Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook Tests Its First Search Operator, a “Quick Link” to Photos
- Buddy Media’s Tool Improved for Multi-Page Management and Teams
- PayPal’s Shoptimist Offers Group Buying and Sweepstakes
- Through Sharing and Spin-Offs, Phrases Becomes Largest Facebook App by MAU — for Now
- Philippines’ Largest Mobile Carrier Backs Zong Payments for Facebook Credits
- Phrases Appears to, But Doesn’t Really, Pass FarmVille on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by MAU
| Facebook Tests Its First Search Operator, a “Quick Link” to Photos Posted: 22 Nov 2010 05:49 PM PST Facebook is testing a new “Quick Link” feature in its search interface which lets users jump straight to the “Photos of…[User Name]” page by including “photos” in their search. The link to user’s tagged photos was previously only accessible beneath a user’s profile picture on their profile. Search operators like this could streamline common navigation flows.
In the past few months, Facebook has added Liked Open Graph objects to its internal search, and Liked news stories to the search typeahead. This is the first time we’ve seen the typeahead recognize search operators. When users who are part of the test first go to use the search bar at the top of a Faceboook page, they see a a tooltip pop-up explaining that they can use the operator “photos” then a user name to see the Quick Link. The tooltip also gives a recommendation of a friend to try the feature on. Upon searching “photos” with the name of a another user who’s tagged photos a user has access to, they’ll see a “Photos of [User Name] Quick Link” item in the typeahead drop-down. This experiment could signal a future where users could type in search operators such as “videos”, “Notes”, “Events”, or “Places” to instantly access different content associated with a specific friend. The feature would give power users the benefit of expedited navigation without cluttering the search experience of more casual users with additional buttons or options. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Buddy Media’s Tool Improved for Multi-Page Management and Teams Posted: 22 Nov 2010 03:06 PM PST
The system also now better supports multiple admins, with a view of all posts flagged by any admin, and a history of all flags and admin actions. These changes indicate that brands are now frequently represented by multiple Pages, single managers are controlling multiple Pages, and some Pages require entire teams to manage them. In June, Buddy Media released +Global which allows companies to show localized versions of its main Facebook Page instead of creating separate local instances. When we spoke to founder and CEO Mike Lazerow in July, he said the company’s revenue is growing 50% quarter over quarter. Investors have taken not of the growth, with Institutional Venture Partners leading a round last month which raised $32 million for Buddy Media to expand its management offerings for Open Graph sites, Twitter, and YouTube. Product UpdatesBuddy Media Platform’s revamped Publisher reduces the friction of managing multiple Pages. The consolidated stream multi-Page cross-posting eliminates the need to switch back and forth between Pages. Filters and labels created for one Page can now be instantly applied to any Page. Admins can sort the stream by posts with most Likes to find especially popular user posts, or determine what kinds of content they’ve posted has received the best response. To reduce the likelihood of mistakes and conflicts from multiple managers bulk-moderating content at the same time, Buddy Media has switched to a sequential moderation system where admins handle one post or comment at a time. The new flagging history systems makes it more efficient for multiple admins to manage one Page. One manager can read the stream and flag any important posts which can be left in the flagged view or assigned to other admins, reducing time wasted by having many admins reading through the same acceptable content. Flags can be accompanied with notes about the content such as “Check with the product team if this claim is accurate, delete if it isn’t”. Admins can see what moderation actions other admins have taken, which is useful for training new managers, or knowing if someone deleted a post without having to scan the entire wall to make sure it isn’t there. Other improvements include a refined user interface, and a faster, scalable, non-relational data storage system using NoSQL built on MongoDB. Evolution of Page ManagementPage management was once just a small task assigned to someone on a company’s marketing team. Companies have built more Pages that can receive thousands of posts and comments an hour, and the management role has grown to a full-time position or even one handled by an entire team. Buddy Media’s VP of Engineering Patrick Stokes explains that “the majority of our clients do represent multiple brands and thus multiple pages and need a consolidated place in which they can assign a team of moderators and community managers to watch their pages.” By creating tools which facilitate this shift, Buddy Media is positioning itself for long-term success in the industry. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| PayPal’s Shoptimist Offers Group Buying and Sweepstakes Posted: 22 Nov 2010 12:00 PM PST
PayPal has increased its focus on social this year, even as social developers have brought in new business for the eBay-owned service due to the rise of virtual goods payments. It announced a partnership with Facebook in February to become a payment method for Facebook ads and Credits. In October it launched a reduced friction checkout process for purchasing virtual goods and currency without redirecting to another site, making PayPal a more attractive option for these kinds of transactions. Other companies offering group deals through Facebook include Wal-Mart with its CrowdSaver, heavyweight Groupon, and LivingSocial which gives a user a free coupon if three friends they invite purchase it too. The Shoptimist Facebook Page briefly explains the experience. It’s using a Sweepstakes tab where users must Like the Page to be eligible to enter in order to stimulate growth. Prizes include electronics from Samsung and Sony, and gift cards from Netflix and Zappos.
