A new Facebook group has surged in popularity over the past few days as it claims to provide instructions on how to revert your Facebook to the old design. The group titled “I WILL SHOW YOU HOW TO GET THE OLD FACEBOOK BACK!” gives step by step instructions on how do just that. While I haven’t tried out the process, it sounds logical.

Numerous users that have joined the group claim that it doesn’t work. Regardless of the tutorial’s accuracy, users are joining at a rapid pace. Just in the last hour I’ve counted over 300 new users. What has accounted for the group’s rapid growth? The primary growth is due to the group administrator’s decision to post step by step instructions for promoting the group prior to listing out the instructions for reverting back to the previous design.

Everything listed in the instructions makes sense but I don’t have any desire to go back to the old design. My guess is that Facebook will disable this functionality in the near future. Theoretically Facebook could store copies of the “old design” and “new design” at all times, in order to make it easier to roll-back in case of substantial errors or backlash from users.

While I haven’t heard substantial feedback from users about frustration with the new design, many users have expressed frustration with Facebook regularly changing the layout of the site. Some users claim that Facebook switches the design just as they get the previous iteration functioning properly. Have you found the new design easy to use? Have you tested out the steps described in this group? If so, did it work? We’d love to know!

This afternoon Koen Peeters sent us a screenshot of a modified version of Facebook’s help page which states, “We’ve updated our homepage because we wanted to copy Twitter.com.” Initially I thought the screenshot was fake since the help center page was titled “Help Centre”. We quickly found out that the reason it was spelled that way was because it was visible for those who were using the site under the U.K. version of English.

So how did this happen? Well, we can only think of two ways. First, it could have been someone in Facebook’s U.K. office as there has been other modifications of site pages before. The alternative reason could be that users decided to modify the translated version of Facebook but we aren’t quite sure that it’s possible since the “English (U.K.)” version of Facebook has been available for quite some time.

While I doubt that we’ll ever know who changed this page, it’s definitely slightly embarrassing error. If you want to view the page yourself, you must install the the Facebook Translations application and view the help page using the “English (U.K.)” version. Our guess is that by the time you’ve done this, the error will have been fixed.

Pete Bratach stated that “We now count tab views toward your applications’ active users. The count occurs on the initial page load of the profile, in addition to a user explicitly clicking the tab.” It was a minor change but one that could potentially inflate application metrics substantially.

Previously active users were not counted until the user actually interacted with the application. That could include clicking on a profile box but now it just represents a user viewing the “Boxes” tab. For those few individuals that actually visit the “Boxes” tab, I’d guess that they aren’t viewing every box on the page. Ultimately this ends up inflating the active users as far as I can tell.

Then again, I don’t even navigate to the “Boxes” tab on friends’ profiles but I do know that in order to view all the boxes on my page you would have to navigate well below the fold. So why has Facebook decided to switch to this new metric? Honestly I have no idea. The only rationale I can think of is to artificially boost the active user metrics for applications.

Does Facebook really have an incentive to boost active users within applications? Well it makes sense in terms of Facebook wanting applications to look more popular than they are in order to drive new developers to the platform. I doubt this is the rationale though. Facebook already has plenty of popular applications and it doesn’t make sense to inflate the numbers any more.

Meebo is back in business with Facebook. After adding Facebook support for its multi-client chat tool late last year, Facebook requested that Meebo remove the service due to issues with the way in which Meebo was connecting to Facebook’s network. But the standing issues between Meebo and Facebook have since been resolved, and Meebo is able to add Facebook chat support by leveraging Facebook Connect.

The details surrounding the technical issues that Facebook cited when requesting that Meebo remove Facebook chat support from its service are still cloudy, and when we firstlearned of Facebook’s request we were also baffled.

As a third party developer working with Facebook’s Platform (or most other platforms for that matter) there’s always the risk of doing something that directly conflicts with the owner of that platform. And with Facebook being at the forefront of open platforms for social networking purposes, there are many times when its terms are unclear or take weeks for Facebook to completely verify them at all.

