gravatar

Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook to Distribute AMBER Alerts, Perhaps Other Emergency Info

Posted: 11 Jan 2011 06:55 PM PST

In an interesting tie between government and Facebook, users will soon be able to receive AMBER (America's Missing Broadcast Emergency Response) Alerts on the site about children abducted in their area. The deal is made possible through a partnership between the company and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. It’s another sign that web services like Facebook and Twitter are becoming the fastest ways to disseminate information to the largest number of people.

The partnership could pave the way for Facebook becoming a medium for disseminating other types of emergency information, such as warnings about natural disasters, product recalls, violent crime, and national security.

Facebook will reveal more details about the program at a press conference being held tomorrow in Virginia on the fifteenth anniversary of the death of Amber Hagerman, whose abduction was the impetus for the AMBER Alert. The bulletins, which are traditionally distributed via television, radio, and through roadside signs, started being sent to AOL users who requested them in 2002. AMBER Alerts are available via SMS, and the Ontario, Canada Provincial Police set up a Facebook app last year to help inform locals about abductions.

The bulletins have reportedly helped save 525 children to date. Facebook previously worked with the U.K.’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center to offer an allowing people to report child predators and other inappropriate behavior on Facebook

Notifications of nearby abductions could potentially be shown as Facebook home page prompts or inserted into the news feeds of users, and could be opt-in or op-out. The news feed would be a particularly effective medium because the bulletins would be visible across different interfaces, such as mobile phones. Since AMBER Alerts often include details about the appearance and vehicles of suspected abductors, getting this information to users outside of their homes is important.

Since so many people are connected to the site, check it frequently, and it can be used to widely forward information, Facebook could become an important way of distributing emergency bulletins. There are some reports that students in lock down across the University of Texas at Austin campus used Facebook to pass along up-to-date safety information during a September 2010 shooting. In the future, it’s possible that governments and other institutions might call on Facebook to help warn people of impending tsunamis or tornados, tainted food products, fleeing suspects in violent crimes, or even terrorist attacks. If news of celebrity deaths can spread so fast, its reasonable to hope Facebook’s viral nature could also serve the public good.

Facebook recently reached an agreement with state and local agencies regarding how the government would interact with the site. The deal facilitates the creation of Pages for these agencies that could distribute community information, and also demonstrates Facebook’s willingness to cooperate with officials. The press conference with implementation details for the Facebook AMBER Alerts will be streamed at 10:30am EST on the Facebook Washington DC Page’s Livesteam app.

Facebook’s Big Credits Push Shows Itself in CityVille, Other Top Social Games

Posted: 11 Jan 2011 03:52 PM PST

Over the past year, Facebook has steadily worked to make Credits the only payments option on its platform, but has given few specifics details on what it’s doing during the transition. Below, we take a fresh look at Facebook, its top developers and the platform providers to help clear up where Credits will go in 2011.

Although it has never said so explicitly and publicly, Facebook has required, one by one, all major developers to sign five-year agreements agreeing to use Credits exclusively. That’s instead of the direct credit card payments, third-party offer walls, game cards, and other payment options that have until now been the main ways to buy virtual currency for social games and apps on the platform.

Facebook’s initial plan was to fully transition to Credits by the end of 2010, but the results might not be obvious today. For example, the two largest games on the platform — CityVille and FarmVille — show an offer wall, game cards, and a variety of other non-Credits payment methods.

> Continue reading on Inside Social Games.

Facebook Adds Seven More Ad Providers to Approved List for Developers

Posted: 11 Jan 2011 12:09 PM PST

After releasing a very short list of ad providers that it has approved to work with developers on the platform last month, Facebook has added seven more names in the past week or so. Readers will recognize many of them as having been active on Facebook for years.

The newly-listed companies:

For those who haven’t been following, Facebook made the list to create another checkpoint for ad quality. In past years, it has not policed who provided what kind of ads on the platform as tightly, and many service providers competed to generate the highest revenues for developers regardless of quality. The result was a lot of misleading advertising in applications, whether in the forms of banners, offers or other promotions.

Facebook has been steadily upping the requirements for who can provide ads, banning some unscrupulous ad networks over the course of 2009, and increasing scrutiny of all providers and developers after a round of hard-hitting media coverage of the offers business in social games in the fall of that year. It introduced a range of new restrictions and transparency requirements over the course of the 2010.

This list is even more definitive. Facebook first requires ad providers to sign on to its site policies (against practices like running deceptive ads); then, once a given provider is listed, Facebook still holds developers accountable for the provider’s ongoing compliance with the policies, which we briefly reviewed here. Our coverage of the other ones more recently added, here.

Data on Facebook’s Traffic, Advertising, and Company Health at Inside Facebook Gold – January 2011 Edition

Posted: 11 Jan 2011 09:35 AM PST

With Facebook's recent substantial fundraising round and the emerging possibility of an initial public offering in 2012, Facebook's growth and business success will impact even more individuals, businesses, and institutions throughout the coming year. While the company remains private with details of its traffic distribution, and monetization, it's clear that Facebook today implies more opportunity, and accompanying risk, than ever before.

Inside Facebook Gold is Inside Network's business intelligence service that supplies monthly data on Facebook's growth outlook through a comprehensive data feed service and expert analysis.

