Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- More Speakers Set for Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 – January 25th in San Francisco
- MySpace’s “Mashup with Facebook” Ports Likes to Populate Its Stream
- Facebook Credits Gift Cards Now Sold in UK Tesco and Game Stores
- Facebook Tests “Pay Later” Option for Buying Virtual Goods
- Facebook’s Efforts in Japan, South Korea and Russia Show New Localization Focus
- VisitBritain and Betapond Show the Top 50 UK Places by Check-Ins
| More Speakers Set for Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 – January 25th in San Francisco Posted: 18 Nov 2010 11:00 PM PST
As we announced recently, Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011, our second conference on the future of monetization on social platforms, is happening January 25th in San Francisco. We're excited to see all of the developers and entrepreneurs that are planning to attend! Today, we're excited to announce 3 new speakers for Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011: Anil Dharni, Co-founder of Funzio and Founder of Storm8; Jens Begemann, Founder & CEO of Wooga; and Eric Goldberg, Managing Director of Crossover Technologies. They will be joining our full list of speakers below. Finally, if you’re considering attending Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011, take advantage of early registration pricing and sign up now. A limited set of early registration tickets are currently available at the Early Admission price of $249. This price will be good through Friday November 19th only, so we encourage you to register now. At Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011, executives and experts from Facebook, leading social networks, mobile platforms, social game and app developers, media companies, virtual goods and payment services, and investors will be discussing the future of social platforms and virtual goods monetization in social games and apps from a global perspective. Who’s Speaking? We're honored to present the following confirmed speakers at Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011:
Key topics for the day will include:
Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 – January 25th in San Francisco Social applications first emerged in 2007, and are today maturing into a global media ecosystem. With the launch of the Facebook Platform, followed by platforms from MySpace and other social networks, developers worldwide could leverage the social graph to create new kinds of social experiences never before possible. Now, three and a half years later, what started out as sheep throwing and vampire biting has quickly become a profitable billion-dollar industry, punctuated by numerous major acquisitions by the world’s leading media companies and developers. But now, new challenges are emerging, affecting big players and new entrants alike. Inside Social Apps will investigate the latest trends and challenges for social applications, and look at what’s to come for developers throughout the space – including the growth of virtual goods and social applications on mobile devices. What are the biggest uncertainties and opportunities facing the future of social games and applications in 2011, and who is leading the way? Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 takes place January 25th, 2011 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, and brings together the world's leading entrepreneurs to weigh in on the future of social app and game monetization. Inside Social Apps will be a one-day summit led by Inside Network’s Eric Eldon and Justin Smith, and will take in-depth investigative approach to the day’s discussions. At Inside Social Apps, Inside Network will work alongside founders and executives of the top social networking, social gaming, mobile social gaming, payments, and virtual goods infrastructure companies to analyze the most important issues affecting the industry. Inside Social Apps is geared towards developers on Facebook, iPhone, Android, and emerging online social platforms. Inside Social Apps will be a content-rich day of critical discussion, followed by an evening and nighttime of casual networking. Register Now
A limited set of "Early Admission" tickets is available through Friday at a special price of $249. This price will change after Friday, and space will be very limited, so we encourage you to register early. From all of us at Inside Network, we hope to see you on January 25th in San Francisco!
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| MySpace’s “Mashup with Facebook” Ports Likes to Populate Its Stream Posted: 18 Nov 2010 05:51 PM PST Today, Myspace announced ”Mashup with Facebook” allowing users to port their Facebook Likes to Myspace to "create a personalized stream of entertainment content.” By offering new users signing up through Facebook Connect a way to populate their stream, users are more likely to stay engaged until they can establish friendships on the network. Meanwhile, existing Myspace users can augment their stream. The integration operates under the assumption that while everyone has a Facebook profile with Likes, there is content from these publishers that is unique to Myspace.
At the end of August, Myspace began allowing users to syndicate the content they share to Facebook. One million MySpace users took advantage of the option in the first month, underscoring the interest in deeper integration between the two networks. Last December, Myspace said Facebook Connect would be heavily integrated into the social network in the coming year, and now the site has made good on its promise.
After interests have been confirmed, users see a stream of updates from these entities. As well as status updates, photos, and blog posts which can also be found on Facebook, users get Myspace specific content like automatically generated playlists of songs by their favorite musicians. MySpace also begins to suggest friends, events and other preferences based on a user’s Facebook information.