However, when Meebo announced that Facebook had requested that the chat service remove Facebook support, the company also hinted that it was working with Facebook on a way to reinstate support for Facebook chat. Facebook itself mentioned that it was looking to offer additional chat options for developers by leveraging Facebook Connect, and it looks like that’s exactly what it’s done, given Meebo’s new implementation of Facebook chat support.

This makes Meebo the first official launch partner of the alpha version of the Facebook Connect + Chat integration program, which is designed to protect users, their login info and authenticated sessions. When it’s all said and done, developer and user frustrations aside, it’s important to remember that user safety in regards to such open platforms is still very important, especially considering the many phishing scams that are currently plauging Facebook.

We’re glad to see that Meebo and Facebook have found a way to team up in such a relatively short amount of time, and there will surely be more applications arise from Facebook’s new Connect + Chat integration program in the coming months.

Earlier today I was contacted by Jason Wilk from TinyCombwho claimed that all stores had Facebook disabled, including three that he tested. I proceeded to call a number of stores here in the Washington, D.C. area and one out of three couldn’t access Facebook. One Apple store representative that I spoke to said that MySpace has been banned for a long time but Facebook has not.

Why the discrimination against MySpace? I have no idea but Facebook and Apple are known to have a fairly strong relationship so it makes sense. Does banning Facebook in stores make a lot of sense? Not really considering Apple’s sales continue to break records each quarter. The company is rapidly capturing large portions of the personal computer marketplace.

Conversely, avoiding having customers come in to the store to use it as a free internet cafe makes a lot of sense. Want to save money? Just show up to the Apple store when they open each day and turn their top of the line computer into your personal office! Apparently some customers were spending too much time on Facebook but part of this argument just doesn’t seem rational.

Personally, I’ve witnessed numerous individuals sitting in Apple stores and browsing social networks. I’m sure Apple prefers customers don’t spend hours on end using the computers but then again, isn’t this how they can sell more computers? Apple is known for constantly having customers in the store. There may be a down economy but every time I walk into an Apple store it’s always busy (perhaps it’s the part of the country I live in though).

So has Apple banned Facebook in your stores? We haven’t been able to get an absolute confirmation that it’s unavailable in all stores but there is sufficient evidence to indicate the start of a possible trend. While I doubt it will have a substantial impact on Facebook’s traffic, it could impact the relationship between the two companies.

Today, Facebook announced that they have joined the OpenID Foundation. Facebook has long been criticized by those working to build out the “open stack” for not supporting open standards, instead opting to develop their own authorization protocols. Facebook Connect is the current public authentication model that the company is promoting although the Facebook API has provided methods for authentication for a while now.

OpenID and other open stack protocols have become secondary to Facebook Connect within the mainstream media due to the massive buzz the company experienced as the Facebook platform grew. Being a participant in the OpenID Foundation is an important step toward the success of OpenID and the open stack. Without Facebook’s support, I would argue that many of the open stack standards (OpenID, XRDS-Simple, OAuth, OpenSocial, etc) will not succeed.

While Google has been heavily promoting Friend Connect, the standard doesn’t appear to be gaining as much traction, especially not in the media. Facebook has also kept themselves at arms length from the open identity evangelists for a long time although more recently they’ve become more active with Julie Zhuo’s participation in the UX Summit, and Dave Morin’s occasional appearance at meetups related to the topic.

While Facebook has not yet committed to support many of the open standards, joining the board is a sign of commitment. While Facebook may choose to duplicate and recreate their own version of many of the standards, it’s always important to be part of the conversation. Personally, I’m interested to see what other steps Facebook will make to support these new standards.

Finding out your marriage is over via Facebook may be one of the worst experiences you could have. Yet that’s exactly what happened to Emma Brady, 39, when her husband of 12 years changed his relationship status on Facebook, according to theDaily Mail. To Neil Brady’s friends, the message on their news feeds read “Neil Brady has ended his marriage to Emma Brady.”

The worst part about this situation is the fact that Emma says she had no idea her marriage was in such dire straights until a friend saw Neil’s updated relationship status and called her at work to see if she was all right. It’s painful enough to go through marital problems and even a divorce. It can be just as painful to have to deal with the social consequences of divorcing, so Neil’s public denouncement of his marriage via Facebook has turned into a very humiliating situation for Emma.

