Facebook “Like” Button Could Make it NASDAQ of Website Value

With the Facebook F8 developer conference coming up this Wednesday, Facebook PR is hard at work trying not to be outdone by Twitter in terms of preshow buzz.  Still, the biggest news coming out of the tech giant so far has been, well, likeable … but not entirely earthshattering.

As reported in the New York Times, Facebook has announced that it intends to implement a “like” button on every web page on the Internet.   Pete Cashmore of Mashable said “its all part of Facebook’s plan to follow you around the entire web, and perhaps avoid the fate of MySpace.”

The idea, according to Cashmore, is to avoid becoming just another “destination” that can be “left” as soon as another easier, more reliable site comes along to replace yours — as happened with Friendster and MySpace. 

“The more businesses rely on Facebook,” he mused, “the less likely it is to fail.”

That leaves a whole lot of individual users out of the equation, but let’s set that argument aside for a moment. 

Let’s also set aside that Twitter, Meebo and others are also expected on Monday to announce ways to draw users from anywhere (Twitter calls its idea “@anywhere”) back to their respective sites. 

To my mind, there’s another development happening here, one with significant financial implications.

When you view this in terms of analytics, there is a strong advertising component as well.  In this scenario, the “like” button will be used as a revenue generator since it immediately measures value (“resonance,” in Twitter’s parlance) of online advertising.

The more “likes” something gets, the more advertising in connection with it will cost. This can be increased instantaneously.

The lack of a “dislike” button is… equally obvious, Facebook doesn’t want to do anything that could be construed as actionable in terms of sereptitiously decreasing the value of a product or ad. 

How does this help facebook? By making it the database for real-time analytics trying to determine the advertising value of any or every website out there. With this central position, Facebook becomes the NASDAQ of website market value.

Do you agree? What are your thoughts? And, do you think Facebook has any other news up its sleeve before F8?

Twitter Locks One Bird Cage, Throws Open Two Others

Just days ahead of Chirp, the Twitter developer’s conference in San Francisco, Twitter on Monday made two bold new moves: it threw open its database of user relationships, and introduced a new advertising model. 

Both moves are expected to powerfully enable the Twitter universe, but they come on the wings of a revelation last weekend that sent many developers scattering in fear.

What sent the developers aflutter was the annnouncement that Twitter had acquired Atebits and that it was adding new features that could effectively negate the usefulness of many third-party Twitter apps.

Up to this point, Twitter had been largely supportive of third-party development of Twitter-like applications, but rumors had been rampant that at some point, Twitter would draw the line or take up some applications development (or acquisitions) itself. 

With the acquisition of AteBits, Twitter caged Tweetie, an application that allows users of iPhones to access Twitter.

If that wasn’t troubling enough, Twitter also said that it had labeled as “official” an application that allows users of Research in Motion’s Blackberry smart phones to use Twitter on its devices.

The announcements caused enough disturbance on social media sites to prompt Ryan Sarver, director of the Twitter platform, to issue a statement in an attempt to calm the flock.

In an e-mail to the San Francisco Chronicle, Sarver said that Twitter’s decision to launch its own iPhone app was intended to end the confusion caused by the many Twitter applications on Apple’s App Store for the iPhone. The confusion, he said, was causing many new users to just give up.

“This means that we were missing out an opportunity to grow the user base which is beneficial for the health of the entire ecosystem,” Sarver said.

Importantly, he added that Twitter will continue adding new features, and acknowledged that “the potential to upset a company or developer that may have been building in that space and they then have to look for new ways to create value for users.”

Nevertheless analysts welcomed that last statement, saying that it is time for Twitter to begin adding new features and upgrading the functionality of the service – a call to action that should get many applications developers flying in formation.

One possible destination is the newly opened FlockDB, a relational database that keeps tabs on who is following or blocking who else on Twitter.  Though messy, the code is extremely efficient, processing huge amounts of data without getting bogged down. Twitter officials suggested that the newly opened code may be of use beyond Twitter itself as a framework for processing mammoth data streams.

But the “multibillion dollar question,” according to Mashable, is whether users will find Twitter’s new advertising model agreeable. The model enables what Twitter calls “Promoted Tweets” — essentially, advertisements in the Twitter stream. The ads will appear to be very much like any other Tweet, except for a small “promoted by X” line at the bottom of the Tweet frame. 

The more an ad “resonates”, the more often it can appear, while “bad ads” will be essentially lost.  The model is not unlike that used by Digg Ads, which has seen some success.