Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook Roundup: Debt Collectors, Bugs, Free Speech, Military, Plastic Jungle, Cars and Kids
- Facebook Reintroduces App Requests in Left Sidebar, Permits Open Graph Object Type Changes
- Pursuit Creates a Social Chain Between Job Applicants and Recruiters
- Facebook Job Listings: Hong Kong Mobile Manager, Developer Advocate, University Recruiter, and More
- New Spins on Friend Quizzes in This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps
| Facebook Roundup: Debt Collectors, Bugs, Free Speech, Military, Plastic Jungle, Cars and Kids Posted: 19 Nov 2010 09:00 PM PST Lawsuit: Facebook for Debt Collection – A woman in Florida is suing after a debt collector used Facebook to try to collect. This could be a significant case because, currently, Facebook as a debt collecting method is a gray area of the law. Facebook doesn't like this type of activity and said it appears to violate their policies against, "any kind of threatening, intimidating, or hateful contact from one user to another." Reports: Accel Sells Part of its Stake in Facebook — TechCrunch and VentureBeat are reporting that early investor Accel has sold some minority portion of its stake in Facebook, with a possible valuation of around $34 million. Details, like the size of the stake, and where this positions Accel versus other investors, is still not clear. Technology Crossover Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz may be among the stock purchasers.
Facebook Writes UK Govt for Free Speech – Facebook and other tech companies have written an open letter to Prime Minister David Cameron and the justice minister asking them to change libel laws to reflect the Internet age. One problem is that, "there is a one-year limit for bringing a defamation claim after an offending remark is published, but every time an online comment is viewed it counts as a new publication and a potential new cause for a defamation lawsuit." Facebook Accounts Disabled, Being Restored – A bug hit Facebook this week that disabled an untold number of accounts; Facebook says it is in the process of restoring access to those affected, and most seem to have been by this point.
Facebook Sells Cars – Facebook is becoming an ever important part of the auto industry, as reflected by the fact that almost every new release at the L.A. Auto Show was featured on Facebook. More at the link. LivingSocial Invests $5M in Jump On It - LivingSocial invested $5 million to gain a majority stake in the Australian social shopping site Jump On It, according to a press release. The site will incorporate LivingSocial's Daily Deals, opening up its money saving services to 10 million people in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Oodle Acquires Grouply – Social commerce company Oodle has acquired Grouply, an online hub for social groups; the Grouply platform and its hosted groups will continue to operate on that site, according to a press release. Zuckerberg's FaceMash Sold for $30K – We previously wrote about Mark Zuckerberg's original web site, FaceMash, and the fact that it was up for auction. Well, it was sold for $30,000 to an anonymous buyer last month, according to a press release. OpenSocial 1.1 Published – The OpenSocial Foundation published version 1.1 of its specification. Facebook Integration for TSA Body Scans - The Transportation Security Administration announced a Facebook integration for its fully body scans, allowing passengers to share their semi-nude scans with all of the world (actually, this is a joke, but almost too real given everything else the TSA is doing).
Kmart, Sears Sell eGift Cards on Facebook – Sears and Kmart have begun to sell egift cards, from $5 to $25, on Facebook. Once purchased they may be delivered either by being posted on the recipient's Wall or sent to their email. Facebook Influences Teen Relationships – Seventeen Magazine released the details of a survey of 10,000 people aged 16 to 21 to see how Facebook influences romantic relationships. Turns out: 79% friend a crush within a week; 60% check a crush's profile once a day and 40% more than once a day; 72% say talking online brings real life relationships closer; 10% have been dumped on Facebook; 10% change their status to single; 27% change their connection after a breakup; 73% keep their exes as friends. Kids Under 12 Love Facebook – Smarty Pants published a study this week that found Facebook among the favorite brands of first through sixth graders from a list of 270-plus; Facebook was number 126 for children 6 through 12 and 91 among 9 through 12 year-olds. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Reintroduces App Requests in Left Sidebar, Permits Open Graph Object Type Changes Posted: 19 Nov 2010 06:31 PM PST Facebook has reintroduced app requests to the requests module in the home page’s right sidebar, the company announced today in its latest weekly developer blog update. By displaying counters for requests in the left sidebar, and text alerts in the right, users are more likely to respond to requests and reengage with apps. Facebook now also allows Open Graph objects with less than 10,000 Likes to have their type changed without reseting their Like count.
