Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Get Real-Time Feedback on Potential Purchases with Zappli’s MyShopanion
- Facebook Offers All Page Owners Deeper Analytics
- Facebook Gets Closer to a Trademark on the Word ‘Face’
- Facebook Growing in the US and Around the World this Fall, Measurement Firms Show
- American Express Runs Big “Small Business Saturday” Campaign on Facebook
- “Member Suggestions” Module Recommends Friends to Add to your Facebook Groups
- Announcing the Facebook Marketing Service Provider Directory
- With 100 Million Downloads on GetJar, Facebook’s Mobile Apps Reach Across Devices
| Get Real-Time Feedback on Potential Purchases with Zappli’s MyShopanion Posted: 24 Nov 2010 07:00 AM PST Zappli is releasing a new version of its myShopanion iPhone and iPad app today which pulls comments on news feed stories published from the app asking for advice. Zappli is also announcing that is has closed its initial round of funding from 500 Startups, Dave McClure of fbFund’s new seed fund. The improved app should streamline the purchase research process which previously required significant time, skills, and returning to one’s home computer.
MyShopanion provides price comparisons and customer reviews when users scan barcodes or search for items. Last week, the startup won the "Promising Start-ups" VC Panel at the Web 2.0 Summit. Unlike Shopkick which incentivizes barcode scans with Facebook Credits, myShopanion is purely functional with no incentives or game mechanics. It seeks to revamp the web-based price comparison shopping experience popular in the web 1.0 era. Previously when a user posted to Facebook asking for opinions or advice on a potential purchase, their friends had to click through to a myShopanion product page and leave comments there for them to be routed back to the initial user’s app. Now the app pulls comments made directly on the news feed or wall story in real-time, increasing the chances a user will get valuable feedback while still in a store considering a purchase. Since the app also pulls email replies and Twitter @replies, Zappli CEO Philippe Suchet say that with myShopanion, “Instead of having ten different conversations you have one where everyone can give their two cents.”
Other improvements include a more intuitive new user flow, and more comprehensive search. Increased UPC barcode coverage will increase the probability that scanned barcodes return product info. Suchet believes mobile technology will have a larger impact on shopping and other industries than any technology to date. For this reason, he says it’s easy for mobile startups to attain funding right now, but finding investors with more than just money can be complex. He says Zappli chose 500 Startups after cautious consideration because “they can provide tremendous insights, introductions… and are doing their best to help as much as possible” despite having a large number of other investments. Some people refuse to make purchases until they’ve spent hours pouring over research at home, awkwardly fracturing the purchase process into different phases. Others don’t do any research before buying. Suchet says myShopanion hopes to “bridge the gap by giving everyone access to research with forcing unnatural behavior.” With the tools in hand to make informed decisions, impulse buying could become obsolete. | ||
| Facebook Offers All Page Owners Deeper Analytics Posted: 23 Nov 2010 06:16 PM PST
Facebook is expanding analytics once reserved for Pages with more than ten thousand fans. All Page admins will now be able to see impressions for each of their posts. They’ll also see the feedback rate, or what percentage of time fans “like” or interact with their posts. Facebook is also making some changes to how monthly active users or MAUs are counted. Instead of users that actively “like” or comment on content, all unique users that see posts will get counted into a Page’s MAUs, which will drive overall numbers up. Facebook originally introduced these feedback analytics in January to Pages with more than 10,000 fans; they help Page owners understand how much exposure their content is receiving. Impressions are how often a post is rendered in a news feed; it is not how many unique users have seen a post. | ||
| Facebook Gets Closer to a Trademark on the Word ‘Face’ Posted: 23 Nov 2010 05:26 PM PST
After this, the company has six months to file a statement of use and pay a fee. An examining attorney can either approve the statement, file a refusal or ask for additional requirements. If it’s approved, then the patent and trademark office will usually issue a registration within two months. Facebook first filed for this trademark almost five years ago in December of 2005. That was when it had only raised its first venture round of investment from Accel Partners and was still a college social networking site. The trademark would cover the word “face” when it pertains to:
If Facebook is awarded a trademark on the word “face”, it shouldn’t interfere with Apple’s mobile video calling service Facetime, since the Cupertino-based device maker has a trademark on that term itself. Facebook has also tried to trademark other words. It has at least 15 trademark applications around the “like” buttons it launched in April, some of which cover the word “like” itself. The social network tends to be more aggressive with its trademarks than its patents, which it has implied it acquires mostly for defensive purposes. The company is currently embroiled in a dispute with parody site Lamebook, which takes user-generated screenshots of off-color interactions on the social network. It also sued social network aggregator Power.com for trademark infringement last year. | ||
| Facebook Growing in the US and Around the World this Fall, Measurement Firms Show Posted: 23 Nov 2010 01:38 PM PST Following a solid summer of growth, Facebook is continuing to gain users in the US and around the world in September and October, according to the latest data from most third party web measurement firms. Most showed the company gaining a few million users in the United States, and more abroad. Here’s a look at the trends we’re seeing from what Compete, comScore, Google Ad Planner and Quantcast are showing. We’ll end by comparing their data to the Facebook data that we collect from the company’s ad tools. Our previous post covered data from August and in some cases September — be sure to check that post for context on some of the changes we discuss seeing now.
