Since the launch of this application, we have seen a growing numbers of users from across Canada share their opinions on restaurants, bars, dentists, health spas and this is a way to say thanks for those users to keep sharing their opinion with friends and family.

On a personal note, I appreciate that my blog has been very quiet in the last couple of months and for everybody who emailed me asking me what’s up - thanks for emails and your concern.

Besides being extremely busy in my position of Director of Online Services for Yellow Pages Group, I also made a move from Toronto to Calgary. Although the transition went extremely smooth, it is quite a ride to pick up your life and move over 3000 km’s.

Anyway, I will be regularly contributing again, with more of a focus on what is being launched by the YellowPages.ca Labs Development Team as we continue to produce some great work in helping Canadians buyers connect with sellers.

So what is the determining success in developing a facebook application? In the facebook world it really comes down to the number of installs of the application and more importantly the number of daily active users. At the bottom of this post, I will share some numbers on local search applications in facebook.

Before I get into small application numbers, I want to highlight a feature about the YellowPages.ca application - building your own lists to share with friends and then map your lists. This application allows a user to create lists for private, semi-public and public on pretty much any topic. Here are some public user created lists:

Favorite Restaurants in Calgary - Map List.
Favorite Sports Stores in Montreal - Map List.
Favorite Toronto Restaurants - Map List.
Great Restaurants in Port Perry - Map List.
Places to Eat in Ottawa - Map List.

Some interesting lists, including one for my favorite places to eat in Ottawa.

Back to numbers of successful application usage. I grabbed these numbers from Adonomics.com, which aggregates usage on facebook applications. Here are some stats regarding application usage on facebook. Numbers are as of today.

The most successful application, in terms of installs is SuperWall with just under 43M installs and a daily active usage of 2%.

Funwall has the most active users at 1.8M from a total install base of 36.5M and a daily active usage of 5%.

Scrabulous (now being sued by Hasbro) has 3.9M installs and daily active usage of 506K or 13%.

So what about local search applications? First, from an expectation perspective, they are not even close to the above numbers. Facebook is still, at its core, a platform of entertainment. However, it is interesting to see how some of the local search player applications fair-out:

Yell Socialiser (UK) - 500 installs, 2 daily active users (0%)
Praize’n'raze (CDN and US) - 950 installs, 57 daily active users (6%)
YellowPages.ca (CDN) - 667 installs, 40 daily active users (6%)
Local Picks (Global) - 1.1M installs, 3349 daily active users (0%)
Lolodex (US) - 2800 installs, 15 daily active users (0%)

Over the past number of months, I worked with the Praized Team on the data distribution and traffic agreements for Yellow Pages Group Canada. Many people kept asking me what Sebastien was up to (I use to work with Sebastien at Yellow Pages Group and he is one person with whom I regard very highly) but had to keep quite out of respect as well as contractual obligations.

Now that it is launched, what I think you are going to see two things; 1) a user focused platform that I would bet is going to be very successful and 2) a model that demonstrates how publishers and new ventures can work together. For the start-ups they get the necessary data to ensure they can fully deploy their concept and a revenue model. For publishers they get exposure in the social space and targeted traffic to their online networks. This is a very exciting time and I am excited to be working with such innovative organizations such as Praized Media.

So how does it work and what does it look like?

First thing a business owner should do is go to YellowPages.ca and do a search for their business listing. Once again - I am using my mom’s business, The Bra Lady as an example. Once you are on your business listing click on the ? beside the Add These Tools To your Website.

When you click on the ? mark - this will launch a new window with some Javascript code that you can copy.

Take the Javascript code and add it to your website. In the case of TheBraLady.ca - we decided to add this code into the header of the website so that it is available on every page.

Finally - when a user selects this new button on your website - it launched a window that gives a user a multitude of ways in which they can share your business information.

And that’s it. Now your business contact information can be shared via email, address book, desktop, social media, print and instant messenger.

Pretty cool eh.

I have had the pleasure and opportunity of working with Jeff and his company since I started working at Yellow Pages Group as an employee in 2006. He is one of the most intelligent, level headed, and forward thinking experts in the field. I suggest checking out his corporate blog for insights from field.

There was a question in the interview that was asked of Jeff specifically about Social Marketing.

“I have recently become addicted to social bookmarking, esp. StumbleUpon. What words of advice can you give to anyone looking to become a power user in any of the social guises?”

