I was at the iLike party table that Marc Canter was at. Where Kara Swisher commented about needing a Marc Canter “taser” which was in response to Marc’s interruption of a little presentation at the iLike party. Here’s Marc’s recollection.

Marc asked an interesting question, but I remember feeling weird because of the timing.

To understand the tension I’m avoiding, go read Tantek’s post on “the importance of being nice.”

The question of the moment: to be nice or to ask the question?

Not to mention that Marc’s question (about whether iLike was going to be on platforms other than Facebook) got to strategy and was awkward because there were Facebook co-founders and employees in the audience. Strategic alliances are made and lost during events like these. I remember the times when my boss got yelled at by Microsoft because he started a Java magazine.

Cringe, cringe, cringe.

As to the journalists at the table. Getting access to things is their lifeblood. It isn’t lost on me that I don’t get invited to certain things because I don’t play by certain PR rules either (one guy told me he stopped inviting me because I recorded other guests who complained to him). It does make one very careful about when and where to break the unwritten rules.

To ask the question or to be nice?

Which one would you do?

Oh, and if you haven’t seen my hour-long interview with Marc, you get to see his personality up close and personal.

Me? If I ever do plan an event I’ll get back at Marc. I’ll put him on stage where you all can ask him tough questions.

I tell ya, it’s hard to keep up with Kara Swisher and her little video camera. On Thursday evening we went to two parties. I was enjoying one of my last parties before Milan gets here and both were interesting events.

She has reports from both.

Party I — August Capital.
Party II — iLike celebration of Facebook success.

I show up in one of the videos admitting that I’m a loser. You gotta listen to see why I say that.

It’s a tough life partying with journalists from Newsweek, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Kara. But someone has to do it.

Valleywag was at iLike too, catching all the mustaches.

OK, the TechCrunch interns tell us about their top 10 favorite Facebook applications. Now, since the interns are 20-somethings I expected that I’d have a different take on what we needed and so I talked through it on my Kyte.tv channel.

Here’s the TechCrunch Intern’s apps:

1. iLike (music app).
2. Graffiti (way to draw little lame cartoons on your Facebook profile).
3. Where I’ve Been (a way to brag to your friends that you’ve been to more countries than they have).
4. Zoho Online Office (a way to share Zoho’s apps with your friends).
5. Fantasy Stock Exchange (fun game, I wonder which stocks they are picking).
6. Flickr Photos.
7. Honesty Box. (A way to send anonymous messages. I already have comments on my blog for that reason.)
8. Box.net files. Useful way to share files.
9. Superpoke. A serious 40 something wouldn’t be caught dead pinching, hugging, tickling his friends.
10. Friend match. 40 somethings don’t need more friends.
11. Bonus: TechCrunch.

My favorite Facebook apps:

1. Google Reader Shared Items. This is way more useful for those who read a lot of feeds. Plus it shows you who has the most popular blog posts in the past few hours.
2. Twitter/Pownce/Jaiku apps. Pick the one you’re on. That lets your Facebook readers keep up with you, no matter where you post.
3. The video application. Lets you send video messages to all your friends from your computer’s webcam.
4. Kyte.tv. You see it here on this post (if you’re reading on my blog — lots of feed readers strip it out). But you also see the same thing on Facebook. You can chat with people live there on that app too.
5. BlogTips. If you’re looking to blog better, use this app.
6. Upcoming Calendar app. Come on, don’t 20-somethings have to keep track of all the events that are coming their way?
7. Blog Friends. Don’t the interns have any friends with blogs? This is how you track them.
8. Wordpress. If you blog on Wordpress or Wordpress.com, this is the app for you. Shows your posts AND your comments. I thought every 20-something had a Wordpress blog?
9. Ustream.tv. This isn’t important to everyone (who here other than Chris Pirillo has a streaming video show). But I included it here cause I have to wonder about a 20 something who isn’t into streaming video. Don’t you guys watch Justin.tv?
10. SkypeMe. Lets you use Skype to call me.
11. FaceReviews. It’s a Website that reviews Facebook applications.
12. iLike. Hey, at least we matched up on that one and the Zoho one (although I don’t have any Zoho stuff I want to share publicly yet).

What do you think? Which Facebook apps are you using, if you’re on Facebook?

I don’t add any of the silly ones, so don’t tell me about the Ninja app or anything like that.

I’ve been on Facebook, what, about six weeks? I have more than 4,000 friends so if anyone should be complaining about “Facebook chores” like adding new friends or dealing with “application spam” it should be me. Jason Calacanis has been on for a while and only has 395 friends and now is giving up because he hasn’t figured out how to keep up with “Facebook chores.”

