On Apps:

"There are 550,000+ apps that are used on Facebook. Seventy percent of users engage with apps each month. There are one million app developers. Zynga, the top app developer, made $250 million in 2009. Of that amount, $80-$150 million is estimated to be profit, more net profit than Facebook itself made."

On Pages:

"There are 1,500,000 active Facebook pages. The average value per fan is $136.38. Extrapolating on that, many celebrity pages would be worth enormous sums:

Michael Jackson, with 13.3 million fans, would have a page worth $1.8 billion. Family Guy has 9.5 million fans for a worth of $1.3 billion. Lady Gaga and Barack Obama each have 9.1 million fans, worth $1.2 billion each. Vin Diesel has nine million fans, worth $1.1 billion. Starbucks has 8.2 million fans, worth $1.1 billion. South Park has 6.2 million fans for a worth of $845 million."

Via VisualEconomics.com

I would love to see something similar for the Android and Apple app store economies.

My friend James at AdHack introduced me to the concept of Archive vs. Flow:

The web works in two ’states’ (for lack of a better word): flow and archive.

• Flow: all the new content coming onto the web and its parsing, aggregation, recombination, etc. For short, consider this the new stuff. New blog posts. New Twitter tweets. New YouTube videos. Access is by RSS, browsing, email, IM, alerts.
• Archive: all the content that’s no longer new but is still accessible and indexed for retrieval. For short, this is the culmination of not-new stuff. Old stuff organized and accessed by tags, categories, searches and links.

Most folks only get the archive aspect of the web once they’ve used it and managed websites for a number of years. It’s a little counterintuitive and different from all other media types.
Flow is short-term candy to fire people up. Archive is long-term value that ages and improves over time.

Once I started thinking like this - about content and experiences as Archive or Flow (or a combination, of course, if done right), it has permeated my thinking.
More recently, I've been thinking about organizations and their activities using this same model. And how many traditional, broadcast media organizations are all flow. They don't even *think* about archive. And this is epitomized by what I think is the very basis for all web-based Archive concepts: the permalink. If your piece of content, your experience, does not have a permalink, there is precious little I can do with it (including find my way back to it).
Two examples of media organization that are pretty much all flow: TV and radio (especially the news and/or local versions). Neither have permalinks in their "native" format. Their companion websites are slowly evolving some archive functionality, but it's not very good. Even worse, their websites do a bad job of showcasing the inherent flow nature of the organization and the content they serve.
Hulu is an example of a TV-related website that is starting to provide a great archive functionality. More like this, please!
Other TV sites do have some clips after the fact, and ways to link to them, but these are divorced from the native medium. You have to remember to go back to the website, somehow find the piece of content you were watching, and even then you might not have a permalink (think hour long clips, mini clips, or mystery meat javascript navigation that doesn't let you link directly to items).
Radio is the example that I think is:

1. in the most dire need of showcasing the "flow" nature of their content on their companion website and
2. has done a terrible job of doing anything to grow an archive that, as James says, has "long-term value that ages and improves over time".

A counter example is actually CBC Radio - they're growing an archive at a furious rate for most of their shows in the form of podcasts and interactive shows like Spark that blur radio and web and interactivity. But, I think the local "news" radio doesn't do nearly as good a job of moving from flow to archive on the web, arguably where it is the most important. The produced "shows" just happen to currently be broadcast over the air - but they are discrete chunks of content that can probably be better delivered via the web.
Last.FM is an example of a site that is tangentially related to this discussion, at least as regards music. They turn your "flow" of music listening into your own personal archive. And it grows richer over time. Radio doesn't do this for you, even on their own website. You can't favourite a song, or share it, or tell other people to tune in to a particular frequency RIGHT NOW if they want to hear it. It probably should.
So, how do flow-based organizations grow an archive? I think the prime example of native flow tools on the web today are all based on microblogging: Twitter, Friendfeed, and Facebook status messages. By looking at these native flow tools, media organizations can do several things at the same time:

1. Leverage the flow based, real time nature of their content and business - every item from their native medium becomes the basis for a microblog post coming from their own brand.
2. Build interactivity around this web-based flow version. What if your radio or TV station tweeted back at you? What if it used hashtag #traffic? or #news? or #contest?
3. Use all of this activity to automatically create permalinks which can be shared, rated, commented and in general, grow value over time. Since every microblog has a permalink "for free", there's the basis of your archive. Layer on other tools to remix, analyze, mashup, and visualize the depth of your archive over time.

