| Facebook Opens Page Promotions to Small Businesses, Drops Pre-Approval And Minimum Spend Requirements Posted: 29 Nov 2010 07:20 PM PST A key gripe among Facebook Page owners — at least those who don’t do a lot of ad spending — has been the spending restriction Facebook put in place on promotions last year. If you hadn’t bought at least $10,000 in Facebook ads, the company wouldn’t give you the written prior permission it required to run a promotion, whether it was a “sweepstakes, contest, competition or other similar offering.” It is dropping the spending requirement and approval process, we’ve confirmed with the company, following an email it reportedly sent about the changes to some Page owners earlier today. Until now, disobeying the promotions guidelines could cause Facebook to do things like block your Page. Promotions can be done for minimal cost, just the worth of the prize if nothing else, so they’re a natural type of marketing plan for smaller businesses. Facebook first instituted the restrictions last November, and told us more recently that its guidelines weren’t about making money. It didn’t have enough staff to be able to preview everything quickly, and if it didn’t have some sort of full review process in place, it could still be found legally responsible for material posted by Page owners. But the company has been busy hiring for sales operations and related roles over the past year, and apparently it feels comfortable enough with its current processes that it has dropped the restrictions. Note that the guidelines terms haven’t been updated to reflect these changes, although we assume that will happen shortly. To go in-depth on Facebook Page policy and marketing best practices, check out our Facebook Marketing Bible.  |
| Facebook Removes Bookmark for Old Groups, Adds Recently Updated Section for New Groups Posted: 29 Nov 2010 06:25 PM PST As part of Facebook’s continuing deprecation of the its old groups product in the wake of the launch of new Groups, the home page left sidebar navigation bookmark to old groups has been removed. Users could previously click this bookmark to reveal links to their old groups, but now must visit the Groups page to see the new Groups and old groups they are a member of. Since posts to old groups do not appear in the news feed, the removal of this bookmark could lead users to forget about their old groups all together. 
Facebook has also updated the Groups page to include a “Recently Updated” section showing counters next to a user’s new Groups which have posts they haven’t read. Old groups do not appear in the section when posted to. At the new Groups launch event, Facebook announced that old groups would not gain new functionality, could not be converted into new Groups, and users would no longer be able to create them. Earlier this year, Facebook removed the list of groups a user was a member of from the profile info page, preventing old groups from growing in this way. 
Now when users view their navigation bookmarks in the bottom section of the home page’s left sidebar above “Friends on Chat”, they won’t see a bookmark for old groups amongst those for third-party apps and other in-house apps like Photos, Notes, and Links. The only way users can access their old groups is through search, activity links on their wall, or through the Groups page. Users can navigate to the Groups page by clicking “See All” at the bottom of the Groups bookmarks section in the middle of the home page’s left sidebar, beneath “Friends” and above the third-party and secondary in-house apps bookmarks section. Users must then look for the group links without profile pictures at the bottom of the My Groups section, sometimes hidden beneath the “Show Older” fold. Clicking these links leads to a user’s old groups, where they can post to the wall, but do little else. The “Recently Updated” section borrows the counter design from the new Application and Game Requests bookmark system. Users can get the same information about new posts from the counters on the Groups bookmarks on the home page, so this new section is more convenient than essential. The Groups page also shows invitations to old groups. 
With the implementation of community Pages and the new Groups product, old groups have little place on Facebook anymore. Therefore its sensible to remove navigation links to them. However, even if Facebook removes all the links, expect users to paste saved URLs of groups into their browsers until Facebook actually deletes those protest and world record groups.  |
| Facebook Temporarily Denies Access to Users with Invalid Names Posted: 29 Nov 2010 02:58 PM PST Users whose names don’t meet Facebook’s guidelines are being temporarily denied access to their accounts. Upon logging in, these users are warned to change to a full first and last name without special characters or punctuation. If they provide an invalid name, they’re prevented from viewing their news feed, communicating with other users, or even deactivating their account for a number of hours. This aggressive move should eradicate irregular names on Facebook, promoting authentic identity but potentially angering or driving some users away from the site. 
A month ago, Facebook began asking users to use their real name in only one language with a full first and last name and without special characters such as ♥, ☮, or Ⓥ. Facebook explained that this was to “reduce spam and increase authenticity”, but many affected users felt it was unfair to force them to strip away symbols used to denote affiliation with causes or ideologies, such as Ⓥ for veganism or voluntaryism. In Facebook’s view, when users are tied to their real name and identity, they’re less likely to practice abusive or disruptive behavior. By only having real names on the site, Facebook could power future online identity systems which could become a lucrative business. However, Facebook has allowed irregular names until now, meaning some have become accustomed to this form of expression and are reluctant to change. Now when users without valid names log in to Facebook, they’re brought to the URL http://www.Facebook.com/Checkpoint. Under the header “Please Update Your Name on Facebook” they see a warning stating “If you enter an invalid name your account will be inaccessible for [#] hours before your next opportunity to update your name.” The number of hours number reportedly increases from one to two hours to four hours, and possibly longer if the user repeatedly refuses to comply. 
