How about a little love for the guys and girls behind the scenes, eh? After celebrating some great web design posts last month, we’re turning the focus to Web Development for this edition of the MetaSpring Blog Carnival. So let’s get right to it!

The Trouble with Soft Delete

“Soft delete is a commonly used pattern amongst data-driven business applications”, but as Richard Dingwall points out in this post, “[soft delete] usually ends up causing more harm than good.” Richard outlines the various pros and cons of soft delete and offers a few solutions for those struggling with implementations of the pattern.

Scaling Rails – On The Edge – Part 1

This is the first of three screencasts by Greg Pollack in which he explores nine new Ruby and Rails libraries which can help you to scale your rails application. This first post deals with three tools: Bullet, Rails Indexes, & Scrooge. The content covered in these posts is easy to discern for all levels of Ruby development.

behavior: a Rails gem/plugin for storing application configuration in the database

Paul Campbell from Pabcas.com put together this post highlighting the advantages of a new Rails gem/plugin that he’s pushed out called “behavior”. Paul worked on the Rails Development Directory and developed behavior as a solution to storing issues that came up. As Paul writes, “It is useful to store site title, description, email address, passwords, etc. outside the source code.” Behavior does this with a Yaml configuration file. Installation instructions can be found at the end of Paul’s post on his website.

We Can Have Hack Free CSS With the @unsupported Directive

This forward-thinking post by Chris Eppstein discusses a feature for CSS that does not yet exist. Chris makes his plea to CSS3, requesting an @unsupported directive, which would provide benefits like “Feature Queries” and legacy browser targeting.

Top 15+ Best Practices for Writing Super Readable Code

The developers here at MetaSpring take great pride in well written, succinct code. (MetaSpring programming Architect, John Ku took this concept to the extreme a few months back in a post about Ruby Quines.) Now, Burak Guzel’s post urging developers to write highly readable code will continue that theme, because as Burak says, “readable and maintainable code is something to be proud of in a finished product.”

Top 20+ MySQL Best Practices

Burak Guzel is so good that we had to feature another of his posts! This time Burak covers a few MySQL optimization techniques. Burak walks through a step-by-step process for structuring tables properly, writing optimized queries and assembling better code. This 21 point plan for making optimized web applications is a great read for any programmer.

Next Month’s Issue: Usability

Thanks to all those that submitted blog posts this month. Hopefully you learned as much as we did. Next month’s theme is one that gets discussed a lot in both the world of development and design: Usability. Usability issues are at the forefront of many projects these days, so we’re sure to have a great batch of links. The deadline for submissions on BlogCarnival.com or through our email is January 17th. If you have a usability-related post or a suggestion for a topic that you’d like to see discussed, make sure to let us know at media@metaspring.com.

Happy Holidays!

It was my first assignment during my first week as MetaSpring’s new Digital Marketing Intern, and I had screwed up. Big time.

You have been banned for the following reason:
Shilling: Spam links in a user’s first post

…

We’d just published a great guide on upgrading your Rails development environment for Apple’s new OS, when Joe, our head of Business Development, recommended that I submit the post for discussion on Icrontic - a close-knit community focused on PC hardware, gaming, and the tech industry, in general.

Like many other user-submission based sites, Icrontic protects its readership from all sorts of spam - accidental or not. And unfortunately, as I filled out the submission form, I inadvertently pasted the entire blog post into the description field, effectively shilling the site. Boom. Roasted.

Fortunately, it was an honest mistake and I had someone much more experienced and much more connected to help guide me through the incident. Without any knowledge of the ban, Joe simultaneously reached out to Robert Hallock (@Thracks), Technical Analyst for Icrontic, to offer the post up for syndication. He responded via Twitter and it was then that we’d discovered my fault:

At that point, Joe had a chance to explain what had happened, the issue was resolved, I apologized profusely, and we all learned a few very valuable lessons.

Transparency: Gift or Curse?

In social media, conversations flow vertically - meaning that, no matter your fame or reputation (or lack thereof), you can talk to pretty much anyone willing to listen. This sort of communication bypasses many of the filters common in professional communications, allowing for nearly instantaneous feedback that is both measurable and highly visible. It was this sort of social media transparency that got me into the mess, and it was the same transparency that saved me, the post, and MetaSpring’s relationship with Icrontic.

Since technology has accelerated the pace at which business can move, instead of sitting in guilt all night long, I was able resolve the problem in just a few hours. It must also be pointed out though, that it only took a second and one click from Icrontic’s spam management team to dash MetaSpring’s credibility. The pendulum swings quickly, my friends.

So even though it’s been said on thousands of blogs, we have to say it again: transparency can be both a gift and a curse. When it comes to online business relationships - authentic, genuine, and honest interactions are the safest bet. No black hat, programmed bot can replace forthright conversation.

But sharing is caring, isn’t it?

Remember the “All for one, and one for all!” motto from The Three Musketeers? That’s the sort of mentality that I see on the internet these days. Social media and networking have fostered a collaborative environment wherein if you’re not sharing, you’re not caring.

But wait! Don’t start caring and sharing too much! While I had good intents, I fell into this category with my unintended shilling of the site. Often, transparency leads to an excess of information. As President Obama warned in last week’s address to students, “I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook.” The point of social networks is to make yourself more accessible, but you still need to take precaution with the details that you choose to provide. The same concept can be applied to social media and bookmarking sites, except in these cases, sharing too much information often implicates you as a spammer or someone trying to sell something.

