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A Tale of Two Facebook Apps: Viral Vs. Non-Viral Growth

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on March 8, 2008

in Code, Facebook, Research, School and Social Network

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For my SI 508 Networks class last semester I did an analysis of one of my Facebook applications, Notecentric. Notecentric was a social network that I had written during the Summer of ‘06 and I had recently ported it to the Facebook Developer Platform in Summer ‘07 shortly after the platform had been launched.

The growth of Notecentric isn’t what I had hoped it would be. Not too many people use it, probably due to network effects of Facebook promoting a competing app (note to Facebook: if you want to promote a level playing field, don’t play favorites!) and other general performance issues (the application is pretty barebones and the RFacebook library I used to write it is pretty damn slow. It times out a lot!).

Anyway, I got some neat network data from it, which made the whole thing worthwhile. You can check out the original paper I wrote last semester here.

I’m going to be presenting my analysis during the School of Information’s annual expoSItion. It’s like a science fair except without the exploding volcanoes. During my Winter break, I developed another app, mainly for fun. It’s called Musical Instruments. Basically it lets you list which instruments you play and see which instruments your friends play. I had somewhat higher hopes for this application as a data gathering tool, and sure enough, it seems to be doing some cool stuff on first analysis. For expoSItion I figured I’d grab some data from this new app and compare the two.

I ran some initial analysis on the Musical Instruments app. I won’t go over a lot of the original metrics I used (number of peers with app installed, percentage of peers with app installed, etc) and I’ll just skip to the pictures.

This is an initial view of the Notecentric network:

Continue reading ‘A Tale of Two Facebook Apps: Viral Vs. Non-Viral Growth’

Facebook Social Ads Really Work!!!

Published

Hung

on February 10, 2008

in Facebook

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I mean, they work if you’re a captain who knows how to catch big fish with their boats. Oh wait, I’m not! But thanks for the ad anyway… Also, I love the typo: “This app if for?” IF FOR? Seriously? You must’ve gotten your MBA at Harvard!

Banished From Boggle

Published

Hung

on November 7, 2007

in Code and Facebook

. 3 Comments

There’s a Facebook app called “Bogglific.” It’s sort of the Boggle equivalent to Scrabulous. Anyway, my boss Gillian likes playing it, so I added it to play against her. And she beat me handily. So handily, in fact, that I was resolute to come up with a way to have my revenge.

I’m the kind of person who likes to play smart, not hard. And I’m a programmer. So put one and one together. Go ahead, I’ll give you some time to predict what I did.

YES, I WROTE A PROGRAM TO CHEAT AT BOGGLE!

I mean, it’s sort of this fun problem if you think about it. My solution used a lot of recursion (probably too much), and a dictionary function that verified actual words.

And it worked pretty well, too. I beat one of my coworkers 70 points to 1. Of course, afterwards I fully disclosed this information. I’d never be able to live up to the hype if someone challenged me to a live game anyway. I mostly cheated to see if my program was any good. And apparently it was. My plan was to make it to the top of the leaderboard, then retire from the business altogether.

I have to hand it to the Bogglific people; they’re pretty clever. They detected that I was cheating and banned me. And I have nothing against that. I knew what I was getting wrapped up in. I still even have my pride intact, since it was my program that I was cheating with! I understand though that cheaters should be banned. It really isn’t fair for everyone else who comes up with their three and four letter words.

I’m thinking of adapting my Boggle solver into a Facebook app. For educational purposes only, of course. Like, check out all the words you missed! It’ll be a sort of Boggle trainer…

Anyway, I am taking my Boggle banishment in stride. I hold nothing against my oppressors. At least now I’ll have some free time to work on my Scrabulous Solver (which is actually a somewhat more computationally complex (and interesting) problem…).

Facebook Internship Interview Result: Rejection! And Why I Like It…

Published

Hung

on October 27, 2007

in Facebook and Job

. 2 Comments

So I got a polite (aren’t they always?) email from a recruiter at Facebook about my interview. Rejection. I guess I’m not too surprised since Facebook is everyone’s favorite company right now. Apparently there are billions of people who want to get a job/internship there, and currently, there’s like ~300 employees. So I didn’t have a very good chance from the start.