Neil, however, insists that his Facebook profile changes are not the first Emma had known of their separation. After a scuff between Neil and Emma, the husband grabbed his wife by the wrist and threw her out of the house wearing nothing but her robe after hearing of Emma’s purported affair. The case went to court, where the Facebook status situation also came up. Neil’s attorney insists that Neil had suggested a separation several times, rejecting Emma’s claim that the Facebook status update was the first she’d heard of Neil’s desire to end their marriage.

While this does all seem to boil down to a nasty case of he-says, she-says, the situation merely reiterates the power of Facebook as a heavily influential social utility. Just last weekPrince Harry faced a similarly humiliating situation when his girlfriend of 5 years officially ended their relationship by changing her status on Facebook as well. No matter which way you look at it, changing your relationship status on Facebook is an official and public declaration of what’s going on in your real life.

And with delivery tools like the Facebook news feed, our immediate social graph is only enabled to watch the successes and the train wrecks of our lives go by. As Facebook is a social network, these successes and train wrecks also become interactive occurrences in our lives’ timelines, often incurring reactions from friends and acquaintances we’re just not ready for.

Which begs the question; is this something that will change on Facebook’s end, or an individual’s end (by changing things like privacy settings or merely avoiding online social networks all together) or will we come to accept the fact that our lives get played out and essentially archived on sites like Facebook, for all to see?

Facebook turns five years old tomorrow. That’s practically middle-aged in Silicon Valley. To celebrate, Facebook has put up this slideshow that highlights Facebook’s evolving Web design over that time period. We’ve reproduced the slides below. (Yeah, we wish they were bigger too).

Founder Mark Zuckerberg also hints at a surprise virtual gift that will that will appear tomorrow in the the Facebook Gift Shop Oh, what could it be?

Facebook is 5 years old today, and the social network has admittedly come a long way in those few years. Just take a look at the album Facebook posted, chronicling the layout of profiles from 2005 until now. But what does this 5 year milestone really mean for Facebook? It means that we can all take this opportunity to see what Facebook has planned to ensure it can celebrate another 5 birthdays.

All Things Digital took today’s birthday as an opportunity to reflect on Zuckerberg’s plans for Facebook shortly after launching the website from Harvard’s campus. There’s an air of foreshadowing, considering Zuckerberg didn’t want to sell Facebook then and has stuck to many of his core principles surrounding Facebook ever since.

Even Zuckerberg’s own Facebook birthday blog post highlights the objectives Zuckerberg still holds dear to his heart when it comes to Facebook and its ongoing potential–to become a place where people can openly share information about themselves with each other, initiating conversations about a given topic and encouraging global discussions through Facebook’s social network. Idealistic as this may sound, Facebook has in many ways become just that, for the good, bad and the ugly.

So as the dominating social network, is Facebook still on the right track? As far as social networks go, there’s been an overriding tendency for them to become fads. Yet many still see Facebook as having longevity potential, and have even compared it to Google from a Silicon Valley startup success story perspective. The article at All Things Digital went on to compare Facebook at 5 years with Google at 5 years, and with estimates for Facebook’s valuation being far lower than Google’s at 5 years of age, Facebook may still have some work to do.

While the two companies are different in many ways, the idea that Facebook could become a major centralizing service for individuals interacting on the web means that its permeability could be far reaching. As with Google, future growth may be tied with the economy Facebook has created with its Platform and Facebook Connect. Facebook also continues to create native apps in hopes of bringing users back to the site, as the company still needs to compete with the other social networks that are out there.

And yet there is still room for improvement, especially in regards to the economy that Facebook could create for further empowering third party developers, end users and itself. The open communication Facebook founder Zuckerberg seeks isn’t always the direct byproduct of individuals’ interaction within the social network, yet such idealism continues to drive many of the concepts behind ongoing projects at Facebook. I’m not exactly sure what the next 5 years will hold for Facebook, but I can’t wait to find out

More brands are engaging with Facebook’s 150 million users through Facebook advertising solutions and the Facebook Platform, patterns of best practices are emerging for brands in different verticals. Last week, Inside Facebook spoke with Dave Eisenberg, VP of Marketing at Bonobos, about the ways the specialty pants retailer is reaching new customers on Facebook.

