Sunday, November 22, 2009

The Rise & Fall Of India’s Youth Icon – Orkut




It was year 2005 and Orkut was becoming a sensation in modern India. It was spreading virally. The Orkut phenomenon was more viral than almost any word of mouth epidemic I have seen (in India). Yes, even Twitter’s fast growth in India is no way near to the way Orkut grew. It was almost like one fine morning you wake up and you find all your friends (and family) addicted to a piece of Web App called Orkut. Orkut captured the imagination of India youth to such a extent that it was
awarded The MTV Youth Icon for the year 2007. Orkut won the award inspite of competing with likes of Abhishek Bachchan, Rang De Basanti& Multimedia Cell Phones.

Orkut - MTV Youth Icon 2007
On reflecting back I think Orkut’s popularity in India was because of one or more of the following reasons.
1). Orkut had a very low entry-barrier. It was dead simple. Unlike
Myspace, hi5 (and ‘n’ number of other social networks) Orkut had very less features making it more user friendly, less complicated.
2). For a majority of Indians Orkut was their 1st social network. Orkut made Indians discover social networking along with its addictive nature (more about “the nature of social networking” in future post).
3). It had very good (or cool) look and feel and Indian users almost considered it as a bench mark in both design and quality because it was endorsed by Google.

Orkut India
4). Orkut made online contact management a cake walk. Integration with GMail (Google contacts) made it even simpler. Note- Part of the reason Yahoo! Mail fell of its knees in India
5). Orkut Album became a default photo sharing hub. The semi-public nature of Orkut album was perfect for Indians. Note – Part of the reason
Flickr never took off in India
6). Scraps emerged as a new messaging protocol. Scrapping someone was more appealing than sending a short E-Mail (considering the user was ready to trade off the privacy and was not available for chat).

Orkut == (YOU)th
7). Orkut Communities emerged as powerful Forums to discuses and debate (although I never found Orkut communities useful). Just a note -India Community on Orkut has around 1 million members with a rather hyper active Forum.






On reflecting back I think Orkut’s popularity in India was because of one or more of the following reasons.
1). Orkut had a very low entry-barrier. It was dead simple. Unlike
Myspace, hi5 (and ‘n’ number of other social networks) Orkut had very less features making it more user friendly, less complicated.
2). For a majority of Indians Orkut was their 1st social network. Orkut made Indians discover social networking along with its addictive nature (more about “the nature of social networking” in future post).
3). It had very good (or cool) look and feel and Indian users almost considered it as a bench mark in both design and quality because it was endorsed by Google.

Orkut India
4). Orkut made online contact management a cake walk. Integration with GMail (Google contacts) made it even simpler. Note- Part of the reason Yahoo! Mail fell of its knees in India
5). Orkut Album became a default photo sharing hub. The semi-public nature of Orkut album was perfect for Indians. Note – Part of the reason
Flickr never took off in India
6). Scraps emerged as a new messaging protocol. Scrapping someone was more appealing than sending a short E-Mail (considering the user was ready to trade off the privacy and was not available for chat).

Orkut == (YOU)th
7). Orkut Communities emerged as powerful Forums to discuses and debate (although I never found Orkut communities useful). Just a note -India Community on Orkut has around 1 million members with a rather hyper active Forum.
Few other trends of the Orkut Era
1). Integrated nature of Orkut and GMail killed Yahoo! Mail in India. Yahoo! Mail which not too long back was default E-Mail address of Indians was now replaced by Gmail.
2). Then as Gmail became popular the integration of Google Chat with GMail killed Yahoo! Messenger.
3). Although rest of the world was busy uploading their latest photos on Flickr, Indians preferred Orkut Album. Y? Because unlike Flickr, Orkut Album was semi-public in nature with privacy options. Indians would never have been comfortable making their online album 100% open to public gaze. Orkut Album never left any room for Flickr.
So, Yahoo! was more or less fading out of the Indian tech scene by 2008.




