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Inside Facebook

Facebook Allows Page Post Targeting through the Graph API

Posted: 24 Nov 2010 05:09 PM PST

Facebook’s weekly developer blog roundup post came early this week, and includes mentions of post impressions data becoming available in Page Insights, and the fix of the long-standing “Make FB.ui work” bug. Most significantly, location and language targeting for Page posts is now also available through the Graph API. Lastly, the post explains that Facebook has added commenting functionality to its developer reference docs.

Facebook began the roundup posts as part of Operation Developer Love, which has since included implementation of a new opt-in migration system and a Graph API-based system for creating application tester accounts.

Now developers who control Pages through the Graph API can target posts to certain user demographics in the same way as posts can be targeted through the user interface. Developers use the targeting argument and include a “JSON object containing comma separated lists of valid country , city , region and locale.” Exact usage details are available on the Post reference page.

“Make FB.ui work”, which hangs a loading dialogue box, was in fact roughly 10 bugs tied together. Natik Shaw of Facebook’s Platform team successfully fixed most of the bugs, or has created separate bug reports for them.

To help developers quickly ask questions of Facebook engineers and their peers, reference documents now have the commenting plugin installed at the bottom. This should give the opinions of developers more visibility than bug reports and web form submissions.

“Iframe Post Proposal” and Unique Identifier Mechanisms Aim to Solve Facebook User ID Issue

Posted: 24 Nov 2010 03:15 PM PST

Facebook has outlined a new “Iframe POST Proposal” as a solution to prevent User IDs from being passed through HTTP refferer headers. The mechanism embeds the UID in a HTTP POST body ensuring that it will not be exposed in any HTTP Referrer header whatsoever (encrypted or otherwise).” The system should be easy for developers to implement.

For cases when a user ID must be passed between an application and a legitimate third-party, Facebook has developed an anonymous unique identifier mechanism.

While the information attached to user IDs is public, many national publications criticized Facebook for allowing the leak. In response, Facebook put forth the Canvas Encryption Proposal a month ago, and solicited feedback. Developers wanted a mechanism which had less impact on their applications and that didn’t require them to use encryption libraries. Meanwhile, Facebook sought a way to to prevent UIDs from being passed, even in encrypted form.

Iframe Post Proposal

The Iframe Post Proposal embeds the user ID within a <form/> element targeted at the application canvas URL in the body of an HTTP POST.

Instead of this:
<iframe src=”http://example.com/?fb_sig_user=218471″></iframe>

Applications would use: <form target="canvas_iframe" action="http://example.com/" id="canvas_form">
  <input name="fb_sig_user" value="218471" type="hidden" /> </form> <iframe name="canvas_iframe"></iframe> <script>   document.getElementById("canvas_form").submit() </script>

Additional implementation details can be found on the POST for Canvas documentation page.

Facebook is now asking for feedback, but a schedule for transition to the Iframe POST Proposal has already been set. The migration is now active, will leave beta and become default for new applications on December 1st, and will be complete for all iframes on March 1st, 2011. Because of the limited time in beta, developers should promptly experiment with the new mechanism so they can share their thoughts with Facebook before December.

Third-Party Unique Identifiers

When an application interacts with a partner website, such as identifying that a user has completed an offer and earned Facebook Credits, it may be necessary to verify that user identity. To allow this without sharing the user ID, developers can assign a third-party unique identifier to a user. This can be done though either the Graph API or FQL, for one or more than one user.

To request a unique identifier from a user object through the Graph API:

http://graph.facebook.com/dmp?fields=third_party_id

&access_token=[access_token]

From the user table through FQL:
https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.query?query=select third_party_id
from user where username =”dmp”&access_token=[access_token]

This mechanism will become mandatory on January 1st, 2011. This is significantly faster than the three month opt-in migration system Facebook recently implemented in the spirit of Operation Developer Love , likely because it is part of Facebook’s expedited response to the User ID issue.

Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: Zynga, Digital Chocolate, Solvate, & More

Posted: 24 Nov 2010 12:48 PM PST

We recently 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 Zynga, Digital Chocolate, Solvate, SpanTran Educational Services, NaturalMotion Limited, BringIt, Ubisoft, Tencent America, Lolapps, and Meteor Games.

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.

Shoebuy.com Gives Purchasers 50 Free Facebook Credits Via Ifeelgoods

Posted: 24 Nov 2010 10:48 AM PST

Micro-incentive provider ifeelgoods launched a promotion today with popular ecommerce store Shoebuy.com to offer users 50 free Facebook Credits for making any purchase on the site. This is the first time ifeelgoods has been used to incentivize action which leads directly to profit for the company hosting the promotion. If the promotion attracts users whose purchases generate greater profit than the cost of the Credits, other ecommerce sites may seek to similarly incentivize purchases.

Ifeelgoods launched in September to help companies encourage users to take actions such as signing up for email lists, clicking ads, and sharing with friends. Its first major promotion offered 5 free Credits to users who followed the Dallas Mavericks on Twitter. Facebook Credits are often valued higher than their actual monetary value by users, especially social game players, making them a powerful but cheap driver of action. Shopkick similarly lets users earn Facebook Credits for visiting certain stores, and scanning or purchasing certain items.

When users visit Shoebuy.com, they’ll see a banner explaining the promotion. Any qualifying purchase on the site will cause 50 Credits to be deposited in their Facebook profile with 72 hours. Credits can be redeemed on any Facebook application, but must be used within 5 days of being received or they’ll expire. Shoebuy.com is protected from users trying to game the system by returning their purchase after spending their Credits, as $5 is docked from any returned total.

Ifeelgoods promotions benefit Facebook as well by getting Credits into the hands of users who might not have participated in the virtual economy yet. Upon buying virtual goods with the free Credits, at least some users will get hooked and begin purchasing Credits from Facebook. Users benefit from being rewarded for their natural behavior, and companies hosting promotions attract new customers and sway others to actually purchase. With everyone involved benefiting, micro-incentive systems such as ifeelgoods could become very popular.

Ads API Profile: AdParlor’s Full-Service Solution for Game Developers

Posted: 24 Nov 2010 10:00 AM PST

As part of our ongoing series of profiles on companies that offer products for Facebook’s Ads API, today we look at AdParlor. It provides a full-service solution for app developers working on and off the Facebook platform, helping them buy acquisitions without hiring their own Facebook ads managers.

For those not familiar, Facebook’s performance advertising system is the primary paid tool through which social game companies and other developers attract new users. To allow developer and other marketers to target ads and manage bids for large scale campaigns, Facebook has allowed a limit number of companies acces to an ads API on which advertising tools can be built.

AdParlor has built an ads API tool which it uses internally to conduct managed spend campaigns. Developers set a cost per acquisition they are willing pay for different country, age, and gender demographics and install AdParlor’s tracking pixels on where they consider an acquisition to be completed, on monetization, or on a specific action. AdParlor than buys CPM and CPC ads from Facebook on the developer’s behalf, optimizes bids to achieve the client’s goals, and earns or loses the difference between their cost per user and the dev’s set CPA. Developers are only charged what they define.

Developer clients provide some creative assets, but then AdParlor takes care of the rest, creating and targeting ads, managing bids, optimizing, and reporting back to the client. The only part of the ads API tool developers have to interact with is the reporting dashboard which lets them monitor performance and pause or activate campaigns. By using an external company to handle advertising, developers can focus on improving their games.

Company Profile

AdParlor began as a Facebook banner ad network and offer wall provider in 2008. Restrictions on banner ad content plus competition and backlash in the offer wall space pushed the company away from these business models. Meanwhile, it saw that the largest demand for its ad network came from developers trying to drive user acquisition, and it had begun buying Facebook ads through the bulk uploader tool to deliver the volume developers wanted. Through the laborious process of manually A/B testing ad variants, the company formulated ideas for a sophisticated tool.

