The Facebook Problem: A New Perspective

One of the toughest aspects of the Facebook platform is the potential rate of growth. While the virility of the Facebook platform provides a new opportunity for entrepreneurs, it also creates a very dangerous predicament. Instead of asking, ‘How do we grow?’ the question becomes ‘How do we scale?’.

The post “I have 250,000 Users, Now What?” describes some of the growth problems on Facebook, and prominent bloggers such as Brad Feld have discussed it as well.

To build on this conversation and add an additional perspective, J-Squared’s Sticky Note application has seen explosive growth and is now finding itself in the middle of ‘The Facebook Problem’. While we are pleased with our situation in some respects, there is no infrastructure in place for us to scale with our growth rate. As an early stage start-up, we lack the important resources needed to effectively grow the business evenly in terms of scaling and product development. If we spend time on one, the other fails. Both are crucial to success.

While we don’t believe it is Facebook’s responsibility to provide unlimited resources to their developer community, it does seem that some sort of developer assistance program would benefit both Facebook and its growing developer community. Why not reward the most successful applications by providing support of some kind? It’s in Facebook’s best interest to facilitate the growth of the most popular applications, because these popular apps begin to take on the Facebook brand.

We have personally experienced poor customer-support response times and adverse effects from poorly communicated F8 modifications, among other obstacles. At the same time, our users are beginning to associate our sometimes slow response times (due to server overload) with the Facebook brand in general. This is why it behooves Facebook to assist popular applications. It becomes a representation of the entire Facebook product.

We’re not asking for Facebook to provide us with a revenue model and an executive management staff, but some general support and streamlined communication would help.

What do you think? Should Facebook be providing support of some kind? If so, what type of support? Is ‘develop at your own risk’ the right model, or will developers soon leave the ephemeral green pasture of F8?

J-Squared rolls out Viral Facebook App: Sticky Notes

Six days ago, J-Squared launched an application in Facebook called Sticky Notes. We now have over 50,000 users and are continuing to grow rapidly. We pushed through the top 100 list yesterday and now find ourselves as the 72nd largest app on the Facebook Platform out of over 1,000. How did we do this?

Simple. Communication is always at the heart of interactions online. A computer is merely a glorified calculator until you connect it to another machine and allow the two to interact. The difference between technical interaction and human interaction is that social communication always carries with it an emotional intent. At J-Squared, we felt that the expression of emotional communication could stand to be enhanced on Facebook, thus offering users a superior experience in the growing space of ones ‘digital life.’

So, how do people interact on Facebook? They send short snippets of information back and forth. These ‘micro-emails’ form the fabric of a large portion of online communication today. Twitter has proven that such communication is a ubiquitous and addictive behavior.

In response, we took this same behavior and enhanced it on Facebook through the concept of Sticky Notes. By enhancing the graphical representation of messaging and allowing the expression of emotion through fonts, colors, and familiar real-world objects, we were able to create a compelling new way to micro-message online.

Our advice to Facebook developers: find a ubiquitous activity and break it down to its fundamental core. Then offer enhancements to that activity in a creative way. There you have it. Of course there are other techniques to employ – but this one has worked well for us thus far. Anyone have any spare servers?

We’ll discuss more about the Sticky Note project as J-Squared continues to develop it. Please comment on this post. We love comments.

Hey People. J-Squared is here.

Welcome to J-Squared Media – the Blog. Wow, that sounds official!

If you’re new to this blog, you’re in good company, because I’m a newbie too – and so is everyone else. This is my first blog-post for J-Squared Media, as well as the first blog I’ve ever written period. I’m not a hardcore ‘blogger’ by any means, but the time has come for me to start probing the depths of the internet and latching on to the massive crowds who gather here. After all, J-Squared Media was founded on the principle that the internet is by far the most influential communication platform ever invented.

The possibilities and innovations tucked away within the construct of the internet are endless, and J-Squared was developed with the attitude that these opportunities will continue to present themselves at a constantly increasing rate. With a focus on social communication software and emerging technology, J-Squared hopes to develop a suite of interesting and useful new business entities.

I believe I’ve now written enough for the inaugural post. If you’re not bored, please come again. I’ll end with a final question: What would you personally like to see in this blog? Comments welcome.