Requests Interface ChangesIn August at Facebook’s Games press event, the company announced that application requests would soon cease to appear as text alerts in the right sidebar, and would instead appear as counters on the Games or Applications dashboard bookmarks in the left sidebar. At first, users saw additional text in the right sidebar requests module explaining where the requests had been moved, but soon the counters were the only way of knowing about requests. This likely hurt game and application growth and retention, leading Facebook to reinstitute the right sidebar text alerts.
Now when users receive an application or game request, such an invite to support a Cause or be neighbors in FarmVille, they see a text alert on the right, and a counter increase on the left. The first time users click on one of the text alerts they’ll see a pop-up pointing to the corresponding counter bookmark and explaining how it works. Interestingly, the text alerts are not active links, though they appear to be. Subsequent clicks to the alerts do not open the corresponding dashboard, which could frustrate or confuse users. Changing Open Graph Object TypeWhen the Open Graph protocol was announced at the f8 conference in April, Facebook began allowing websites to use meta tags to denote a type for each Open Graph object. This markup could be read by Facebook, so if you clicked a Like button on an Open Graph object with its type set to “Movie”, that Like would appear in the Movies section of your profile interests. However, little additional instruction was given as to what type some objects should be classified as. This probably led to many objects being mis-classified, but changing the object type would reset all the existing Likes, severing those connections which are valuable to the object’s owner. Now, Facebook is allowing the admins of Open Graph objects with fewer than 10,000 Likes to switch the type to another from the type list or a custom type without resetting its Likes. Very popular Open Graph objects do not have this option because it allows admins to alter a user’s profile without their permission, which at that scale could have too big an impact.
Admins with objects under the cap should check to ensure they have the optimal type selected. If applicable, admins should use the Activity, People, or Products and Entertainment types which appear in special categories with more prominence than Likes lumped into the general “Other Pages” section. This increased prominence can lead to more users discovering the object in the profiles of friends. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Pursuit Creates a Social Chain Between Job Applicants and Recruiters Posted: 19 Nov 2010 12:00 PM PST Recruiting great job candidates is a costly yet crucial endeavor for companies of all sizes. Often times these candidates are already socially connected to current employees who don’t always pass along job opportunities despite referral bonuses. Meanwhile, posting on traditional job boards can lead companies to receive huge volumes of unqualified applicants. These companies need a structured, efficient way of incentivizing employees to leverage their social networks to share openings. New web application Pursuit aims to fill this need by offering employees monetary referral bonuses, social recognition, and interesting influencing who is hired to work with them.
Bootstrapped, three-person, San Francisco-based Pursuit’s goal is to help companies quickly get more referrals and less applications, as there is a high cost for leaving a position unfilled or mis-hiring. It’s currently free for authorized companies to post job’s through the site’s beta, though Pursuit collects 20% of any bonuses paid out for referrals it helps generate. Pursuit is accepting new users slowly as not to overwhelm the existing job listings, but beta invites can be requested on the site. The company sees LinkedIn as a place where people post or look for jobs, not share them with well-matched candidates. Other companies building recruiting applications include BranchOut, which focuses on showing who has employed your friends, and Work For Us, which revolves around company-specific job boards.
Pursuit lets users create personal job boards of openings they think others they know would be interested in. Job postings includes job descriptions and requirements; the referral chain leading to the posting; an unique referral URL which can be shared publicly, and a comment reel so users can leave feedback on the company or job. A multi-friend selector allows users to forward or refer specific people on Pursuit, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or email. Those interested can click through to apply for jobs by submitting a personal message and uploading a resume.