Shoptimists Unite will allow users to invite friends to “get a group discount on this week's hot item. If enough people buy in, we'll sweeten the deal.” This sounds similar to existing group deal systems, but appears to be focused on physical items rather than discounts on services like dining or getting $50 worth of goods from an entire store for $25.
Lastly, users can vote on what kind of deals they want to see on Shoptimist. Amongst the options of clothes, electronics, housewares, and travel, electronics is the clear preference with over 50% of the votes.
The massive profits group deals are creating for some providers seem to have been too lucrative to pass up, even if PayPal will be extending away from its core functionality. Its trusted name and vast cross-promotion opportunities should help with customer acquisition, despite being late in following the trend. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Through Sharing and Spin-Offs, Phrases Becomes Largest Facebook App by MAU — for Now Posted: 22 Nov 2010 11:04 AM PST Pre-fabricated wall post generation app Phrases has overtaken FarmVille and all other Facebook apps in monthly active user count. However, the app’s developer Takeoff Monkey disabled Phrases for US users within the last month, meaning some of the current users being counted are no longer actually active. When the app’s MAU responds in the next few weeks, it could easily drop back to #2 where it was the last six weeks. The ascension of Phrases to its current 54 million users shows that simple utility apps are still attractive, despite Facebook wanting developers to make more complex apps and games.
Second, the app allows users to create their own quiz for others to answer with posts, and then share these quiz with friends. These child apps funnel MAU back to the parent-app Phrases. Similar to the Lolapps Quiz Creator and Gift Creator, when a new trend or piece of popular culture emerges, users create quizzes and phrases around it, boosting growth. Facebook has expressed dissatisfaction with these types of rudimentary apps which primarily share instead of engage, but the nature of the open Platform is that developers will test its boundaries in pursuit of success. Apps can launch immediately and don’t need to be approved as on Apple’s platform — that openness entices developers. However, this makes enforcement more difficult for Facebook’s U.S.-based policy team, especially when apps predominantly operate in languages other than English. Facebook needs to balance the quality of the user experience with fairness to developers. Apps like social games which increase time-on-site and tie users to Facebook are obviously more in the site’s interest than spammy apps which only take a few seconds to use. However, taking action against apps which haven’t violated Facebook’s policies or changing the platform to reduce their reach could push developers elsewhere–a less desireable possibility with Google’s social product on the horizon. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Philippines’ Largest Mobile Carrier Backs Zong Payments for Facebook Credits Posted: 22 Nov 2010 09:00 AM PST The Philippines largest mobile carrier, Smart, is putting its marketing power behind mobile payments for Facebook Credits, underscoring Southeast Asia’s growing importance to the Facebook developer ecosystem. The country is Facebook’s sixth largest market behind the U.S., Indonesia, Turkey, the U.K., and France.
