ReadWriteWeb

There appears to be evidence that Facebook users are beginning to suffer from app fatigue, and there is growing discontent about how applications are being distributed and about the amount of noise that the application platform has introduced into the Facebook ecosystem. As Mark Glaser writes on the PBS MediaShift blog, Facebook has a growing trust problem. Further, new numbers suggest that fed up users might have had enough of some of the most popular Facebook apps. This, however, could be a good thing for users and for the health of the platform in the long run.

paidContent reports that Finnish handset maker, Nokia, is in talks with Facebook to put social networking on the company's mobile phones. The placement of Facebook on handsets could be "as prominent as the YouTube button on the main screen of iPhone," says paidContent. As part of the deal, Nokia could could also purchase a stake in Facebook. Though the talks are at a very early stage, as paidContent says, there are a number of reasons why this makes sense for both companies.

According to the New York Times, MySpace is planning to launch a startup incubator that would nurture the development of new web companies, presumably to feed its growing widget universe. "[MySpace CEO Chris] DeWolfe is nurturing another project that promises to help MySpace grow: an incubator that will form new companies and function like a start-up," writes Brian Stelter in today's paper. "The company, tentatively named Slingshot Labs, will be financed by the News Corporation but exist as a separate company. Mr. DeWolfe anticipates that it will nurture four or five consumer Web sites at a given time."

According to latest report from China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), by end of 2007, there are over 200 million Internet users (including 163 million broadband users) in China. 2008 is shaping up to be a very busy year for the Chinese Internet, and the Chinese market seems to be pulsing with social networking activity. But for Chinese Internet users, social networking has taken on a very different form than it has in Western countries. In China, the most popular form of networking may just be the traditional Internet forum system, or BBS.

Last July MySpace deleted the profiles of more than 29,000 registered sex offenders who had been using the social networking site. The sheer number of sex offenders using the site highlighted one of the biggest checks against MySpace: child safety. Numerous news reports over the past couple of years have painted the site as a hang out for sexual predators. This morning, MySpace aimed to put its problems behind it by announcing a new set of safety guidelines drafted in conjunction with 49 US state attorneys general.

Following the December announcement that social network Bebo was aligning itself to the Facebook platform, the company announced today that the Bebo Open Application Platform is "100% open" – meaning that any 3rd party developer can deploy their applications on Bebo.

Previously the Bebo platform was only available to a select group of media and developer partners, including NBC Universal, CBS, NBA, Yahoo!, RockYou, Slide, and others. As of now, there are 63 apps in their Developer website - Bebo obviously hopes to ramp this up quickly now that anyone can develop apps.

According to a report by Justin Smith at Inside Facebook, the social network is planning to roll out three new features in the first quarter of 2008. The first, privacy filters for friend lists, is a welcome addition that we said needed to be added to the lists. The second, more localized versions of Facebook, is an obvious step to take as the site expands around the world. The third, though, is a bit more confusing: the ability to blast messages to large groups.

Many of our readers here at ReadWriteWeb are brave explorers of what's new in technology - while working inside large, often slow-changing organizations. For those of you who fit that description, there's a new organization in the works called The Working Group. More than just another niche social network, this is a serious project that I expect will be in high demand.

Back in October Read/WriteWeb got the scoop that social network Bebo was about to announce a developer platform. This was pre-OpenSocial, which Bebo joined at the beginning of November. Then in mid November Bebo announced Open Media, which we described as not terribly open and "like a white listing of professionally produced, big media content." [see also last100's take on it] At that time there weren't many details on the Bebo platform.

Today Bebo has fully lifted the lid on their platform plans - and surprisingly it has ended up aligning itself to the Facebook platform. Surprising, because previously it had declared itself a partner in Google's competing OpenSocial.

The Inside Facebook blog reports that the Bebo platform is almost identical to Facebook's - it is nearly 100% compatible, in that the APIs, markup language, and query language are all the same. The Bebo Platform is launching tonight with 40 application developer partners and media partners such as NBC Universal and Flixster.

A post today on the official Facebook blog notes that Facebook is opening up its platform architecture to other social networks. So this move by Bebo/Facebook is certainly a move against Google's OpenSocial. Although it looks like Bebo may be trying to have its cake and eat it too, by declaring support for both Facebook and OpenSocial.

LinkedIn just announced two new things: 1) a new Beta home page with a news feed; and 2) a developer API. Marshall Kirkpatrick covered the announcement this morning on Read/WriteWeb. I was given a background briefing by Adam Nash, Sr. Director of Product at LinkedIn, so in this post I'll explore more about what the announcement means for LinkedIn's user base - and how it compares to Facebook.

Although the news today is fairly ho-hum, what was new and interesting was that LinkedIn claimed a demographic that compared favorably to Wall Street Journal (WSJ) - LinkedIn has an audience that is both younger (41 vs 48) and richer ($106k vs $98K). LinkedIn was also naturally crowing about their growth (189% for year ending Oct. ‘07) and the chart from Nielsen which shows comparative Facebook growth at 125%. Note that Facebook growth is from a higher base and the law of large numbers applies, but Facebook has always crowed about their growth rates vs the larger MySpace, so they have to live with growth rate comparisons to LinkedIn now.

Getting that kind of growth with the younger/richer demographic is significant. What is the average income of a Facebook user? What is the growth rate of WSJ online?

If the rumours of negotiations with NewsCorp are true, I can imagine these numbers being used to some effect.

Four major use cases for LinkedIn

Before getting into the changes LinkedIn is announcing, it is interesting to look at the four major use cases for LinkedIn and use that to assess how well their direction fits the market needs: