Abhinav Sharma

Do they even know what ‘Beta’ means?

Abhinav — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 06:52:11 +0000

I have had it with these people. Seriously, of all the software in the world that can be classified as Beta, the last thing you’d expect is a movie rental service who probably bought off the shelf code and hacked it a little to use it. But hell, they dont care anymore, as far as they’re concerned, its a fashion statement to use unstable software in a public release!

Facebook Opens Up Platform: fbOpen

Abhinav — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:19:51 +0000

Here it is, many considered it inevitable after OpenSocial, and Facebook have responded by opening up their own platform. Even though the OpenSocial adopters are sticking with Google for now, I think fbOpen will catch on eventually, at least I find it the easiest platform to develop for.

The fb-open-platform.tar.gz archive contains the tools necessary to implement Facebook Open Platform — including the API, FBML (Facebook Markup Language), FBJS (Facebook JavaScript), and FQL (Facebook Query Language) — in your own environment. It also contains libfbml-1.2.0.tar.gz, which contains the essential libraries for parsing and rendering FBML.

Download fbOpen

AdSense vs. Cubics: Two Weeks Later

Abhinav — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:21:00 +0000

Here’s how the AdSense experiement on Facebook went:

AdSense eCPM: $0.35 (ranging from $0.02 to $1.60)
Cubics CPM (Average): $0.70 (minimum $0.67 to maximum $0.74)

Take Cubics, play safe, or take AdSense and try to maximize clicks in whatever way you can.

Yahoo: One Giant Social Network?

Abhinav — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:32:36 +0000

If this bit of information is anything to go by, the social networking bubble is either bordering on the edge of being ridiculous, or Yahoo might be on to something.

Yahoo are looking a little stagnant, and a switch to social media might create the largest social network overnight. On the other hand, if implemented poorly, Yahoo will keep going down the drain. With 500 million active users compared to MySpace’s 110m and Facebook’s 60m, Yahoo will automatically get the largest userbase in no time at all.

This represents the first time a major force is switching to the social format rather than experimenting with smaller projects like Orkut or the now dysfunctional MyWallop. Open application development is also on offer, so this might as well become much bigger than Facebook or MySpace, if they do it right!

Facebook Insider’s Guide to Viral Marketing

Abhinav — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:40:44 +0000

This was in an update sent to certain users by Facebook.

Why Facebook might be worth more than you think!

Abhinav — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 16:36:55 +0000

A lot of people have cried out over Facebook’s $15 billion valuation. However, there are certain points that support such a ridiculously high value. Investor Paul Buchheit has written an interesting article about how Facebook has the benefit of knowing about your entire real-life social network, clouded only by a few random online friends here and there, and how they could leverage it.

Facebook Application Development: 10 Things to Know

Abhinav — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 12:04:13 +0000

This comes from padrenel’s blog. It discusses important things to know while getting started with Facebook application development. Must read in my opinion, helped me immensely. It discusses:

PHP4 vs. PHP5
Session Keys
Updating Profiles with fb:ref
Debugging tools
Support and Documentation

Complete article here.

Getting beaten at my own game!

Abhinav — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 18:51:52 +0000

Trust me, it doesn’t feel good, but it proves a point, I made a fair game! Yes, the Indian Premier League has begun and so has my application for Facebook. Here’s how I’m doing in the fantasy game:

Not looking too good, I’m afraid!

Periodically back up MySQL with a Shell Script

Abhinav — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 05:12:26 +0000

There are many advantages to using the shell, one is making backups. With the following code and a cron job, periodically backing up MySQL databases is a breeze.

#!/bin/sh
mkdir `date +%m-%d-%y-%Hx%M`
cd `date +%m-%d-%y-%Hx%M`
mysqldump -h localhost  -u user -ppassword dbname > file.sql

Experimenting with AdSense on Facebook

Abhinav — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:45:13 +0000

Monetizing Facebook applications is a difficult job. First, there’s no dominant ad network for Facebook. I’ve started experimenting with AdSense on some pages of my Indian Premier League application. Here are some things I’ve learn so far:

AdSense provides relevant content if the web-page can be crawled. That’s why I built my app in such a way that certain pages can be crawled and others not. There are ways of getting around this such as nesting the ad code in iFrames with dummy text, but that probably borders right on the edge of Google’s TOS. Point is, if your page is open to crawlers, you will get relevant ads.
Selectively use require_login() and require_add(). This comes from the point above. The index.php file on my application uses require_add() so 92% of people using my app have added it. Most of the other pages are open to the web.
AdSense = CPC + CPM. Most Facebook ad networks such as Cubics or Adblade are exclusively CPC or exclusively CPM. AdSense is a combination of both, and the publisher cannot control the ratio in which these ads are shown, so you have to trust Google to deliver. Here are the facts about AdSense’s CPM.
You will get less clicks on Facebook as compared to a website. Most people on Facebook stick on Facebook and aren’t easily interested in going away. Pray to God for more CPM ads.