Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook Roundup: Acquisitions, Rutherford, Zuckerberg, Netflix, Privacy Office, Microsoft, Oodle and Buddy Media
- Platform Update: Change Log, Third-Party Unique IDs, Deprecations
- 2010: The Year Facebook Passed $1 Billion, and Maybe $2 Billion, in Revenue
- Christmas Titles Show Up on This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps
- Wildfire Launches Social Media Measurement Tool
| Posted: 17 Dec 2010 08:16 PM PST Facebook Plans 15 Acquisitions in 2011 – Company corporate development manager Michael Brown said it was looking at 15 acquisitions in 2011, according to peHUB. These would be similar others this year, like the Hot Potato and drop.io acquisitions in that they would be a mix of talent and product acquisitions. More details and a video at the link.
Zuckerberg, Facebook in Time Magazine – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year and the magazine also had an interesting photo gallery of Facebook offices around the world. [Image via Time] Facebook Best Place to Work – Glassdoor placed Facebook at the top of its list of 50 best places to work. It beat out Apple and Google. NetFlix Searches For Facebook Engineer – NetFlix posted a job for a Facebook Integration-Engineer/Architect recently who can "create a more social Netflix experience." Obama Administration Considers Privacy Office – A report from the Commerce Department suggests that a potential Privacy Policy Office could be created to manage commercial uses of personal information. More at the link. Visualizing Facebook's User Connections – Paul Butler, a Facebook data infrastructure engineering team intern, created a visual representation of what Facebook's 500-plus million users' connections look like, geographically. [Image via Facebook]
Facebook Sets Sights on Big Media - Facebook has hired two New York-based executives to work specifically to get big media companies to work with the social network. They are: Andy Mitchell, who worked as VP of business development at The Daily Beast and Nick Grudin, who did the same job at Newsweek. Paciolan, Buddy Media Partner to Sell Tickets - Paciolan has developed a white label version of the Buddy Media Platform, PAC Social MEdia, to better use Facebook to sell tickets and promote events. Details on Facebook's Policing Team – The New York Times took a look at Facebook's "hate and harassment team," which essentially decides what content to keep and remove on the social network.
Fan Appz, Miami Dolphins Grow Fans – The Miami Dolphins NFL football team have enlisted the help of the Fan Appz platform to help grow their Facebook fan base, which currently runs about 446,000 Likes. The Dolphins will work to create deeper connections to their "Finatics" Facebook community using Fan Appz in the near future. Oodle Expands on Facebook – The classifieds search engine Oodleis set to roll out new social features to better nexus with Facebook. Construction Hiring in Rutherford County, SC – Construction hiring has begun for Facebook's latest data center in Rutherford, South Carolina. About 150 electrical jobs will be open for applications. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Platform Update: Change Log, Third-Party Unique IDs, Deprecations Posted: 17 Dec 2010 06:32 PM PST
Platform Change LogSince Facebook pushes new code every Tuesday night, it can be difficult for developers to stay up to date on changes. To make it easier for for devs to integrate the latest features and keep their apps functioning, Facebook will now file Platform changes in the new change log in addition to announcing them on the Developers Blog. Changes go live on beta.facebook.com on Sunday night, giving devs two days to test their apps before the changes are rolled out to the public. Third-Party Unique Identifier Mechanism Roll OutIn the aftermath of the user ID sharing issue, Facebook developed a mechanism to allow applications and acceptable partners to verify the identity of users without sharing their user IDs. Developers can assign users a unique third-party identifier via the Graph API or FQL. All applications must begin using this system by January 1st, 2011. API and FMBL Tag Deprecations
While it was previously announced that pages.blockFan would be deprecated, Facebook has responded to developer feedback about the need for a method to prevent unruly users from spoiling the experience of others. The call has been removed from the deprecation list and will continue to be supported. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2010: The Year Facebook Passed $1 Billion, and Maybe $2 Billion, in Revenue Posted: 17 Dec 2010 12:00 PM PST For years, the conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley was that social networks were expensive to run, and didn’t make much money. So as Facebook grew by hundreds of millions of users over the past few years, many people wondered if it was in financial trouble. Revenue, however, appears to have doubled every year since 2007. And at this point it appears to be increasing even more sharply. Based on what we and others have heard, we’ve tracked Facebook making $150 million in 2007, slightly less than $300 million in 2008, and somewhere up to $800 million in 2009. A number of reports have suggested that it will make $2 billion or more this year, and we have also heard the same estimates in recent months — up significantly from the $1.1 billion number that the company loosely confirmed earlier this year. How? Through growth in brand and performance advertising — payoff from years of investment — with revenue from its Credits virtual currency only starting to kick in. But, aside from bits of information provided by sources close to Facebook, there is very little information available about how the latest revenue numbers actually break down. So here’s a closer look at what we think is going on. Some high-level points, before we get started. Facebook’s user base has boomed from around 375 million at the beginning of the year to somewhere around 575 million today, with growth happening across the world, in all types of advertising markets (see our Inside Facebook Gold report for more details on Facebook’s worldwide traffic). Engagement is also massive: Facebook says that more than 50% of users visit the site every day. Facebook’s product development has focused on continuing to increase engagement and gathering more user data — factors that help it target advertising more accurately to more people