users and developers," Facebook's Pete Bratach wrote on the company blog. While perhaps clumsily handled, the delay is probably a good idea. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg will give a keynote at Facebook's second annual developer conference on July 23. Drumming up anticipation for a big reveal won't turn Zuckerberg into Steve Jobs overnight, but it might help keep the focus on what he says, not how awkwardly he says it.
Microsoft Vista ranks well behind XP, Linux in application developers' hearts
The operating system from Redmond that was going to blow developers away, Windows Vista, is being used as an application platform by only eight percent of software developers surveyed by Evans Data. 13 percent are developing for Linux, and a whopping 49 percent are still developing for Windows XP, which was released sometime before the birth of Mark Zuckerberg. [News.com]
developers, developers, developers
Bill Gates last move at Microsoft is to replace Steve Ballmer with robot
Speaking at Microsoft's TechEd conference in Orlando, Florida, Bill Gates said some stuff about Internet Explorer 8, blah blah blah. More importantly, he rolled out the latest version of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, a Windows-powered machine that waves its arms and shouts "Developers, developers, developers!" It can even throw eggs in order to fend off ruthless Hungarians when necessary. Presumably it can also throw chairs to fend off larger predators like Google. However, any attempts to buy Yahoo inevitably result in a blue screen of death. We hear Steve Ballmer 2.0's first decision was to hire Lloyd Braun.
facebook platform
Facebook's new profile: "Orwellian"
Welcome to the Silicon Valley hype cycle: One year, and you're over. That seems to be the consensus on Facebook's vaunted platform, whose one-year anniversary went largely unremarked. The company itself didn't blog about it until today, and sources tell us an open-bar party Facebook held in Palo Alto was low-key to the point of despair. It can't have helped that Google was throwing a massive party in San Francisco the same day to close out its conference for developers. How different a scene from a year ago, when the F8 launch event of Facebook Platform won comparisons of the company to Microsoft and of founder Mark Zuckerberg to Bill Gates. More »
5:00 PM on Mon Jun 2 2008
By Owen Thomas
2,853 views,
17 comments
Latest by n/a: I don't understand the hoopla around Facebook. The applications are annoying. The site is annoying, and it really doesn't do much for me. What's even more annoying is Zuck is considered this genius, and lets face it.. more »
google i/o
Google misspells binary message -- or does it?
Google's developer conference in San Francisco, Google I/O, is a temporary geek paradise, a replication of the Googleplex's lavish perks. Flight of the Conchords played last night. Google also provided puzzles. TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington noticed that a binary code sequence on Google's T-shirt for the event spells "GOOGLE KO". A mistake? Or a test to see if readers are clever enough to notice that the top half of a "K" looks like an "I" and a slash?
Google I/O conference registration fails
A tipster reported from the scene — a madhouse — at Google's I/O conference for developers, held in San Francisco today and tomorrow:
A tipster reported from the scene — a madhouse — at Google's I/O conference for developers, held in San Francisco today and tomorrow:The Google I/O conference is off to a roaring disaster. The backlog at the prereg[istration] desk was so long (500?) that they told people to just come inside. Conversely the onsite reg was empty.Did anyone take advantage of the registration gaffe to sneak inside? Your reports are welcome.