Statutory Warning : You might not like what I am about to write.
It is year 2009 and Orkut sucks, it is boring, it is monotonous, it is has way too less features with not many apps, it is buggy (no donuts for you!),

Orkut is buggy
it is does not facilitate sharing, no vanity URL hence no public profile, Orkut communities still sucks, scraps are dead (scraps? wtf? I tweet now!), no blog widgets, obviously I cannot search and monitor real time data on Orkut unlike
Facebook (and Twitter) and it is does not help me drive traffic to TechDusts (I know I am a selfish brat! but the fact remains that Twitter and Facebook alone helps bringing hundreds if not thousands of visitors to TechDusts everyday).
Times have changed and the world is quickly moving towards the next generation of social networks where scrapping is not as cool as updating your status message every hour. The problem with Orkut is that after a certain point of time it did not evolve. Unlike Facebook, Orkut never embraced real time sharing (like Twittter), Apps (I know Orkut has App but in no way are they comparable to Facebook) and host of other innovative feature like fan page, public profile etc. Orkut did not realize that people are done with making friends and would get bored if they not served with new functionality. Sorry to say Indian’s ex – youth icon who earlier was at the centre stage of my online life now serves as my birthday reminder boy. I never thought this would happen. I only log into Orkut to get updated with upcoming birthdays of my friends.

Orkut's Fluctuating Traffic in India Vs Facebook's Steady Growth

Facebook Ranked 4 (above Orkut) in India

Social Network Map
People in India might get offended with what I have written but the reality is – In a span of one year Orkut has lost a huge share in India. It is losing heavily in Brazil and the rest of the World has almost abandoned it.

Snap shot of New Orkut
I was very pleased to see a makeover of Orkut a couple of days back. You didn’t notice? It is invite only (as of now) and you might get over it in a couple of months when it is fully functional. Have a look at the snapshot to get an idea of what it is.
It looks a lot like Facebook. Can’t really say whether this make over will help Orkut regain it users who have already
migrated to Facebook. Orkut needs to act fast or it might become a not so dominant second player in India, after Facebook of course.
P.S- Check out the interactive Map of social networking at the bottom of the post. For similar post on social networks you might want to subscribe to our
RSS Feed or E-Mail News Letter. Bookmark it on delicious for future reference.
World Map of Social Networks (June 2009)

var postBookmarkSaveCallback; function g(id) { return document.getElementById(id); } function submitBookmark() { new Ajax.Request('/manyeyes/bookmarks', {asynchronous:true, evalScripts:true, parameters:serializeBookmarkForm(postBookmarkSaveCallback)}) } function createBookmark(callback) { postBookmarkSaveCallback = callback; setValues(submitBookmark); } function serializeBookmarkForm(callback) { return Form.serialize($('new_bookmark_form'))+"&callback="+callback; }
//

IBM legal view data 22 comments
Image Credit
get widgetminimize
CrunchBase Information on Orkut
Orkut

Company:
Google
Website:
orkut.com
Orkut is a social networking service owned and operated by
Google.
Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than competing social networks like
Facebook and MySpace, it is one… Learn More
Information provided by
CrunchBase
get widgetminimize
CrunchBase Information on Facebook
Facebook

Website:
facebook.com
Location:
Palo Alto, California, United States
Founded:
February 1, 2004
Funding:
$716M
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 300 million users.
Facebook was founded by
Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard… Learn More
Information provided by
CrunchBase
get widgetminimize
CrunchBase Information on Twitter
Twitter

Website:
twitter.com
Location:
San Francisco, California, United States
Founded:
March 21, 2006
Funding:
$155M
Twitter, founded by
Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006

Statutory Warning : You might not like what I am about to write.
It is year 2009 and Orkut sucks, it is boring, it is monotonous, it is has way too less features with not many apps, it is buggy (no donuts for you!),

Orkut is buggy
it is does not facilitate sharing, no vanity URL hence no public profile, Orkut communities still sucks, scraps are dead (scraps? wtf? I tweet now!), no blog widgets, obviously I cannot search and monitor real time data on Orkut unlike
Facebook (and Twitter) and it is does not help me drive traffic to TechDusts (I know I am a selfish brat! but the fact remains that Twitter and Facebook alone helps bringing hundreds if not thousands of visitors to TechDusts everyday).
Times have changed and the world is quickly moving towards the next generation of social networks where scrapping is not as cool as updating your status message every hour. The problem with Orkut is that after a certain point of time it did not evolve. Unlike Facebook, Orkut never embraced real time sharing (like Twittter), Apps (I know Orkut has App but in no way are they comparable to Facebook) and host of other innovative feature like fan page, public profile etc. Orkut did not realize that people are done with making friends and would get bored if they not served with new functionality. Sorry to say Indian’s ex – youth icon who earlier was at the centre stage of my online life now serves as my birthday reminder boy. I never thought this would happen. I only log into Orkut to get updated with upcoming birthdays of my friends.

