Piers Jones

Do something useful with facebook - the feedheads application

Some of you that currently use facebook may be tiring of invitations to become a mutant zombie or hug a wombat. I have found one application though that gives me a useful insight into the feed subscriptions of other facebook users which is called Feedheads. I think deserves more than the 224 daily active users that it has at present.

If you are a googlereader user that shares items of interest for other people like me, you can send these items to the feed heads application. Your shared items will then be displayed on your facebook profile.

Once you've done this the app will give you details of the top shared items of other users for up to the past 7 days, as well as a tag cloud of categories. You can also distill this down to any of your friends that have the app installed to see what they are sharing.

I've found feedheads to be a useful app for finding stories that I've missed or new feeds to subscribe to. Not that I really needed any more,  I see I'm not the only feed addict around.

Tuning by attention data

Of all the things that I have read over the past week or so the post that has most stuck with me has been this one about how Facebook tunes it's newsfeeds based on your attention data. Fascinating (well I thought so anyway).

Facebook and business roundup

Lots of debate this week around whether Facebook at work is 'OK' and what the business opportunity might be.

Here's a roundup for anyone that doesn't want to spend all week reading RSS feeds:

JP Rangaswami has a whole series on Facebook and the Enterprise

Marketing pilgrim did such a nice post that I'm tempted to let them off for using the word 'leveraging'

Master of 500 hats gets quite passionate about it

Scoble has been twittering about it

Mashable predicts that targetted facebook ads are on the way

Trip advisor paid $3 million for a facebook app

And one of RBI's blogs covered it from the HR angle

How to send your facebook status directly to Twitter using RSS feeds

I came across this rather nice site today called Twitterfeed.com. You can set up any RSS feed to post directly to twitter . All you need is an OpenID to create an account with and the RSS feed from your Facebook status updates (or any other feed for that matter).

There are step by step instructions on this site of how to set up your facebook status to post to Twitter via Twitterfeed.com  and this includes how to find the RSS in Facebook which is really hidden away.
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The post from Facebook to Twitter only runs every 30 minutes right now but I think I can live with that.

Twitter and Facebook status updates

Today I am mostly wishing that Twitter tweets updated my Facebook status automatically to save all the bother of deciding which one to update and everything getting out of sync. Aren't they both there for the same reason?

I have installed the Twitter Facebook app but it doesn't work that way. I'm not sure whether thats because Facebook apps are all unable to access your status updates via the platform or that the app just doesn't have that particular feature.

From the comments on this post I am not alone.

Facebook and business: Can Facebook Apps be commercial?

Opinion seems to be divided on this point.

Readwriteweb says build a business on Facebook and details Bay Partners who are funding the development of Facebook apps whether commercial or not.

Om Malik thinks the idea is bonkers

I'm still making my mind up. I'm not sure that just being a Facebook app is enough for a sustainable business, but it could be a great way to promote and existing one.

Myspace still beats Facebook in a google fight

For a bit of fun I tried Myspace Vs Facebook with a google fight.

Myspace still wins hands down with 191,000,000 results to Facebook's 47,200,000.

But for how much longer?

Still I guess neither is complaining with a £12bn valuation for Myspace and Facebook only just making $8bn.

Using facebook for business

I noticed that there are 134 company groups in London alone on Facebook today and 123 London groups for the purpose of employment and work.

What's the bet that if I check back tomorrow the number will have increased significantly?