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Inside Facebook

Facebook, Google Offer Conflicted Definitions of Data Portability

Posted: 10 Nov 2010 03:20 PM PST

Once again, Facebook and Google are posturing in the long-brewing debate over openness and data portability.

The latest round was triggered on Friday after Google changed its terms of service, asking that Facebook offer reciprocal access to data when the social network’s users import their contacts from Gmail. Facebook responded with a run-around; users can manually download their Gmail contacts and then re-upload them to the social network. Without banning the practice, Google responded with the rather passive-aggressive prompt below.

The very public skirmish comes as Google is building its own competing social product and has made a series of acquisitions to incubate other social projects, although sources say the company’s internal bureaucracy has made progress difficult.

Google has accused Facebook of being a “data dead end” that traps information collected from third parties. Facebook argued back that it has one of the most widely used APIs on the web and that the friend lists it shares have seeded hundreds of thousands of applications.

How Facebook, Google Strategically Employ Openness

Openness is a political term. Tech companies go out of their way to tout openness because it helps them attract developers, who fuel the value of their platforms. They want the advantages of openness without the risk of commoditizing their technology in the same way that governments want the benefits of free trade without the risk of destabilizing political rule as less competitive industries lose.

Google is open, but only in areas that are accessories to its core businesses of search and display advertising. It open-sources Android and Chrome, but does not share the formula that powers its search engine. It also uses openness and free products to undermine competitors who don’t have the scale, talent or capital to compete.

Facebook is open, but only if it is the middle-man and if its partners do not have the size or technical capability to build competitive ecosystems. It has cut off Google before; in 2008, Facebook blocked Google’s Friend Connect service from accessing its user data.

At first, Facebook’s access to Gmail users’ contacts was not a threat; years ago, Google’s senior management dismissed social networking as technically uninteresting and as a trivial fad. But as the social network has grown, so has the protected part of the web it controls and collects data from. Furthermore, Facebook is now positioned to one day launch products that could be competitive to AdSense or AdWords, Google’s key revenue streams.

Sources familiar with Google’s thinking say there was no specific trigger for the change in the company’s terms of service, except that the search giant had long tried to use the “carrot” to encourage reciprocity from Facebook. But now it was time to use the “stick.”

More than 550,000 applications depend on the Facebook Platform. But integrations with big partners like Twitter and Apple have stalled, purportedly because of issues with technical capacity. The company has also stopped short of allowing full export of data. Its new “Download Your Information” product, which lets users store a copy of their information locally, omits friends’ email addresses among other key pieces of data.

Facebook argues that it cannot pass email addresses of a users’ friends because it has — quite legitimately — privacy issues. On one side, legislators and mainstream media outlets like The Wall Street Journal have called the company out for not cracking down on developers who pass along or sell user information. On the other side, it is criticized in the technical community for not making it easy enough for users to export their information.

Yet, as SearchEngineLand’s Danny Sullivan points out, Facebook does export e-mail addresses to other partners like Microsoft and Yahoo. Facebook is willing to have double standards with other large companies that have established reputations and pose no legitimate threat to their core business.

Neither Google nor Facebook is entirely innocent. What is unusual is about this spat is how public it is. Google has finally made a very calculated decision to publicly call Facebook out on its double standards.

As the two increasingly joust over talent, users and advertisers, expect more impressive acrobatics from both over the meaning of “openness.”

Comparing Recent Public Statements from Facebook and Google

Google, when it originally changed its terms of service. The company asked that Facebook offer its users the opportunity to send their contacts back to Gmail:

“Google is committed to making it easy for users to get their data into and out of Google products. That is why we have a data liberation engineering team dedicated to building import and export tools for users. We are not alone. Many other sites allow users to import and export their information, including contacts, quickly and easily. But sites that do not, such as Facebook, leave users in a data dead end.

So we have decided to change our approach slightly to reflect the fact that users often aren't aware that once they have imported their contacts into sites like Facebook they are effectively trapped. Google users will still be free to export their contacts from our products to their computers in an open, machine-readable format–and once they have done that they can then import those contacts into any service they choose. However, we will no longer allow websites to automate the import of users' Google Contacts (via our API) unless they allow similar export to other sites.

It's important that when we automate the transfer of contacts to another service, users have some certainty that the new service meets a baseline standard of data portability. We hope that reciprocity will be an important step towards creating a world of true data liberation–and that this move will encourage other websites to allow users to automate the export of their contacts as well.”

Google, after Facebook changed its contact importer to get around the new terms of service. Instead of offering reciprocity, Facebook took advantage of a loophole, and gave users the option to download their Gmail contacts into a .CSV file and then upload them again to the social network:

“We’re disappointed that Facebook didn’t invest their time in making it possible for their users to get their contacts out of Facebook.  As passionate believers that people should be able to control the data they create, we will continue to allow our users to export their Google contacts.”

