Hung Truong: The Blog!

Facebook Marketplace – With Connections!

So the Facebook Marketplace is like this mini craigslist for the various networks in Facebook. This is pretty neat. Not because you can sell stuff on Facebook, necessarily, but because it incorporates the existing data of Facebook as well.

When you look at an item, you get information on the item and seller, and also information regarding your “relationship” with the seller. So if the seller is your friend, Facebook tells you. Well, you should already know who your friends are… But if this person is a friend of a friend, Facebook tells you that as well!

This is really cool (and something craigslist lacks) because you automatically have a way to determine if the seller is legit, without using lame feedback methods like Ebay does. At least, hypothetically, your friends should know legit people…

It’ll be interesting to see how successful the marketplace will be. While it may be fun getting random stuff from strangers with craigslist, it’d seem like a better idea to actually know who that couch belonged to before using it…

Also, I think it’s hilarious that Facebook decided to release this like a day after Oodle launched a sponsored group featuring its own classified ads. PWNED!

Alexa T-Shirts: WHY!?

So I was checking out the Alexa ranking of MapsKrieg, and I saw this link that was selling personalized shirts based on the Alexa ranking of a site. Ummm, what!? The shirts display stats like your Alexa ranking and quotes like, “0.00005% say my site rocks!” (which doesn’t sound like something I’d boast about), and “Will dance for better Alexa rank.”

I find it scary that someone actually took the time to prepare the templates for these shirts (they’re printed by Zazzle). Has anyone in the history of the universe bought one of these? Perhaps an overzealous SEO fanatic? But really, is anyone so obsessed with their Alexa ranking that they’d buy a shirt (that would probably end up being inaccurate by the time the shirt was printed and delievered anyway)!?

If you know anyone who has bought one of these shirts, please inform me. And punch them in the face for me, too.

Businesshackers Dot Com: Redefining “Lame”

So I got this spammy email in my inbox and I thought it was too good not to write about on my blog. I got this “offer” via Notecentric, my social note taking web app.

Dear friends,

here is Dario, the founder of “businesshackers.com, profitable ideas for business and life”… I am writing to tell you that I was really impressed going through your website. My team and me have seen thousands of websites and start-ups in particular and rarely have we seen such a good work.

One of the things we try to do is to promote great website that do not receive any promotion because of a number of reasons such as lack of funds, not enough time to launch it, etc.

We usually charge quiet a lot of money for reviews and links to websites due to the quality of posts you can find on businesshackers.com. We focus on quality, not quantity. There is something we can offer you: you can write a review of your website, but please try to be as objective as possible. What you could include is a description of why the site was created, how it works, what your plans are, etc. You are allowed to include max 2 links to your site and 1 picture. It should be a good way to gain visibility online. Normally we charge between 30 and 160$ for a review, but because of the quality of your website we will be happy to publish your own text on businesshackers.com.

Please let me know if you think it is a good idea.

Best regards,

Dario

p.s. if you prefer us to write the review for you it is just 50$. This is the link with the details.

p.p.s. please link to businesshackers.com if possible

p.p.s. we do not accept duplicate content, only unique sorry

Basically, they’re offering to post a review of Notecentric, given that I write it and send it to them… OR I can pay them “just” $50 to write it for me. Screw that. Judging from the quality of the writing in their email, I wouldn’t take money from them to write about Notecentric!

Do all the companies on this lame ass website pay for these reviews? If so, I think the word needs to get out about this totally lame and unjournalistic enterprise.

BTW, I’m intentionally not linking to them, lest I contribute to their pagerank.

The Facebook API: Somewhat Disappointing

I had read a few months back or so about Facebook coming up with a developer API. I hadn’t really felt like trying anything with it until recently when I heard about the FQL (like SQL for Facebook) Query language being created.

Anyway, I tried to think of a few ideas for mini-apps using the API, and today I finally got around to messing with it. I hit a roadblock pretty quickly, though. Apparently Facebook’s API will let you find all of the current user’s friends, but it won’t let you see all of the friends of any other user. This seriously limits the capabilities of the API by a whole lot.

This sort of makes sense. If the API let you see more than a logged in user could, that user could theoretically get past privacy setting that are in place. However, the API just blocks all queries that try to find all friends of anyone other than yourself. When logged in, you can see this info, so I don’t see the harm in offering it in the API.

What this means is that there’s no way to really “traverse graphs” with the API. You only get info on the user’s immediate friends. Thus, any application using the API is really only rehashing or using data that is already available on the main site. That’s fine for simple applications that can sync your address book to Facebook or let you rate how hot your friends are.

But Facebook is a social networking site. The interesting applications require some kind of access to the graph data of the site. It’s really disappointing to see that the API limits this so much.

I really would’ve liked to see a bit more capability with the Facebook API. If Facebook really wants developers to come up with interesting and complex applications, I’d suggest opening it up a bit more.

Seriously, What Is The Deal With Twitter!?

So I’ve been reading about this thing called Twitter on some web 2.0 sites and whatnot. Call me pessimistic but it sounds like a completely useless idea. Now, before I had heard about twitter, I had used this thing called “status updates” on Facebook. I guess they’re pretty similar.

On Twitter and Facebook, you can write updates on what you’re doing, either from your phone or your computer. I think the difference is that Twitter sends updates to your friends on what you’re doing by SMS or whatever. Facebook just sorta posts your status on the site.

Now, I actually use the Facebook updates now and then, but it seems like people who use Twitter do this to the max. Like they update multiple times a day. Are these people so self-centered that they think everyone needs to know what they’re doing?

I think the difference between this functionality in Facebook and in Twitter is this: In Facebook, it’s just that. A functionality. In Twitter, the ability to update is the entire application itself. To me, Twitter is simply a subset of what Facebook already provides. Why would you ever need both?

The only thing I can see that Twitter does better is leaving out the required “is” that facebook stick in the updates. So I can write “Hung Truong likes cheese” rather than “Hung Truong is liking cheese.” Screw gerunds!

Regardless, Twitter seems to be insanely popular. At least with web 2.0 blogs. For now I’ll stick to updating with Facebook, like every few days or so…