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- Google’s Eric Chu to Discuss Android’s 2011 Social Platform Plans at Inside Social Apps
- Facebook Roundup: Privacy, Community Council, DST, South Korea, Email Importing, and Disney
- Latest Update to Facebook’s Official Stats Shows Surge in Off-Site Traffic
- Platform Update: OAuth 2.0 Migration, Open Graph Tags for Video and Audio
- Comparison: Cardpool and Plastic Jungle Exchange Facebook Credits for Gift Cards
- Likes, Bonuses and Page Managers Are On This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps
| Google’s Eric Chu to Discuss Android’s 2011 Social Platform Plans at Inside Social Apps Posted: 10 Dec 2010 11:53 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. Today we are excited to announce that Google’s Eric Chu, Group Manager of Android, will be joining us for a fireside chat on Android’s 2011 social roadmap at Inside Social Apps. Social mobile applications, especially games monetizing through virtual goods, have seen rapid growth over the last year. Now that there are over 300,000 Android phones activated each day, developers are increasingly investing in building applications for the Android ecosystem. With the rise of Facebook and third party mobile social platforms, what will Android’s approach to supporting social application developers in 2011? How should developers think about what to expect from Google in the year ahead? We’ll discuss Android’s 2011 social platform plans in-depth at Inside Social Apps . Who’s Speaking? At Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011, executives and experts from Facebook, Google, 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. 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, December 17 at a special price of $299. This price will change after Friday, and space will be very limited, so we encourage you to register now. From all of us at Inside Network, we hope to see you on January 25th in San Francisco at Inside Social Apps! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Roundup: Privacy, Community Council, DST, South Korea, Email Importing, and Disney Posted: 10 Dec 2010 11:50 PM PST Congress Censors Privacy Hearing – In a strange incident, Ohio Democrat Rep. Zachary Space asked Columbia University Law School Professor Eben Moglen to censor his remarks during a hearing on online privacy to avoid specific criticism of Facebook. The hearing was for the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, more here. Facebook Shutters Community Council - We previously wrote about Facebook's attempt at crowd-sourced content moderation, the Facebook Community Council. This week, Andrea James, who was one of the Council members, said an email shut down the group without much explanation. James supposed it was because the company bettered its moderation algorithms.
Facebook Tries New Email Importer Tactic – Facebook seems to be testing a new feature to access users' email accounts by asking for the password. This helps Facebook add new users. Disney Reaches 100M Likes – Disney announced this week in a press release that the company, across its Facebook Page properties, had reached 100 million Likes, or fans.
Facebook's Safety Advisory Board Grows – The National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) recently joined Facebook's Safety Advisory Board and is now one of five organizations to partner with the social network in North America and Europe on related issues. Humorous Insight Into Latest Facebook Lawsuit - AllThingsD reported this week that the latest fracas involving the Winklevoss twins, who sued Mark Zuckerberg for stealing their idea for Facebook, takes a lighter approach in some of the language. Russian Facebook Investor DST, $500M In – Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian investment fund, recently disclosed that the company had invested a total of $500 million in Facebook to date. South Korea Balks at Facebook Privacy – South Korea's Communications Commission has asked Facebook to improve its privacy protections there. Specifically, that Facebook needs to notify users of the purpose of sharing information when it's offered to a third party.