Facebook director of platform Mike Vernal responds to Google’s criticisms, pointing out that the search giant shut down its own contact exporting tools for Orkut last year:

“Less than a year ago, Google issued this statement when they blocked their own users’ ability to export their contacts from Orkut to Facebook: “Mass exportation of email is not standard on most social networks — when a user friends someone they don’t then expect that person to be easily able to send that contact information to a third party along with hundreds of other addresses with just one click.”

This functionality was not a problem when Orkut was winning in Brazil and India but, as soon as people starting preferring Facebook to Google products, Google changed its stance. First, Google simply broke their export feature and hoped people wouldn’t notice. People did notice (http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/01/google-has-a-plan-to-stop-the-mass-exodus-from-orkut-no-friend-exports-for-you/). Then, when they got called out on it, they changed their policy completely. Today, the same thing is happening with Gmail.

Openness doesn’t mean being open when its convenient for you. On Google’s website, dataliberation.org, Eric Schmidt says, “How do you be big without being evil? We don’t trap end users. So if you don’t like Google, if for whatever reason we do a bad job for you, we make it easy for you to move to our competitor.” How does limiting user choice honor this commitment?

Our policy has been consistent. The most important principle for Facebook is that every person owns and controls her information. Each person owns her friends list, but not her friends’ information. A person has no more right to mass export all of her friends’ private email addresses than she does to mass export all of her friends’ private photo albums.

Email is different from social networking because in an email application, each person maintains and owns their own address book, whereas in a social network your friends maintain their information and you just maintain a list of friends. Because of this, we think it makes sense for email applications to export email addresses and for social networks to export friend lists.

Facebook Platform and the Graph API enable everyone to bring their own information to millions of sites and applications, including even Google’s YouTube. It’s still a work in progress and there’s more to do, but in practice Facebook Platform is the largest scale initiative to help you move your information between services that exists today.

We strongly hope that Google turns back on their API and doesn’t come up with yet another excuse to prevent their users from leaving Google products to use ones they like better instead.”

Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: A Bit Lucky, Glu Mobile & More

Posted: 10 Nov 2010 01:01 PM PST

Recently, we launched the Inside Network Job Board – dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities in the Facebook Platform and social gaming ecosystem.

Here are this week's highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at A Bit Lucky, Glu Mobile, Gameloft, and Perfect World Entertainment.

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games through regular posts and widgets on the sites. That way, you can be sure that your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

Facebook for Blackberry Now Includes Places, but No Deals or Groups

Posted: 10 Nov 2010 11:30 AM PST

RIM has released a new version of its Facebook for Blackberry Smartphones app which includes the location feature Places, as well as improved search and friend lists. Users can now check-in to nearby Places, tag friends, and view check-ins by friends, but not add photos to check-ins or view Deals as users of the latest Facebook for iPhone application can. The update gives Blackberry more Facebook functionality than Palm or Windows phones which still don’t have Places, but less than iPhone and Android which have Groups.

Blackberry’s last official Facebook app update included a new photo browser, but had push notification configuration issues which led some users to receive duplicate notifications, or not receive them at all. Blackberry is part of the updated Facebook mobile platform, giving Facebook-integrated apps on the phone access to Single Sign-on, relieving users from having to repeatedly enter their email and password.

According to Blackberry’s changelog, the following updates were made in Facebook for Blackberry version 1.9.0.20:

  • Facebook Places - You can now share your location with your friends using Facebook Places.
  • Messages list - You can now view your Facebook messages list.
  • Searching - You can now search Facebook for people and pages.
  • Friends and Pages screen -The friends list has been redesigned and you can now view your Pages list from the Friends screen.

Blackberry may need to be more clear with its users as to what service package is required to run Facebook for Blackberry. The comments on the download page show that many users are receiving an error when trying to load Facebook, which is likely due to them not having paid for Blackberry internet service.

By adding Places, RIM shows that it is concerned with offering new Facebook features. Blackberry users are obviously concerned with Facebook too, as 60% of it them use the app everyday, opposed to 50% of iPhone users as of April 2010. Blackberry is one release cycle behind right now, but if it can close this gap, die-hard Facebook users will be more likely to consider purchasing RIM’s phones.

Facebook Performance Ads Case Studies: Virgin America, Whole Foods, Get Covered California

Posted: 10 Nov 2010 10:00 AM PST

Facebook Marketing Bible

The following is an excerpt of content available in the Facebook Marketing Bible, our comprehensive guide to marketing and advertising your brand, business or content on Facebook.

As Facebook reaches past its 550 millionth user, and grows its primarily ad-driven revenue to well past the $1.1 billion mark this year, a diverse range of advertisers are utilizing its performance ad platform to target and reach users around the world.