Orkut's Fluctuating Traffic in India Vs Facebook's Steady Growth

Facebook Ranked 4 (above Orkut) in India

Social Network Map
People in India might get offended with what I have written but the reality is – In a span of one year Orkut has lost a huge share in India. It is losing heavily in Brazil and the rest of the World has almost abandoned it.

Snap shot of New Orkut
I was very pleased to see a makeover of Orkut a couple of days back. You didn’t notice? It is invite only (as of now) and you might get over it in a couple of months when it is fully functional. Have a look at the snapshot to get an idea of what it is.
It looks a lot like Facebook. Can’t really say whether this make over will help Orkut regain it users who have already
migrated to Facebook. Orkut needs to act fast or it might become a not so dominant second player in India, after Facebook of course.
P.S- Check out the interactive Map of social networking at the bottom of the post. For similar post on social networks you might want to subscribe to our
RSS Feed or E-Mail News Letter. Bookmark it on delicious for future reference.
World Map of Social Networks (June 2009)

var postBookmarkSaveCallback; function g(id) { return document.getElementById(id); } function submitBookmark() { new Ajax.Request('/manyeyes/bookmarks', {asynchronous:true, evalScripts:true, parameters:serializeBookmarkForm(postBookmarkSaveCallback)}) } function createBookmark(callback) { postBookmarkSaveCallback = callback; setValues(submitBookmark); } function serializeBookmarkForm(callback) { return Form.serialize($('new_bookmark_form'))+"&callback="+callback; }
//

IBM legal view data 22 comments
Image Credit
get widgetminimize
CrunchBase Information on Orkut
Orkut

Company:
Google
Website:
orkut.com
Orkut is a social networking service owned and operated by
Google.
Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than competing social networks like
Facebook and MySpace, it is one… Learn More
Information provided by
CrunchBase
get widgetminimize
CrunchBase Information on Facebook
Facebook

Website:
facebook.com
Location:
Palo Alto, California, United States
Founded:
February 1, 2004
Funding:
$716M
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 300 million users.
Facebook was founded by
Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard… Learn More
Information provided by
CrunchBase
get widgetminimize
CrunchBase Information on Twitter
Twitter

more ........

Friday, November 20, 2009

Download Google Chrome OS Source Code (Updates With Videos)


Google seems to have some big plans lined up for today. Some time back Google announced about their Chrome OS event and just moments ago Matt Cutts has revealed about the Chrome OS Source Code. Go ahead and browse the source code from HERE or better still read the detailed guide HERE and then download it.

You can also watch the web cast of the Google Chrome OS event HERE .

Google announced about Chrome OS back in July and since then their have been a lot of speculations about Chrome OS. Now Google is ready to tell to the world about Chrome OS.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Windows 7 Was Inspired By Mac OS-X. Microsoft Employee Reveals In An Interview


Apple Fan boys- you can’t get bigger than this. Microsoft’s Partner Group Manager Simon Aldous has said on record in an interview with PCR that Windows 7 is inspired by its arch-rival Apple’s Mac. It was not new to us as Microsoft always tries to follow the footsteps of Apple but saying it openly is suicidal. I want to produce a snippet of what he really said

What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 – whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format – is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics. We’ve significantly improved the graphical user interface, but it’s built on that very stable core Vista technology, which is far more stable than the current Mac platform, for instance.

Was it a slip of tongue from Simon or is he planning to move into Apple? We all know that some of the features of Mac OS X have been taken by Windows 7 for instance Windows 7 taskbar and Mac OS Dock are alike (this is just one of them).

