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Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

A Slower December for Facebook, Third Party Measurement Services Show

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 03:41 PM PST

While Facebook appears to have grown by more than 36 million new users around the world in January, according to the data we track in our Inside Facebook Gold premium service, that was not nearly the case in December. The company gained significantly fewer users in the last month of last year versus earlier in the year, although there’s the usual considerable variation depending on which analytics service you look at.

Other factors such as students being away from school on holiday also may have influenced the numbers. While the site is maintaining the growth trend of the last few months, it isn’t matching the enormous gains it saw in early summer.

Here’s what we see. Note that most third-party analytics companies take around a month to report; we’ll be covering January’s numbers from them by early March.

You can see the November third-party data here.

Compete

Beating the peak it showed of 133.5 million monthly US unique visitors in October, Facebook was up to 134.1 million in December  – the most Compete has shown for the social network to date. This represents a rebound from a slight drop to 132.7 millionin November. Meanwhile, among its closest rivals, MySpace fell further from 51.9 million to 47.1 million and Twitter stayed about flat at around 26.4 million uniques.

ComScore

Along the same lines — albeit with a baseline difference of around 20 million monthly uniques — comScore showed Facebook growing from 151.7 million users in November to 153.9 million in December in the US. Worldwide, Facebook went from 647.5 million to 662.4 million monthly uniques. Both numbers tend to skew higher than any other services, although the trend comScore is showing matches data from other services.

Similarly, MySpace fell from 54.4 million to 50.1 million in the US and from 81.5 million to 79.5 million worldwide. Twitter fell slightly from 24.0 to 23.6 million monthly uniques in the US, but grew by around 2 million worldwide. Among Facebook’s competitors (at least in the English language), Twitter’s worldwide growth is the most notable.

Google Ad Planner

While the metrics don’t match up perfectly, Google property DoubleClick pulls from Google Analytics and other services to present a generally good look at what’s happening for other web sites around the world. Facebook, in this case, rose from 590 million uniques in November to around 600 million in December. Meanwhile, daily unique visitors (as based on browser cookies) appeared to stay roughly flat at slightly below 300 million. Facebook has said that around half its users log in daily and this data seems to still be backing that up.

Quantcast

Similar to Compete, Quantcast shows Facebook with nearly 134 million monthly unique visitors in the US in December. Note its weekly graphs indicate a solid rise to 135 million right before Christmas, then a drop, then a slight increase at the turn of the year.

MySpace continued its decline to 28.6 million and Twitter grew to 81.6 million; neither of those numbers are anywhere near what others show, but the directions at least seem to match.

Conclusion

We tracked Facebook gaining around 9 million US users in December to reach 145.7 million monthly actives, so above Compete and Quantcast but below comScore, based on Facebook’s advertising tool. Our worldwide tracked data showed 585.5 million — also below the other available world numbers.

Following a year where Facebook would register across-the-board gains in the millions, December seemed slow. But as we mentioned before, preliminary January data seems to be showing a lot more growth. In the US, it added more than 3 million to reach 148.9 million, for example, according to the ad tool.

Inside Facebook Gold includes our country and region breakdowns of growth, as well as ad rates, demographics, and languages, if you want to get more detail on the monthly trends. Meanwhile, stay tuned for the March version of this article to see what short-term trends go long.

Facebook’s Traffic, Advertising, and Company Health by the Numbers – at Inside Facebook Gold, February 2011 Edition

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 11:30 AM PST

Surprising new traffic trends emerge this month. Facebook continues to grow in markets where (now waning) competitors have historically dominated, including India and Brazil. Meanwhile, many early markets outside the US that first grew big are now plateauing or even losing users.

The biggest standout, however, was the site’s growth beyond the Great Firewall in the massive, and elusive, China market. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has several times expressed the company’s ambitions in East Asia; this month it looks like Facebook has made progress in the region.

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 February 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 February 2011 intelligence suite at Inside Facebook Gold.

Facebook Announces Move of Its Corporate Headquarters to Menlo Park

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 10:17 AM PST

Today at the Menlo Park City Hall, Facebook’s Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman announced that the company will move its corporate headquarters to the Silicon Valley suburb. He explained that Facebook was attracted to the Sun Microsystems campus, as well as support from the city government. Facebook will move all operations to the new campus over the next 12 months.

The campus is 57 acres, can seat 3,600 employees, and has 3,700 parking spaces. The purchase was a sale-leaseback with a 15 year long-term lease, with an option to purchase the campus after five years. There were no tax breaks included in the deal with Menlo Park.

