Facebook: A Site with Sticky Applications and Empty Causes

We learn things in various ways and because of many types of experiences. This weekend, I thought I had the concepts of social networks all wrapped up in a tidy package and was very ready to talk about their attractiveness. This was my reality until my IE browser crashed three times in two hours.

It was then that I discovered the campaign that I'd been striving to commence was illusory. It was actually . . .. Well, I'll get into what it really was a little later. Let's focus on comparing the experiences on Facebook to one of its rivals.

Facebook Compared to a Rival

Facebook started as a social site for teens. Its major competitor was MySpace and both offer similar features. It's difficult to say with a certainty because when I reached the front door for MySpace, I became wretchingly ill at the sugary fuschia, lavender, and hot pink color scheme. After 30 seconds of a failed attempts to acclimate myself to their front page, I had to leave. So I cannot make a fair comparison between the two toe-to-toe rivals. What I can do, however, is compare Facebook to, to, to. Hmph. There is no other to which it can be compared. Hi5 is not a parallel. LiveJournal also doesn't foot. Mail.com used to offer chat and community but removed those features and its major calling card was email. I went back to MySpace.

Thank my God in Heaven! The pink, and fuschia, and lavender are goooooooonne! (Was that a bit over the top? Do you get a sense of how much I hated those colors?) MySpace has gone after a similar, clinical color scheme of navy blue and white. They differentiate theirself from the competition with photos and images. I clicked, I joined, I started looking around and comparing.

The teen and college atmosphere predominates both environments. Facebook is squeezing out that teen image in deference to the more mature crowd that is now taking over its space. It's fun and silly. It's a good place for getting acquainted with people on a personal level and humanizing the otherwise overly busy mover and shaker. In other words, it's acceptable to show your sense of humor there.

MySpace is also working on creating a more mature environment. On an initial scan, the youthful activities still outnumber the more professional profiles. But there are spaces for professional networking. The thing MySpace endeavors to do is use their real estate to bring people together in order to congregate, get acquainted, network, and mature.

What I see with Facebook is that they are losing their teen and college populations because those are being crowded out by the over-30 crowd. In order to make the site sticky, Facebook has added "applications" that allow users to share various types of information with one another. It's a romp. You poke someone. Then you Super Poke someone. You use your Wall to post messages. Then you graduate to using your super Wall in order to add photos and music. Then you use your Fun Wall to add photos, videos, music, and graffiti. If the person you want to share with doesn't have that application, they must add it so that the two of you can communicate.

After a time, you have an enormous collection of "toys" and little to show for them except a lot of time constructing and sharing on them. If you're not careful, it's easy to find yourself playing with the toys and getting no work or business done. You may develop a few relationships but it takes a very long while to get substance into the relationships.

There are no toys on MySpace. The features are conveniently categorized by tabs at the top of the page so it only takes a click to find film clips, groups, discussions, and so on. There's no stickiness from the toys. The stickiness comes from the straightforward collection of offerings and people interactions. Some are silly; others are serious. The stickiness comes from an appreciation of what the group offers and plunging in because of the honest representation.

The "Causes" Application

But I was inspired by Facebook when I discovered the "Causes" application. It was October 1. October has two significant causes featured during its span -- Breast Cancer and Domestic Violence Awareness. I am a domestic violence awareness advocate. I've been striving to bring awareness through public and site presentations since 1999. I've been researching, interviewing, and writing on the subject since 1999. I've created several events to bring awareness to others through articles. Based on the Causes Application, I determined Facebook was the place to create my cause and then do outreach.

It should have been a simple, fast process of setting up the "cause." That assumption was the first step to my downfall. The Internet connection between Facebook and the Cause template was slow. Eventually, I began using two different browsers in order to complete the last two steps in addition to several other little tricks to keep the connection active. Twelve hours later, my Cause was developed and live. I was ready to invite friends to join the Cause.

One thing I learned about myself at this juncture was I don't give up easily. Yes, I already knew this. But this time the "i"s were dotted and the "t"s crossed. In fact, there were several times I told myself the sensible thing to do was to abandon the effort and return to it another day. There were two matters that mitigated against that reasonableness: (1) It was the day of the event and the first day of the month-long acknowledgement of it. (2) With just one or two more steps, it seemed whimpy to abandon the effort. One or two more steps could easily be completed in five minutes or less. Forge ahead.

It later became obvious that inviting friends to a Cause is merely a means of finding common interests. But friends were invited at a limit of 10 per day. Thus, Facebook developed a means of getting those who had developed a Cause to return to the site on a daily basis in order to send out as many invitations to their Cause as possible. They developed not only viral traffic but stickiness. What Facebook didn't count on was a person who is committed to their cause.