Some claim that these recent integrations signal the end for Myspace, but syndicating content to Facebook is available on Twitter, and Likes can ported to a variety of Facebook Connect sites such as Amazon. Instead, the move indicates that Myspace understands its role in the social network ecosystem. Using Facebook to strengthen its core functionality as a rich content channel between celebrities fans should benefit Myspace’s users, even if at the expense of the company’s pride. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Credits Gift Cards Now Sold in UK Tesco and Game Stores Posted: 18 Nov 2010 12:36 PM PST Facebook Credits gift cards are now on sale at grocery store chain Tesco and videogame retailer Game in the UK. The cards can be purchased with any payment option the physical stores accept, making them accessible to teens without credit cards. The cards can be redeemed by scratching off the back and entering the code on the Facebook Credits webpage.
Making the gift cards available in the UK is another step towards Facebook’s goal to provide hundreds of payment options for Credits. The cards were first sold at US big box outlet Target, and are now also available at Best Buy and Wal-Mart, supermarket Safeway, and electronics and game retailers Radioshack and GameStop. Facebook has recently added a number of other payment methods including mobile phone payment provider Boku, loose change counting kiosks CoinStar through Rixty, and third-party gift card exchange Plastic Jungle. Putting Facebook Credits in retail stores not only makes them more accessible, but seeing the cards on the shelf reminds people of the virtual economy they could join.
Between Game’s 683 and Tesco’s 2,482 locations, users can purchase gift cards in £5, £10, £20, and £25 denominations. Facebook also continues to say that it’s possible user may eventually be able to spend Credits on Facebook-integrated third party websites, in addition to the Facebook canvas where they can currently be used. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Tests “Pay Later” Option for Buying Virtual Goods Posted: 18 Nov 2010 11:03 AM PST Facebook is testing a “Pay Later” option for purchasing goods within social games. Users who have never purchased Credits before can spend Credits they haven’t paid for and repay the balance later. Users can only repay a balance with a credit card or PayPal, not offers, gift cards, or mobile payment. Therefore, the option may be designed to get users to comfortable with buying virtual goods and get them to put their credit card or PayPal details on file with Facebook for quick purchasing in the future.
Facebook has signed deals with all the top social game developers including Zynga to make Credits the exclusive direct payment method. With plenty of games that accept Credits, the biggest barrier to users actively spending is getting their payment information on file. Pay Later, which seems to only be available for some users in some games, addresses this barrier. We obtained this information via an industry source and are currently unable to access the option ourselves.
Clicking these links brings users to an Unpaid Order History page showing the goods they bought, their existing balance, and a “Repay” button. If users choose to repay, the only payment methods which are offered are credit card and PayPal. Once a user has input payment details for one of these methods, future purchases only require a single click.
If users want to make another virtual goods purchase, they’re given the option to also pay off their debt during the transaction. However, users aren’t required to first settle there balance, and can still buy more goods through the Pay Later system, increasing their debt. At this time, there doesn’t appear to be limit to how far into debt a user can go, or any repercussions for remaining in debt.
Purchasing virtual goods is still new to many Facebook users. By providing a free introduction to the purchase process, Facebook may be able to get users hooked. Then, by only allowing users to repay balances with methods which can be quickly reused later, Facebook has converted non-buyers into one-click-buyers. While some users could use Pay Later to buy goods and then deactivate their accounts, these cases should be more than compensated for by the new customers created through the option. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook’s Efforts in Japan, South Korea and Russia Show New Localization Focus Posted: 18 Nov 2010 10:23 AM PST For most of its history, Facebook has tried to build a single product that works for everyone in the world. The only localization it offered was the text on the site, and even that was a one-size-fits-all product — its Translation tool allowed it to quickly launch in new languages using feedback from users. But now, we’re seeing more signs of Facebook trying to customize its products for specific locations, at least for a few major markets where it wants to grow. Some of the latest examples are a new game-style Facebook site tour for new Japanese users, and a small engineering expansion in South Korea. We’ll look at these and more, below. Certain Countries Get Special AttentionThe stage has already been set for product localization. Company chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in October that four countries had become targets for new growth over the past year: South Korea, Japan, China and Russia. Aside from all being located at least partly in Asia, these four companies are also notable because they all have well-established local social networking competitors: Vkontakte in Russia, Cyworld in Korea, Mixi in Japan and Tencent among others in China. More generally, all of these countries have unique languages, cultures, and in some cases government regulations that have historically hindered outside competitors. Out of those four, Facebook is blocked in China — the company has hinted that it might work with the government in order to be allowed in, but that hasn’t happened yet. So here’s a look at what’s happening with Facebook in the other three locations. All data is from our Global Monitor report, part of our Inside Facebook Gold subscription service. Note for subscribers: We’ll be coming out with a detailed new monthly report analyzing worldwide Facebook traffic and trends, with the first one arriving in early December. Japan Facebook’s first foreign engineering office opened in Tokyo, Japan, this past year. So far, it has introduced products like a customized interface for mobile users, and an in-house app designed to help users with job searches. That app, the first Facebook has made for a local market, is most interesting for its cultural focus — it is intended as a way for users to make connections in the traditionally rigid Japanese job market.