To that Jeff answered:

Jeff: Don’t lose perspective, and always track results against objectives. Social media can become all consuming, but the actual traffic is very difficult to convert. Its very easy to have spent a great deal of time and effort, with no real returns. So, begin by setting objectives (Benefits to Engaging in Social Media Marketing). Its not for every business … its merely a tool in our toolkit. So make sure the effort can satisfy specific goals.

3) Network … participate in these communities. Vote, comment, submit … in that order. Establish friendships in various social media, and migrate them to other platforms. Be loyal to your friends … follow their submissions religiously. Tip … use RSS to follow their submissions pages, and check every few hours. THIS WILL TAKE TIME … and continue to take time! If you really want to be a power social media user … its takes a lot of time and effort.

Could not have answered that question any better.

Jeff answered many more questions from Paul - so make sure that you check out the entire interview.

Remember Friendster? One of those early social networking sites. Well as of this week, they have made a couple of key announcements that could help bring friendster.com from the depths of the Canadian Internet space to - perhaps a competitor to facebook? Well - let’s not get carried away, but they have announced opening up a developer network as well as integrating with OpenSocial - both positive steps in the right direction, however, probably a little late - at least in the Canadian market. For the full story please read, Friendster developer platform goes live with over 180 apps.

From a local business perspective - your best bet is still facebook.com as a vehicle to communicate with your customers and friends. With the launch of facebook’s business solutions - there is a very viable solution for local businesses to get involved in the social space.

However, what about friendster? You know, at one point, they had a great service but what they are doing now is reactive not proactive. They, like myspace, are in reactionary mode to facebook and this is a touch position for any business to be in.

Anyway, as a FYI - here is a 12-month media trend comparing facebook.com, myspace.com and friendster.com in Canada - the graph speaks for itself as to what Canadians are using and where local businesses in Canada need to be.

Anyway, here were some of the stats regarding the growth of facebook.com that I found very interesting and impressive:

55 million active users (usage in the last 30-days)

250,000 new users a day

doubling every 6-months

over 50% of users are returning everyday

70+ billion page views per month

end of 2007 - 1 trillion page views per year

40+ page views per user per day

Here are some screen shots of what this looks like. I used my mom’s business in Calgary called TheBraLady.ca. Here are the steps of how I got these screen shots:

First visit yellowpages.ca and do a search for bras in calgary. This actually loads a full page of results, but I captured just the result listing. As you can see, from the listing level you can add to facebook.

If you click on the company name this loads the merchant page for TheBraLady.ca. As you can see from the following screen shot there are two locations where you can “add to facebook” including the logo in the top right hand corner. Sorry for the small size - click on the link above to see the live version.

This is what it looks like inside of facebook.

As far as I know this is one of the first times that a company has allowed every single business in a country the ability to brand itself inside facebook - if you know of another integration - please send me a comment.

From a user perspective this is a great way to share a meeting location since all the merchant pages on yellowpages.ca have a map - when an address is available. From a small business perspective - this is a great opportunity to brand yourself within facebook.

Imagine - you set up a small business profile in facebook and invite your customers to connect to you. Why would they do that - because you are going to send out messages, promotions, coupons, etc. You use the add to facebook functionality to continue to update your friend list of these promotions. There is very little investment to make this happen and you potentially create a great viral tool.

If I had a small business - I would definitely take advantage of the many opportunities that could come from this integration. But that is just me - I tend to think a little differently.

What I am not suggesting however, is that a local business simply puts something up on facebook and they will gets lots of business. Frankly the only person who cares about your business is you - facebook users certainly don’t. However, if you can build an application that has meaning for users - then you can probably turn this into real dollars.

Over the coming weeks, I am going to test out applications on facebook that have been developed by companies interested in making money but that have real application for users. I will keep you posted.

So I did a test this evening and here is how the process works:

Step #1 - Visit YellowPages.ca and do a search query. I happen to look for a dentist in Calgary.

Step #2 - Locate the business of your choice that you want to add and select the “Save and Share”. In this case, I selected my dentist - Optimum Dentistry.

Step #3 - This launches a window where you select how you want to “Save and Share”. In this case, I selected Social Bookmarks and then Selected Facebook.

Step #4 - The listing is added to your facebook profile.

What I like about this service is that it is a simple way to share businesses in Canada with friends and family on facebook. For example, if you are planning a night out - you can add the link to facebook - share it with your friends to view the map and or driving directions for your business. A good example of a IYP leveraging social marketing to promote its customers.