Happy New Year! It has been a little while since our last blog post, but we are still working away. Today's big announcement: the extended profile. Many bloggers have posted about this and I feel like it is a positive change. This is just another way that the more engagement focused apps can rise to the top. As you can see, it has helped me a lot (I have way too many apps).
This feature will help make the application developers think more about their users. Facebook has come a long way from the early days, when bright, ugly buttons demanded profile viewers add a particular application. Now, users have even more control over what is displayed on their profile.
I think the big winners will be photo applications (a little biased maybe.....). Social Network users enjoy displaying photos of themselves and will not want to demote good photo apps to the extended profile. Photo applications can have some of the most relevant and interesting profile boxes.
Other applications that do not provide as much relevant content (Vibrating Hamster) will most likely be the first to be banned to the extended profile. Hopefully this move will help show off the more useful and engaging apps, and we are trying to make PhotoGraph one of those apps.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Facebook's New Extended Profile
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
New stuff?! Cool!
Well, the quarter is over, and we still haven't caught up in our blogging. So, I'll take the first step and take you through the (tons of) changes we made to PhotoGraph since last Tuesday.
- Speed - PhotoGraph is now much faster (and much more usable) than before.
- FBML - We're more integrated into Facebook than before (no more iframe!), so we can have more of that native "look and feel".
- Banner - We have a new one. It is sexy. Don't like it? Tell us! We're still trying to find our voice in this world of Zombies, Vampires, Fun, and Super.
- T
abs - PhotoGraph has two views now: explore (the view you're all familiar with), and now one to browse just your starred photos (pictured to left). You can also jump to a friend's starred photos by typing in their name, just like in explore view. We hope this brings us closer to our goal of helping you find the best photos of your friends without wasting your time wading through all the...not so hot ones. - Star - You'll notice that there is no star in the upper-left anymore. We've replaced it so that now, if you want to star a photo, you simply hover over the photo itself and click on the star that appears. If a friend of yours in the photo doesn't have PhotoGraph, you can invite them right there, too!
- Share Button - A great way to start a conversation about a photo with somebody. (Also, simpler than copy-pasting URLs, although that will work, too.)
Monday, November 26, 2007
Molson's Facebook Photos Failure
Keep on the lookout for some changes to PhotoGraph! Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.
Throughout the Stanford Facebook Class many opportunities have been presented to us. We have collectively seen how interested the corporate world is in Social Networks. Why wouldn't they be? The demographic present on most social networks is very lucrative. Social networks present an opportunity to build your brand in a very trusted and open setting, between friends. We all saw the success of the Dylan app, allowing for self-expression while plugging the upcoming CD. They obviously understood the audience and why users add apps.
When reading about the Molson photo contest, I immediately knew that Molson was walking on a slippery slope. After browsing many photos while developing PhotoGraph I have seen a very prevalent pattern. In the United States Facebook photos is littered with drunken debauchery. Red cups appear in many pictures and there are even dozens of groups dedicated to this college signature. This trend undoubtedly arose from Facebook's background as a college-exclusive social network. College kids don't go on many trips or have families. We study (hardly picture worthy) and party. It seemed funny to me that Molson did not realize that when asking for photos of people partying, they were going to get photos of such drunken mayhem.
Working on PhotoGraph has exposed me to a lot of Facebook photos. They are very fun to browse and laugh at, but nothing to build your brand around.
While social networks have drawn great interest from large corporations looking for new avenues to spread their brand, it is important to understand the cultures of these networks. Social networks are still in their infancy. With the faces of MySpace and Facebook changing rapidly, larger, more mature business are not in a competitive position to venture onto social networks on their own. That is why I think there is room for smaller players that know this arena. As shown by the Dylan app, the smaller consultants who understand the users of Facebook and MySpace can very successfully bridge the gap between big brands and the needs of social network users.
-Mark
Thursday, November 8, 2007
New Version of PhotoGraph
UPDATE: A NEW VERSION OF PhotoGraph IS LIVE.
PhotoGraph got a face lift today! We have been working hard and just pushed out some new, awesome features. The photos should be more recent and relevant. Also, check out the sweet banner and new formatting!
One of the most exciting features that we have pushed out is the search box. Now, if you want to browse a particular friend, just enter their name and click "Go!"
This will load PhotoGraph with a picture of that person and you are free to browse from there. So, if you get stuck in some obscure album, just enter someone you want to see and start over!
Try out these new features and let us know what you think.
-Mark
Friday, November 2, 2007
Press
Yesterday in class, all the teams presented their creations so far. It was really hectic because we were all writing feedback and trying to think of how we can help each team. With 24 teams to present, that makes for a lot of feedback and good comments.
Not only were the students taking notes, but so were reporters from GigaOM, VentureBeat, and TechCrunch. This was great exposure for the apps. Check out VentureBeat article here and the TechCrunch rendition here. All in all, PhotoGraph got some good exposure, although it would have been nice to have more than a long list. Focusing on and pointing out some of the notable apps would have better rewarded the more prepared teams. With a long (alphabetical) list of 24 apps, most viewers will just check out the first few. On VentureBeat at least we got a photo! We are still waiting to hear from GigaOM, so stay on the lookout.
Thanks to all our users. We have now blown past 2 million PIDs. If you have anything we could do to make the browsing and starring better, let us know. We have a lot of development ideas for the future, but would love to incorporate your feedback as well.
-Mark
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
1 Million
Tonight was a milestone we wouldn't think we'd see for a while. At 1:19AM today, October 31 (with all of us in a chatroom), PhotoGraph indexed its millionth photo. The screenshot you see is actually of how many images are in our database and the two counts were taken less than a second apart(!).
I want to thank everybody who's been helping us out by installing. Browse on!
Rest assured, PhotoGraph has quite a few features planned for the future, so keep your eye on this blog for announcements!
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Facebook LIVE!
UPDATE: OUR APP IS BACK UP. CHECK IT OUT AND LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK
Facebook has always been preaching that it is not the social graph. There is some social graph that exists, and Facebook wants to be the best representation of that. It is a pretty simple idea. We each have attributes and relationships with other "nodes". Although Facebook does a good job at being my online social network, it can't be with me all the time like the social graph. So if Facebok is such a good representation of the social graph, why not take it with me everywhere so I can tap its resources at a moments notice? Thinking about this (and being a Facebook junkie for the past month) made me wonder and finally, I decided to try "Facebook Live" (aka being Facebook for Halloween).
Besides everyone thinking they were so funny by poking me, I had a lot of fun. I had small slips of paper that people could write on and I would tape to my "wall". I also implemented a mini-feed for me, keeping track of the happenings throughout the night (mostly posts of "Mark had a drink). The one thing I REALLY wanted to do but wasn't able to was having a Polaroid camera and posting pictures on myself throughout the night.
What was most fun was reading my wall posts the next day. You can definitely see the posts getting more illegible as the night went on. Also, the wall posts were definitely more crass (being a grad school Halloween party) than online. They ranged from nice posts ("Your costume is awesome") to drink gifts references ("X gave Mark a 40!").
If any of you were wondering how much of a Facebook addict I am, I hope this solidified it for you! This class has been a lot of fun and I look forward to growing the PhotoGraph.