Facebook also purchased the adjacent property owned by an affiliate of Ford Motors. The two properties are connected by an underground commuter tunnel, but Facebook has no plans to develop that property at this time. Facebook is sponsoring three fellows from the Environmental Defense Fund to help make the campus as friendly to the environment as possible.

Rich Klein, Mayor of Menlo Park, said that he’s excited to see if Facebook’s move will inspire other companies to come to the city. He also expects it to boost the local economy as Facebook employees travel offsite for food and other amenities. Public debate will begin in March, possibly in a town hall format, to discuss how the move will impact taxes, spending, traffic, schools, and local business.

Ebersman said that having all the local employees working in the same space promotes sharing and innovation, and that this was no longer possible in its separated Palo Alto offices. When asked how employees are reacting to the announcement, he told us that they are “excited to get back together in one place” after being split between offices.

Employees might not be as excited about the location, though. The area is less developed than Palo Alto’s El Camino Real and California Avenue districts, so employees will have to travel greater distances to get off-site food. This could lead to an increased reliance on the Facebook cafeteria, which in turn could lead employees to spend more time at their desks.

One of the draws of moving to Menlo Park was supposedly to allow more employees to commute without using cars. However, the closest train stop is an 11 minute ride away in one of Facebook’s shuttle buses or a 16 minute bike ride — roughly twice the distance from a train as the Palo Alto offices. For those visiting the campus from San Francisco via public transportation, the trip will take 1.5 hours across multiple buses and underground trains. The could therefore push more people to drive to Facebook, especially considering its ample parking.

Facebook has been rapidly expanding its facilities across the country and internationally, as well as in Silicon Valley. In December it leased two floors with up to 150,000 square feet at 335 Madison Avenue in New York City. That space could accommodate up to 600 people. It has begun construction on a data center in Forest City, North Carolina, and another in Prineville, Oregon that will use advanced energy saving technologies to reduce Facebook’s footprint. Facebook also announced a 500-person office in Hyderabad, India.

Ebersman stated that Facebook’s employee base is growing at 50% a year, and it has 2,000 employees, 1,400 of which currently work in Palo Alto. This means if current growth continues, and the percentage of employees who work in the Bay holds steady, Facebook may need to begin developing the Ford Motors property in as little as three years.

Sponsored Stories Now Available in the Facebook Self-Serve Ad Tool

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 08:10 AM PST

Facebook’s self-serve performance ad tool now allows Page, Place and application admins to create Sponsored Stories ads. The recently launched ad unit allows admins to pay for additional distribution of Page stories as well as user updates that mention them in Facebook’s ad space. Until now, these ads could only be bought through a Facebook managed brand advertising representative.

Sponsored Stories complement other types of advertising and marketing on Facebook, allowing businesses and brands to approach users in multiple ways at once. Sponsored Stories will likely become a component of many ad campaigns on Facebook.

If admins select a Page, Place or application as an ad’s destination in the ad creator, a Sponsored Stories option is revealed. If a Page is the destination, admins can choose to create a Like Story, which “promotes News Feed stories about the viewer’s friends liking your Page”. This type of ad is most effective when it can tell users that multiple friends have Liked your Page, and is therefore best paired with standard Facebook ads, promotions, or tab applications that simultaneously drive Likes, seeding the Sponsored Story.

The other option for Page admins is to create a Page Post Story, which “promotes News Feed stories about your Facebook Page updates.” This can help Pages drive extra clicks to an outbound link, such as to vote in a poll, sign a petition, visit a ecommerce store or get more people to follow another call to action. If the post includes a photo or video, users can click through to see the photo, or watch the video inline.

Application admins have the option to create an App Story, which “Promotes News Feed stories about the viewer’s friends using your App.” Since only users who have the advertised app installed, App Stories are good for re-engaging existing users, but not acquiring new user. Admins of claimed Places should also be able to create check-in stories to promote Places check-ins. This type of Sponsored Story could be used to call attention to a grand opening or sale.

Sponsored Stories ad prices seem to be the same as their traditional counterparts when targeted to the same audience. Metrics about Sponsored Stories appear to be lumped into the social context field in Page Insights. If the advertising community finds that Sponsored Stories perform well, they may shift spend away from traditional Facebook ads to this more complicated, but more persuasive ad unit.

[Thanks to Brittany Darwell for this and all her other valuable tips]

onsdag den 9. februar 2011 at 07.37