In march 2010 AdParlor’s application to use the ads API was approved. It quickly built the tool and shifted its business to full-service Facebook advertising. The bootstrapped, Toronto-based company now has ten employees including three engineers. The company makes money by running campaigns where their cost per acquisition from CPC and CPM campaigns is less than the CPA they charge clients.

AdParlors clients include Facebook game developers KlickNation and A Bit Lucky, console developer Ubisoft, online and desktop developer PlayFirst, and group deals provider Groupon. In the first week of November, 7 of the 20 fastest growing Facebook apps were advertising with AdParlor.

To ensure clients are large enough to receive the company’s focus, AdParlor requires at $10,000 spend commitment, though their average client spends roughly $50,000 a month, and their largest spends more than $500,000 a month. AdParlor is now driving over 3 million app installs per month, and producing over 400 million ad impressions a day.

Service and Product Info

When clients sign on with AdParlor, they either provide spreadsheets of CPA targets for different demographics or AdParlor can use predictive modeling to help the client determine appropriate goals. Clients also submit creative assets which AdParlor’s design team builds off of to create ad images whose colors and shapes are swapped and combined with different headlines, titles and bodies to create thousands of ad variants. Clients can create an advertising account on their app for AdParlor, permitting exclusion targeting of those who’ve already installed their app.

It can take less than a day for a client’s ads to start running. AdParlor’s algorithms A/B test all the creative and targeting combinations and shift budget towards the best performers. The system dynamically changes bids to maximize ROI, so if 25-30 year old Norwegian males monetize best around dinner time, AdParlor will increase bids to those targets at that time.

Clients monitor their campaigns through the AdParlor dashboard. Clients can view the status of campaigns and pause or activate them and see their remaining budget,. The dashboard’s home page shows data on the last two days, including coversions, impressions, clicks, CTR, CVR, cost, and graphs for CVR by Hour and Daily Trending. The bottom of the page shows the selected campaign’s lifetime stats, as well as a country breakdown pie chart and an engagement funnel showing where users drop off.

Through the dashboard’s left sidebar navigation, clients can get more detailed charts showing the exact performance of every ad in a campaign. Clients can also see the performance of different creative combinations; trending graphs of CVR by hour of the day, day of the week, date, or CTR by date; conversions by date, and more specific conversion/engagement data. Data can be exported as a CSV, though the native visualizations give solid high level insights.

The management section allows clients to set bid and budget caps and contact their account manager. Lastly, the financials section shows billing between the client and AdParlor.

AdParlor works well for developers who want to be involved as little as possible with the advertising process. Alternative managed spend options include Nanigans, whose cost per acquisition solution allows for slightly more control, as clients can pay more or less for users who reach different engagement or monetization thresholds. Nanigans also provides flash funnel graphs to help developers determine exactly which part of their game needs to be changed because it causes users to drop out. Efficient Frontier’s cross-channel portfolio management system works for clients seeking to include search and display advertising in their campaigns. TBG’s ONE Media Manager, with its larger account management team and $50,000 a month spending minimum, is an option for big clients looking to run massive campaigns.

Hopes for the Future of the Ads API

AdParlor’s CEO Hussein Fazal believes Facebook is unlikely to make the ads API public due to the support team and infrastructure that would require. Nor does he believe Facebook would ever charge for access since the company makes so much on the increased volume of ads sales the ads API brings in. Fazal also notes that keeping up with changes to the API has been easy thanks to Facebook’s ads API mailing list which keeps AdParlor informed.

Fazal had a number of ideas for features which could augment the ads API. Advertising accounts are currently limited to 1000 campaigns and 10,000 ads, forcing AdParlor to create multiple accounts to do large A/B tests. He’d like to see this cap lifted. Fazal says that Facebook’s general APIs can occasionally go offline or have significant slow down, causing the clicks AdParlor buys to lead to broken or slow-loading application pages. Since AdParlor charges for acquisitions which these clicks don’t produce, issues with Facebook APIs can cost the company a lot of money. He’d like to see a warning system for API downtime, alerting advertisers to temporarily pause their campaigns.