Rex Hammock chides him. I’m not going to link directly to Jason, cause I want you to read Rex’s post first cause Rex has a good point on this issue.

My response? I LOVE WHEN PEOPLE GIVE UP ON FACEBOOK!

Why? Because Facebook is now a media distribution network (among other things).

I’m in the media creation and distribution business.

When Calacanis gives up that means there’s fewer competitors.

Media creation also means I need to be a professional networker. That’s why I go to TechCrunch parties — to find great people to interview. Last night I collected a stack of business cards. Those people get invited to join Facebook. Why? Facebook is the new business card AND the new media distribution network. Watch what’s happening with video inside Facebook. Watch what’s happening with applications.

More of the best names in tech are on Facebook than any other social network I’m on (and I’m on a ton of them).

I’m glad Jason isn’t taking the time to do it.

Anyone else in this business want to avoid Facebook? Please do it! Means more opportunity for the rest of us.

Speaking of which, I’m gonna leave a little video message on this topic for Jason over on my Facebook profile.

UPDATE: as an example, over on Facebook I just shared a video done by Terry Storch and Brian Bailey on the Blogging Church (Brian blogs for one of the biggest churches in the USA). Facebook is the ultimate “pass along” video source. No one person gets huge distribution, but get passed along enough and a sizeable audience will show up. In fact, I can’t add more than 5,000 friends in Facebook so the audience size of any one person will always be small. But the passalong is huge. The app platform there works the same way — virally. Anyone miss that iLike got millions of visitors in the first two weeks? I didn’t.

I met with a few people who work at Facebook today (my first meetings).

Learned some stuff:

1. Facebook’s first office was above Jing Jing in downtown Palo Alto, which Dave Winer made famous for Spicy Noodles. Of course we ate there and had Spicy Noodles.
2. The Facebook platform is getting a small update tonight (it’s updated once a week, I learned). Tonight’s update that developers will notice? That you can put different things into messages on the wall. If you haven’t visited my Facebook Profile yet, the wall is an area where you can leave messages for me and anyone else who visits my profile. Expected to come onto this? Music (iLike, last week, already added music choices to messages sent inside Facebook). Video. And other media types. The wall will be open to third-party developers to plug different media into and integrate into. This makes the platform integrate better into common pieces on the profile page. End users might not see a difference tonight, but developers will see new APIs. Developers should add the Developers Application to their Facebook Profile, which would bring you to the news about new APIs coming. To add the app, visit the Facebook Developers page and click “getting started.”
3. They are seeing a lot of growth. Both in usage, as well as employees. If you’re a hot computer scientist they are hiring.
4. They are continuing to move to a wider demographic than just college students, which should have been obvious to anyone who is following their moves over the past year. I told them that I have already seen that, most of my 3856 friends aren’t in college anymore. They are also taking over quite a few buildings in downtown Palo Alto near the Stanford University Campus (more than three buildings already, with more needed).
5. There is a limit to the number of friends you can have: 5,000. This is there because of technical limitations. After you reach 5,000 you have to remove someone before you can add someone else as a friend.
6. People with thousands of friends are called “whales” by Facebook employees. Only a small percentage of their user base has more than 1,000 friends.
7. They expect many more “useful” apps in the next few months. Apps aimed at just getting spread around (one I don’t accept is the Ninja app) are probably not going to be as successful as a new wave of apps that actually provide some value come on board (my favorite example there is the Google Shared Items App).
8. For employees who live within a mile of Facebook’s headquarters they subsidize your housing. Translation: if you hang around in Palo Alto chances are pretty high that you’ll meet someone who works at Facebook.
9. They are pretty careful about discussing future capabilities. I asked about new advertising platforms and other questions about the platform (like whether a new API would come out that would allow applications to talk with each other) and got “we can’t discuss future directions.”
10. The leadership at Facebook is young. I knew that since I remember listening to Chris Putnam’s music when he was 16 (he’s now one of Facebook’s best developers — his team built the video app, which is really awesome — and he just turned 21).

Anyway, I’ve come away even more impressed with the team here. This is definitely the most interesting company that I’ve met in the past few years and can’t wait to bring you more news from inside Facebook.

UPDATE: Some people are misunderstanding me here. The update will let users add new datatypes to their messages on Facebook walls. It doesn’t mean that apps will be able to write their own messages to walls.

John Battelle asks a compelling question: why Facebook and why now?

Scott Rosenberg of Salon.com follows up with another point: that Facebook’s friends definitions are all messed up.

Over on TechMeme everyone is talking about how Facebook’s advertising isn’t working.

So, let’s take on these questions.

First, why does Facebook’s advertising suck?

