Facebook’s controversial privacy issue regarding friend’s “news feeds” has made its way to Myspace. For over a year users have been able to view details about the recent activities of their friends: who is friends with whom, messages left on each other’s walls, etc. The first time I saw this I thought, “I wonder what this says about me?”

Well, if you’ve logged into your Myspace account today you were probably prompted with an alert that you can subscribe to keep up-to-date with about 40 of your friends’ every move, including when they update their page, add new photos or music & post blog entries.

The good thing about this is Myspace actually informs you of this and gives clear instructions on how to opt out of it. Facebook has never asked me if I wanted this removed, and although you can go into your preferences and change it, I found it a bit of a pain to actually do it.

New Myspace Friend Updates:

Although it’s not often talked about, Myspace and Facebook were not the first to give you an option to keeping up with your friends. If you use an instant message service like AOL’s AIM you could actually specifically inform your friends of your every move in your Away Message, such as “In the other room, brb”, “getting ready to go out, cell me!”, “upstairs back in 15″, etc.

The obsession and with curiosity of knowing everything has always existed; it’s just that now we are less “in control” of it. After hearing about Facebook’s plans to possibly place your Facebook profile picture next to a product you purchased, a friend of mine said he didn’t even want to sign into his Facebook account again. Not because he often goes on secret shopping sprees but because it just seems like he has no control over what is being said about him.

Are our actions being over-publicized and is it out of our control?

In case you were wondering, Chitika will gladly let you what we are up to. You can find out right here on The Chitika Blog and in our forum Chitika SPHERE. Feel free to subscribe; we don’t mind :)

With Chitika’s API, you will be able to easily integrate Chitika | eMiniMalls ad units within the pages of your application. Check out our press release for more information about how this will allow you to monetize the traffic to your Facebook application while earning pay-per-click advertising revenue!

“Once Facebook opened its API, it established an entirely new channel for creative developers seeking a wider audience,” said Venkat Kolluri, chief executive officer at Chitika. “An obvious next step for us was to extend the success we’ve had with our 15,000+ bloggers in the blogosphere onto Facebook. Now, developers on Facebook have an easy way to capitalize on their popularity and earn revenue from the traffic to their applications. Furthermore, advertisers will have an exciting new channel to engage highly qualified consumers online.” KEEP READING!

-

How Do I Add eMiniMalls?

1. Open an account with Chitika using your Facebook application as your site URL.
2. Once you receive your approval email (with your user name and password), click the tab labeled “eMiniMalls on Facebook”
3. Select an ad unit size and your application type (either iFrame-based or FBML-based) and supply at least 1 keyword
4. copy and paste your code!

Last week when we told you Chitika made it possible for users to put
Chitika | eMiniMalls within the pages of your Facebook applications, we were curious to how many of our readers even knew how to develop a Facebook application and whether they even cared for it at all. Well so far it seems 52% of our readers are unsure of how to develop a Facebook application and 39% of you have!

Here’s a new question for you…

At the beginning of this month, Chitika and the University of Texas conducted a study estimating the revenue in the blogosphere. We came up with:
$500 Million for the top 50K bloggers!

Chitika is the first ad service to create a Facebook compatible API allowing all Facebook Application Developers to monetize the traffic to their applications via advertising. With Chitika’s new Facebook compatible API, you will be able to easily integrate Chitika | eMiniMalls ad units within the pages of your application. This will allow you to monetize the traffic to your Facebook application while earning pay per click advertising revenue.

How?
1. Open an account with Chitika using the URL to your Facebook application
2. Once you get your login email, click the tab labeled “Facebook”
3. Select an ad unit, copy and paste your code!

TIPS:

• This code will work only on Facebook canvas page
• You need to supply at least one product keyword
• Don’t forget to select your application type(FBML or Iframe)

What Chitika looks like on a Facebook application.

In case you missed it, we recently joined the ranks of those creating applications for Facebook. Chitika’s new application iBought was created for people to show off the products they recently purchased. Now with a growing number of users (100+ so far), we’re creating ways for people to incorporate revenue streams through Facebook.

Not too long ago Jason, one of our publishers, creatively developed a way to put Chitika | eMiniMalls within the pages of his Facebook application iBaseball so he could start earning pay per click revenue from Chitika on Facebook.

Although successful, the code he created was not easy to use. The Chitika engineers went to work to create a way for anyone to put eMiniMalls on Facebook just as easily as you can on your website or blog. Now with Chitika’s new API you can easily put eMiniMalls within the pages of your Facebook application to start earning PPC revenue to your Chitika account.

Being able to use the Chitika publisher interface to create the ad code is going to make it easy for anyone to copy and paste into an app and begin earning says Jason.

Getting eMiniMalls on Facebook…
Simply login, click the Facebook tab then copy and paste your code!

Now sure how to create a Facebook application?
Step by step guide to creating a Facebook application from the Facebook folks themselves!

Want Chitika | eMiniMalls displayed on your Facebook app? Just sign up to get your code!

Jason created a Facebook application similiar to Chitika | iBought and has used the Facebook API to his advantage to display Chitika ads on his app: iBaseball.

How I did it….
One of the hardest parts of creating applications for the Facebook platform is how to monetize those apps. Many apps are perfect for advertising so it can be frustrating trying to find a program that is flexible enough to target a wide variety of topics and layouts and still be used on the Facebook platform.

My application iBaseball, is no exception. The app delivers, scores, news, pictures, schedules and standings on all 30 Major League Baseball teams. Each team has it’s own “profile” page, with users setting a favorite team to use that team’s profile as their application home page.

eMiniMalls, ShopCloud$ and MPU on Facebook!

So this app has highly targeted users: everyone is a baseball fan and they are a fan of a certain team, since fans usually buy and shop for team merchandise, I wanted ads with pictures, preferably with multiple products to give users the ability to “window-shop” and since as everyone with passing baseball knowledge knows I can’t show Yankee ads on a Red Sox page or Cub ads on a Cardinal page or vice versa.

Lucky for me I am basically describing a Chitika eMiniMall using the Multi-Product Unit option. After writing a display function to properly feed the different variables to the eMiniMall code, I am able to display specific team products in an ad that is color coded to match the team colors. so users get to browse through a wide variety of team products in a cool way, and the ads blend in perfectly with each page layout. Even if your application isn’t as demanding as iBaseball, the eMiniMalls are the perfect match for any app, since you set the keywords you want to target, you don’t have to worry about the problems contextual ads are currently having “reading” page content.

Even if your app isn’t product based, you can choose products, that you think your users might be interested in, or use information available through the API to display ads of the user’s favorite band, or movie etc. The only limit to using eMiniMalls is your imagination and not what the system can handle.

Got questions for Jason about putting Chitika products on Facebook? Chat with him here!

If you’re among the many who have a mini-obsession with the fun & wacky applications on Facebook we have something special just for you!

Chitika | iBought widget has made its mark amongst the other cool applications you can add to your profile. With the iBought widget you & your friends can show off products you recently purchased. What makes iBought better than other apps? You’ll get access to thousands of products & where to buy them at the cheapest price!
iBought will look something like this on your profile page:

Oh, and don’t forget to rate your friends’ purchases! If you don’t like what they bought you can give them a big thumbs down!

Comments are open!

-Karla Escolas
CRM/Marketing
karla(at)chitika(dot)com