more often. And although we’re focusing on revenue here, we should also note that Facebook has made significant hardware and software investments to reduce infrastructure costs, helping it to become profitable as of late 2009. Performance advertisingZynga and other social gaming companies began utilizing Facebook’s self-serve advertising system in order to reach more users over the course of 2008 and 2009. Along with a smattering of online performance marketers, and a few early adopter small businesses and major brands, the developers provided significant boosts to Facebook revenue in past years. That trend has continued, with local advertisers, social game developers and group buying sites like Groupon reportedly making massive investments. Advertisers have reported prices steadily rising as more of them figure out how to achieve their desired returns on investment. As of this past fall, the average cost-per click in Facebook’s largest market, the United States, is around one dollar. For developers interested in learning more, we’ll be examining how advertising is working for Facebook and developers at our Inside Social Apps conference in late January. Facebook has been making a significant new effort to help performance advertisers spend more money. It introduced an advertising API last year that allows third-party service providers to place thousands of automated, highly targeted ads on behalf of clients. While that program has rolled out slowly, big search marketing businesses like Omniture have moved in to offer services to clients, and a dynamic ecosystem of startups are competing for clients as well. Facebook also ended most parts of its original advertising deal with Microsoft, where that company ran banner ads on the site and split the revenue — the relationship is now more product-focused, on things like social features for the Bing search engine. In addition to more users, more engagement, more advertisers, and the new options available through the API, that switch helped make even more inventory available to sell against. Brand AdvertisingFacebook has been trying to pitch Madison Avenue on the benefits of its advertising services for years, and all those efforts appear to be paying off now. Most major brands at least have a Facebook Page today, and dozens have created more sophisticated applications, Facebook integrations on other sites, and other campaigns designed to engage with users. While Pages are free, Facebook upsells owners into its performance and brand advertising services. The home page ads are only available to companies that spend $50,000 or more, and include a variety of engagement-focused options, such as the ability to Like a Page or RSVP to an Event with a single click. The company has also aggressively stepped up its sales efforts to large brands, building out its staff in New York City and many other offices around the world, and hiring a series of veteran salespeople away from other technology and media companies. While there’s little information available about the amount of revenue now coming from large advertisers, anecdotal evidence suggests it is booming. For example, a number of Page management companies, like Buddy Media, are saying that they’re seeing significant new interest. CreditsWhile still in its early stages, Credits will likely form another key revenue driver for Facebook in the future. This past year, the company made it clear to developers that Credits would be the only payment option for virtual goods in canvas applications. While many companies have not fully integrated Credits yet, expect them to in 2011. Also look for Facebook to expand Credits to the web and mobile devices — something that many have speculated about, but has not yet happened. If Credits proves to be a big success in 2011, we expect Facebook to quickly expand it beyond the home site. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Christmas Titles Show Up on This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps Posted: 17 Dec 2010 09:39 AM PST
Monster Galaxy is an interesting new game, from the creators of tween virtual world Gaia Online. Anyone familiar with Pokemon will recognize the monster-collecting theme, but the game also lacks the strong time-based mechanics and monetization characteristic of most Facebook titles. Apps like Merry Christmas to All My Friend are typically as bare-bones as possible, focusing on either greetings or gifting. My Year in Photos is in a somewhat different category, going through an entire year of the user’s activity to pick out the highlights — in this case, top photos, or down at number seven, My Top Followers. Most of the remaining apps are pretty typical. Several are by AppBank, an app developer that has created hundreds of apps over the past year with varying levels of success, this week being one of its better ones of late. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Wildfire Launches Social Media Measurement Tool Posted: 17 Dec 2010 09:36 AM PST Wildfire launched a social media measurement tool called the Social Media Monitor today. The new service is set up on a web site to allow visitors to compare the performance of Facebook and Twitter accounts and will soon also include Places check-ins and overall fan/follower engagement. In an example of the Social Media Monitor's utility Wildfire recently ran a study comparing Target and Walmart. The Monitor showed that Target beat out Walmart in terms of captive Facebook audience during the summer, has extended its lead in recent weeks, particularly around Black Friday, putting Target 600,000 fans over Walmart.
Using the Monitor is very simple. A user just goes to the web site, enters the Twitter or Facebook URL for a particular company/brand and voilà, information that includes growth over the past 7 days, month and 3 months appears, along with a graph and the total number of fans/followers. To help visitors to the Monitor take their social media reach to the next step, Wildfire also provides links to its other services along with these metrics. Learn more about strategies to increase your social media reach with the Inside Facebook Marketing Bible. [Image Via Wildfire] |
Facebook’s weekly 
Facebook will begin returning an error or cease to recognize many “old and infrequently used FBML tags and API methods” starting January 1st, 2011. Developers should check the full 
While a new game called Monster Galaxy leads this week’s 
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