Zong, the mobile payments platform powering the service, lets users buy virtual goods in games from companies like Zynga and Playdom through their phones. These deals in the Philippines could introduce up to 70 million mobile subscribers to Credits and to the social network, which has 18.1 million users there. In this Zong integration, users click “Get Facebook Credits” or the Zong button in a gaming environment, type in their mobile phone number and then wait a few seconds to receive a text message with a 4-digit PIN. They type the number in the game to confirm the transaction, which will deduct that amount from their mobile bill. Zong gets a 5 to 8 percent cut of every transaction it facilitates.
Southeast Asia is becoming a key region to Facebook; Indonesia recently eclipsed the United Kingdom as the social network’s second biggest market. Malaysia and Thailand are also posting promising growth. Thailand’s Facebook user population has grown 265 percent in the last year while Malaysia’s has more than doubled — see our Inside Facebook Gold report for more market data. However, the revenue Facebook makes from these users is a fraction of what the company can earn in Western countries. The suggested cost-per-click for a user in the Philippines is about 16 cents, compared to about $1.80 in the U.S. Virtual goods are thought to be a promising way to raise revenue-per-user in these markets, and Facebook has made a few in-roads already through a partnership with MOL Global to bring Credits to thousands of real-world kiosks throughout Southeast Asia. Zong’s chief executive David Marcus said a significant hurdle stands in the way of successfully monetizing through virtual goods in these developing countries. Most gaming companies are still charging the same prices for virtual goods across the world even though local living incomes are quite different. A $1 virtual cow might be nothing to an American consumer, but it is significant in countries like India, where the GDP per capita is $1,017. One potential solution to that problem is differential pricing, but that could introduce a new problem, fraud: users could route their connections through IP addresses in emerging markets where virtual goods are cheaper. Marcus said more than 75 percent of Zong’s payment volume comes from outside the U.S. Western European countries are still the largest international region, but Southeast Asia comes in right behind that. He said Zong spent six to nine months securing the deals in the Philippines. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 22 Nov 2010 08:00 AM PST
Looks can be deceiving. Take a peek at the list, then keep reading for more on why Phrases is still only second-largest:
The problem with Phrases’ MAU count is that it’s a trailing measurement of the past 30 days, so any drop in MAU takes that long to appear in the numbers. A more accurate day-to-day indicator is the daily active user count, in a graph of which we can see the effect of Phrases’ recent suspension in the United States:
Phrases was first suspended a month ago, when Facebook briefly cut it off worldwide. The app was then allowed to resume, but after another week, stopped serving American users. Its DAU has since fallen by over three million users. (AppData Pro subscribers can access full historical graphs, among other metrics, but the above 30 day measurement shows enough for our purposes here.) We’ll see a corresponding drop in MAU within two or three weeks. After that begins, Phrases’ MAU measurement may even fall below that of Zynga’s second-biggest app, Texas HoldEm Poker, which has 35 million MAU. Tag Friends and Social Fun both appear following Phrases. These are both types of friend quizzes, which ask questions and then post the answers to your, or your friend’s, wall; these apps tend to grow quickly and die young, generally as victims of Facebook policy enforcers. Lately we’ve only seen friend quizzes with mostly international userbases, like these two. Hollywood City, Ravenwood Fair and the other games you see on the list are helping to define a new generation of successful developers on Facebook. Two especially stand out; you can read more on our corresponding Inside Social Games list. Finally, BandPage by RootMusic has accelerated its growth considerably, and appears to be well on its way to becoming the dominant music page app on Facebook. |
Later today, Buddy Media will announce several improvements that it has made to its Facebook Page management system Buddy Media Platform’s Publisher tool. Admins using the system can now see a combined stream of posts and comments to all the Pages they control, sort the stream by many parameters, and also publish to all these Pages simultaneously.
PayPal is preparing to launch its new 
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