Oh, and you probably shouldn't cede all of this great archive content exclusively to Twitter or any other third party network. Like cross-posting to YouTube, you definitely want to reach the audience on Twitter (and Facebook, and so on), but you first want to post to your "own" microblog. How do you get your microblogging network? I'm glad you asked!
There are a number of tools evolving to support the Open Micro Blogging standard that will let a number of different sites all talk to each other. This means that platforms like Drupal or WordPress can easily support implementations of microblogging.
More simply, Laconi.ca is an open source project designed to be a turnkey microblogging platform. The biggest single example is the Identi.ca site, and a good example of a community using it is Leo Laporte's TWiT Army. Evan Prodromou of Laconi.ca / Identi.ca recently shared with me that he's also working on a fully hosted option. Watch status.net to keep up to date with that option.
Much of the growth of the web has come from its Archive nature, rooted in the permalink and being able to instantly get back to a single piece of content. Google and Wikipedia are two prime examples of this. Flow and real time are more recent entrants, but they are making the web grow even faster [1].
How is your flow based organization going to participate in both?

Phil Wolff of Skype Journal contacted me (over Skype, of course!) earlier in the week to ask about posting something for Skype's 5 year anniversary. I didn't get to it earlier in the week, but when I was chatting with him I had some ideas around Skype and the identity space that I've continued to think about. So, here is a belated birthday wish to Skype. Check out Dan York's post for a lot of the same items that I'll be mentioning here.

I was really annoyed with Skype when it launched. Annoyed because I had spent the previous 5 years working in the VoIP standards space at Nortel, having seen MEGACO and MGCP fall by the wayside so that my favourite, SIP, could reign supreme. And here was Skype, with its proprietary protocol. That just worked. And nary a cool SIP service to be seen (other than the Gizmo Project, which is still the only cool SIP project around...).

I wouldn't say that Skype is an integral part of my work flow today (lots of people use it much more heavily than I for all of their voice communications). But it is one of the communications channels that I do need to have open most of the time, primarily for group IM chats. 3 years ago at Gnomedex, we started a Skype backchannel group chat, and it's still running today -- the "Vancouver Swarm". For various groups and companies, multi user chats are just an add to channel and bookmark away. Oh, and of course, the way that chat history "flows" to you if you've been offline for a while: persistent chat!

And I'm still not talking about the audio and video features :P

My dad is a heavy user of Skype, especially Skype Video. Whether it's sitting down and "sharing" a coffee with my sister in Italy, checking in with relatives in Germany, or showing off the snow up at the cabin at Deka Lake, he uses Skype all the time. He continues to "evangelize" Skype to people he comes across.

I started by mentioning the concept of Skype and identity. With sites like Twitter and other social networks and services exploding into general consciousness and discussion, I'm (still) thinking about identity.

Each of these services are an identity space. Systems like Facebook are rooted in your real identity -- you use your actual name and such -- while others like Twitter have you using nicknames or shortened forms. These nicknames become your identity within those spaces. Phil Windley talks a bit about this namespace federation -- in response to Craig Burton ho humming it. Yes, there is a friction with federating so that a single namespace is very valuable.

Are phone numbers, especially international phone numbers, a single or federated namespace?

In the past, our phone number was a large part of our identity. e.g. my parents have had the same home phone number for 29 years. I still remember the last 4 digits of my childhood friend's phone number (the whole island has the same 6 beginning ones, so the "local" identity space only needed the last four...). Now, less so, in part defensively. I give out my Vonage VoIP number which rings all the numbers I need it to. Of course, when I then switch to text messaging, my cell number shows up (and shows up as "unknown" for those that know me by my home number). Traveling between countries and switching SIM cards, you have multiple numbers.

Skype is a portable voice identity. It doesn't care what country you are in or what SIM card you happen to have inserted. It is Internet voice. One could argue that federation and open standards are needed (and I would agree ...), but no one else has reached the same "just works" level of functionality. Here's hoping that we get at least another 5 years of innovation and disruption out of the Skype juggernaut. Happy birthday!

David Crow in Toronto picks up the community platform meme and lists some other tools / platforms available in response to Chris Pirillo's announcement regarding the building of Gnomepal on Drupal.

I already commented on Chris' initiative here, but here are some comments I made on David Crow's post:

Now, which of those listed platforms have portable data? Which of them are a suitable platform for building the (invariably) custom pieces that each community may want as they grow?The tough part with many systems -- especially closed, hosted ones -- is that they provide great initial starting points, but then often lack in customization or growth options. And god forbid that your platform provider "go away" -- then you're completely stuck, and need to start over.This is why I have chosen to go with fully open systems, because they can grow with communities and can never be locked down or disappear.@Varun:Facebook is ultimately closed and not a participant in the "open web". And it's someone else's platform with someone else's rules. I would hope that we steer around such closed instances and strive to connect openly.@Peter Childs:"What I’d like to see is a platform that recognizes communities are networks of interests (people & organizations) and doesn’t try to become a destination"I think this is spot on -- don't try and a become a destination IN AND OF ITSELF -- but rather add value through various aggregation and hub features. This also seems to argue for mini-networks that cross sites.