Because it isn’t tied to people or applications. Everything I do in Facebook is about interacting with people. For instance, at the top of my Facebook inbox right now is Ryan Coomer. The advertising next to him says “Try Forex Trading Today.” There is absolutely NO connection between who Ryan is and the advertising that’s put next to him.

Imagine if advertisers could “buy people.” I just clicked on Ryan’s profile, hes into Running and Golf. Why don’t ads for running and golf gear get put onto his profile? Wouldn’t that make sense? He’s also a software developer. Where’s the Visual Studio advertisement? He’s into video games. Where’s the Halo 3 advertisement?

Translation: Facebook needs an advertising platform and it needs one in the worst way. I’m not going to even look at the ads until the ads are tied to the people on Facebook. Facebook knows what we’re into, put ads for those things onto our profiles and messages.

Second, how could the friends definitions and ties be improved?

1000 ways. I’ll be honest, I don’t use them at all. I just add you as a friend and don’t put any details in there about how I know you. For one, adding that kind of detail is a competitive advantage for me and for PodTech and not something I’m really anxious for other people to know.

For instance, my first result is for Danny Krimgold. I’ve never written about Danny. You don’t know who he is. But he was one of the first people I talked with on Netmeeting back in 1996. He was in high school then and I could tell he was damn smart. I kept in touch with him as he went to Cornell, got a masters in computer science, and now is working at McCann Erickson as a project manager. There isn’t a good way to tell Facebook how I know Danny. In fact, I found that there isn’t a good way to tell Facebook how I know people for about 70% of the people I know through the Internet. So, I just leave them all blank. I guess the best choice in NetMeeting is the “met randomly” choice, but that sounds so stupid. So, I leave it blank.

Finally, why Facebook, why now?

Well, I compare it to LinkedIn (which is the competitor that comes up the most in conversations), Twitter, Pownce, and Jaiku. All of which have a social network component where you can keep track of your friends.

First, Facebook has far better contact management than Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku. If I look up someone on all three networks Facebook shows me more, brings it up faster, and has a better look into their own social networks. That leaves LinkedIn to compare it to. I dropped off LinkedIn a year ago cause the expected useage model there is to have your friends do things for you. Pass along resumes, give references, etc. Because of my popularity I simply got too many requests to do those things. There is no such expectation on Facebook.

When I talk with people about the two, also, they say that LinkedIn is for their professional lives and Facebook is for their personal stuff. A PR person at BEA told me that, for instance. I’ll leave her name out of this. Theresa Klein also says this (and is not very happy with me that I’ve turned Facebook into a professional tool).

To tell you the truth, the reason Facebook is the better networking tool is BECAUSE it’s personal. I don’t really care that Danny is at McCann Erickson. I would have known that anyway cause the first thing Danny tells me whenever we talk is what he’s working on. He told me the day he got accepted into Cornell, for instance. That stuff just comes up in regular conversation. But I don’t remember his wife’s name, Facebook shows that (they just got back from their honeymoon). I didn’t know his favorite drink. Mojitos. I got just the place to take him for great Mojitos when he comes out to visit. Facebook shows that. And I didn’t know anything about his social network. Facebook shows that too. Looking at the groups he’s added I can tell a lot more about him. He’s into going to free movie screenings in NYC, likes BMWs, reads the Economist, and lots more.

Oh, and he has his email and phone number there, so if I want to drop him a line, or give him a call, it’s there. Facebook has almost replaced my Outlook contact list because of this.

What other reasons are there for Facebook now?

Quality of people on the network. When I say my Facebook contact list is like a who’s who of the Tech Industry, I’m very serious. And I’m still adding more people to my friends network. I’ve been on Facebook for about a month and I’ve already gotten 2,452 friends. Let’s give you a little tiny taste of who is in my contact list.

Jeremy Allaire. He started a company, sold it to Macromedia, was its CTO. Now is founder/CEO of Brightcove.
Dion Almaer. Works at Google. Was the principal technologist for the Middleware Company. Founder of Ajaxian.
Stewart Alsop. Was editor at InfoWorld, now a VC at Alsop Louie Partners.
Marc Andreessen. Founder of Netscape and Ning.
Geoffrey Arone. Co-founder of Flock.
Michael Arrington. Founder of TechCrunch.
Eric Auchard. Tech reporter for Reuters.
Edward Baig. Tech reporter for USA Today.
Brian Bailey. Web developer for fourth largest church in USA.
Josh Bancroft. Most famous blogger at Intel.
Jeff Barr. Web services evangelist at Amazon.
Andrew Baron. Founder of Rocketboom.
Hank Barry. Famous Silicon Valley VC.
John Battelle. Founder of Federated Media, among other things.
Scott Beale. Famous San Francisco photographer and founder of Laughing Squid.
Joe Beda. Works on something important at Google in Kirkland.
Veronica Belmont. Now working with Jason Calacanis on some killer video project. Significant other of Ryan Block, top Engadgeteer.
Kenneth Berger. One smart dude at Adobe on Web Suite team.

