Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook for Android v1.5 Mobile App Finally Gives Users Chat and Push Notifications
- Facebook’s Performance Ad Rates In Key Markets: A Couple Surprises
- PostPost Turns Facebook Links into a Socially Curated Custom Newspaper
- Facebook’s Top 10 Status Update Trends of 2010 Reflect Its Global Youth
- Adopt, Care for a Virtual Child, Donate with UNICEF’s New Facebook App
- Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages: Shrek, TV, Zynga, Rihanna, Wikileaks and Cristiano Ronaldo
| Facebook for Android v1.5 Mobile App Finally Gives Users Chat and Push Notifications Posted: 14 Dec 2010 05:15 PM PST
This update closely follows version 1.4 which was released December 3rd, and gave users access to Facebook Places and Groups. Android phones also recently received single sign-on, which reduces login friction for third-party Facebook integrated apps. Facebook for Android now only lacks a few minor features available on the iPhone, namely photo tagging, Facebook Deals, and advanced Places functionality including photo check-ins and the ability to add tags of friends to an existing check-in. The added Chat functionality eliminates the need to use a third-party, Facebook Chat-compatible mobile app such as Go!Chat. Chat for Android runs properly in the background, which the announcement says allows users to”receive chat messages while using other applications”. Chat can thereby simulate SMS, which can help users save money. The new push notifications will help users stay aware of activity on their Facebook accounts in real time, reducing the need to constantly check the app when awaiting a wall post or message. It will also prompt less engaged users to occasionally open Facebook for Android, which could lead to a growth in daily active users. Comments on the announcement of the app are overwhelmingly positive and appreciative of the progress the app has made — a strong shift from the comment reels of previous release announcements which were filled with complaints about the lack of Chat and push notifications. If the Facebook for Android team can keep up this pace of updates, the app may soon rival Facebook for iPhone for the title of most advanced Facebook mobile app. That would be a big shift which could drive Facebook power users to the Google platform — something that could aid the launch of Google’s upcoming social product which may be more mobile focused. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook’s Performance Ad Rates In Key Markets: A Couple Surprises Posted: 14 Dec 2010 02:27 PM PST Performance advertising rates in the largest countries on Facebook are showing some mostly unsurprising trends. Ads in North America and Western Europe cost the most per click, up to around $1.00, with uneven but significantly lower numbers in most other markets. Perhaps most strikingly, advertisers have driven up rates in some key emerging markets. The five largest Facebook markets by monthly active users illustrate this trend. Based on data sampled from Facebook’s advertising tool in mid-November, available in our Inside Facebook Gold report, the US is clearly Facebook’s single most valuable market. It not only has the largest audience — today above 145 million monthly actives — but its ad rates come in nearly on top as well. Ads targeting women costed an average of $0.94 per click, with men slightly lower at $0.89.
The second-largest country by size, Indonesia and its 31.4 million users, is unsurprisingly far less expensive to advertise in. CPC rates were $0.14 for men and $0.19 for women. While, rates tended to go up and down over the course of the fall in Facebook’s largest markets around the world, based on our data, large European countries typically ranged from $0.25 to above a dollar, while developing countries went as low as $0.10 or so. India and Brazil were notably strong. Men and women in the former country costed $0.35 and $0.29 CPC to reach, respectively. The latter country was the most expensive to advertise in out of all of Facebook’s largest markets. CPC rates for men were around $1.20 and for women $1.40. Both of these countries have wide income disparities, with wealthier citizens far more likely to have internet access. The high rates suggest that a significant number of advertisers have picked up on this fact. For full access to our ad rates data on major Facebook markets, including country breakdowns by relationship status, age and sex, be sure to check out our Inside Facebook Gold subscription service. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| PostPost Turns Facebook Links into a Socially Curated Custom Newspaper Posted: 14 Dec 2010 11:14 AM PST Data management company Tiger Logic recently released PostPost, a custom real-time internet newspaper made up of links a user’s friends and Pages have shared on Facebook. It makes it easy to consume, Like, share, and comment on longer form content such as news articles and videos. PostPost is designed to feel like a socially curated version of popular editorially aggregated news site The Huffington Post.