Today, we turn our attention to the restaurant industry and Papa John’s Pizza. Inside Facebook recently sat down with Bob Ford, Papa John’s Director of Online Marketing, about the ways the pizza restaurant chain is reaching customers on Facebook.

Thanks for your time Bob. Why did Papa John’s decide to get involved on Facebook?

We’ve obviously been tracking social networks for a number of years now, but we’ve been looking for opportunity that is right for our brand, and Facebook’s engagement ads made sense to me and to Papa John’s. Facebook has actually initially reached out to us three years ago, but this is the first one we felt like we were ready to try.

Before we built our Facebook Page, there were other Papa John’s Facebook Pages out there. They had a limited number of fans, but when you looked and saw something that was put up by someone who was literally just a fan, it became intriguing to us. So we dedicated the time to put together our Facebook Page, working closely with Facebook to design it in a way that the audience is looking for.

Who was your campaign targeted at and how did it work?

Facebook is very different today in terms of who their audience is even compared to just a couple years ago. We were really looking for a way to feature some of our new features like mobile ordering, and the 15-24 audience is a great fit for that.

We did two projects with Facebook. First, in November of last year, we did our engagement ad where we drove people to become a fan of our Facebook Page. Fans were notified on three different dates via an Update from the Papa John’s Page, and were then directed to the Papa John’s site to receive their promotional code for the pizza.

We added 125,000 fans within a day, that number has grown to over 200,000 today. We’re very pleased with how many fans we’ve gained, and we’re examining ways we can promote it more. We look at our Facebook page almost as an extension of our website, and we have more campaigns coming up soon in the next 6 moths.

We also gave away some virtual pizzas. Using Facebook Gifts, we gave away as many virtual pizzas as we could. We funded and gave away a couple hundred thousand pizzas. You may think, “What’s the value in a virtual pizza?” We looked at it almost like we do our widgets - they’re a constant reminder that sits on someone’s profile page.

The person sent their friend a gift that was a Papa John’s ad that the friend was happy to get. It’s not often that you find an advertising vehicle that people are happy to get. From the feedback we’ve seen it seemed to be very well received.

How did the ROI on these campaigns compare to your expectations?

We set out targets for both promotions, and they came back dead on. In fact, we got a much better ROI than we expected from the number of impressions we ended up receiving from our virtual gifts - Facebook did a great job projecting that.

In terms of the number of fans we added to the Papa John’s, it is probably double what we projected. What we were truly hoping for was to sign up 100,000 fans. I would have been okay if we had signed up 50,000. The fact that we’re at 200,000 is fantastic.

Why do you think your Page has been successful?

Facebook has been really good about providing guidance on what their users expect to see on Pages, and how to keep them active. What we need to do is make sure that we keep that page fresh so that people keep coming back, and so that when we send an update people will see it and find it valuable.

Thanks Bob. Do you have any final thoughts for other brand marketers out there?

Industry by indusry we have to be willing to put ourselves out there, knowing that not everything we do will be perfect. We know we will take some hits from our customers, but we as a brand need to embrace that. We need to monitor it and react to it. We have worked to resolve issues with people who have had any issues - for example, I have sent personal messages to people that have had issues, and the responses I’ve gotten have been fantastic. Even if someone makes a negative post the first time, they often go back and make an unbelievably positive comments

This morning while working on one of my new projects for this site, I stumbled across an interesting site. The site is called FacebookChatMLM.com and they embed a copy of Facebook’s homepage with a screencast embeded below the login form. It’s currently set up through simple domain forwarding but their homepage configuration is not the only thing sketchy about this application.

The application is essentially your basic pyramid scheme. In order to begin, you register for the application and then pay $6 using your PayPal account (as explained in the screencast below). You then invite your friends who do the exact same thing. The only problem with this system (well, aside from their sketchy homepage configuration)? It completely violates Facebook’s terms of service. On Facebook you are not allowed to incentivize users to invite their friends, and generating some “quick cash” is definitely an incentive. Shawn Pringle and Scott Messina, the clever developers behind this application (or so the video says), claim that it’s a quick way to riches, but ultimately they’ve developed the quickest system for having an application shut down.

