The blog is on break for a couple more days for legal pursuits, but in the spirit of thinking about the law, here is my Facebook v. ConnectU prediction (keep in mind this is only to see whether to trial will go forward). I know very little about the suit, but it is difficult to get a suit dismissed. If ConnectU has any evidence to support it's claim, the case will not be dismissed. My guess is they have something, even if it is not enough to win a jury trial. People who do not follow the law may find that strange. What if, for example, ConnectU just had a little bit of evidence for their position and even that evidence was of limited value? Would not matter. Any evidence at all should be enough. The reason is simple, in America we let juries decide questions of fact (or judges when they are the fact finder which is not the case for tomorrow's decision). In other words it is hard to make a law suit go away, even one that seems to be almost completely meritless.

Let the record show, I predict no dismissal. We will see what happiness, and see what kind of legal outcome bookmaking skills I posses.

Tags: facebook, facebook v. connectU, lawsuit

Looks like Lookery is set to launch next week. Lookery's Scott Rafer notified Facebok Application Publishers this morning that the service is set to launch next week. As expected, the service uses CPM banners of the standard variety. The good news is Lookery is going to take advantage of the data available to publishers about users (the single most valuable distinguishing feature Facebook has over any other portal). The bad news is initially it will be limited to country-by-country (presumably meaning ads can target specific countries). Plans are to then add state-by-state, age, and gender. The possibilities are pretty exciting from there, including when an application publisher, or any other advertiser can begin targeting specific groups (couples/singles, specific degree holders, people who like particular genre's of movies,ect.). It will also be interesting to see if there is a way to test Malcolm Gladwell's "Connector" theory. Will advertisers, either through Lookery or Facebook directly, be able to target users with a high number of "friends?"

The service is obviously a promising proposition for application publishers. It is not clear that this will necessarily work for all kinds of applications, or that Facebook is on board. So far they have taken a hands off approach, allowing developers and service providers to explore the space.

Gigaom took a quick look at Lookery last week.

Tags: facebook, advertising, cpm, developers, banner ads

The Pitch:

Appaholic is your gateway to the wild world of Facebook applications. See how your app is growing or compare it to its competitors. What times of day is your application doing well? What were the effects of your marketing campaign? What sort of uptake can you expect if you create a Facebook application? Appaholic will help you answer all these questions.

Appaholicdoes not make it any secret that it wants to be the Alexa of the Facebook application community. And while it won't win any artistic awards, it certainly delivers what it says. Jesse Farmer developed this site, which enables visitors to compare user bases among Facebook applications. He keeps the 20 applications with the most users on its front page and allows for a quick comparison of up to three applications by the number of users, percentage change and number of users per hour. Farmer has also recently added a feature called the "Viral Dashboard." The dashboard puts every application in the Facebook directory into a sortable table, along with a link to the application's primary page. I see that "What's your stripper name?" finally got knocked out of the top spot after several days of amazing growth by none other than Harry Potter Magic Spells. I doubt I am alone in spending more time than a human should browsing the pages every day to see who is getting contagious and who is not,. Then again, I do write a blog about contagious applications.

The Good:
Obviously the information is the sweet part of the site. Farmer is pretty modest about what he has done, but his service has quickly become essential for the FB application community. The information itself is available to anyone, but Farmer is the only one who has organized it and put it into an extremely easy-to-use format. While it might be fun to compare the top 20 applications, the real use is in comparing similar applications and monitoring the daily movers and shakers. Before Appaholic, users were limited to Facebook's "most popular," "newest" and "most users" categories. That service is marginally useful. Now there are real numbers to see and analyze — and for many development teams — to obsess over.

Not as Good:
The charts are straight out of the Microsoft design school. While that is a little annoying, it’s really a reminder that good information and functionality really are more important than prettiness. Given a choice between beautiful charts with limited information and boring charts with indispensable information, it’s a no-brainer. Perhaps Farmer will one day team up with a designer and we will be able to have our cake and eat it too.

Monetization Possibilities:

Update

Farmer has posted directions at Inside Facebook detailing how to manipulate Appaholic's data within Excel to forecast growth. Warning: It is highly addictive.

I am sure that if Farmer decides to start putting up advertising, he will have no shortage of application owners jumping all over themselves to plaster his walls with banners. So far, he has not gone this route, perhaps because he is concerned about whether he is violating the Facebook Terms of Service.His attitude seems to be "shut me down if you want, but why would you?" I could not agree more. Plus, by observing how Facebook ultimately treats Appaholic, will offer the application community some insight into the larger question of how the two communities (Facebook and its user-developers) will co-exist.

Tags: facebook, services, review, facebook statistics, analytics