MySpace meanwhile continued to fall while Twitter also fell after a flat summer — but the latter company is also seeing some new growth, according to most other measurements.
The search giant’s Doubleclick property aggregates data from Google products and other sources to offer a high-quality alternative to web measurement companies.
It’s showing the same monthly unique visitor count as in past months — 540 million — but it appears to have updated its daily active user graph since the last time we looked. Having dipped down towards 200 million, it now appears to be reaching towards 300 million daily uniques. The firm currently only has data available through September, and for that month it showed Facebook gaining around 2 million new users in the US, from 135 million to 137 million uniques. That still roughly tracks with the others.
Meanwhile, like comScore and it is also showing more losses for MySpace and growth for Twitter — the growth pattern around Twitter looks unusually, as you can see below, and we’ll be tracking it in the future. ConclusionFacebook itself self-reported 551.7 million monthly active users at the beginning of November, via its advertising tool. The US in particular gained nearly 5 million new users in October to reach 143 million. The company hasn’t officially confirmed that or any other number since it announced it had reached 500 million in late July, but most firms seem to confirm the US growth, and comScore and Google both seem to confirm international growth. On that last point, Facebook has consistently claimed that around half of its users are on the site every day, and if that is holding true, then the daily usage growth Google is showing points towards 600 million monthly active users. We’ll be exploring the company’s stats and much more in our new Inside Facebook Gold monthly report, coming in early December. Stay tuned. | ||
| American Express Runs Big “Small Business Saturday” Campaign on Facebook Posted: 23 Nov 2010 01:03 PM PST American Express has announced its first Small Business Saturday this week on November 27 in an effort to simultaneously help small businesses and the U.S. economy — and its own public image — using Facebook as a central part of the campaign. The company is set to award registered American Express card holders a $25 credit for spending at least that amount at a local, independent business on Saturday. Thus far the Small Business Saturday Page has about 882,000 Likes. The Facebook integration for this program is multi-faceted. First, the Small Business Saturday Facebook Pages is set up so that American Express will donate $1 for every new Like up to $1 million to Girls Inc., a non-profit working to help young women gain confidence.
Facebook users can share this information to their news stream. The landing page on Facebook takes a user to the American Express web site where the first 100,000 card holders can register their card on the American Express web site for the $25 credit. The Page seems to be set up so that, in the future, small businesses and American Express can continue to work together in similar ways. This is evident in the fact that American Express is inviting business owners to sign up to receive a $100 Facebook advertising credit and that the company is billing this event as part of a "movement" to support small businesses. The Small Business Saturday Page is a place where would-be consumers can receive information on how to help small businesses; all this information is also being disseminated via Twitter. | ||
| “Member Suggestions” Module Recommends Friends to Add to your Facebook Groups Posted: 23 Nov 2010 12:01 PM PST Facebook is using a new “Member Suggestions” right sidebar module to recommend friends to add to your currently viewed Group. The module displays users who are friends with many of the Group’s existing members, but may have been accidentally left out. The feature should help keep Groups growing, preventing their membership from stagnating after the initial wave of additions.
