Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- ISA 2011: Roundup of Press Coverage
- Facebook Increases Application Requests Limit: More Virality, More Spam?
- Facebook Tests Voice Chat, Could the Facebook Phone Run on VoIP?
- Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: Facebook & Meteor Games
- Facebook Combats Image of Insecurity with HTTPS and Social Authentication
- Yahoo and Badoo Rhyme Their Way to the Top on This Week’s List of Fastest-Gaining Facebook Apps by DAU
| ISA 2011: Roundup of Press Coverage Posted: 26 Jan 2011 09:40 PM PST
Our Inside Social Apps 2011 conference yesterday featured intense industry discussions around key issues like developer growth on Facebook, the expansion of Credits, the evolution of mobile social applications, and the roadmap for Android in 2011. Be sure to check out the coverage from the press in attendance, below. If you want to see what attendees were saying during the event, see the #isa2011 Twitter hashtag. The Future of Social Gaming: Key Questions for 2011 & The Emerging Media LandscapeInside Facebook: ISA 2011: Live Blogging The Future of Social Gaming Panel Fireside Chat: The 2011 Facebook Platform RoadmapInside Facebook: ISA 2011: Fireside Chat with Facebook CTO Bret Taylor Bonus: TechCrunch recently published a follow-up, looking at Facebook’s plans for tablets. See Techmeme for more discussion on the spam and HTML5 topics. New and Alternative Social Platforms: Where Do Opportunities Lie?Inside Facebook: ISA 2011: Live-Blogging New and Alternative Social Platforms Panel Monetization & Customer Acquisition on the Facebook Platform in 2011 Inside Facebook: ISA 2011: Facebook Announces Buy With Friends and Frictionless Micropayments See Techmeme for more discussion on the new Credits features. Growth and Monetization on Mobile Social PlatformsInside Mobile Apps: ISA 2011: Live-Blogging Growth and Monetization on Mobile Social Platforms See Techmeme for more discussion of the new Sony Ericsson Facebook integration. Fireside Chat: Android’s 2011 Social RoadmapInside Mobile Apps: ISA 2011: Fireside Chat with Google Android Group Manager Eric Chu See Techmeme for a large and wide-ranging discussion of the in-app purchase issues and the 2011 roadmap. M&A Landscape for Small & Midsize DevelopersInside Social Games: ISA 2011: Small Developers Don't Need to Sell Out Yet And don’t miss Silicon Alley Insider’s retrospective on the event. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Increases Application Requests Limit: More Virality, More Spam? Posted: 26 Jan 2011 08:00 PM PST Facebook has updated its Requests Dialog with a few changes, including eliminating an unnecessary step, improving ease of implementation, and reducing the strictness of requests limit on users. Previously, users were sometimes limited to sending 20 or fewer requests or invites a day in order to prevent spam. Facebook says it will continue to improve its spam detections systems to ensure the limit change doesn’t degrade the user experience.
Facebook originally implemented the requests limit because they were being abused by developers and users were getting so many that they were ignoring them.
Facebook recently began testing use of the top navigation bar notifications channel for showing app requests, but the Developers Blog post says, “In some cases of requests that Facebook predicts to be very relevant based on the recipients usage and relationship to the sender, the recipient may be made aware using a notification jewel.” This means Facebook may be scaling back the use of the notifications channel, which should come as good news to some gamers who say their social notifications about things like wall posts and photo tags have been drowned out by app requests. Receiving masses of invites and requests can turn-off gamers and non-gamers alike, so Facebook will need to be vigilant to prevent a return to the wild west days of rampant application spam, regardless of the channel they appear in. The blog post implies that there is no limit, but the documentation says that if a developer doesn’t specify a ‘
Developers can visit the new Requests Dialog documentation page for instructions on how to implement it. Facebook engineer Derek Brandao explains that “the dialog was designed to work for IFrame apps, and no longer requires server-side FBML”, making it easier to add to apps than the previous version. Judging from preliminary tests and image from the documentation, it appears that the new Requests Dialog is already active in Zynga’s CityVille.
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| Facebook Tests Voice Chat, Could the Facebook Phone Run on VoIP? Posted: 26 Jan 2011 02:07 PM PST Facebook has been spotted testing a new voice chat feature. There are few details at the time, but it appears users experiencing the test see a “Call” button next to options to Chat, Message, and Poke on the profiles of friends. When pressed, users see a “Calling [friend's name]” dialog pop up.
