Facebook Blog, Applications and Developers Directory

Facebook launched a new kind of ad unit today that has the potential to drive much more engagement than any ad product on the site ever before has: embedded multimedia with comments visible to users’ entire friend list.

Facebook has created new home page advertising inventory with its upcoming redesign. However, this is the first time we’ve seen Facebook fill the sponsored home page slot with this kind of unit. The behavior:

1. Clicking on the ad image opens a video player in-line
2. Comments on the video are visible to your entire friend list.

The comments around the ad dramatically increase engagement with the unit, as the highly visible comments provide an opportunity for users to simultaneously draw attention to the ad by drawing attention to themselves. While this could backfire if comments degrading the advertiser are abundant (I saw a few “LAME!” comments about Tropic Thunder today), the ad comments powerfully take advantage of Facebook’s social dynamics to draw attention to an ad in a way that is impossible without the social graph. When is the last time you heard 9 friends talk about an online ad in the same day?

Ad comments are an interesting step forward in the evolution of “Social Ads.” While this kind of ad may not work as well outside of a few advertiser verticals, I expect that early advertisers will be pleased with its performance.

Happy hour finder Unthirsty.com has launched a Facebook application that puts the closest happy hours on your profile. Done with work and looking for a drink? Open up your Facebook profile and find out. Not a bad application for the Facebook crowd. An interesting addition to this application would be to allow users to check of the places they want to go and automatically match up ideal locations with friends based on a variety of factors including location, preferences, and more. While it is easier said than done, Unthirsty.com has been around for a while so there is a good chance that more features are soon to come. If you need to take a break and grab a drink go get the Unthirsty application.

My good friend Gary Vaynerchuk just informed me about his new Facebook applications and they are pretty sweet. For those of you who don’t know who Gary is, he is the Director of Operations at Cork’d, a social network for wine lovers around the world and the creator of WineLibrary.tv, a daily videocast about wines around the world. If you haven’t checked out his videocast yet, you definitely should. It is probably one of the most entertaining videocasts on the web. I am including Friday’s episode at the end of this post.

Gary and his team just released two new applications, Thunder by Wine Library TV and Ask Gary Vaynerchuk. These two applications appear to be targeted at his dedicated fan base as well as new fans. Thunder is an application that is pretty straight forward. It is a tool for fans of Wine Library TV to help promote the site. Additionally, there is a page that lists recent episodes for your viewing pleasure. The other application, Ask Gary Vaynerchuk, is an easy way to ask the one and only wine connoisseur on the web. Gary seems to be pretty good at quickly responding to questions. One Wine Library TV fan, Adam Shaver, asked “Gary, I’m loving Brunello’s these days. Which is the best you’ve ever had? In one of your shows you gave a 2001 Pinino 95 points…is that your favourite?” Within an hour Gary responded, “Adam There were many 1990 Brunello’s that were way up there Caparzo La Casa comes to mind and so were the 1997’s many I had in the 96-99 range, those are the 2 vintages!”

While I don’t know anything about wine, I do know where to go when I want to find out. I simply go ask Gary Vaynerchuk. If you have any questions pertaining to wine, go grab the Ask Gary Vaynerchuk application and get all of your questions answered. Additionally, if you want to help Gary spread the good word on wine, go grab the Thunder application. Also, if you want to read more about Gary and his awesome videocast, go check out Time magazine’s article on him.

David Gentzel is one of the top Facebook developers right now. He has launched a number of other applications that each have millions of users. His most recent creation, Happy Hour, has added close to 1 million users in under a week. If you want to figure out an effective way of developing viral applications, look no further than David’s applications. Happy Hour requires that you invite at least 5 people prior to entering the application. If there were any doubts about whether or not inviting users is a barrier to using an application, this should answer that question. Close to 1 million people (I’m sure it will be more than 1 million by the end of the day) have been willing to go through the invite process. The application is insanely simple as well. While I keep arguing that applications need to have robust features, David Gentzel keeps proving me wrong by releasing simple applications that rack up rapid numbers of users. All that you do in the application is send your friends drinks. You are given a daily budget and you can choose the type of drinks that you’d like to order. That’s all there is to it. If you want to buy your friends a drink, go grab the Happy Hour application.

Following WineLibrary.tv’s launch of their two Facebook applications a new wine related application has been launched. Mario Da Roza, Derrick Lee, Howard Lu and Graeme English have teamed up to build an application out of their appreciation for fine wine. The WineBeagle application has a database of over 14,000 wines from 12 different countries. So what does the application do? Well, it is pretty straight forward. There are two main components: tastings and your wine cellar. You can use the application to display the wine bottles that you have in your virtual wine cellar. This is either a reflection of your real cellar if you are fortunate enough to have one or your wine wish list. The second feature, tastings, allows you to give your own reviews of wines and assign a score. This application is at a very early stage and should build out a few more features. I would like to see an aggregate rating for each wine, top rated wines, new wines and more. There are a lot of features that could be added to this to make it better but it is definitely a great start. If you are a wine enthusiast then I highly recommend that you go check out the WineBeagle application. Any chance of an acquisition Gary?

Will Chu, Mike Weber, Paul Kowssari and Erik Ober just launched a new application that lets you keep track of the local scene. Simply type in your city and browse through the various late night attractions. Additionally, it shows you all of the users that have added each location to their favorites. As soon as I signed up it immediately reminded me of LateNightShots, an invite-only social-network dedicated to DC nightlife. As of now there was only one venue for Washington, D.C. but New York city and Los Angeles has a ton of venues. As of now there are around 350 users on the application but I can see this one taking off. One feature that I would like to see is photos from each location. Additionally, it would be great to see a list of upcoming events that users can post. Aside from that, this application is well made and is easy to navigate. If you are a regular to nights out on the town, then go grab the Bar|Book application. It’s a great way to find other people that like to attend the same places as you do. Maybe you’ll even find some new places to attend!