If you read the comments on the application page, it’s pretty clear that the system isn’t working for those that have already signed up. So far, just under 2,000 people have registered for the application. I have no idea how many of those users have been scammed out of their 6 bucks but there’s no way the people that have spent their money are going to get it back. Not only were the developers of this application using spam techniques within their application but they are also spamming Twitter with thinks to the application.

Talk about social media spammers! Word to the wise: if you are looking to “get rich quick” you may want to go searching for the next gold rush because “ChatToText” surely isn’t it. I’m giving this application no more then 6 hours before they are off the platform and the developers behind this application less than 24 hour before they receive a letter from Facebook’s lawyers.

If you thought Facebook birthday notifications were helpful reminders of your friends’ big day, then you’ll love the new feature Facebook added today. You can now send a virtual birthday gift to your friends up to seven days in advance of their actual (listed) birthday. Facebook is offering two options for the new early birthday gift delivery: directly from your friend’s wall or via Facebook birthday e-mail reminders, which contain a direct link to send your friend an early birthday gift.

The new feature is being launched today, but it’s being rolled out in increments so I haven’t been able to check it out first hand. But based on the screen shots provided by Facebook’s engineering team, the new early delivery options look to be an extension of the birthday virtual gifting push initiated by the social network a few weeks ago. If you recall, Facebook began promoting the giving of birthday greetings to friends by placing a rather blatent “Give Gifts” box on their profile page, which you’ll see when you visit their profile on their big day. This looks to be the same box that will be available to you for early birthday gift delivery, which has been given some extra time to hang around people’s profiles. What’s interesting, and perhaps frustratingly enticing, is the fact that your friend will see that you’ve given them a virtual birthday gift, but they won’t be able to open it until their big day.

That should ensure that the birthday gal returns to Facebook ON their birthday, right? No matter which way you look at it, Facebook is taking a few extra steps to encourage more virtual gift exchanges on its social network. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Virtual gifting has not only become a point of interest for Facebook, but for retail brands as well. Not to mention, a series of third party developers have made some lucrative virtual gifting applications that reside on Facebook. Some of these apps do allow things like early birthday reminders and other scheduling options, so in some regards they compete with Facebook’s latest gifting enhancements.

this is just one concern third parties have to deal with when creating an application for a platform that’s part of a larger social network with its own powerful native apps. There are also other social networks that have taken to virtual gifting, such as hi5. The potential for generating additional revenue through virtual gifting and virtual goods is something social networks seem anxious to explore right now, as it’s worked for virtual worlds and the micro-payment model can really help supplement any advertising-based revenue that a social network earns

Facebook has been launching a number of campaigns for clients that provided branded integration with Facebook status updates. For example, CNN’s recent inauguration campaign included status update notifications which specified that they were posted from the CNN site. This feature is limited to those that have set up campaigns with Facebook. Having to work with Facebook directly can be a costly proposition on both ends (Facebook needs to provide resources and companies need to pay for that time). What would be much easier is if Facebook simply charged for specific services.

If brands could simply pay for each instance of a branded Facebook status update, it would help Facebook generate revenue, and it would reduce overhead. Clearly there would need to be limits to a paid API since companies with deep pockets could pay to spam the system but ultimately there could be a lot of value in an extended API with additional features.

Also, Facebook could open up their API for new components such as access to the news feed or shared stories (two of Facebook’s most valuable features) on a paid basis. Want to aggregate everything Facebook users are sharing? Pay for it! I know that I would definitely pay for additional features, and charging for a more robust API gives Facebook an incentive for developing a more robust platform. Should Facebook Charge for Everything? An instant way to reduce “spammy” applications on the platform would be to charge for all API calls.

Most developers would instantly shun such an idea. Perhaps there could be a threshold for charging (such as all apps over 100,000 monthly active users, etc) but charging would reduce a lot of the noise on the platform. There are clearly downsides for charging for an API. For starters, many companies will simply leave the Facebook platform and this is the last thing that Facebook wants. Secondly, developers would become paying customers and that means they would demand a lot more from Facebook. For example if Facebook decided to turn up limitations on the platform for paid developers, there would be even more of a backlash.