This article presents analysis of, and recommendations for, three recent self-serve advertising campaigns on Facebook.

Virgin America

About the Ad

This Virgin America ad unit invites users who “love travel” to “hop on the next flight and enjoy RED.” The ad unit relies on the message implicit in the image used — an unusual, futuristic-looking interior of a passenger airplane that communicates Virgin’s different and modern brand personality.

The ad also relies heavily on the brand recognition that many young people (and Facebook users) likely have for the Virgin America brand, using simply “VIRGIN AMERICA” as the unit’s headline. The ad creative is broadly focused around the unique Virgin America in-flight experience, characterized by a dark, purple-and-red interior, and entertainment offerings (including live television).

Implied or Explicit Offer

A unique, modern, and entertaining flight experience. (“Love TRAVEL?” Then hop on the next flight and enjoy RED”)

Call-to-Action

“Hop on the next flight and enjoy RED”

Destination Page Content

The destination page is at virginamerica.com, and displays an airfare promotion between two cities in California and Dallas, Texas, a new Virgin America service destination opening December 1, 2010. The landing page contains text that refers back to the original offer implied in the Facebook ad unit: “Flying without live TV, WiFi, leather seats, power outlets and food on-demand is just plain un-American.”

Summary

Virgin America geo-targeted this ad to Facebook users in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Although the main offer (a fare sale for flights between these two Californian cities and Virgin’s new hub in Texas) was not enunciated in the initial ad, Facebook’s geographic targeting persisted throughout the conversion funnel.

Suggestions

While it’s likely that Virgin America chose its entertainment-focused ad creative based on research findings for their audience, this ad campaign may also have benefited from a more direct expression of the offer at hand — an entertaining, and, even more important, inexpensive flight between the targeted user’s city of San Francisco to the newest urban destination in Virgin’s growing portfolio of American hubs.

Whole Foods Market Coddington

About the Ad

The Whole Foods Market Coddington ad unit displays an enticing image of a popular bakery item, a branded description of the item, and the news that the item is available at a discount through a time-limited sale. The ad was displayed to a San Francisco-based Facebook user profile that is a fan of the general Whole Foods Market Facebook fan Page.

Coddington is the name of a shopping center housing this Whole Foods Market brand, and it is located in Santa Rosa, California, a city that is approximately 55 miles north of San Francisco.

Implied or Explicit Offer

Sale-pricing for a bakery item (“Greenlee’s Bakery Cinnamon Bread — a sweet lover’s delight! ON SALE TODAY ONLY!”)

Call-to-Action

“LIKE us & come in for this sweet deal!”

Destination Page Content

This ad takes the user to a custom landing tab on the Facebook fan page of Whole Foods Market Coddington. The tab itself presents a seasonal promotion for Thanksgiving-related food items, and displays an appealing image that is actually an embedded YouTube video. The YouTube video is a Thanksgiving-oriented commercial for Whole Foods Market Coddington, featuring testimonials from local customers and staff, and had received 1,164 views at the time that this article was written. The destination page content contains no further mention of the bakery item highlighted in the ad.

Summary

This ad and accompanying campaign showed technical proficiency via a customized landing tab, embedded YouTube video, and strong visual design, but presented mixed messages in its offer and call-to-action. For what is essentially a local business, the ad also targeted broadly. Given the 55-mile distance between San Francisco and Santa Rosa, and the presence of numerous Whole Foods Market branches in San Francisco and nearby, a resident of San Francisco would be unlikely to shop at Whole Foods Market Coddington.

Within the Facebook experience, as elsewhere, users are most likely to click on an ad they see because it is relevant to them, and because it presents a specific offer that interests them; users are not likely to expect or prefer to see another, unrelated commercial upon clickthrough.

Suggestions

This ad could improve its results through tighter geographic targeting, the inclusion of Thanksgiving-themed ad creative (both visual and textual), and landing page content that is directly related to the core offer and does not introduce new and unrelated marketing material.

Get Covered California

About the Ad

This Get Covered California ad unit boldly states “Put Health Before Politics” while displaying an image of a suited man with a small byline denoting his status as a doctor. The goal of this ad appears to be to appeal to users who are concerned with healthcare, and have some awareness of, and interest in, political developments. The ad’s headline, “Get Covered California,” implies political or public service action, while the body copy reinforces this implication.

Implied or Explicit Offer

Health care protection (“let’s protect health care”)

Call-to-Action

“Join us and find out what the new health law can do for you.”

Destination Page Content

This ad brings the user to a customized campaign landing tab for Get Covered California, a public service campaign aimed at getting more young Californians to sign up for health care coverage. The landing tab makes use of bright colors and clear, sequential calls-to-action.