developers, developers, developers
MySpace bans the spam tactics that ruined Facebook apps
Little-known MySpace "cofounder" Kyle Brinkman announced new rules for application developers on the social network's platform today. They're meant to prevent the spam bubble Facebook went through after it launched its platform last year. In response, Facebook tightened up its rules, and offended developers in the process. MySpace's new rules: More »
developers, developers, developers
Widgetmaker: Lost developer enthusiam cuts Facebook's value by $10 billion
Earlier today, we reported that participation in Facebook's developer forum is down, most likely due to Facebook's new restrictions on Facebook-application spam. We praised these new rules, saying Facebook won't miss its lousiest apps. Now an executive from a major, well-funded widgetmaker tells us, "Your post misses the point." Before you reach for the "Block" button, hear him out: More »
facebook applications
Finally, the craplets on Facebook begin to fail
New accounts and activity on Facebook's developer forums are down dramatically since January, reports Adonomics founder Jesse Farmer. And as the above chart indicates, Facebook's users no longer add third-party Facebook applications as much as they did at the beginning of the year. Along with increased competition from social network Hi5 and consolidation into larger widgetmaking companies, Farmer blames the slowdown on Facebook for "instituting increasingly demanding and arbitrary rules on platform developers, which they then enforced selectively and for their own benefit." We agree the slowdown is likely the result of the new rules, but we don't so much blame Facebook as praise Facebook for them. More »
online advertising
Why ad budgets are better spent on Facebook apps then Facebook itself
When a Facebook user adds "skiing" to the interests on their profile, it's hard for an advertiser to tell exactly what the user means. A Google search for "Ski rentals in Wolf Creek, Colorado" is much more informative, by contrast. Advertisers know what kind of pitch to deliver, albeit in the form of an AdWords haiku. Inside Facebook's Justin Smith argues advertisers have an easier time targeting users of Facebook apps — for example, one who installs a skiing weather-map application, and looks up conditions in Wolf Creek. It's one reason he says that Facebook applications will prove easier to profit from than Facebook itself. More »
facebook platform
Zuckerberg's caving to Facebook developers proves he's no Bill Gates
Updated mockups reveal that Facebook has added a new tab to its soon-to-be-released user profiles. It's a small but telling detail that illustrates how the obsessively controlling Mark Zuckerberg has ceded power to independent Facebook-app developers. In his original plans for Facebook's redesign, Zuckerberg planned to integrate the Wall — the place where public messages from other users are displayed on user profiles — with Facebook's News Feed, which is where Facebook serves ads between "stories" about other users' activities. This integration was a way for Facebook to finally serve ads in the Wall, a placewhere users spend a great deal of their time on the site. More »
makeover
Can Ari Balogh "rewire" Yahoo? Probably not, but it will be fun to watch
Check out Ari Balogh's geek makeover! In jumping from stiffly corporate VeriSign to stiffly corporate-but-trying-pretend-otherwise Yahoo, the CTO ditched the '70s mustache and switched to an open-necked sweater for a keynote at Web 2.0 Expo. The upshot: Yahoo is "rewiring" itself to be more "open." As with Balogh's sweater, those who use this openness to get a closer look may get frightened. Yahoo's software certainly requires rewiring, but putting a new layer on top of it and inviting software developers to build applications using Yahoo services won't solve the problem. As one ex-Yahoo put it to me, vast swaths of Yahoo are built on "spaghetti code," poorly maintained and poorly understood software that's prone to breakage. Opening this up to developers may lead to all kinds of surprises, but not the kind Yahoo's tech-indifferent executives hope for. (Photo by Dan Farber)
developers, developers, developers
Widgetmakers successfully gut Zuckerberg's Facebook redesign
When we ran screenshots of Facebook's new profile pages back in late February, what you saw was a classic Mark Zuckerberg production. A source close to Facebook tells us the profile redesign was Zuckerberg's pet project, his baby. Well, that baby is dead. More »
Latest to adopt "Tom Sawyer" strategy: Photobucket
Photobucket, the News Corp.-owned photo-sharing site, is introducing an application programming interface, or API, in an effort to catch up with Yahoo's Flickr. One of the benefits, Photobucket CEO Alex Welch implies, will be having independent developers do Photobucket's R&D for it and come up with new ways to line Rupert Murdoch's pocket: "If we see a noncommercial application that's doing something clearly in our commercial terms of service or doing something very creative, it's our responsibility to go out and figure a way to partner." [News.com]
social networks
Social network Hi5's platform gives widgetmakers more new users than MySpace
In the month since San Francisco-based social network Hi5 launched its platform for independent applications, users have installed widgetmaker RockYou's applications 2 million times. The most popular third-party application on MySpace only has 100,000 installs. The difference? Hi5 links to its application directory from user profile pages and allows application makers to send notification messages to users. Those simple interface elements allow Hi5 users to see which applications their friends are using, which then prompts them to add them, too — the main factor in their spread. MySpace is still working on those kinds of tools, reports VentureBeat. Facebook built those types of innovations into its platform nearly a year ago.
developers, developers, developers
Facebook "still iterating" on profile design, pushes back rollout to developers' relief
Facebook flack Meredith Chin said the company would roll out a new profile design by early April. Didn't happen. And it won't until later this spring, Facebook developer Pete Bratach writes on the company's developer blog. "We're still iterating on the design, making sure we get it right," Bratach explains. BoomTown reports that third-party developers are greatly relieved by the delay. "They really have to roll this out perfectly," one told Kara Swisher. "It really is the biggest thing since Beacon, and you know how that went." (Poorly, and ruining more than a few Christmases by disclosing people's online purchases to Facebook friends.) But we disagree that Mark Zuckerberg should try to "roll this out perfectly." More »
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