Facebook's Visual Global Dominance – Vincenzo Cosenza posted a most recent visual of Facebook's global reach. Zuckerberg To Donate Large Portion of His Fortune - Facebook co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Mark Zuckerberg are among 17 other extremely wealthy individuals who have agreed to join the Giving Pledge. The Pledge is an effort pushed by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to encourage wealthy people in the U.S. to donate their fortune when they die. Facebook to Reimburse Gay Employees – Facebook is set to reimburse its gay employees for taxes related to health care costs. Because same-sex marriages are not recognized by the federal government, employees who cover their spouses with their company health insurance must pay more; Facebook is set to reimburse this amount to its employees. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Latest Update to Facebook’s Official Stats Shows Surge in Off-Site Traffic Posted: 10 Dec 2010 09:53 PM PST Facebook has updated its official statistics page with new numbers that show how it has become much more than a social networking web site. While the on-site platform appears to be entering a new phase of slower growth and more monetization, the social plugins and Graph API that Facebook launched earlier this year are giving it wider reach than ever before. First, the on-site platform. Users are now installing 20 million applications per day. This appears to be a new stat so it’s not clear if it’s higher or lower than previous months. Considering that Facebook says it has more than 500 million users, that’s 4% of the user base installing an app every day. The percentage may be slightly lower, though, as Facebook’s ad tool shows it having 573 million monthly active users as of December 1st, and comScore shows it having even more. Two stats were also removed in this update, reducing the clarity of what’s going on: “Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications,” and “More than 550,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform.” Overall, the developer community continues to stretch across the globe, with 190 countries represented on the platform today versus 180 when the last stats update happened in October. The number of developers — one million — is unchanged. Moving beyond the application platform, Facebook continues to expand to the web. It now has more than 250 million users engaging with its external products, including Connect, the Like button and other “social plugins.” That’s up from 150 million in late June, and 60 million in February — the launch of plugins and the Graph API in late April has clearly helped Facebook make itself a more central part of how people use the web. Since the new products, Facebook also says that its getting 10,000 more web sites integrating with it per day; around 2 million are using the social plugins, from 1 million in June. And this number isn’t just showing smaller. Facebook continues to get more of the largest on the web. In October, it said it had two-thirds of comScore’s list of the 100 largest web sites on board. Now it says it has more than 80. Worldwide, it has gone from getting half of the largest sites to “over half.” Stacking these numbers against the total user base, Facebook is getting big portions engaging with it across the web. For another example of how it’s doing off-site, it also recently said that it has more than 200 million people interacting with its products on mobile devices. ConclusionAnother data point is developer traffic on the platform — many of the largest social games and other applications have had big drops in MAU counts in the past year as Facebook has altered features and policies. At the same time, we’ve seen evidence of many smaller developers prospering. Given the information available, the platform is clearly entering a slower-growing, mature stage, where the focus has become more on making money and less on growth. Connect has been around for years, but Facebook’s renewed efforts to build on it with the plugins and Graph API has quickly paid off. With its big and growing portions of off-site users, Facebook has the opportunity to integrate even more of its features, like Credits and ads, with everywhere users are. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Platform Update: OAuth 2.0 Migration, Open Graph Tags for Video and Audio Posted: 10 Dec 2010 05:26 PM PST
OAuth 2.0 for CanvasTo ensure users don’t “trick [an] application into thinking they are someone else”, when the app calls for the user’s ID, Facebook developed Canvas Authentication OAuth 2.0. It uses a signed_request with an application’s secret which is only known to the developer and Facebook, preventing third parties from altering the signature without invalidating the request. This more secure format helps protect users and developers. OAuth 2.0 for Canvas is leaving beta without changes, but the migration won’t be forced on developers using fb_sig “for the forseeable future”. However, Facebook recommends migrating to signed_request, as those who don’t won’t receive new features, and fb_sig use will no longer appear in documentation. The old “Canvas Session Parameter” will be removed on March 10, 2011, so those who’ve enabled it should move to OAuth 2.0 for Canvas before then. Open Graph Tags for Video and AudioAt f8, Facebook began allowing developers to define Open Graph object meta tags to denote an object’s type. This markup helps Facebook properly direct actions taken to an object, such as placing the Like of an object tagged “movie” in the Movies category of a user’s interests. In a Platform update last month, Facebook began allowing objects with less than 10,000 Likes to change their type tag without resetting their Likes.
Now, Facebook is supporting new tag types for audio and video content. Audio or video files on an Open Graph-enabled site tagged App Requests in the Notifications Channel
Also included in the blog post is a mention of the test of application requests and invites in the notifications channel which we covered yesterday. If rolled out, the notifications channel could significantly aid app discovery and retention. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Comparison: Cardpool and Plastic Jungle Exchange Facebook Credits for Gift Cards Posted: 10 Dec 2010 12:56 PM PST
Here we’ll look at what differentiates Cardpool and Plastic Jungle, discuss how each could gain an advantage, and declare a current front runner. Background and SimilaritiesPlastic Jungle was founded in 2006 and has since raised $23.4 million in funding from Shasta Ventures, First Round Captal, Bay Partners, and others. It operates a website where users can exchange gift cards for cash, PayPal funds, or Amazon gift cards, and a separate Facebook application allowing exchanges for Credits. The younger Cardpool, founded in 2009, has only raised a relatively small undisclosed seed round of funding, but that backing comes from respected super angels including Ron Conway, Jeff Fluhr of StubHub, Max Levchin of Slide and PayPal, and startup incubator YCombinator. Its website allows users to exchange cards for cash, Amazon gift cards, or Facebook Credits.
