25 million faces

(I don't know if it's just a slow week at work or if I am getting lucky finding sweet news these last few days)

You have to believe I have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to shine my praise on all that is Facebook. I search WSJ archives for a blip on the social happyland or a quick interview with the CEO (who is frighteningly only a year older than me). I looked through Time, Newsweek, NYTimes, any credible source of news-making to tell us what we already know is a sweet story parallel to the Google dorm start up. And today, while reading my favorite Fortune girl's blog, there it was. A 3 page article on the new applications that Facebook slide under our noses earlier this week. Facebook is slowly taking over the cyberworld. Then there was the followup article the ran a week after the launch of the new stuff. A week later.....

When I was playing around with the iLike app, posting my favorite songs (K-OS remix on Feist "Mushaboom" Loves it!) and finding out who else is going to the Tegan and Sara concert, I wasn't thinking about the revolution of the internet that I was involved in. The articles do a much more articulate and term-accurate way of explaining these changes so I will leave that to the expert and make you read it.

When I told Elaine about this evolution, she said "so if it crashes it will take down the world is what you are saying. or at least the under 24 world." my response "25 million people worldwide. yup. it will be a spectacular crash if nothing else...."

I think some of the most fascinating parts of this little update is

1) The freedom of anyone being able to create an app to share with us eager Facebook lovers. Within this one awesome week, the apps list has gone from the initial 65 mostly corperate-sponsored applications to 800 applications created by the guy in the apartment next to you. The creative spark of those closet techies will either be a flop (which I'm sure many will be) or the next Yahoo. And as a certified Facebook junkie me and my junkie peers will be at the helm of the success of whatever this next big thing could be. Its like an exclusive club that has access to the hip joints before the rest of the world even knows about it or can get in. An exclusive club of 25 million people and 150,000 new members every day......

#2 sweet thing is the natural Hot or Not of these applications as they find free members. When you eliminate the money and advertising aspect of anything, your going to see the true trend and activity of it with people as a whole. It goes hand in hand with my philosophy on free mp3s for up and coming bands to get a solid fan base (see uofm application essay) The part of the article (I don't know which one) where they say that Facebook didn't even announce the changes, that people found out about the applications was through the Mini Feed. After a week, iLike (which seems to be the most popular app so far) had 1 million members within Facebook. I can attest to that. That's exactly how I found it. I logged on one day and found that the guy that is subleasing my friend's room for the summer "added the iLike application" You put an i in front of anything and you've got me hook line and sinker (pod, phone, mac, tunes) So I clicked and signed up. 1 million and one.

iii) The best and most awesome (I'm running out of awesome adjectives) aspect of this, from a former Marketing major's standpoint, is the idea of friends reviewing products for friends. I haven't come across this app yet so I don't know much about it (or if it even exists yet), but i do know that it could be the demise of advertising-induced hypnotism that companies have over us with commercials and ads and an overabundance of awesome adjectives to use on their own products and less on the actual quality of the products. People are always going to listen to their friends over the 60 year old 3 piece suit CEO's marketing team with $$ in their eyes. So what terribly awesome new ways are they going to have to come up with to get us to buy their product. I say if you can't beat em, join em.

So I just did a once over on my 3 awesome Facebook points and I saw a huge parttern that makes me kind of embared to realize that I am basically talking about the same thing 3 times over. The user is in control. Freedom. God that is a great word.