The Delicate Nature of Online Credibility

When participating in online relationships, you can’t just hide behind your avatar. Online credibility is an invaluable tool for extending your message and your brand, but it is also incredibly fragile, so you have to be extremely careful not to offend the wrong people. As internet communications continue to improve, the world continues to get smaller and smaller - conversations can be re-posted for the world to see and you could be heralded for your intelligence or banned for your missteps.

So as I reached out to the Icrontic team, I reminded myself of the following tips for professional online conversations:

1. Check for Typos – Careless grammar and typing can reflect poorly on your capabilities and the amount of respect that you have for your audience.
2. Be Concise – The social media world moves extremely fast. If you wait too long, you might loose your only chance. So stay on top of the situation, say what you need to say, and get out.
3. Be Honest – In the end, deception just isn’t worth it. Honest interactions tend to resolve issues quickly and are more likely to lead to solid credibility.

Lesson Learned: Tread Carefully.

Social Media affords users the opportunity to communicate freely, quickly and efficiently. In my case, my attempt to share information was done in earnest, but could have resulted in disaster. Luckily, social media’s inherent transparency helped fortify a strong business relationship and wiped the slate clean.

Oh, and the final result? Our post was featured on Icrontic’s home page! Not too shabby for my first day, eh?

In 2007 Facebook launched their developer platform, essentially allowing anyone with the spare time to create custom applications for the site and add a bit of their own personalities to the experience. Since then, the platform has evolved and expanded at a record pace with developers – both in the community and commercial – providing a near constant stream of new and exciting applications.

Many of these new applications are created by companies looking to seize the opportunity and extend their consumer base to the ever-expanding Facebook community. And thus begins the union between eCommerce and social networking.

Mixing business with pleasure

Unfortunately for many of these opportunistic companies, Facebook users are generally not very receptive to what might be considered a commercial invasion of their personal networking space. While these commercial applications tend to be fun and quirky, site users have not been very eager to take advantage of them - likely because the business of eCommerce conflicts with Facebook’s fundamental use: relaxation and social interaction. Users feel as if they are being exploited as potential customers, rather than potential friends.

And so the question stands: Is it possible to fuse eCommerce with Facebook AND avoid alienation by Facebook’s core audience?

Giving the users what they want

Facebook had its beginning as an exclusive social networking site for college students, but opened their doors to all ages and countries in 2006; members now span all ages, interests, and backgrounds. That said, Facebook users are generally technologically savvy enough to use a computer and tend to value both their time (where they choose to spend it) and the quality of their interactions with others (their primary reason for visiting the site).

As Facebook grew, it quickly became a popular outlet for professionals - allowing them to find new contacts, maintain existing relationships, build their businesses, and widen the scope of their career field. It was this shift in Facebook’s core audience, from college students to professionals, that really got the ball rolling on eCommerce integration with Facebook.

Knowing the identity of their users is exactly why “Virtual Gift Giving”, an early eCommerce program run exclusively by Facebook, was such a success - they finally found a way to combine spending in a way that directly supplemented a user’s social interactions. Because it was so successful, many real world businesses followed suit.

Go viral with it!

Along with knowing their audience, successful applications have had a few other things in common: they are often both extremely functional (strengthening the social connections between users), as well as entertaining. These characteristics are two of many “viral attributes,” or traits that make an application appealing to the both the user’s sense of enjoyment, as well as to their check book. These viral applications are not only something that people want to be associated with, but also something that people feel like they need to share with friends.

One innovative business, Blue Nile Fine Jewelry, found it most effective to use indirect sales methods when dealing with Facebook users. In their wish list application, they acknowledge that people don’t usually login to Facebook with their wallet in hand - so instead the application provides a way for people to share links to what they’d like to buy/receive with potential gifters and recipients. At the same time, the application helps to keep users informed about sales and products right there on their own profile page. The application is simple, yet highly visible and successful in boosting the long term return on investment.

How to sell without selling

And so it seems, the key to generating an effective eCommerce application on Facebook is not to line the sidebars with banners pointing to your storefront, but to instead let the user seek you out when you have what they are looking for. Facebook users are constantly spammed with traditional internet advertising so the less that companies provide them with shameless promotions, the more valuable their product will be in the eyes of the user.

Once the users have found you, you just have to ensure that you’re providing them with useful content worth sharing. Good content and applications will benefit both parties when shared or placed on a user page, since the user must have strong motivation to advertise the company for free.

Indirect sales or mind control?

At this point in the game, perhaps the best method of eCommerce on Facebook is indirect sales - not asking the user to make an outright purchase, but still ingraining the product in their mind through continued, meaningful interactions with the application - subtly priming them for a future purchase.

Have you had any success implementing an eCommerce strategy with Facebook? We’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Editor’s Note: We’re very pleased to welcome our newest guest blogger, Katherine Naszradi. Katherine is currently a senior at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, pursuing a career in marketing. She’s had extensive experience building social media campaigns and online brand identities through sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. In her spare time she can be found traversing the Twittersphere as @krnasz, creating abstract works of art, and running with the bulls in Spain. Thanks Katherine, for a great post!