Open platforms are as important as open data or any other cross site initiatives. I don't care what you end up picking as your community platform, as long as your data and your users can seamlessly interwork with the other systems out there. The network is not the destination.

My usage of Facebook has dropped. At the same time, people messaging me / contacting me through there has increased. At least the message shows in email now.

What I am still using quite a bit is the SMS integration for status messages. I know that updating my status sends out SMS notifications to a bunch of my friends, and vice versa. Yes, this is not new -- it's microblogging / Twitter / Jaiku, etc.

The mobile integration grounds the social in the "real world". There is an element of serendipity in sending a ping out to the world, and wondering who might respond back, who else is wandering the streets, cellphone in hand, ready to go for a drink or join an activity.

I imagine when Jaiku gets their US / Canadian mobile integration up and running, I'll use that more.

What SMS services are you using in Canada? Travis' description of SpinVox sounds great -- except for the whole Rogers is the devil and expense of it :P

I'm going to be on Business News Network this afternoon, 4pm PST / 7pm EST, talking about if Microsoft is still innovating? This is, of course, related in part to earnings announcements from a bunch of companies, and more directly, the Microsoft investment in Facebook. I'll be on a mini-panel with Fred Vogelstein.

Some related links / thoughts below, I'll clean this up after the interview:

• John Battelle on Facebook and Microsoft
• Paul Kedrosky on Facebook and the Microsoft Curse:
  

  Do you believe that Microsoft knows its own strategic interests, and that it can act rationally and appropriately in their defense? Ten years ago I might have said yes, but today I have a much harder time. So when it comes to defending a large strategic premium over a credible competitor with a better basis for economic valuation, I have a hard time.

• Recent interview with Steve Ballmer at the Web 2.0 Summit -- from Ballmer on Windows Live search, "it's like a 6 year old playing hoops with the 12 year olds"
• Did Microsoft pay too much for Facebook? Well, Facebook might be overvalued, but it's small dollars for Microsoft and gives them potential insite into profile / social based advertising
• MSFT failures -- Zune, Windows Mobile (failure outside of the US), search
• MSFT wins and/or in progress -- Silverlight, an Adobe Flash competitor, casual gaming and home based social networks (XBox Live Arcade, Windows Media Center, etc.)
• innovation? Microsoft Research (PhotoSynth), new offices and working environments down in Redmond and elsewhere
• closing thought: competition is good, Microsoft isn't going anywhere; they *should* compete more on innovation rather than dollars and marketing

I'm helping out the local Vancouver Facebook Developer Garage event this coming Tuesday by running a "Future of Facebook" Q&A. Johnny Bufu of SXIP will be on hand to lend expertise around portable social networks, especially regarding identity, OpenID, the OpenID Attribute Exchange extension, and related tech.

The timing and title of this talk is interesting: there is an "all hands" meeting at Facebook on Tuesday, so the rep from Facebook that was supposed to attend can't make it. There is much speculation here, everything from "Microsoft will buy them" to "Facebook is worth $15 Billion". It will be fun to talk some of this through live at the event, but I'll mainly try and jockey live audience discussion, not do my own pontification.

It has been most interesting, with the "rise of Facebook", to see its vast spread into "non techies". Indeed, that's where *I've* found it to add real utility: since so many people are on there, both organizing events and seeing what people are up to "in the real world" has become much simpler, and has led to more in person meetings, for me at least. Pointing the way what a ubiquitous, interoperable identity infrastructure on the web could enable?

Some other preparatory material for such a discussion is this video of an interview of Mark Zuckerberg interviewed by John Batelle at the Web 2.0 Summit.

The event is this Tuesday at VFS starting at 5:30pm, full event details on Facebook, of course :P

Since I've been rambling on about Facebook recently, Mark Shropshire pinged me to let me know that Facebook is blocking / taking legal action against apps that attempt to remotely "automate" Facebook. Said like that, it sounds kind of bad, but in reality, it's MoodBlast trying to update your status across all systems -- FB, Twitter, Jaiku, etc.

TechCrunch has a longer write up on this trend. What does this mean? Well, it's probably not a good idea to treat a large, commercial system as a coral reef (hat tip to Dave Winer).

Aside: coral reefs and other ecosystems flourish around the rusting hulks of sunken ships. Should we extend the analogy to businesses as well? Didn't all these other social networks spring up because of the dead carcass of Friendster?

Not a big thesis on this topic, just an observation that this evening, as I was thinking about organizing something with friends for tomorrow morning, my instinct was to open a tab and go to Facebook to contact them...rather than email.

And of course, this is exactly what ActiveState's Up4 Facebook app is trying to help with as well.

Update: And of course, today I see that Facebook has added straight-to-email messaging -- "No more switching back and forth between email and Facebook. When you are writing a message, simply enter any email addresses into the “To:” field.". There is a longer post on the Facebook blog about this.