Of course, my thought process immediately after reading the message went something like this:

Stage 1: Retaliatory. “I’m going to create the next Facebook-killer and they’ll all regret the day they rejected me!”

Stage 2: Somewhat more realistic, optimistic. “I’m going to create something they can’t help but acquire, which will be my ‘in!’”

Stage 3: Realistic: “Okay, I guess I’ll just improve and maybe try again next year.”

People might wonder why I’m so open to listing my rejections publicly. I think the reason is that I’m not ashamed by them; I actually tend to get motivated instead. For example, when I was rejected by Berkeley, Georgia Tech, UC Irvine and Iowa State, I decided that I’d work extra hard when I finally did begin grad school at Michigan. And I think I’ve been doing a job of getting involved academically.

When I was rejected by Google, I decided I’d become a better programmer (in addition to becoming more interested in real research with stuff like social networks, etc). Plus I made MapsKrieg shortly after the rejection (mostly because I needed to find an apartment, but if I had given up on Google, I might’ve used the Yahoo Maps API instead…).

Apparently I still need to work on this aspect a bit since the Facebook interview was basically a programming/algorithmic question. The “interview” was so short that I doubt anything meaningful about my abilities could have been evaluated. Sure, I didn’t prove P=NP, but I thought I did okay… I think it was a matter of the process being way too competitive (or at least, that’s how I’ll rationalize it to make myself feel better).

So what does this latest rejection mean for me? It means I’ll be working a lot harder in my networks class, for one. I’m working on a fairly interesting project, so hopefully that’ll buff my otherwise slim portfolio. Facebook is the only (should I say first?) company to reject me so far for Summer internships. So I still have a few other good companies to try.

In two years (more like one and a half, now), there might be a better company I’d like to work for. I still have a lot of time before I graduate, so hopefully I can become “acceptance worthy” material by then.

Facebook Information Session at Umich

Published

Hung

on October 4, 2007

in Facebook, Job and School

. 0 Comments

So tonight there was a Facebook info session up at North Campus in the exact same room as the Yahoo one was, exactly one week ago to this very day!

In stark contrast to the Yahoo one, there were actually engineers, and they actually told us what they did, and why they liked it. Bob Trahannypoo (was that really his name?) and Jon Warman did the talking.

The info session was very geared towards engineers, and I found it interesting that a lot of the stuff they talked about seemed like shared knowledge among the room. Like they’d reference f8 and just assumed we knew what that was. I got all the references, but I’m not sure about other people.

Before the session, I was pretty convinced that Facebook was a solid company and seemed fun to work for. Now, I’m even more convinced. When your engineers answer questions like PR people, you know you’ve built a pretty good company culture.

Also, for anyone who hates the “is” in the status updates, I asked them if they could remove it when they asked for questions. The answer I got was “no, but maybe when we internationalize the ‘is’ will go away.” So good news on that front.

As far as schwag goes (it’s always a factor), I got some neat Facebook branded gum and M&Ms. If I ever decide not to be lazy, maybe I’ll take pictures. On the downside, no pens, notebooks, post-its, or shirts! Come on, guys! All the Silicon Valley companies are doing it!

The only thing that really sorta annoyed me was that I had tried and tried to get an interview with them. Because I’m not in the Engineering school of Michigan, I couldn’t log into their super special system. I still tried contacting the Facebook HR people but they never replied. I physically handed them my resume, so hopefully they’ll have a slot open tomorrow. I felt a bit of Engineering snobbery going on (as in, you’re nothing if you’re not an engineer), which is funny since I still consider myself an engineer (B.S. in Comp Sci == Engineer, right?). But I guess that’s the price I pay for entering the School of Information…

I’m still convinced that SI is a good choice, and also that Facebook rocks. Let’s see if something good happens.

EDIT: I got an interview, so it looks like I’ll be reading a bit of the algorithms book tonight.