Users are shown first, middle(optional), and last names entry fields which they can use to update their name. If the user enters a valid name, they’re given normal access to their account. If they enter the same invalid name they’ve been using or another name that fails to meet the guidelines, they’re shown an “Account Inaccessible for [#] Hours” page explaining “Your account is temporarily unavailable because of repeated attempts to enter an invalid name.” They’re told to enter a valid name when they regain access. Users with unusual legal names, such as those which umlauts or other special characters, could be erroneously prompted to change their names. The move could also stamp out some emergent behavior, such as users changing their name on Facebook while searching for a job to keep hirers from finding their profile, or users putting special characters in front of their names so they appear at the top of search results. Facebook could merely be trying to clean up the site. However, the stern approach may be to speed preparations for an upcoming feature or integration which requires authentic identity. [Thanks to Jill B for the tip]  |
| MySpace’s New Facebook Connection Starts to Grow Posted: 29 Nov 2010 01:35 PM PST Following an initial integration with Facebook at the end of August, where MySpace let users share status updates and other information to Facebook but not the other way around, it introduced a way to share Facebook profile data back to the site in order to build out users’ interests. That effort is starting to pay off at least a little bit, as our AppData measurement service shows MySpace gaining more Facebook users. 
The app had been coasting down to under 500,000 monthly active users by the middle of the month. Then, it started rising when MySpace began apparently testing the new product with users, and started going up more steeply when the feature went live on the 28th — today it’s up to 761,000. That’s not much compared to big new social games on Facebook, but it’s a good sign for MySpace and its “social entertainment” strategy, considering that most third party web measurement show the company continuing to lose users. And for those wondering about the relatively flat daily active user numbers, the news isn’t necessarily bad for MySpace there, either. DAU counts were down to around 65,000 at the middle of the month, and have since risen up to slightly above 80,000. This likely shows that Facebook status update integration has a small but reliable user group — and a steady line of new people doing the new one-off sync with Facebook to port their data over. 
With the new integration, the results wouldn’t show up as Facebook traffic. The News Corp. company is using the Facebook data to friend profiles of celebrities and other figures who a user has already Liked on Facebook. Then it is using that information to share a constant stream of updates from those people into users’ news feeds. This in turn could get more users coming back to MySpace to engage with the musicians, actors, and the demi-celebrities who helped make the site a hit with users over the past decade. While the traffic numbers are still low, growth is in the right direction. The real test will be how MySpace is able to use the new relationships in order to increase engagement. If third parties start showing the site going back to gaining users, Facebook could be one reason why. Other social networks, and anyone looking to boost their own social integrations, should be watching to see what they can learn from MySpace’s efforts.  |
| Phrases Reboots With a New Version on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by MAU Posted: 29 Nov 2010 08:00 AM PST  Just a few days after surpassing FarmVille as Facebook’s largest app by monthly active users, Phrases has fallen back below the farming game — exactly as we predicted it would. But developer Takeoff Monkey appears to have a new plan. The developer has never spoken out that we know of, but it does have a new version of Phrases that is ramming its way up the rankings:
| Name | MAU | Gain | Gain,% | | 1. |  Phrases (new) | 14,164,363 | +3,788,546 | +37% | | 2. |  Tag Friends | 4,263,425 | +2,419,721 | +131% | | 3. |  Social Fun | 5,713,423 | +915,841 | +19% | | 4. |  Vegas City | 2,746,935 | +877,045 | +47% | | 5. |  phrases 4 fun | 1,928,386 | +741,652 | +62% | | 6. |  FrontierVille | 29,271,413 | +603,957 | +2% | | 7. |  JibJab | 2,228,025 | +541,238 | +32% | | 8. |  Birthday Greeting Cards | 624,743 | +534,018 | +589% | | 9. |  Island God | 1,515,461 | +419,956 | +38% | | 10. |  Hollywood City | 3,107,475 | +414,168 | +15% | | 11. |  Social Statistics | 3,585,676 | +404,123 | +13% | | 12. |  Frontier Bonuses | 396,762 | +395,938 | +48,051% | | 13. |  Epic Fighters | 721,374 | +381,723 | +112% | | 14. |  Game of Truth | 1,289,812 | +371,011 | +40% | | 15. |  ABC.com | 775,989 | +359,779 | +86% | | 16. |  xo Hearts xo | 1,473,180 | +348,795 | +31% | | 17. |  Quizazz | 3,315,133 | +332,750 | +11% | | 18. |  Crime City | 6,256,827 | +327,563 | +6% | | 19. |  Entrevista Amigos | 1,358,411 | +326,113 | +32% | | 20. |  Bar World | 635,811 | +310,334 | +95% | In total between the two versions of Phrases, Takeoff Monkey now has access to about 67 million MAU, which by that measure places it well ahead of any developer except for Zynga. Quite a few apps besides Phrases are doing well on this week’s list — in fact, the usually dominating game category only holds six of the 20 total entries, starting with Vegas City at number four. Ahead of that game we have Tag Friends and Social Fun, which both use variations of the quiz and wall post mechanic that makes Phrases successful. Phrases 4 fun, after Vegas, does as well.  JibJab has lurked in the lower-growth sections of the list for several weeks. Like several apps that we’ve pointed out recently, it is not, in fact, an app at all; what you’re seeing is a count of how many Facebook users log into JibJab.com using their social network credentials. JibJab shut down its dedicated Facebook app several months ago, but the decision doesn’t seem to have hurt it. We’ve covered the company’s successful use of Connect over the years, see its guest post from last November for more.
 |
SportsNewser: NFL Today Hosts Can't Handle Victoria's Secret Model
mediabistro.com
