Building a scalable application is a real challenge. A lot of nightmares can be saved if you have your basic architecture right when the applications scale up. We are prepared for failure but often not for success. I am collecting a list of useful links on building successful applications. Please share them with a tweet to @2rams to be included here. 

May 9, 2010  http://dorai.wordpress.com/about/scalable-web-architectures-resources/ - @dorait

At Future of Web Apps Miami 2010 Steve Huffman gave a great presentation on the 7 key lessons he learned during his time at Reddit. If you are in the business of developing large scale web apps or just taking your first steps into thinking about building your web app there’s plenty to take note of.

Check it out at http://carsonified.com/blog/dev/steve-huffman-on-lessons-learned-at-reddit/

A social web counter by Gary Hayes

For more details please visit http://www.personalizemedia.com/the-count/

With great power comes greater responsibility, remember the Spiderman. Today Facebook is exactly in the same scenario. As it aspires to be the super power of the web it needs to understand it has got greater responsibility than before to its users. The way Facebook deals with some of the key issues discussed below will decide on its future.

Security and stability: With more than 400 million users as on date and growing at a astronomical rate wherein so much of personal data is entrusted, is the data safe and secure. What if for one day Facebook goes down, will all the sites built on this ecosystem also go down?

Privacy: The privacy settings of Facebook is something that many are not comfortable with. All the details about a user are open for access to any site or application, worse even their friends data are shown up. Even if you have set high privacy settings details about you could be obtained when your friends sign up or register to a site. Assume one of your friends goes to a porn or gambling site than the site will have access to your data also, sounds scary right!

Hackers: With so much of monetizable data Facebook is always going to be a target for hackers. Even a small glitch in it can create chaos. Facebook had to recently shut down its chat system after it emerged private conversations were visible to other users. Any user was able to view the live chats of their friends, as well as their pending friend requests. This is just be a small sample of the potentially bigger hazards.

Stalker: Facebook is also a stalker of your entire online activities. No we are not talking about you clicking on a like button and Facebook tracking it. Irrespective of whether you like it or not your online activities will be tracked. One way to escape from being tracked is to do your browsing in the inprivate or Incognito mode. For more details on the same check detailed article on the same by Ashwin Anand http://bit.ly/9dSYey

The future of Facebook will depend on how it handles the issues discussed above else it will not be long before Facebook gets itself entangled in unnecessary mess. Remember it takes one sensitive issue to blow up the entire system and pull down Facebook. With greater power comes greater responsibility and greater scrutiny.

With the unleashing of F8, Facebook team would be smacking their lips at the slew of opportunities that has opened up. Facebook would like leverage upon them to help it grow beyond as a social networking site over a period of time.

Search : Search is a holy grail that not many have been successful. Facebook has a good chance to be among the select few who have mastered this. Currently most of the search rankings system is based on the number of quality links that a site has. On the top of it if you add an algorithm to give weightage to the number of likes a particular article has search will throw up better results that are not only made of bots but also human intelligence.

Personalized search: One big advantage Facebook has is it can unleash personalized search. When I do a search results can be displayed as per the weightage my friends have given to different articles. For example if I am searching for review of iphone the results can be based on the likes that my friends had given for different review articles and sites. Not only does this make it personal but also more authentic.

Advertising: Facebook advertising platform can be extended to other third party sites in a big way. Facebook can provide with better targeted advertising services based on the personal likes of a user. The wall is full of information about an user and his friends, add to it the fact that the pattern of a users browsing behavior is also tracked making it much easier to display targeted advertising.

Facebook Currency: Facebook is currently testing a system called Facebook credits. This can be a real big push for sites that build their revenue models around virtual currency. Enter Facebook credit and user need not buy credits for each site or game. A uniform system of payment will open up new opportunities for sites that were traditionally relying on advertising as major source of revenue

Gaming is big business and Zynga has immensely benefited from the Facebook platform with revenue estimates to the north of $500 million by analysts. Gamers give real cash to buy virtual currency and trade in their games now this virtual currency could be replaced by Facebook Credits. Typically gaming companies pay around 10% to service providers like paypal or credit cards companies. Facebook credit can replace this entire system and it is expected that Facebook will take a 20%-30% cut but companies will immensely benefit from the fact that a uniformed system of payment will bring in more users.