Microsoft has taken almost no time in disowning Simon and clearing the air. In the blog post titled how we really designed the look and feel of Windows 7 Microsoft says

An inaccurate quote has been floating internet the Internet today about the design origins of Windows 7 and whether its look and feel was “borrowed” from Mac OS X. Unfortunately this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Millions of Facebook & Myspace Users Account Data Could Have Been Compromised & Even Stolen


Whatever I am about to write can scare the hell out of you. The top two social networks Facebook & MySpace were vulnerable to a security flaws that could have possibly allowed any one to gain access to (and steal) your whole account data. A Facebook developer Yvo Schaap came across a flash security flaw that allowed him to gain access to millions of accounts on Facebook and Myspace

Schaap says in his blog

“My solution allowed full access and control to the Facebook user account that accessed my application. Did I mention this would also be untraceable since exploit actions would happen from the users IP and own domain cookie?”

Schaap further explains how the hack worked. Putting it simply the “crossdomain.xml” file used for Flash applications was open to such manipulations that could lead a hacker to gain full access and control of millions of accounts on both Facebook and Myspace.

After carefully reading his blog and the explanation of his hack I boiled down that 2 kind of users were highly vulnerable to this hack.

1). Users that had “auto-login” enabled for their account.

2). Users that viewed a vulnerable Flash App.

Facebook looks a lot more vulnerable than Myspace. After Schaap’s explanation it comes out that manipulating Facebook’s “crossdomian.xml” is relatively easier than a much complicated Myspace one. You should read his post if you want to gain more insights into this amazing trick.

Thanks to Schaap, he immediately contacted Facebook and Myspace and according to him the problem has been fixed.

What is really disturbing here is –

1). What about the potential developers who were already knowing this hack and were not ethical enough to inform it to Facebook or MySpace? Considering that Facebook has some 300k + developers it is quite logically that people already knew about it and the vulnerability was exploited.

2). Old debate but – How safe is your data online? Earlier there have been issues with Twitter. Hacker broken in and gained access to user accounts. This one is even more disturbing. We share, save, upload all sorts of public and private data on Facebook & Myspace. Social Networks are not a fun thing anymore; lots of people use to for their day to day business.

I need a more responsible social network company.
URGENT & IMPORTANT: I would recommend you to go to Facebook and Myspace and change you password to avoid any further exploitation. Make sure you let your friends know about this and ask them specifically to change their account credentials. Send them a mail, tweet about this to your followers, share this on facebook, myspace , help it spread on Reddit or use one of the many share option at the bottom of the post.

250+ Facebook Groups Hijacked. Reason – To Raise Social Awareness


In my last post Reported about one of the vulnerabilities of Facebook being pointed out by a developer and there is one more coming this week but this time it is being highlighted in a subtle way. A group calling themselves as Control Your Info have hacked or taken over (as explained by the group itself) around 300 Facebook Groups by taking advantage of one of the major design flaw of Facebook. After hacking the Facebook group they are changing the name of the group to Control Your Info (and not any vulgar names). They have posted everything on their website about the way and their intention of doing this.

First of all what’s the flaw all about? Any Facebook user can create Facebook group and the person who created it becomes the admin of the group. If by any chance admin has left the group, anybody can take-over as the admin of the group and do whatever he/she wants to do with that group. Facebook doesn’t have the any sort of mechanism to automatically elect new admin from within the group. Take for example the most active member of the group can be made the new admin (my way of choosing admin). I am little bit skeptical on the capabilities of Facebook testers as this is the basic functionality or may be this is how Facebook intended to have this feature.

Blunders that an employee commits

An employee is satiated with his/her work as it is in line with their needs and interests but due to the competitive nature of the market, the employee opts for a change because of many reasons. This could be a huge blunder if the opportunities attached with are not analyzed.

At the dawn of ones career mistakes do occur as there exists a factor called nervousness that disallows the person to remain calm. During the first interview the employee is unable to answer questions even if he/she knows the answer to it. Another mistake that a fresher does is duplicating another resume hence it is often found that students from same college have the same CV format. Also the job seekers forget to eliminate points that might not be valid for them. For example if you are replicating a CV ideally made for someone in the service industry, it might contain facts like height, weight, etc. But when you are applying for an administration job, these facts are not important.

Most employees change job for an increment but before making this decision one should compare the present work environment with the new. Even if the new job pays you more there are other things that one requires to continue working. One should avoid jumping at every opportunity. Every office has different work culture and adopting a new culture after being familiar with one particular culture for long is difficult.

