Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook Ups Application Security with Roles, Whitelists, and Notifications
- EHow.com to Delete its User Profiles and Switch Entirely to Facebook Login
- ISA 2011: Growth and Monetization on Facebook — The Credits Panel [Video]
- Facebook Runs Survey to Assess User Perceptions of Credits
- Facebook Career Postings: Payment Operations, Sales, Mobile, Engineering and Data Centers
| Facebook Ups Application Security with Roles, Whitelists, and Notifications Posted: 27 Jan 2011 08:02 PM PST Facebook today introduced new security features and a roles system to help developers prevent unauthorized changes to their applications. Developers can set up IP address whitelists for making requests or setting changes to their apps, receive email notifications of changes, and establish which privileges each of their team members has.
The application security announcement follows yesterday’s revamp of user security. As applications can touch tens of millions of users, preventing their control from falling into the wrong hands is essential to making users feel comfortable trying new apps as well as attracting developers to the Platform. Application RolesDevelopers can now access a Manage Users section in the About tab of the Developer application. It can help them minimize the impact of having a team member’s account hacked. The panel allows them to assign friends with one of the four following roles: Administrator: Complete access to all settings and insights, including the abilities to reset the application secret key, delete the application, and choose the roles of others. Only the most trusted team members who need total control should be set as administrators. Anyone with application access from before the implementation of the roles system will start as an Administrator by default. Developer: Access to all technical settings and insights, except they can not reset the app’s secret key, delete the app, or modify roles. The typical development team member should be given this role. Tester: Ability to test the app in sandbox mode. They have no access to settings or insights. Users assisting with play testing and bug detection should be appointed to this role. Insights User: Ability to view performance metrics on the application’s Insights dashboard, but no sandbox or settings access. Third-party marketing partners, consultants, and PR should be assigned as Insights Users. Whitelists and Email NotificationsIn the Advanced tab of the Developer application, those with the Administrator or Developer roles can use a new Security panel. If they choose to add IP addresses to the Server Whitelist or Update Settings IP Whitelist, requests and settings changes will only be able to be made from these addresses.
If developers always modify or test their app from an office or specific set of computers, these whitelists can protect their apps from outside meddling. However, in the case of a server crash, weekend emergency or similar urgent need to access the app’s settings, the whitelists can prevent the legitimate owners from making changes from the nearest computer. The Update Notification Email field allows developers to specify an address that will be pinged whenever changes to the app are made. This can keep development teams aware of each other’s work, or let independent developers know if someone else has gained unauthorized access. |
| EHow.com to Delete its User Profiles and Switch Entirely to Facebook Login Posted: 27 Jan 2011 12:43 PM PST Project instructions site eHow.com has announced that Facebook Login will become its exclusive login and registration method starting in February. Those without a Facebook account won’t be able to access the site, and all its existing proprietary user profiles, along with their private messages, uploaded content, and subscriptions will be deleted. While the authenticated identity of Facebook profiles may improve submission quality, the switch is likely to anger the eleven year-old site’s core users. Exclusive use of Facebook Login is better for new sites, those without significant existing user content, or those with a plan to more gracefully migrate their service.
eHow.com has had a strong year, increasing its monthly unique visitors from 25 million to nearly 40 million by some reports . This makes such an abrupt and major change a curious choice. eHow.com already offers Facebook as a login option, and the site’s success to date shows it doesn’t depend on the social graph. Suddenly, users have been given only six days to archive any content they wish to keep. eHow.com appears to have chosen not to announce the change on their blog or via any home page signage, instead opting to send an email today. Users not paying close attention to their email could come back next month to find that important conversations, how-to videos they’ve posted, and all their existing activity on the site has disappeared. Rather than rebuild their on-site network from the subset of people they’re Facebook friends with, I believe many will leave the site for good or drastically reduce their engagement. eHow.com’s users appear to agree, as the response to the entry on how to log in via Facebook has been overwhelmingly negative.