Enterprise market: One needs to read more into the partnership between Microsoft and Facebook. The Microsoft docs application helps Facebook users to share documents among friends. I won’t be surprised if any announcements come targeting at enterprise market or on a platform.

I am sure there are many more interesting products that can be built around F8. It is going to be a problem of plenty for Facebook. 

When protecting data about a user base with high level of secrecy is the norm of any industry, why is Facebook willing to share details about its users. What does Facebook stand to gain? Well the guys who found Facebook are after all not dumb right!

The benefits that Facebook stands to gain can be classified into short term and long term. We will look into the short term benefits in this post.

Short term benefits

A strong eco-system – As more and more sites embrace Facebook it stands to gain from the eco-system of applications that are built around it. The success of iphone is due to the applications that were built around it, Mozilla dominates the browser market despite presence of heavy weights like internet explorer and chrome exactly for the same reason. Now with a new web eco-system built around Facebook it will virtually stamp its presence everywhere.

Content aggregator - Currently More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month. When the like button was released Mark said that he expected 1 billion likes to be shared on the site within just 24 hours of launch and this number is likely to swell by each passing hour.

More user engagement – As more information is shared on the wall by its customer it will lead to a higher user engagement. The more the time users spend on the wall the better it is for Facebook. There will also be frequent returning visitors as users will be checking updates are available on the wall more frequently and more regularly.

Better brand recall – With a single stroke Facebook will all of a sudden be visible on all the websites and applications. Facebook already had 250,000 sites that were using Facebook connect and within a week of the F8 announcement another 50,000 sites have added Facebook plugins. As a brand what more can you ask for?

Membership boost – Not to forget the growth it will fuel for the giant social networking site. With all the branding and hype created and ease of signing up with any site it will not be long before every granny and nanny will become a member of the Facebook site.

Knows your mind map – This also helps to track its user behavior as to what the the tastes and likes of a user are. In essence all your browsing habits are now available with Facebook. All of a sudden all the bands and brands you like, all your shopping and weekend plans are now known to Facebook. Throw a bit of artificial intelligence and Facebook knows your entire mind map.

This is part 2 of the Facebook analysis. Part 1 - http://techbites.posterous.com/facebook-like-the-new-evil  

Facebook has revealed ambitious plans for web domination with the F8 announcement and also has launched a direct war against Google challenging its web supremacy. We will be analyzing the same in a series of articles.

The social networking site is growing at a scorching pace both in terms of time spent and number of visitors. The core of this social networking sites strength lies in its 400 million loyal user base which is growing every second pushing it towards web dominance. Facebook is now attempting to leverage on the fact we humans are social animals.

With a small button called “Like” Facebook attempts to change the eco-system of the web. Facebook has provided website owners with access to a button called Like which can be placed in the sites pages. When a visitor clicks on this button it gets shared in his Facebook wall alerting his friends that he liked the particular page. This means there are chances his friends will also visit the site thus pushing more visitors to the website. A simple yet powerful way to spread a word around and create a viral effect.

This means all sites will sooner or latter have the Like button in their pages to cash in on the viral effect that a visitor effectively bring in. Also when you visit a site if your friends have already visited the page it shows their pictures thereby increasing the attention span to the site.

Facebook connect also eliminates registration process required for websites by allowing them to login with their existing Facebook id. When a user signs in with FB id his personal details are shared with the website owners. For website owners it is a great boon as they don’t have to dish you with a long registration form and more importantly they get more in depth data about their visitors and also about their friends that they normally would not have access to.

Facebook Platform Lead Bret Taylor had earlier stated that Facebook users are sharing over 25 billion things a month currently. Now with new Like button the numbers are bound to surge further.

It is good news for website owners and visitors who would like to share the content they read, but what does Facebook gain from this? Watch this space for more info.