Stop and think for a moment: If you’re spending your time developing a tool that channels negativity then of what are you a conduit?

When conceptualizing and developing applications, it’s easy to get caught up in how to make things viral and sticky. A lot of facebook apps are stupid games. Beyond those, many successful facebook applications feed and grow little narcissus within us. Compare People, Top Friends etc. The incentive for “comparing” or adding someone to “top friends” is the desire for them to reciprocate. That is what makes these viral.

So, with that said, I pose the following questions to anyone brave enough to answer:

1. Can an application be viral without being innately selfish?
2. What applications of a social network like Facebook can provide a net gain to society?

For more analysis on facebook apps, check out this analysis on the three types of facebook app.

The old way:
register their concerns and suggestions. Add them to a big list with all the other concerns and suggestions. Talk to the developers and make changes to the next version of the product. Now you have bad suggestions with the same value as good suggestions. Your brain is flooded with all of these specific feature requests and changes that only affect a few users.

The new way (a la 37Signals):
Read user feedback. Delete it.
If you see something over and over again, it will sit in the top of your mind. You’ll know then what needs to be fixed.

A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life

- James Allen

I love facebook. I use it at least once a day. It’s easier to know me through facebook than it is to meet me. You’ll know who I’m dating. You’ll learn about my interests and whom my friends are. You’ll see pictures of my life.

Giving away your soul

I dont own any of it. By putting myself up on facebook, I relinquish all rights to owning my digital representation of myself.

That’s not to say that I care right now. The service is compelling. One site with all the information you need to keep up to date with your friends. It makes it easier for everyone that way. All credit to facebook, they do a great job of making their site a compelling place to hang out.

Déjà vu?

I liken Facebook to the Web 2.0 AOL. In the early days of the internet, if you weren’t on AOL, you were nobody. AOL had instant messaging, chat rooms, message boards, content – all the makings of a great social network. That lasted for a little while. Until the openness of the internet provided variety. The service that AOL provided to its customers has been supplanted by the broader web.

Zuckerberg is going down.

Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in a year, but humans don’t like walled gardens. Humans don’t like being locked in. As cool and as open as facebook apps are, they lock you in.

The opportunity is there to provide the value that facebook does; aggregate user generated content and link it to specific individuals. Spoken plainly – my friends find out about me – both in general and right now.

Making it happen

Friend interaction and aggregation is the main thing missing from Wired’s attempt at replacing facebook using open social tools. We’ll get there eventually, but it will require interactions as simple as facebook using open technologies from multiple vendors.

What would you need to be in place to ditch facebook?

If I ask you about women. You would probably give me a syllabus of your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You’re a tough kid. If I was to ask you about war you’d probably throw Shakespeare at me, right? Once more into the breech dear friends. But you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap, and watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help.

Nothing beats experience.

As much as we can learn from books, they cant replace experience. Im an impatient person. I left my job and thought “Im going to go and become a successful tech entrepreneur”. Ambition is great, but I’ve learned something since leaving. Unless you have $500,000 to burn on making mistakes, work for someone else to learn the ropes. It is faster.

Starting a business is like skydiving. However, instead of a parachute, you jump out of the plane with fabric, a needle and thread. Learn to sew first. Otherwise, good luck!

Be Honest!

I got an epiphany during my current trip to England. Everyone has fears, problems, struggles. As a defense mechanism, our brains feel uncomfortable sharing this vulnerability with people. Remarkably, after doing this, people feel an immediate bond.

Im going through an interesting time where Im a little uncertain about my purpose in life. In the past, I had always been on a well defined path. When meeting friends, instead of talking about my fears, uncertainties and struggles along that path, I would try to stress how great things were going. Though my friends / acquaintances would leave thinking how great things were going with me, they would fail to forge an emotional bond because it’s more difficult to relate and have feelings for people’s successes.

On this trip, I unashamedly talked about the struggle to find my purpose in life and how unfulfilled I was by my good job, townhouse, girlfriend, honda accord, 2 dogs, 2 cats life in the past. In sharing my inner self, I connected with ALL of my old friends. The testament to this is when people wanted to meet up again before I left!

I found this really interesting, and Im really glad that I don’t alienate people anymore (fingers crossed)! That’s the last thing I want to do, but I now realize I would have done so in the past.

How do you connect with people?