Many policies and procedures of the two companies are identical. Both offer users up to 92% of the value of their sold cards, allow cards to be purchased at up to a 30% discount, and guarantee any cards bought from them. If users want cash back for their cards, both offer free shipping and estimate the turn around time for receiving a check at two weeks. The list of merchants whose cards can be exchanged for Credits through either service is almost identical, including airlines, hotel chains, and big box retailers such as Best Buy, Target, and Walmart. Differentiators and OpportunitiesPlastic Jungle’s primary advantage is its self-contained Facebook app, allowing users to acquire Credits in the same place they’ll use them. Cardpool technically has an application, but it simply directs to its website. Plastic Jungle’s other differentiators include card value and discount percentage filtering options for finding gift cards to purchase, and the display of “Hot Card Deals” on its home page. The option to exchange for Facebook Credits on the Plastic Jungle website would be a useful addition. Kristen Donelson, the company’s VP of Marketing, says it’s looking to let users convert cards into value on other platforms. When asked about possible integration with the new Google Chrome Web Store, she replied, “you never know.”
Cardpool offers a slightly larger list of merchants whose cards can be converted into Credits. Merchants not offered by Plastic Jungle include the Apple Store, Macy’s, Urban Outfitters, and Ticketmaster. Cardpool offers a referral program where users can make $10 when a friend who uses their referral link makes a purchase. Funder Anson Tsai says Cardpool looks up to Zappos, inspiring it to offer a 100-day return policy on purchased cards, and to refuse to sell gift cards which expire or whose value deteriorates to avoid disappointing customers. Cardpool also provides sharing buttons connected to Facebook and Twitter and an email contact importer for inviting friends. These viral mechanisms offer significant potential for growth. When we spoke with Plastic Jungle in October, CEO Jeff Bower said it was considering how to implement social features, but none have appeared yet. Users are typically eager to tell friends about ways to save money, so Plastic Jungle needs to add sharing functionality soon or it risks being outpaced by Cardpool.
Neither company allow redemption of popular gift cards for the iTunes store or Starbucks. The first to secure deals with these companies could make gains during the holiday season. To reduce sign up friction and allow for the easy transfer of Credits, both should add Facebook Connect as a registration option. Direct tie ins or becoming a payment method for social games could expose the companies to users who need Facebook Credits. Cardpool Atop a High-Potential IndustryCurrently, Cardpool is the better gift card exchange, thanks to its sharing features, customer service policies, and larger merchant list. However, with such a large market and so little penetration, there’s room for more than one company to succeed. Cardpool’s Tsai believes “the biggest issue is awareness. Most people don’t know any of us exist. If people knew about these sites, they’d be using them.” | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Likes, Bonuses and Page Managers Are On This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps Posted: 10 Dec 2010 08:07 AM PST
The full list contains a wider variety of apps than usual:
At number two, #1 Song On My Birthday is just the latest version of a time-honored web app. After finding out your birthday, it tells you what the top charting song was on the day you were born. Farm Bonuses is similar to one that we’ve seen before called Frontier Bonuses; both scrape the walls of your friends in search of shared virtual goods from Zynga games. While thousands of apps purporting to help play social games have appeared and subsequently been banned on Facebook, 101 Apps‘ titles take a different tack, and seem to be surviving because of it. PicBadges modifies your profile picture to show support for a cause, or just a mindset, by placing a logo over the photo. It’s followed by Pool Master 2, a new casual game.
Starbucks Card is worth a look; it provides a place both to manage your existing card by adding to the balance or setting up auto-reload, or to buy a new card. With the gifting season coming up, the latter use is probably what’s driving growth. Finally, Twitter for Pages and PM Welcome Tab are both page management tools. The first is actually built by a significant brand, Involver; it’s used to manage a Twitter stream on a Page, but it also appears to be temporarily closed to new accounts. PM Welcome Tab, by Pagemodo, is a simple management tool for smaller brands. |
Mobile Analytics Company Flurry Raises $15M – San Francisco-based Flurry raised $15 million in the third round this 
Facebook has announced updates to several planned migrations and support for video and audio Open Graph tags in its 
Two companies, Cardpool and Plastic Jungle, are competing to become the preferred way to exchange unwanted gift card for Facebook Credits. This week, both unveiled new functionality that allows users to enter a gift card’s code and have the Credits deposited in their account that same day. There is currently $30 billion in unused American gift cards waiting to be exchanged, according to literature cited by both companies, creating high stakes for this battle.
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