Tyler Ballance is a developer for Slide and worked on Top Friends, wrote Fortune Cookie, and wrote Famous Quotes.
Slide also makes widgets:
Slide Shows
FunPix
Guestbook
SkinFlix
Facebook is networks of friends overlaid with other networks like school, work, geography, etc.
(editor's note: Tyler Ballance reminds me a little of Ben Kweller)
Online interaction, leads to offlne interaction.
Facebook is different. It's not about little bitty snippets of code. On Facebook, people aren't viewing profiles so much - they're diving into applications. Not like MySpace.
Apps have mulitple levels to them.
You can jam widgets into FB, but it won't work as well. Not social, not that interesting. FB has the social graph, other sites don't.
Next iteration FunWall. You can engage multiple people. You can post to their pages. Many to many interaction. Engages more users than badge on profile. FunWall has been the most successful widget implementation on Facebook (in terms of being a profile module). Don't just to port widgets - Digg's FB app wasn't very interesting.
Sometimes widgets do work though:
Magic 8 Ball
Famous quotes
They work, but there is a ceiling because of their lack of socialness.
Widgets is not the way for FB.
FB Strategy: think of things that the platform is missing. (Max Levchin called it "feature arbitrage"). Still lots out there.
Facebook users FB differently than MySpace users use MySpace. It's not just browsing profiles on FB.
Many views on FB, and when you're building your app you need to address all of them.
Why are you awesome app - open source app from Tyler.
You need a great icon.
Call to action right after you install, and social context (why friends' are awesome)
Scrabulous is the best game because they have the social context (challenging to a game). Multiple refreshes to see the next move.
Need to hook user before monetization can happen.
Notifications - fine line between spam and usefulness.
The feed - most powerful way to reach users on FB. Feed is the core of FB. Need context specific and relevant info in there - it's the FB highway that drives traffic to the off ramps (apps).
Profile is very hard place to engage users. It's not enough.
Building FB basics:
Slide's best apps are iFrame based. iFrames are not just for users losers.
FBML gives you the native look and feel. The more you make your look and feel indistinguishable, the better. FBML pages will load fast if you can serve them fast.
FBML Cons:
FB's bugs become your bugs, and users blame you. You are depending on FB. If FB breaks something, you have to wait it out.
Examples:
Caching images. Furninture showing up as top friends.
iFrame / HTML
IFrame Pros
You have total control
Easier to port existing apps in.
Only constrained by space, and the TOS.
iFrame Cons
You must call FB API a lot. Lots
(with FBML you don't have to call, you can show)
With top friends every single profile has to be fetched from FB.
You don't have access to FBML at all - no way to get a friends selector. You have to build your own stuff. If you do it wrong, it will look like crap.
Scroll bar.
Build your own FBML controls like find a friend.
General Tips:
Get it out there! More than three days is over thinking. Get something out and iterate.
Figure out how your users interact with each other through your app.
Don't take things so seriously - nobody is bringing enterprise apps to FB. FB users don't go to FB to work. Interaction trumps utility.
Editor's Note: Tyler Ballance is awesome. He answered everybody's questions thoughtfully and helpfully. Very cool, and a fantastic session.
Great post. I've recently opened a new Facebook group to support my blog, and this helps me understand the social dynamics of the platform. I didn't get the "interaction trumps utility" conclusion though.
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