The role you play at a new venture might be different and difficult from the previous one hence the decision should not be made in haste. Look for the opportunities to diversify when entering a new organization and have an optimistic attitude if the decision has been already made.



Bikramjit Dutta

“Human Resource”-A magazine for the discerning professional

www.humanresource.net.in

Power Of Blog: What A Blogger Can Do?


It is just a matter of one blog post that is changing the whole ecosystem around Social Networks and can go a long way in removing the scams presents in these social networks. It’s a fight of a blogger against the companies who scam on Social Networks like Facebook and Myspace and create a bad user experience. It’s a story of how a blogger may have instigated the process of replacing a CEO from her place. Bloggers are often criticized that they write things out of their limits and create controversy just to gain some traffic. I am not at all disagreeing with this point because there are always some bad elements in any setup but the whole community can’t be blamed for this. People some times over look that journalism is there to regulate things and act as a watch dog. It is there to help people differentiate between a good guy and a not so good guy.


Continue...........

News Corp. To Block Google. [Yawn...] Good News For Other Online Publishers


Rupert Murdoch, founder of News Corp. ,one of the largest media empire in the world has said in an interview with the Sky News Australia that they are planning to block Google from accessing its content. News Corp. owns newspapers as influential as The Wall Street Journal, New York Post etc to social network site Myspace.

Rupert said in the interview [video attached]

“The people who simply just pick up everything and run with it — steal our stories, we say they steal our stories — they just take them”

“That’s Google, that’s Microsoft, that’s Ask.com, a whole lot of people..…They shouldn’t have had it free all the time, and I think we’ve been asleep.”

LinkedIn Boards the Twitter Train

These days, it seems that everyone wants to be pals with Twitter, the microblogging phenom. On the morning of Oct. 21, Microsoft announced a deal for its Bing search engine to search for Twitter updates known as tweets. Just hours later, Google announced a similar deal.

Not to be left out, the professional online networking service LinkedIn on Nov. 10 is announcing its own integration with Twitter. Users of both services will be able to sync some or all of their tweets on Twitter and “network updates” on LinkedIn.

Specifically, users in LinkedIn will be able to check a “tweet this” box near their network update post to Twitter. And while on Twitter, they can add the hashtags “#in” or “#li” to their posts to appear on LinkedIn. Finally, a new app called Tweets will let users put their Twitter streams on their LinkedIn profiles.
here are the details in a blog post from Allen Blue, a LinkedIn cofounder and vice-president of product strategy:

I’m excited to announce that starting today, users can sync their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, allowing them to broadcast LinkedIn status updates on Twitter and vice versa. This allows you to amplify your professional activities on Twitter while keeping them organized and structured on LinkedIn. We think the two go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Watch Biz and Reid come to that inevitable conclusion in the video below!

LinkedIn has always been about your professional identity on the web. The many elements that make up your online professional brand range from your LinkedIn profile to the many professional conversations you’re a part of. Status has proved valuable to our users, from finding jobs to kick-start a global business enterprise.
Now you can amplify those messages by broadcasting them to your audience on Twitter.

How does LinkedIn work with Twitter?

It will take a few hours to roll out the feature to everyone (so be patient!), but with today's launch, we're making that two-way communication between your status updates and tweets a breeze to set up. Here's how it works:

1. On LinkedIn

Want to share a status message about an industry-specific article you’ve just read with a broader audience? Or how about letting people view your Twitter account name on your profile? Begin by joining your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts in just a few clicks. All you need to do is click the Twitter box under your Network Updates box on the homepage and follow a few simple steps.

Clicking through the setup process will allow you to specify the Twitter account that you’d like to sync and/or display on your LinkedIn profile.

2. On Twitter

As you travel across the web, you’ll often find articles or reports that would be useful to share with your LinkedIn connections. Now you can share from anywhere. As part of the setup process, you can choose to either send all your tweets or select tweets from Twitter back to LinkedIn as a status update.

If you pick the latter, don’t forget to add the #li or #in hashtag to every relevant tweet you’d like to send back to LinkedIn.

So go ahead and get started. Join your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts today to add a new dimension to your professional conversation.