The January 2011 edition of Inside Facebook Gold includes:

  • Global Data Feed Service, a comprehensive data CSV supplying vital stats on Facebook's audience size, demographic distribution, advertising business, and global language distribution.
  • Facebook Monthly Growth Report, an analytical review of audience change by country markets, and demographic and linguistic groups, with focused reporting on the company's growing international platform ecosystem.
  • Facebook Global Monitor, 100 pages of leaderboards and charts covering audience change in 160 Facebook country markets.
  • DealWatch, a summary and analysis of all the funding and acquisition events, major hires, and partnerships that have taken place in the Facebook business ecosystem, and in social games and payments.

Inside Facebook Gold is a data and intelligence service designed for analysts seeking to understand and maximize opportunities in the Facebook ecosystem, and presents data on key indicators ranging from the site’s traffic growth to its advertising business and its robust applications platform.

Download the January 2011 intelligence suite at Inside Facebook Gold.

Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages: Zynga, Call of Duty, Harry Potter, Rihanna, MTV and Football

Posted: 11 Jan 2011 09:30 AM PST

We had a good mix of different Pages on our list of the Top 20 fastest growing Facebook Pages this week — everything from football (soccer) to games to TV and movies to National Geographic. Growth on our list is measured by the number of Likes added since last week using our PageData tool, which counts the number of Likes added to a Page daily. It took between 374,000 and 734,500 new Likes to make the list this week.

Top Gainers This Week

Name Fans Gain↓ Gain, %
1. Texas Hold’em Poker 32,533,978 +734,541 +2.31
2. Harry Potter 14,910,288 +579,861 +4.05
3. Rihanna 20,992,197 +568,448 +2.78
4. Black Eyed Peas 9,486,139 +563,940 +6.32
5. Shakira 18,200,532 +496,424 +2.80
6. Shrek 6,418,858 +495,384 +8.36
7. Justin Bieber 18,236,230 +444,099 +2.50
8. Eminem 25,422,168 +443,451 +1.78
9. Linkin Park 20,532,960 +441,483 +2.20
10. Lady Gaga 26,198,738 +421,424 +1.63
11. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3,606,915 +421,359 +13.23
12. The Simpsons 18,264,856 +412,566 +2.31
13. MTV 13,828,854 +409,999 +3.06
14. Ricardo Kakà 4,525,550 +401,131 +9.73
15. Michael Jackson 26,668,824 +400,343 +1.52
16. Cristiano Ronaldo 17,780,471 +400,307 +2.30
17. National Geographic 4,372,936 +394,899 +9.93
18. Manchester United 7,441,549 +385,563 +5.46
19. AKON 14,815,554 +378,759 +2.62
20. Facebook 31,790,949 +374,063 +1.19

First on our list was Zynga's Texas Hold'em Poker which added 734,500 Likes to land at 32.5 million by the end of the week after steady growth. Another game's Facebook Page, Call of Duty: Black Ops, took the number 11 spot on our list this week after adding 421,400 Likes to land at 3.6 million, also with steady growth.

A few movies' Pages were also on the list. "Harry Potter" took second place with 579,900 new Likes, coming in just under 15 million. "Shrek" added 495,400 Likes to reach 6.4 million; the Page has been promoting the buy for the DVD/Blu Ray set of films.

Making up almost half of our list were musicians.

Rihanna took third place with 568,400 new Likes and about 21 million total. The Black Eyed Peas follwed in fourth with 563,900 new Likes to reach 9.4 million; the Page advertised the band's upcoming appearances. Shakira took fifth place with 496,400 new Likes, 18.2 million total, and promotions on the Page for her new single and accompanying artwork. Justin Bieber took the number 7 spot, mostly tweeting and updating as he usually does, especially contests and a recent Vanity Fair magazine cover. His Page added 444,000 Likes to climb to 18.2 million.

Eminem's Page took eighth place after adding 443,500 Likes to reach 25.4 million; the Page posted his promotion for the Grammy awards recently. Linkin Park's Page added 441,500 Likes to climb to 20.5 million; the band has been promoting its current tour. Lady Gaga's Page took tenth place with 421,400 new Likes and 26.1 million total. Michael Jackson's Page was next on the list at number 15, with 400,300 new Likes and 26.6 million total; holiday merchandising reportedly sold well, too. Finally, Akon took the number 19 spot, adding 378,800 LIkes to reach 14.8 million. The singer has a new phone app and is running a contest to give away a Lamborghini.

Elsewhere on the list were television shows. "The Simpsons" came in at number 12 with 412,600 new Likes, 18.2 million total and news of recent awards wins. MTV's Page was next at number 13 with 410,000 new Likes, 13.8 million total and a pretty regular promotion of its programming.

Football (soccer) also was popular on our list this week. Perhaps this was partially due to some recent awards given by the governing body, FIFA. Two players were on the list, as well as a recently popular team, Manchester United. Ricardo Kaká took number 14 with 401,100 new Likes, 4.5 million total. Next was Cristiano Ronaldo at 16, who added 400,300 new Likes to reach 17.7 million. Finally Manchester United added 385,600 Likes to climb to 7.4 million; the Page has begun to tie in much more with its web site on the Wall.

A few outliers on the list were National Geographic at number 17, which added 394,900 Likes to grow to 4.3 million this week. The Page promotes stories and photos from the organization and added 336,400 Likes on January 6, probably a likely Page consolidation. Last but not least was Facebook's own Page, which added 374,000 Likes to grow to 31.7 million and take the number 20 spot on our list.

onsdag den 12. januar 2011 at 07.05