It also introduced a way to syndicate Facebook content to Mixi accounts. The most recent example of Japanese localization is from a couple weeks ago, when Facebook added a new site tour that prompts users to take a set of four “missions.” The missions are just a series of screenshots and text explaining how people can fill out their profiles, and include tips aimed at Japanese users (like talking about the value of using real-world names). This sort of site tour page doesn’t currently exist in other languages that we know of, which is reflected in the Japanese page’s generic Facebook URL. Japan’s growth began picking up around the middle of 2009, after the first translated version of the site became available. Since then, it has lagged much of the rest of Asia in the world. But it’s continued to steadily climb, and had its highest numbers yet in October, with 1.69 million monthly active users and 262,000 new ones. South Korea Facebook isn’t saying much about what it’s doing in the country. The two previous postings about contract sales engineering positions are no longer on the Careers page, but there’s a new posting for a full-time sales engineering position. Besides the job listings, the most prominent thing the company has done was launch a dedicated page about the country.
We’ve heard it could be expanding its local engineering operations beyond sales, but a spokesperson’s response seems to shoot that down. “We are currently only hiring for jobs that are posted on the Careers page, and don't have much more to say on rumors and speculation.” The expansion, in whatever form it might be taking, has not yet resulted in any Korea-focused Facebook products. Yet, after a first year or so of slow growth, the country’s Facebook base has quadrupled since April, passing Japan to reach 267,000 new users and 1.73 million total MAU by October. Facebook, as Zuckerberg suggested, has even bigger ambitions. Russia The last difficult-but-winnable country on the list is Russia, where the social network faces a number of homegrown rivals. Facebook shares an investor, Digital Sky Technologies, with a few of these including Vkontakte. So far, the company has done a couple 0.facebook.com mobile integration deals so mobile users with some local carriers can get free access to the site, for example. But the ’0′ deals aren’t particularly special, since the company has done dozens of those deals around the world. Facebook started making Russia-specific moves a few weeks ago, when leading Russian search engine company Yandex began tightly integrating Facebook content in a special deal similar to what Facebook is doing with Microsoft’s Bing search engine (but not with Google). Russia, like the previous two countries, is seeing a distinct growth surge. It grew by 548,000 last month to reach 2.132 million MAU — a striking increase given its slower history, and local competition. What the Future HoldsThese examples are new and mostly basic, but we expect the localization efforts to increase as Facebook looks to strengthen its market position around the world. Beyond more guides and other content, it will likely try to use its products to benefit key local partners , as with the case with Yandex, or to help solve relevant market problems, as is the case with the Japan job search app. Stay tuned for more detailed coverage of Facebook around the world in our Inside Facebook Gold data and analysis service. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| VisitBritain and Betapond Show the Top 50 UK Places by Check-Ins Posted: 18 Nov 2010 08:06 AM PST
To date, check-in leaderboards by Betapond and Context Optional have been for single brands looking to drive foot traffic to their own locations. By using Places data to enrich a travel portal which sells tickets to attractions by a variety of owners, those who don’t actually own any Places can profit off of Facebook’s location product. Top 50 UK Places is the default landing tab on VisitBritain’s Love UK Page. Users first see the name, profile picture, and total check-ins to the top 10 Places. Each entry includes links to the VisitBritian website to find out more information or buy tickets, and buttons to share the tab app on Facebook or Like that attraction’s Places page. Free, public attractions show a “Free” badge instead of a ticket link. If users give the app permission, it can show friends who’ve checked into the Places.
The rankings display well known historical attractions, but also Places which see a disproportionate number of check-ins to their total foot traffic, such as sports arenas and amusement parks. For this reason, the app can be useful for finding out where locals go for fun, not just spots tourists find in guidebooks. Betapond says it will be releasing additional projects with VisitBritain in the coming months in hopes of creating a “'global guest book' for international tourists to share their experiences.” If the app gains traction and makes money for VisitBritain, expect travel companies and tourism agencies around the world to install similar apps. |
Myspace users will see a large prompt on the right side of the home page allowing them to “Connect with Facebook”. Once a user gives Myspace permission to access their Facebook profile, they’re shown a list of Likes which can be replicated as Myspace friendships with official entities similar to Pages.
When a user who has never bought Credits goes to purchase a virtual good, they’ll see a dialogue pop-up asking if they want to pay later and have “Facebook send you a bill for [price of the good in local currency].” They’ll then see their negative Credits balance in red with a link to “Repay” while playing games or using the Games dashboard. Users also receive a receipt for the purchase via email with a link to settle their balance.
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