Fazal also believes that the ability to target users who have friends using a certain app is inadequate, as a user having one friend playing that game doesn’t mean they’re much more likely to also want to play. He’d like to be able to select a threshold such that AdParlor could target users with more than five or eight friends who play that game.

In conclusion, AdParlor have made themselves experts at running Facebook ad campaigns with the goal of driving user acquisition, registration, or email signups for businesses. Developers are unlikely to be able to attain the same efficiency on their own. The benefits of AdParlor’s sophisticated bid management system, experience with adjusting to fluctuations in ad inventory market price, and the opportunity to completely outsource user acquisition makes the full-service solution a strong choice for game developers on all platforms.

The Holidays Kick Up Growth on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by DAU

Posted: 24 Nov 2010 08:33 AM PST

FrontierVille leads this week’s AppData list of fastest-growing Facebook apps by daily active users with a significant bump in its DAU count. But it’s not alone in that; a number of the apps on the list saw a spike in usage around the start of this week, perhaps due to the holiday.

Here’s the full list:

Top Gainers This Week
Name DAU Gain Gain,%
1. Original FrontierVille 7,977,632 +985,334 +14%
2. App_2_120226958034532_2334 Hey I Like 1,310,520 +528,926 +68%
3. Original Are YOU Interested? 1,332,324 +462,478 +53%
4. App_2_120956284629356_2299 Tag Friends 447,677 +262,743 +142%
5. App_2_120563477996213_5785 Ravenwood Fair 646,173 +222,963 +53%
6. App_2_159048707462697_4831 Vegas City 412,191 +212,447 +106%
7. Original FarmVille 16,616,833 +201,970 +1%
8. App_2_162461630459416_9977 La sfida delle città 196,258 +196,257 +19,625,700%
9. Original Windows Live Messenger 9,766,582 +193,589 +2%
10. App_2_130972710269090_3907 Social Statistics 358,940 +149,808 +72%
11. App_2_80541436066_8492 @Hugs 992,753 +142,365 +17%
12. Original Give Hearts 1,492,385 +130,316 +10%
13. Original @Smiles 1,025,928 +130,235 +15%
14. Original Causes 984,329 +129,364 +15%
15. App_2_2462728553_7153 @Hearts 898,787 +114,264 +15%
16. App_2_155965204444587_100 SEXY oder NICHT? 116,008 +113,621 +4,760%
17. Original Frases Diarias 1,106,078 +102,196 +10%
18. Original Snaptu 616,902 +96,574 +19%
19. Original Sorority Life 488,650 +93,755 +24%
20. App_2_172139486132642_1208 Tư vấn vui 191,210 +86,921 +83%

Hey I Like is the first non-game app, and it’s one that we haven’t seen before, despite its 1.3 million DAU and 12.4 million monthly active users. It’s part of a new wave of viral apps that play on the Like button by asking users to make wall posts that their friends will then Like.

Are YOU Interested? registered one of the largest spikes in DAU among the older apps. The dating app is working to reach the all-time highs of 15 million MAU and 1.5 million DAU that it reached in late October, but it may have nearly hit its limits.

At number eight, La sfida delle città is another app that we haven’t seen before, although only in name. The app is basically a homeland geography test for Italians. Such concepts long ago played out among American users, but each individual language group seems to have to go through its own encounter with them.

Finally, the perennial gifting apps @Hugs, Give Hearts, @Smiles and @Hearts are clustered together with over a hundred thousand new DAU each. Each of these apps hovers around 10 percent DAU as a percent of MAU, which is almost game-level engagement; if you haven’t checked one out in a while, it might be worth a visit to see how these lightweight apps keep users coming back.

torsdag den 25. november 2010 at 07.26