Finally, Facebook doesn’t want to get in the business of full-time developer support. While they already have resources allocated to helping developers, under a paid platform, Facebook would have to allocate a lot more resources to this area. A Premium API Makes Sense Regardless of whether or not charging for the whole Facebook platform makes sense, charging for a premium service is a logical extension of the existing platform. Rather than requiring Facebook to exhaust developer resources on each ad campaign, the company would benefit from letting developers build campaigns directly into a premium API.


Would you be willing to pay for a developer API?

Now, this is kind of neat: Facebook Connect, the sprawling social network's universal-login project, has started to come to desktop software. Namely, it's been hooked up to the Apple photo-management software iPhoto, per a post on the company developer blog.


"We are excited that sharing your photos with the people you care about has become even easier with iLife '09, Apple's new suite of applications that includes iPhoto '09," the post by Facebook platform manager Dave Morin said. "Users of iPhoto '09 can easily share and tag photos from iPhoto directly to Facebook. With help from Facebook Connect, photo tags from iPhoto '09 can be added to Facebook and generate Facebook notifications. Additionally, Mac users can update Facebook News Feed and alert friends anytime they update their websites using Apple's iWeb '09 application."


Basically, this means that if you're a Mac user running the latest edition of its iLife package, which started shipping earlier this week, you can hook up your Facebook account for easy uploading right from iPhoto. If you use the iWeb site creation tool, you can set it up to post a message to your Facebook profile (and your friends' news feeds) if you make some kind of edit. That's pretty similar to what a number of Web-based blogging services have already set up using Facebook's platform.

I haven't actually checked it out yet, so I can't provide a thumbs up or down, but the concept itself is pretty cool. Facebook rolled out its Facebook Connect product, which lets third-party sites (and now desktop apps, apparently) use Facebook usernames and passwords for user accounts, over the second half of last year. The reception, so far, has been generally positive.

What'll be really interesting is to see the further implications of Web-based login standards like Facebook Connect as they're synced up to more desktop applications. Not that you'd really want to share all your Microsoft Word edits in your news feed or anything.

Earlier this month we wrote about Facebook surpassing 150 million users. If the growth has in fact continued at the same pace, if not a greater pace, the company should register their 160 millionth user today. Alexa suggests that the company’s growth rate has in fact been increasing which means the company could have surpassed 160 million users prior to today.

Facebook has been updating the numbers reported by their advertising platform on a regular basis as reflected by our Facebook demographics tool. Facebook’s reporting combined with our own algorithm would suggest that the company has reached at least 157.8 million if not 160 million. We are expecting Facebook to update their internal estimates within the next couple days to reflect this growth.

I previously posted about Facebook demographics based on market saturation which illustrated Iceland, Canada, Denmark, and Norway as the highest Facebook population by density. As usual, we will continue to track the number of users on Facebook and update those numbers as reflected by the company.

Have you been noticing rapid growth among your own friends?

In a small addition to Facebook today, the company launched a new feature which turns photo comments into news feed stories. Previously, I believe that photo comments were automatically published to user feeds but now you have the ability to opt-out of that feed story. This is an addition which emphasizes Facebook’s ongoing commitment to user privacy. Earlier today I commented on one of my friend’s photos and it was automatically posted to my news feed.

Had it been a photo of the crazy party I was at last night, it may not have been the most professional to display that photo comment within my news feed. What would be one other nice feature is the ability to turn off friends being notified of me being tagged in photos. Often times users are put in a challenging position when having to explain why they were tagged at an event where they should have been, with somebody they shouldn’t have been hanging out with, or simply doing something that didn’t positively reflect their personal image.

Often times photos can have a much larger impact on a relationship than even a relationship status. While this isn’t a huge change, it assists users with keeping certain activities private. Have you chosen not to comment on a photo before because of the resulting feed story? Worry no more because Facebook now lets you opt-out of the feed story, so you can rest soundly at night knowing that your professional contacts are unaware of some of the less professional activities you’ve been involved in.

Alternatively, if the photo is not of you, but you’d like to leave a comment which doesn’t reflect positively outside of a small circle, you can now feel more comfortable doing so. Thanks to Jeffrey Paul for the tip!