In the anniversary of Semptember 11, 2001 the Financial Times dedicates a full page to data mining company FaceBook, which has become a favorite of the creators of social networking sites. The Financial Times, as did the virtual magazine, Wired, last week, and the rightwing magazine, Newsweek, two weeks ago, praised young Zuckerberg’s FaceBook as the next online fantasy social networking world that would eventually rival Google and the wonderful Yahoo!s of the future.
As was recently stated in early coverage, Newsweek Puts a Mask on FaceBooks Profile, the social networking sites are an outgrowth of the projects of the British intelligence creation known as International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA).
After the 9/11 attacks INSNA members were consulted by Homeland Security, which had decided a new type of intelligence gathering was necessary: Social Network Analysis (SNA). This INSNA data mining method was called by British intelligence earlier as the village survey method or traffic analysis, which was used in Ireland, Africa and many other countries under the eyes of the British Empire. The analysis of these networks gave the British Empire a means to use any rogue groups, such as the IRA, to maintain social control.
In a 2006 report, Social Network Analysis as an Approach to Combat Terrorism: Past, Present, and future, by Steve Ressler, president of the Department of Homeland Security Scholars and Fellows Alumni Program, explained, “The use of social network analysis in the mainstream has increased with the growth of a number of new online Internet sites based on social network principles. For example, MySpace, Friendster, and Facebook are three websites that allow users to connect with friends and friends of friends to share photos, blogs, user profiles, and messages. Especially important in teenager culture, these sites map out each user’s network of friends and acquaintances…”

I will be doing a more detailed piece on this once the deal is struck. Why? Facebook employees, who shall not be named, demand it!

Seriously, an interesting issue for Facebook and Silicon Valley in general.

Kara, can you explain this to us a bit more? Does that mean if the 5% stake deal is done, new employees’ option price rise? Good to know this knowledge.

I am interested in reading your articles more and more…

Nice reporting on the possible ways in which Facebook might raise $500 million at a $15 billion valuation. This warchest will give Facebook the cash cushion to react should Google starting paying people to leave facebook to join a College-Only Facebook-Throwback Social Network. At $100 per student and a grand Facebook moving day of Jan 1, 2008, Google might be able to use $1 billion to tempt 10 million college students to try a social network that their moms and dads won’t be a part of. I doubt this strategy will work but Google has got to try everything possible to deal with the fact that Facebook is a “Google-Free Zone.”

This cash will also allow them to wait for their apps to have more appeal to folks like you.

In two of your recent posts: http://kara.allthingsd.com/200.....e-said-it/ and http://kara.allthingsd.com/200...../#comments, you’ve bemoaned the current “childish” state of facebook apps.

In essence, you are complaining about the lack of a “killer app” for facebook, which has historically been defined as: as the single app that would convince people to buy the machine that the app ran on.

The First Killer App

At the dawn of the PC era with a product called the Apple II that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak thought was cool and might impress their friends had interesting color graphics when hooked up to a TV monitor and a stripped-down BASIC. I believe it may even have lacked a SHIFT key. Some said at the time (like you’ve posted about facebook) “How childish… a machine for alpha geeks in the homebrew computer club to make games for and not much else.”

Well, I worked in a computer store in San Antonio in 1980 when a little piece of software called VisiCalc came out. I was instantly selling a lot of Apple II’s to businessmen who were dealing with huge ledgers of white-out strewn inventory counts and balance sheets who would give their eye teeth for a spreadsheet template that auto-recalculated their work whenever they needed to correct a mistake.

VisiCalc was the killer app that put Apple and Steve Jobs on the road to billions in wealth. And with respect to Tim O’Reilly’s concern expressed in his facebook stats report about the fact that only a few big apps are getting most of the use on Facebook, isn’t that always the case? At least with facebook operating system, unlike Microsoft’s, the main apps are currently owned by 3rd parties.

The real point is that Facebook is exactly ONE APPLICATION away from having their Social Operating System embraced and endorsed by the entire business world. This app will quickly zoom to the top of the list and will be the first app that causes new users to join facebook — just like VisiCalc caused business people to buy the only computer that offer it.

Is SuperGroups the Killer App for Facebook?

As I mentioned in an early comment to your Part2 post above, Facebook’s own Groups app could be a possible starting point for a Killer App for business people. The Groups app’s “Create Event” feature works well and gracefully leverages the social graph to broadcast events and track attendees’ RSVP’s. This app which Mark Zuckerberg wrote himself in one evening leads to more invitations being sent and responded to than evite.com. The Groups app also allows the group creator to send messages to their entire group that is quite useful in a business setting.

With respect to sending a message to the entire group, the group owner(s) can do this at the beginning of the group’s formation but Facebook cuts off this capability when your group exceeds 1,000 members. I think this is kind of a silly restriction and it hampers a real business but I guess they are trying to prevent folks from using groups to spam folks. My own belief is that since groups are opt-in, I’m not sure this makes sense. However, it does show Mark Zuckerberg fanatical dislike of spam and groups could be misused to create spam-traps for unwitting users.

That being said, if App Developers could target the group page with the missing group features (like they can currently target Personal Profile pages) and if Group owners could monetize their group members by either displaying ads or charging to join subscription groups via a single facebook payment system, then we have the makings of the first Killer App on facebook that every cataloger, e-tailer, retailer, brand manager, blogger, unique content owner, etc. would want to use to connect with their key influencer customers.

This Super Groups app is my current suggestion for a Killer App candidate for Facebook. If there are developers out there working on it, please contact me and perhaps we’ll invest in your company. Past killer apps that drove hardware purchases were:

1. VisiCalc — Apple II
2. Lotus 123 & WordPerfect — IBM PC
3. Excel & WORD — Windows
4. PageMaker — Mac and Laserwriter
5. iTunes — iPod

In the case of facebook, the definition of a Killer App will be one that causes people who aren’t yet on Facebook to Join Facebook itself. In that since, you might say that the Friend Lists, Photos and Events apps are already Killer Apps for high school and college students. The next Killer App will be one that crosses over and brings in business people. Ideally, this will be combined with a Facebook universal shopping cart and wallet service that will allow these SuperGroup creators to efficiently monetize the audiences they build on top of the social graph (with facebook taking a share of all of this revenue). Then folks will see why I believe Facebook is worth $100 billion (see http://blog.adonomics.com).

Thanks,
Lee Lorenzen
CEO, Altura Ventures — the first facebook-only VC

(c) 2007 Altura Ventures LLC.