There needed to be a way to put together the credibility, the substance behind the Cause. I began adding links to the Cause, links to articles that explained the issues and showed the birth of my involvement. Adding the links sometimes took as much as 30 minutes because the connection was bad or there was too much traffic or the program has bugs that need streamlining. But links to the content were created. In fact when completed, it looked like a press kit. There was education in going through the effort. This looked a lot like a splash page for the Cause.

Then next step for a person who is sincere about their interest in their cause is to spread the word outside of the community. I wrote to a professional organization and solicited their support. I provided the URL to the splash page for my newly created cause. I waited to hear from the president of the organization. Three days later, there was still no response. There were others outside of Facebook who were on my list of people and organizations to contact regarding the cause. Before contacting them, however, I determined to test the link to the page for the Cause.

The URL for the Cause's page was placed into a browser window and I hit "Return." That action took me to the log-in page for Facebook. Realization: "Causes" is another excuse for building additional members at the site. It's a means of giving people common interests to share and maybe talk about the issues. But principally, you're connected because of a shared interest in a social issue. But there's very little conversation that happens. There are merely emails that solicit others to join the Cause or donate to it.

The other revelation that came with the discovery that "Causes" is a membership building tool was the realities of "Causes." Causes was recently created as an application. I used the application's home URL in order to enter the Causes site and see my Cause's page. This was impossible to do. Causes is new. It is so new, in fact, that it is still in beta. The only people who can enter the site are the beta testers. The beta testers are invited to become testers. No one else can use the site, not even the people who have created causes; not even if you use your Facebook log-in information to access the site and not even if you attempt to become a registered user.

A Learning Experience

For those who have never put together a press kit, using the tools available in the Causes application will provide you with the knowledge and ability to do so. If you are articulate, you will be able to use your own skills to create an effective outreach letter. It's unfortunate that the realization of what's in back of "Causes" wasn't obvious. Things would have been done a lot differently. But time and effort are spent and gone.

In trying to become familiar with the formalities of creating a cause, I've learned even more about website stickiness, marketing, targeting your focus, and the realities of Applications on Facebook. Because of needing to create a fair comparison between Facebook and its highest rival, I've gained the opportunity to learn more about MySpace and its methods of creating stickiness, meaningful content, social networking, and connections.

I believe Facebook is striving to support itself with making its Applications available for a fee that seems to be paid to the developer in exchange for something that will entertain the members, create excellent traffic, and therefore additional advertising revenue on the premise that they are having fun and creating connections with other people It's quite easy to wind up with duplicate and even triplicate applications so that you can use your Application of choice and then use the one your friend has chosen in order to comment on what they are doing. You might compare this to having one telephone in the style and model of each of your friends so that you can talk to them. If the style and model don't match, you can't converse.

Unfortunately, not all of their Applications work, or if they do work, they don't do so very well. Some will develop errors so that they do not respond at all. Some will malfunction so that they broadcast to all of your site friends or else they post to your profile -- several times. Another thing some of the applications will do is broadcast to your entire list of friends that you've added the application -- complete with your learner mistakes. It is quite time consuming to undo the malfunction mistakes from each friend's profile. And it would be so much easier to simply get acquainted with your new friends by actually communicating with them.

I'd say Facebook is an exercise very similar to eons.com in that Facebook tries to create a virtual environment for its users that glues them to the site. As I told someone long ago, the Baby Boomer generation doesn't want to spend the balance of their lives stuck in a chair in front of a computer monitor. They want to be out doing things and enjoying Life.

The Disappointments

It was disappointing to finally realize that the primary purpose of the efforts to create a campaign were in vain. Actually, it was more than disappointing. It was vexing. It wasn't about the failing of facebook so much as some dratted bug that keeps doing things to IE. That has yet to be resolved. Meanwhile, even as I struggle to write this review, my IE browser with a great deal of research, has crashed again. But from these experiences came a new perception of social networks, how they work, their purpose, and how it is possible to get something quite constructive out of the entire experience.

I'm disappointed that I trusted facebook with my time and that I didn't pay attention to my self admonishments. But in that regard, I come away a winner again. This experience showed me that not only am I tenacious but when I realize something is simply too long in coming together, there's a reason for the stumbling block. The project needs to be put off to another day so that the valuable and productiveness of the real efforts stays on top and moving toward fruition.

What Do You Want?

Do you want a lot of activity playing with applications that sporadically function or else embarrass and have no relation to anything real outside of the social environment? Do you have lots of time to waste in order to gain few connections for the effort? Or do you want to build relationships without all the clutter and gimmicks, relationships that will grow in size; relationships that grow because of quality input?