Real-time social streams are becoming the preeminent way to receive information. Products like Flipboard for the iPad, and website Paper.li bring content from social channels including Facebook and Twitter into a new interface. However, these services require either special hardware or only update every 24 hours. Facebook clients like RockMelt and Wowd add filtering or custom feeds, but don’t lay out Facebook content in a unique, visually stimulating way. PostPost is web-accessible, updates in real-time, and focuses on rich content instead of simple status updates and activity. Once users login through Facebook Connect, PostPost takes a few seconds to convert the stories published by their friends into a layout of dynamically-sized boxes. PostPost utilizes the latest JavaScript SDK for Facebook, JSON, and Masonry to directly link Facebook and a web browser. This pushes database and processing responsibilities onto Facebook, relieving Tiger Logic of much the server costs.
PostPost’s search feature is powered by Tiger Logic’s own yolink technology which deep searches behind links to discover keywords across the full-text of any article or website without indexing. These elegant technologies make PostPost load quickly and produce very accurate search results. Sharing buttons on every story and a multi-friend selector inviter help PostPost gain exposure amongst new users.
User can sort their newspaper by content type using tabs for links, videos, and photos, or view them combined. Videos play in-line, and stories by Pages show their existing Like count. One issue is that since Facebook doesn’t provide access to the list of friends a user has hidden from their news feed, they’ll see posts from these low quality content producers. However, an ‘x’ button on each posts lets users hide all posts from that author or which link to that site, allowing lists of hidden friends to be rebuilt on site over time.
In future releases, PostPost plans to release a mobile app, allow story sorting by Like count; and provide filters to only see posts by friends, Pages, or Groups. PostPost creator Peter Yared says monetization will depend on a prospective Open Graph social ads plugin which we speculated that Facebook is preparing. Yared agrees that “that’s the model for Facebook building out its footprint across the web”. Yared sees PostPost as the natural evolution of content consumption. “Instead of displaying what an algorithm on Google, strangers on Digg, or an editor on The Huffington Post surface, we show what your friends think is interesting.” Socially curated news is more relevant to users, offers enhanced opportunity for discussion, and could therefore usurp traditional news destination sites. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook’s Top 10 Status Update Trends of 2010 Reflect Its Global Youth Posted: 14 Dec 2010 10:22 AM PST Facebook posted a blog today revealing the top 10 status update trends over the past year. Interesting, many of these pertained to youthful fads like Justin Bieber and the acronym HMU ("hit me up") but also there were several that reflected Facebook's increasingly global reach with references to the World Cup, Haiti and the Chilean miners. The status update trends show what terms grew the most in updates this year as compared to last in 236 countries. First on the list was HMU, or "hit me up," which started to gain traction last year until the phrase had 80,000 mentions a day by the end of the summer. Second was the World Cup, with 1.5 million mentions at the start and 1.3 million mentions at the end of the games. Interestingly, during important moments during some of the games as many as 50% of status updates pertained to the World Cup.
Movies were third on Facebook's list, particularly "Toy Story 3," “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” “Inception,” “Alice in Wonderland” and “Iron Man 2." In fourth place were the iPad and iPhone 4, which were mentioned in 25 million updates this year. Haiti was the fifth most mentioned status update, peaking at a rate of 1,8000 updates a minute earlier this year. Teen singing sensation Justin Bieber took sixth place with mentions growing throughout the year. Facebook games were the seventh most mentioned status update; FarmVille and FrontierVille were particularly prominent. Next were mentions of miners or mineros (in Spanish), referring to the 33 Chilean miners who were trapped underground for 69 days. Airplanes were mentioned often, coming in ninth place, mostly because a a popular song by B.o.B. called "Airplanes." Finally, mention of the year 2011 made tenth place and have been mentioned more frequently as the year nears its end. [Image Via Facebook] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Adopt, Care for a Virtual Child, Donate with UNICEF’s New Facebook App Posted: 14 Dec 2010 09:07 AM PST The United Nation's Children's Fund, or UNICEF, created a Facebook application called Help a Child. It allows users to care for a virtual child, through buying virtual goods that it requests. The difference from most games is that this money is actually a donation towards UNICEF projects in the real world — the organization works to meet the long-term needs of children and women in developing countries. The app allows you to either select the continent, country, sex, name and age of your virtual adoptee or randomize these characteristics. Then it adds your surname to your adoptee and publishes to your Wall.