Monday, November 2, 2009

In The Fight Between Facebook And Twitter, Which One’s The Mac And Which One’s The PC?


Facebook is much more than a social network. Twitter is much more than an information network or serendipity engine. Each represent a dashboard for your attention, a foundation for conversations and collaboration, and a matrix for your social graph and contextual relationships. In other words, Facebook and Twitter essentially represent the entrée to the future of the social Web as each strive to host, what Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and others, refer to as our personal social operating system (OS).

What Windows is to PCs and OS X is to Macs, Facebook and Twitter are to our social architecture and enterprise. Certainly there’s a David and Goliath element here depending on which company you immediately view as Microsoft or Apple. However, Mac and Windows are simply operating systems, not networks per se, and that’s where the metaphor of an OS breaks down. Either way, there is the perception that there is a competition between Facebook and Twitter for your attention and your network.

Why? At the very least, Twitter and Facebook combine the elements of productivity and interactivity, combining a social OS, a global network, and a platform for open development.

The fabric of our online activity stems from a sophisticated social framework that facilitates the exchange of information and sustains professional, conversational, and contextual connections. Facebook and Twitter, like Windows and Mac, allow us to interact cross platform, while hosting dedicated applications that support our engagement, productivity, and communication.

As much attention as we pay to this mythical clash between Facebook and Twitter, the truth is that it’s not unprecedented to maintain identities in more than one ecosystem. For example, I use both Mac and Windows-based systems, I use both Facebook and Twitter. Yet according to new data from Hitwise, it appears that the epic battle between the two perceived leaders in Social Media is one-sided—or perhaps better stated, dominated.

As of October 2009, Facebook accounts for 6 percent of all U.S. Internet visits while Twitter represents only 0.14 percent. In fact, visits to Twitter.com peaked at .20 percent between June and July 2009 and has slowly lost attention in the interim, a point TechCrunch has noted as well. At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco recently, co-founder Evan Williams acknowledged the slowdown in traffic to Twitter.com in the U.S., for now, but he also stated that they are in the process of finalizing new features that will reverse the downward trend. Williams also reminded us Twitter continues to recognize growth in both mobile and abroad.

And, for those who take solace in the hope that traffic is migrating from Twitter.com to mobile clients, there is some truth to the theory. However, new visitors count for everything and Twitter needs to do a better job capturing new users and holding their interests after they register. The company needs to look further than its resident celebrities to attract and sustain traffic.

For the time being, regardless of numbers, Facebook and Twitter serve a purpose, and thus, remain the Mac and PC in the lives of many. And, until the day that I am forced or compelled to pledge allegiance to one or the other, I will continue to cultivate relationships across multiple landscapes and suggest that you do the same.

But which one’s the Mac and which one’s the PC?

How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insider’s Confession


Last night we wrote about the lead generation scams within social gaming networks. This is a guest post by Dennis Yu, the CEO of BlitzLocal, a privately held 50 person advertising agency in Denver, Colorado, specializing in local search engine marketing for franchises and professional service firms via Google and Facebook. BlitzLocal is no longer in the business of spam, but they do specialize in Facebook advertising and are now using the platform they’ve developed to run campaigns for big brands and small businesses. Dennis writes a blog at dennis-yu.com

Did you know how Mark Zuckerberg supported Facebook in the early days, before he got venture funding? Casino ads. And how about those advertisers who were making over $100,000 a day selling Acai Berry and other weight loss products – they are friends of mine, pioneers of new advertising channels. You see those ads saying “Inbox (5). Nick, someone in San Francisco has a crush on you!” (with your name, profile picture, and city in the ad). I generated millions of dollars from these offers on Facebook – I am not proud of it, but it was very lucrative.

I will walk you through how these online scams work on Facebook and other social networks – the mechanics of how the money is made, some of the people involved, and who is actually clicking on ads. If you’re reading this article, there is a good chance that you are not the type of person actually clicking on these spam ads, but are you curious as to who actually is?

In June 2007, Facebook opened up their application developer platform so that anyone could build games on top of the social network. By having access to user data, game developers could instantly make engaging, viral games. Rate who is hottest among your friends, share quizzes, race cars, grow vegetables, and so forth – all with a click of a button. Users in one click gave the game permission to access their profile data and they didn’t think twice about it.