In the future, Pursuit plans to include Like buttons on the site for instant sharing. To prevent referral spammers from trying to cash in on bonuses, companies can mark referrals as unqualified, which over time flags those referrers as illegitimate. Pursuit includes links to a user’s social network profiles which they’ve connected to their account, raising questions about how companies will use this info. In the early years of social networks, recruiters used photos on social networks to inform their hiring decisions. Pursuit co-founder Russ Heddleston sees users getting more savvy with their privacy controls and posting less controversial content. But he also believes “Not hiring someone out of college because they have a photo with a beer–that’s not a good indicator of how someone will be as an employee. You’re actually hurting yourself if you use that as criteria.” By facilitating a path between an employer and job candidate instead of broadcasting job openings, Pursuit is in fact more social than other recruiting or job search applications. While under-qualified candidates could potentially follow masses of other users and clog openings with low quality applications, job seekers and recruiters should be eager to add this relatively low-noise channel to their efforts | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Job Listings: Hong Kong Mobile Manager, Developer Advocate, University Recruiter, and More Posted: 19 Nov 2010 09:38 AM PST
The Partner Development Manager of Mobile in Hong Kong is set to help Facebook develop strategic mobile relationships in Asia. This person must identify and manage new strategic partnerships to grow Facebook's Asia userbase, focusing particularly on mobile operators, device manufacturers, platform providers and Asian mobile developers. The Hong Kong mobile manager will also represent Facebook at mobile functions and travel about 30% of the time. Some context on Facebook’s latest mobile efforts: Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg recently said there’s no “Facebook Phone” coming but the company has been busy offering a variety of mobile native apps, web apps, and other tight integrations. We and others have heard it’s looking at operating system-level integrations. Over on the platform side, Facebook is hiring for a position called Developer Advocate — distinct from other platform engineering and marketing positions it has had to date, and building on other recent expansions. It recently brought in Doug Purdy, who held a similar title among others during a long career at Microsoft. Over the past year or so it has made a new effort to simplify and clarify developer policies and documentation, and explain upcoming changes. There have been bumps, and this latest position is a continuation of its Platform investment. The particulars from the listing:
A few other interesting listings popped up recently as well. Expect to see Facebook hitting campus job fairs more this coming as it’s looking for a University Recruiting Manager to manage “a team of recruiters to execute all campus recruiting activities for high volume fulltime and intern hiring.” Facebook is also seeking a Monetization Analytics Lead to be based in Palo Alto, Calif. This senior analyst will focus on the "marketplace advertising business" to provide product and engineering teams analysis of customer usage to guide Facebook into the future. Ultimately this analyst will be responsible for recommending product/positioning changes based on user/advertiser behavior and is expected to have an advanced mathematics-related degree. There was also a position for Marketing Communications Analyst based out of Palo Alto. This person is set to help Facebook work with sales, marketing and product teams to develop marketing and analyze programs for global brands. Another marketing position, that of Marketing Strategist, will be based out of the same offices and will similarly work on "creating marketing solutions on a global and long-term scale for the Global Customer Marketing team." This person will help be innovative with branding for global marketers. And for more Facebook-related jobs, check out the Inside Network Job Board. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| New Spins on Friend Quizzes in This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps Posted: 19 Nov 2010 08:04 AM PST
Tag Friends is a modification of the popular friend quiz format. Where a friend quiz has you answer a question about your friend, which is posted to their wall, Tag Friends simplifies the process even further by just asking you to click on a tag. Game of Truth, the second fastest-growing non-game app, does much the same thing with yes / no questions.
Island God is a game that’s quite similar to GodFinger, an iPhone game that was popular several months back. In Island God, which is by Digital Chocolate, you take control of a tiny island on which your worshipers can build various structures. There are plenty of interesting games, but we’ll cover the rest this morning at Inside Social Games. Although neither Tag Friends nor Game of Truth gives the friend quiz a really unique spin, friend.ly actually does. It still asks you questions, though about your own opinions. The really interesting part, though, is that these questions are shared out among the general userbase of friend.ly. The app bills itself as a way to find new friends.
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Plastic Jungle Raises $10M – Plastic Jungle 
Vin Diesel, Facebook's Sexiest Man – People Magazine nominated its sexiest man alive recently, but they took to Facebook to see what the difference would be. Turns out Vin Diesel was named the "
Users follow each other, and can view an activity streams of jobs added to the boards of people in their network. The site uses social game-style status bars to denote a user’s profile completion and the “Karma Points” they earn through referring jobs and helping people get hired.
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