Just prior to releasing the Groups feature in early October, Facebook updated its Friend Lists product with suggestions of users to add to a currently viewed list. Those suggestions were based on a user sharing similar demographic or interest characteristics with existing list members, such as a shared hometown or employer. Its unclear if Member Suggestions might similarly suggest users who share attributes other than friendships with Group members. While users are browsing a Group they are a member of, they’ll see the Member Suggestions module in the right sidebar below Docs but above the advertisements. The module shows a user’s name, profile pic, the number of current Group members who they are friends with, and an”Add friend to Group” link, which instantly admits them using the confirmation-less system. As with all new member admissions, a story is published to the Group’s feed stating who added who to the Group. When Groups was first released, many users flocked to create them and add numerous friends. Friends not added during this initial phase may never have been admitted. If the Group has the secret privacy setting, those users would be unable to find the Group to request admission. Since new friends may join a clique after it’s Group has been created, Member Suggestions should serve to fill out these holes in Group membership. | ||
| Announcing the Facebook Marketing Service Provider Directory Posted: 23 Nov 2010 10:22 AM PST
Today, we are proud to introduce the Facebook Marketing Service Provider Directory, a snapshot of companies providing technical and marketing solutions for brands, celebrities, and organizations of all sizes who are marketing and advertising on Facebook. Each entry includes areas of expertise, verticals covered, client lists, portfolio samples, news updates dating back to 2008 (where applicable), and contact information. Information is drawn from our own sources and Facebook’s Preferred Developer Program listings — and look for more updates soon. Access to the Directory is available through the Facebook Marketing Bible, our comprehensive guide to marketing your brand, business, or app on Facebook. Learn more about the Facebook Marketing Bible here. To request to have your company listed in our directory, please contact us at gold@insidenetwork.com. A77Agency BBerliner Brandung CCandytech.Biz DDachis Group E– FFan Appz GGamaroff Digital HHearsay Labs Ii2we, Inc. J– KKRDS LLarge Animal Games M– NNudge Social Media O– PPlexipixel Q– RRalph SScan & Target TT3 (The Think Tank) U– VVaynermedia WWebtrends X– Y– ZZibaba Learn more about the Facebook Marketing Bible. | ||
| With 100 Million Downloads on GetJar, Facebook’s Mobile Apps Reach Across Devices Posted: 23 Nov 2010 08:00 AM PST
While we don’t know how many of those users ultimately convert to monthly actives, it is likely a big share of the 200 million users who regularly access Facebook on their phones. The two companies, who share a venture investor in Accel Partners, initiated a partnership last fall. Basically, if a Facebook user tries to access the social network on their phone, GetJar detects their device and finds the right native app for them. The two companies marked 50 million downloads in early April, so Facebook’s presence on GetJar appears to be pretty steadily increasing. While GetJar may not be as well-known as the Android or Apple app stores in the United States, it is popular in emerging markets which are key for keeping up Facebook’s growth during the next few years. GetJar is also a gateway for Facebook users who don’t carry the iPhone. More than half of Facebook’s GetJar downloads are onto Nokia devices, although Android is the fastest growing platform. Out of Facebook’s 200 million monthly actives on mobile devices, 52.6 million are on the iPhone and about 24.9 million are on Blackberries. We don’t know current Android usage, but Facebook said it had more than seven million monthly active users in June on the platform. Facebook has been expanding the resources and staff it devotes to mobile over the past year. It hired away Erick Tseng, who shepherded Google’s Nexus One phone from concept to launch, to serve as head of mobile products and has been expanding the number of product managers on the mobile team. The company also launched a suite of new capabilities for third-party developers earlier this month including single sign-on, which makes it easy for users to log-on to an app through Facebook without typing in personal information. Historically, the Facebook’s iPhone version has led feature development, with apps on other mobile platforms lagging behind. But with additional engineering resources, Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this month that he wants the social network to offer parity on Android and the iPhone going forward. The company has also been negotiating partnerships with more than 200 carriers to offer the social network on mobile phones in more than 60 countries around the world. A centerpiece of that strategy includes 0.facebook.com, a low-bandwidth version of the social network for feature phones in developing markets. |
Facebook moved 
Facebook’s growth has been on a steady climb in the US following a slow summer, gaining around 2.7 million new unique visitors in October after a similar gain in September.
Rising from 148.4 million monthly unique visitors, Facebook gained 2.71 million new users in the US. MySpace and Twitter, the company’s two most direct rivals, both also brought in some growth. The numbers are more pronounced worldwide.
Facebook gained 13.3 million new users to reach 633.5 million uniques. MySpace continued to fall by millions, but Twitter also registered international growth, gaining more than 3 million new users. Note that comScore typically shows the highest total numbers for Facebook out of any service, including data from Facebook itself.
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