OK, that’s just a few names off of my first page (probably represents 5% of the page). And I have 13 of them. I’ll add you to my friends’ list. Just request me to add you.

Oh, did you know that once you’re my friend you can look around at all the people who are my friends? This makes getting access to interesting people very easy. If I get complaints about you, though, I’ll remove you as my friend, so don’t abuse this privilege. Thanks.

But, that brings us to the grand daddy. Facebook’s application platform.

This is the real reason why I turned on Facebook. I don’t really care about the social network piece. There’s already other places I can get that (I could have stayed on LinkedIn if I really cared about being part of a social network).

But now my social network brings me cool applications. Well, some cool ones, like iLike and Zoho. But a lot of really crappy ones. It’s interesting to see what people add to their profiles, though. I wish I could see when people remove things from their profiles, in addition to adding them. Right now, for instance, I can see that 13 of my friends have added the Zombies application to their profile. I wish could see that 3 of my friends have already removed it, cause it’s a lame application.

Anyway, it’s the application platform that got me interested in Facebook and THAT is where I expect to see the hot new advertising models pop up.

But, no matter how you look at it Facebook is the one. Right now.

What do you think?

iLike is that app that got super popular, what, three weeks ago? Seems so long ago. It was “BI.” Or, “Before iPhone.”

Anyway, I found out that Tracy Chapman lives right up the street from me, so have been listening to her music lately and putting some of it up on my Facebook home page. If you’re one of the 1900+ people who’ve friended me on Facebook, you can listen along. If not, oh well.

Either way, iLike is a great music service. Just search for someone’s name and you can find music by them and add it to your Facebook profile too.

Oh, and did you know that everytime you write something on my wall my phone makes a noise thanks to inbound SMS? Everytime my phone does that I say “Facebook.” It drives Maryam nuts. Ahh, the fun we have in the Scoblehousehold.

Come back tomorrow at 2 p.m. — I’ll cover the launch of a new Facebook app. Will it be as popular as iLike (which got to six million downloads in two weeks?)

We’ll see about that!

Sorry, can’t tell you who it is until 2 p.m. Pacific Time tomorrow.

When I first met Hadi Partovi and his team he was on the floor of his Seattle startup putting together an air conditioner. We joked about what it takes to make a successful startup (I told him I was thinking of leaving Microsoft) and that being the head of a startup means getting your hands dirty doing weird jobs like setting up airconditioners so your team can keep working. That was just about a year ago. I already knew that Hadi was brilliant. Why? The folks who worked for him at Microsoft (Steve Rider and Sanaz Ahari) told me so. He was the one who put together the skunkworks start.com team which later became live.com. Unfortunately Microsoft couldn’t keep Hadi happy, so he left and started iLike with his brother, Ali. A bunch of smart engineers from Microsoft and other places came along too (Rider left to join the team there).

In that first meeting, and a video interview with Ali since then I don’t remember them ever talking about Facebook. I don’t know if it wasn’t on their radar screen, or what, but I don’t think that a year ago they ever expected that Facebook would turn into the platform it has and that they would be the top player on top of that platform. I’d love to know the story of how they decided to change their business into a Facebook-focused one.

It doesn’t really matter why or how, though, because about a year later, they are the hottest startup around and are signing up 300,000 new people a day. That’s just absolutely incredible. I don’t know of a faster growing startup in terms of signing people up.

If you read my link blog you’ve already seen these blogs and a few others talking about Facebook’s success, but definitely don’t miss the one by Marc Andreessen where he digs into the pros and cons of the Facebook platform.

Om Malik is one of my favorite bloggers and I’m very happy to have him on the ScobleShow today. In the interview you’ll learn how he earned the title “GigaOm” from his mom and he gives his view on what makes a good blog. “Respect people’s time,” is his top advice.

Also on the ScobleShow is a killer new music service, iLike. Meet iLike’s CEO, Ali Partovi, and get a demo of what makes iLike a great service.

Oh, and thanks to Theresa Valdez Klein who paid me a great compliment on the Blog Business Summit blog: “I’m not just kissing Scoble’s ass when I say this-the questions he asked Senator Edwards were better framed and delivered than any that I’ve heard a reporter ask a political figure in a long time. He cut right through the bullshit and got some straight answers out of a politician. I congratulate him for that.”