After you create your adoptee, the child begins to have needs similar to what a real world UNICEF adoptee would have. For example, the app tells you that your adoptee needs food, so the user can select the types of food to give the child, paired with prices, and has the option to donate the actual sum to UNICEF using PayPal. You can also publish the gift of food or vaccines to your adoptee on your Wall. Money collected this way on Facebook will go to help actual UNICEF projects around the world. The application is currently just getting started, with 901 monthly active users and 25 daily active users, according to our AppData service. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages: Shrek, TV, Zynga, Rihanna, Wikileaks and Cristiano Ronaldo Posted: 14 Dec 2010 08:02 AM PST
Top Gainers This Week
There were a handful of movie-related Pages on the list this week. First place went to the "Shrek" Page, which added 943,300 Likes to pass 4 million total after promoting the sale of the newest home release last week. Then "Harry Potter" came in at number 2 with 931,300 new Likes, passing 12.5 million, after the Page mostly promoted the recent release of the latest installment of the franchise. Number eight went to "Toy Story," which added 488,700 Likes to rise to 11.2 million. Finally, Disney's Page, at number 14, added 440,300 Likes; the company recently announced the milestone of 100 million Likes across its Facebook Page properties.
Television also made the list briefly, including "The Simpsons" at number 6 with 554,900 new Likes, making a total of 16.6 million by promoting the show's episodes. Then MTV made number 16 by adding 418,400 new Likes to pass 12.3 million by promoting its programming. Rounding out our list was "SpongeBob SquarePants" at number 20 with 390,000 new Likes to pass 14.7 million without many updates. Media companies made the list, too. Facebook was fourth with 591,200 new Likes to pass 30 million. Zynga's Texas Hold'em Poker made fifth after 564,100 new Likes and special game promotions. Wikileaks' Page added 464,000 new Likes to surpass 1.3 million, riding the scandal following continual disclosure of classified U.S. diplomatic documents. Finally, YouTube's Page was twelfth with 453,300 new Likes to pass 24.7 million.
A few sports-related Pages were on the list, too. Manchester United's Page added 450,500 Likes to come in just under 6 million; perhaps partly due to a landing Page asking visitors directly to invite their friends to join. Then Portuguese football/soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo's Page added 405,700 Likes to reach 16.2 million; his team won a game recently. Finally, musicians made up a big part of the list, as they tend to do. In third place was Rihanna with 634,800 new Likes to her 18.8 million; she's been promoting her new album on the Page. Eminem's Page made number 7 with 542,000 new Likes and performance promotions. Number 9 was Shakira with 469,900 new LIkes to reach 16.4 million; she's on tour.
Both The Offspring and Blink-182 seem to have benefitted from a sizable official Page consolidation. The Offspring was at number 10 on the list with 468,800 new Likes, 445,500 of which were added on Wednesday, to make a total of 1.1 million. Blink-182 made number 15 with 437,000 new Likes, 2.7 million total, and a 352,300 jump on Friday; the and also had an interesting landing Page from Bompa allowing users to interact with the band's tour by requesting songs, confirming attendance, retrieving venue details and seeing who else was attending. The Black Eyed Peas made number 17 with 413,500 new Likes, reaching 7.6 million and Linkin Park was at number 19 after adding 397,200 Likes to reach 18.9 million after having sold merchandise on the Page. |
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