The Call feature could be a build out of Facebook’s partnership with Skype that brought the ability to browse the social network to the the Skype 5.0 for Windows VoIP app. However, no Skype branding appeared in test, so Facebook might be working on voice chat independently. Facebook recently removed a job posting for a Network Engineer – Voice, meaning it has likely hired someone for the position. This employee could be helping develop the feature, or could simply be managing an internal phone system for Facebook offices. Native web voice chat could pull business away from mobile operators, as users wouldn’t need to reach for their phones to call friends. The feature could also position Facebook to offer its own mobile handset that makes VoIP calls. COO Sheryl Sandberg has previously said “we want to make Facebook available everywhere on every device. That's actually complicated in a world of so many cell phones, so many mobile operators." If voice chat can be perfected on the web interface, it could eventually allow a Facebook phone to bypass the tangle of mobile operators. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: Facebook & Meteor Games Posted: 26 Jan 2011 12:59 PM PST The Inside Network Job Board is 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 Facebook 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. 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. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Combats Image of Insecurity with HTTPS and Social Authentication Posted: 26 Jan 2011 12:59 PM PST Facebook officially launched two security features this morning. The new Secure Browsing (https) feature gives user the option of accessing Facebook over an encrypted, albeit slower connection that prevents others on the same network from eavesdropping. Developers can now set up a secure canvas URL to allow HTTPS connection to their apps. Social Authentication protects users from suspicious login attempt to their account by forcing the person trying gain access to identify that user’s friends in photos. The features will help keep users in control of their personal information and should increase trust in Facebook, though early tests of Social Authentication have occasionally locked legitimate owners out of their accounts.
This year, Facebook has been accused of putting users at risk of spam and malware despite implementing many new security features including security questions, one-time use passwords, and remote log-out. It responded to a flurry of criticism about how already public User IDs were being shared with third-party applications by implementing the iFrame Post Proposal that encrypts the IDs. Today’s announcement should help Facebook combat the exaggerated perception of insecurity that the media has propagated. Secure Browsing (https)Over the next few weeks, Facebook will roll out Secure Browsing (https) as an opt-in option users can enable from within Account->Account Settings->Account Security. When enabled, users will see a green bar or lock icon on their browser’s address bar, and all of a user’s communication with the site will be encrypted. Note that Facebook already encrypts logins, but Secure Browsing will keep data like Messages private.
The feature is designed to keep user information safe while they’re browsing over a public network. Facebook recommends “enabling this option if you frequently use Facebook from public Internet access points found at coffee shops, airports, libraries or schools.” It will also protect users from software and browser extensions like Firesheep that let others on the same Wi-Fi network spy or identify another user’s cookies. Developers who wish to serve their canvas iFame applications over a secure connection can specify a Secure Canvas URL in the Facebook Integration tab of the Developer app. If a user with Secure Browsing enabled visits an app without a Secure Canvas URL, they’ll be shown a warning that they’ll be switched from HTTPS to HTTP. Developers should therefore provide this URL as not to scare away users concerned about security.
Social AuthenticationIf Facebook detects a suspicious login attempt, such as one coming from Australia when the user had logged in from the U.S. just hours ago, it will trigger Social Authentication. The person trying to gain access to the user’s account will be shown a set of pictures of one of that user’s friends. They’ll have to identify the friend by choosing between six names, try refreshing to see a different set of photos, or skip the question. Five correct answers are required to regain access to the account, though its unclear how many wrong answers or skipped questions are permitted.
Facebook has been testing this alternative to CAPTCHA since at least July with mixed results. As users aren’t always identifiable from their photos, some legitimate owners were locked out of their accounts because they couldn’t identify childhood or costumed Halloween photos of friends. Some users have many friends who they hardly know, such as people they’ve friended through social games. A few found it impossible to identify these people, and were prevented from accessing Facebook for months. Some of these issues appear to have been addressed in this official version of Social Authentication. The photos appear to hone in on the friend’s face, similar to Facebook’s facial recognition photo tagging feature, meaning users likely won’t be asked to identify photos that don’t show the friend’s face at all. Users can also refresh to a different set of photos if the initial set isn’t adequate. To solve the social gaming friends issue, hopefully Facebook will only require users to identify the close friends who they most frequently interact with. There are ways to thwart Social Authentication. If a user has set their friend list to be visible to the public, or they’ve given photos and friend list access to a third-party application that then sells this information to hackers, the data could be used to pass the test. Improved Security with Fewer False PositivesFacebook explains that, “hackers halfway across the world might know your password, but they don’t know who your friends are.” If this latest set of efforts can both improve security without accidentally blocking legitimate logins and can dispel the perception that Facebook isn’t protecting users, it will be able to refocus attention on its innovations. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 26 Jan 2011 08:39 AM PST
As usual when the DAU numbers are so large, they’re caused by a new influx of users. In Yahoo’s case this could be connected to the site’s recent decision to open its entire third-party network to authentication via Facebook (and Google OpenIDs). But a good number of the big gainers seem to have started picking up new monthly active users simultaneously last Friday, which of course cause simultaneous DAU rises. The app uses a friend quiz that asks users to post to their friend’s walls — which while aggressive, appears to be within the Facebook platform policies. Here’s Badoo’s MAU chart:
Number three on the list is FarmVille, and Zynga follows it up with CityVille and Texas HoldEm Poker. All the recent growth going to Zynga has helped push its MAU to record numbers, although its DAU is still down a bit over 7 percent from its peak last year, as we recently pointed out in a larger platform analysis. |
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