The user is first encouraged to take the pledge, as denoted by an arrow pointing to the Pledge tab, another customized tab that includes aa basic signup form. The user is then asked to learn more about the campaign via the Learn More tab, which presents campaign information written as numbered command form calls-to-action. Finally, once the user has already engaged with steps one and two, the campaign landing page prompts the user to Like the Page.

Summary

Although its Facebook ad creative lacked a powerful hook, the Get Covered California Facebook campaign demonstrated value to the target user, structured its marketing information as clear, concise steps. However, even the best-constructed Facebook fan Pages can fall short of marketers’ expectations if traffic to the Page is low. The Facebook ad unit serves as a valuable entry point that should consist of a clear offer and call-to-action to bring users to the next step.

Suggestions

This ad might improve its click-through performance with more visually and textually relevant ad creative that is both inviting and evokes urgency. In addition to an updated image, clearer body copy that describes that this is not a lobbying effort but a public service campaign could serve to attract not only those concerned about the state of their own healthcare but also those interested in local activism around the topic of healthcare.

Finally, a strong and clear call-to-action within ad unit itself might encourage more curious users to take a chance and click through. For example:

“Take the Pledge to Bring Health Care to More Californians Like You!”

Conclusion

Facebook’s ad unit templates are small, with a simplicity that can make some ads look almost spartan. For most performance advertisers, achieving accurate targeting, clarity of the offer, and strength of the call-to-action — all within a limited 25 title characters and 135 body text characters — are substantial challenges. Nonetheless, it is possible to run fruitful campaigns on Facebook, and more and more advertisers, from small businesses to global brands, are joining the movement.

Learn how advertising and no-cost marketing go hand-in-hand at FacebookMarketingBible.com.

Microsoft Veteran Doug Purdy Emerges to Help Improve Facebook’s Relations with Developers

Posted: 10 Nov 2010 09:00 AM PST

Facebook has been saying for months that it wants to make working on the platform easier for developers. Starting about a month ago, it introduced a program called Operation Developer Love to help do that, headed by a new hire and well-known figure in the development community, Doug Purdy.

He’s an 11-year Microsoft veteran who has held a variety of engineering and developer evangelism leadership roles doing the same sort of outreach that he’s now heading up at Facebook. His new title is Director of Developer Relations, according to his first post on the Facebook developer blog — he’s part of the Facebook platform team, although it’s not clear how he fits in with the current organizational structure.

The operation is intended to “improve Facebook’s relationship with the community, including addressing bugs, improving responsiveness and other points of developer support,” a Facebook spokesperson replied when we inquired about Purdy and his new role. It’s part of a bigger investment in the platform: “We're growing our platform teams as part of our commitment to working with developers and entrepreneurs from around the world to help them build more social products and services,” they said.

Earlier this fall, other platform product managers and marketers began running posts on the Facebook blog cataloguing significant new platform product upgrades. Starting with Purdy’s operation launch announcement in mid-October, the posts have become a weekly event, expanding to mention statistics like the number of new bug fixes, or number of posts in the developer platform. They’ve also included a list of the biggest updates from the past seven days or so. To date, those include the addition of: the ability for developers to create new custom graph objects, content filtering for plugins, access to live stream plugin social content, Page wall spam filtering, and a system for monitoring the quality of user engagement with application stories.

“We know bugs have been a frustrating part of Platform. We also know that our response has been slow (if at all),” Purdy wrote in his post. “We are committed to changing that.” The platform team has also been sending surveys to developers, trying to get a better understanding of what the biggest needs are in the ecosystem.

Operation Developer Love is a perhaps-overdue effort to help the platform become a more stable experience, that in conjunction with Facebook’s other changes, could have some impact on how developers perceive Facebook.

The fundamental dynamic, though, likely won’t change too much.

Facebook offers developers access to more than 500 million users through a variety of social communication channels for no initial cost, and advertising and virtual goods revenue models have already been proven to be profitable for applications. And, in contrast to other platforms, like Apple’s iTunes App Store, there’s no platform approval process.

Such easy access to growth and monetization has both spurred the creation of a new industry, social gaming, but also not prevented many developers from using spammy or scammy tactics to succeed. Facebook’s response, since launching the platform in 2007, has been to create a complex set of platform policies, and to constantly tweak its platform features so shady developers have a harder time succeeding. But not without some unintended consequences. The removal of notifications and requests, and adjustments to the news feed, have all hurt developer traffic numbers.

Facebook has already made concerted efforts to try to increase transparency, like introducing a long-term product roadmap in October of 2009. Whatever the on-the-ground results that Operation Developer Love brings, it shows that the company wants to keep developers happy after years of sometimes mutually damaging back-and-forth. As Microsoft product manager Dare Obasanjo wrote about Purdy’s arrival at Facebook, “Doug Purdy surfaces as Facebook’s last hope to save their relationship with developers. Good luck man.”

[Purdy image via Microsoft.]

torsdag den 11. november 2010 at 07.10