Other websites should learn a lesson from eHow.com’s seemingly unwise decision. Though Facebook Login offers many advantages, users currently aren’t always comfortable bringing their real identity outside of the canvas, and are rarely keen on having their content deleted. |
| ISA 2011: Growth and Monetization on Facebook — The Credits Panel [Video] Posted: 27 Jan 2011 12:00 PM PST Facebook has publicly announced what many developers already knew to be the case: Credits, the company’s virtual currency for canvas applications, will be the only payment method that Facebook allows canvas applications to use for virtual goods. We explored this topic on Tuesday at our Inside Social Apps conference, on a panel featuring Facebook commerce product marketing head Deb Liu and a number of successful developers. The Credits topic comes up at 14:15, with Liu going into detail at 18:40. The promise of the virtual currency continues to be that Facebook can use its size, brand-name and features to make the currency bring in more money for developers than they’ve been making with their own payments implementations, even though Facebook takes a 30% cut of all virtual currency transactions. The first part of the panel, for those interested, covers trends on user growth and retention on Facebook. ISA 2011: Monetization & Customer Acquisition on the Facebook Platform in 2011 from Inside Network on Vimeo. To download an mp3 version of this talk, please email us at info (at) insidesocialapps (dot) com. |
| Facebook Runs Survey to Assess User Perceptions of Credits Posted: 27 Jan 2011 10:22 AM PST This week, Facebook conducted a user survey to determine usage and perception of its virtual currency Facebook Credits. Hosted on SurveyMonkey and linked to by in-house ads on the Facebook home page, the survey asks questions like “Why have you used/not used Facebook Credits?” The data will help Facebook focus its marketing and informational efforts, or determine if it could rebrand Credits as a payment option for physical goods as well. According to Inside Facebook’s own Credits survey in October (full results in our Inside Facebook Gold premium service) roughly one third of users recognized Facebook as a payment option. Yet, only about 6% chose Facebook as their preferred method for buying game-specific currency compared to almost 40% who chose credit cards. Facebook’s plan to get all developers on the Platform exclusively using Facebook Credits by July will only help the company if it can persuade more users that is the easiest and safest way to pay.
At the Digital Life Design conference in Munich Monday, Facebook’s VP of Partnerships and Platform Marketing Dan Rose responded to a question of whether users could eventually buy a consumer packaged good with Credits by saying, “we can create a lot of value by expanding it across different platforms.” The 30% tax Facebook imposes on developers who accept Credits is tenable for the sale of digital goods that have no per unit cost to the developer, but might be too high to allow for the regular sale of most physical goods and services. However, if used as a promotional loss leader to hook users on a brand, Facebook Credits could be viable payment method outside of the digital realm.
The five question survey was hosted on SurveyMonkey (whose CEO Dave Goldberg is coicidentally married to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg) If many users answer question four — “Which of the following do Facebook Credits allow you to do?” with “D. Buy goods and services on the Internet”, Facebook will either have to work to sway this perception or allow Credits to be used outside the Facebook canvas and support the belief. According to Guy Rom, a Facebook engineering manager who works on Credits, Facebook’s currency in Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant. This means that Facebook has passed an audit to see if it adequately protects user data, and could enter the traditional payments industry alongside credit card companies. The Credits team has been rapidly developing new ways to spend the virtual currency, but Facebook may learn that it needs to focus on educating users of the basics of Credits first. The survey included the following questions:
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| Facebook Career Postings: Payment Operations, Sales, Mobile, Engineering and Data Centers Posted: 27 Jan 2011 08:27 AM PST Facebook is building out its finance operations as well as hiring for a mobile platform marketing leader and looking for a variety of new ad positions, according to changes we track on the company’s Facebook Careers Page.
Facebook also added an entire category of listings to its Sales positions; most of them were Associate of Ad Operations positions in Dublin, although several were located in Austin, New York, London and Los Angeles. Several human resources and recruiting positions were added to the Austin, Texas and Dublin, Ireland offices The Global Product Marketing Manager – Facebook Mobile Platform is set to help lead the expansion of Facebook's "growing portfolio of mobile platform products, including Android and iOS SDKs and its web APIs." The candidate will work with everyone from Product Management and Engineering to Partner Management and Developer Relations in the company's Palo Alto offices. About a decade of web/mobile technology experience is required of this candidate, as well as expertise in platform product marketing. Engineering positions also appeared on the Page this week, Software Engineer of Tools and Messaging Engineer, in addition to data center positions. Facebook is seeking a Data Center Technician and Hardware Test Engineer for its Palo Alto, Calif. offices and a Data Center Technician for its Prineville, Oregon data center. Finally, Facebook advertised for a Data Center Operations Manager based in Forest City, North Carolina. This person will essentially establish the company's data center by installing, maintaining and operating server hardware and develop company talent at the center to ensure the smooth operation of the facility in the future. A bunch of positions were filled in human resources and recruiting this week, or at least the job posts disappeared from the Facebook Careers Page. Engineering jobs ranging from Electrical Engineer, Partner Engineer, Data Scientist, Software Engineer, User Interface Engineer and Infrastructure Engineering Manager all disappeared from the Page. Finally, platform operations positions were filled in the India and Ireland offices, of particular interest was the Global Product Marketing Manager – Canvas & Open Graph position, which was no longer listed this week. For more Facebook-related jobs, check out the Inside Network Job Board. |
In one of the more interesting changes, it announced the creation of a new team, | You are subscribed to email updates from Inside Facebook To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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