Simple & powerful often wins


In the age of real-time social media, simple and powerful is a winning combination, and that's why I remain very bullish about Facebook.

Some early adopters are less interested in Facebook these days. Some pundits and critics have even questioned its viability. But the constant and impressive uptick in their numbers continues to define their success. They’re extending their reach both globally and locally in key demographic segments. Facebook counts 300 million active users, and their business model (whilst still immature) is now cash-flow positive.

They’re also a business that has proven to be very capable of shifting quickly to meet the evolving needs of their members. Currently, that means away from a biz model emphasizing funny games and activities (like vampires vs monsters and all that earlier application stuff) to one that focuses more on real-time group and personal networking involving Twitter-inspired status updates, linking and information sharing. That’s very clever of them, as they’re demonstrating their ability to keep pace with the changes going on in the social media space … something MySpace and other networks have been less capable of doing in the past.


I came across the album preview site today for The Big Pink's debut album, A Brief History of Love, and it demonstrates how well Facebook is adapting given the expectations that come with real-time digital communications. It is a simple site with a straight-forward implementation of Facebook Connect allowing people to post comments from the band's album preview page. Nothing too fancy, but it works really well.

~ It is a simple yet well-designed site
~ You can listen to every track of their new album
~ It isn't that complicated to use
~ There's no need to register, unless you want to
~ There are obvious calls to action in terms of purchasing their music
~ Using Facebook Connect, visitors can easily share their opinions

This simple model fosters organic word-of-mouth communications and will drive the visibility of their brand, er, band. ;-)


Facebook Connect allow users to “connect” their Facebook identity, friends and, privacy to any website and is Facebook’s first honest attempt to allow access to Facebook user data outside of Facebook itself. The company is describing it as giving third party applications access to much of the same data as Facebook applications have today. Here's more info on it, from Crunchbase:

Trusted Authentication – Anywhere during the user’s experience that the developer would like to add social context, the user will be able to authenticate and connect their account in a trusted environment. The user will have total control of the permissions granted. This is a proprietary authentication mechanism, but is more streamlined than the existing method and will not require a redirect back to Facebook.

Real Identity – Users can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the open Web, including: basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups, and more.

Friends Access – Users will be able to take their friends with them wherever they go on the open Web. Developers will be able to add rich social context to their websites, and will be able to show which of their Facebook friends already have accounts on their sites.

Dynamic Privacy – As a user moves around the open Web, their privacy settings will follow, ensuring that users’ information and privacy rules are always up-to-date.

Here are some links to explore:
Facebook: Connect Widgets
Crunchbase: Facebook Connect
Facebook Connect: Developer Wiki
Examples of Facebook Connect

I think we'll see much more of this type of simple yet effective use of content combined with user interaction and ratings, as musicians (and other artists) along with folks from other sectors like travel and entertainment latch on to this powerful combination.

Why will it work? Because Facebook is making it simple for people to use their very powerful services and APIs, and the combination of simple and powerful often wins.