Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook Pushes HTML5 Among Game Developers — A Key Part of Mobile Strategy
- Highlights This Week From the Inside Network Job Board: 6waves, Disney, Digital Chocolate & More
- Facebook Ads Can Now Specify Any Page Landing Tab as a Destination
- Join Us at an Inside Network Happy Hour Near You
- Visa Enters Virtual Good Payment Industry with Acquisition of Playspan
- Gates Foundation Funds Inigral’s Schools Facebook App for Keeping Students Enrolled
- Connect Integrations, Zynga, Turkey and Phrases in This Week’s List of Top Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
| Facebook Pushes HTML5 Among Game Developers — A Key Part of Mobile Strategy Posted: 09 Feb 2011 05:04 PM PST
Facebook’s Cory Ondrejka, who recently joined the company last fall as part of the Walletin acquisition, appears to be stepping up as the platform’s advocate of HTML5 — a central piece of the company’s mobile strategy going forward. Facebook wants developers to choose HTML5 over building native iOS or Android apps, so the company can sidestep relatively closed intermediaries like Apple when it wants to roll out new platform functionality or bring products like Credits to mobile games. Ondrejka is giving a talk tonight about game performance with HTML5. During a recent hackathon, he and others developed JSGameBench — a way of exploring high-performance gaming using HTML5. The program draws moving, animated sprites as fast as possible at 30 frames per second against a background with both axis-aligned and rotated sprites. They used JSGameBench to test browser performance at drawing the sprites — Microsoft’s Internet Explore 9 came out on top followed by Google’s Chrome 10, with more than 1,000 sprites per frame. Ondrejka said that 50 sprites per frame is generally the lowest amount needed for good game performance. Right now, Facebook has weak penetration among top mobile developers with only half of the best-selling iOS apps of all-time having some sort of connection to the platform. Even if an app has a Facebook integration, only a minority of users elect to use it over logging in a different way. Top iOS developer Pocket Gems, for example, said three weeks ago that it has had 18 million downloads so far and is making well over $1 million a month. Yet, we only pick up a little over 217,000 monthly active users logged into the company’s top game Tap Zoo through Facebook on AppData. On Instagram, we pick up 333,826 monthly active Facebook users, even though the company says MAUs are at least twice as high. On top of that, Apple is stepping up enforcement around in-app payments, a move that would complicate any plans to bring Credits to mobile devices. Getting its core community of developers to choose HTML5 over native apps would give Facebook better access to downstream revenues and a cut of virtual goods transactions on phones. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Highlights This Week From the Inside Network Job Board: 6waves, Disney, Digital Chocolate & More Posted: 09 Feb 2011 03:23 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 6waves, Disney, Digital Chocolate, Nextive, Bulbstorm, NaturalMotion, and Ubisoft.
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 Ads Can Now Specify Any Page Landing Tab as a Destination Posted: 09 Feb 2011 02:09 PM PST Facebook has added the ability to point ads created through its self-serve tool to a specific landing tab of a Page. Previously, advertisers could only set a Page’s default landing tab as a destination. The change will allow advertisers to run multiple ad campaigns for different tabs simultaneously. By giving advertisers more options of where to send traffic, they’ll be able to produce better results and will spend more on Facebook. It will also increase the importance of tab applications, benefiting the growing Page management industry.
Similarly, funding and acquisitions in the Page management space have accelerated, as brands seek to engage and monetize their fans with tab applications. The ability to send users to different tabs compare will increase the demand for Page management companies that provide tab apps. When advertisers visit the self-serve tool and select a Page they admin as the ad’s destination, they’ll see a Landing URL drop-down menu appear. They can select from any tab installed on their Page, including Facebook’s in-house apps like Photos or Discussion Board, or third-party apps for sweepstakes, email sign-ups, games, and media content.
Pages can now set a default landing tab for everyone that finds their Page, such as a general welcome tab that encourages users to click the Like button, but then send users to a more specific landing tab based on an ad’s content. The feature could also result in admins setting up different, especially relevant landing tabs for each demographic they’re trying to reach, and point ads targeted at those demographics to the appropriate tab. A wealth of new strategies have been unlocked by the simple addition of Page landing tabs as an ad destination option. This shows that Facebook still has much more to offer advertisers than is currently available. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Join Us at an Inside Network Happy Hour Near You Posted: 09 Feb 2011 12:30 PM PST
Inside Network is excited to announce a spring happy hour series to bring together the community of developers, investors, and entrepreneurs who read our news and research. Drinks are on us during this series of relaxed, early-evening happy hour mixers. We’ll be there to meet readers, and help you get to know each other, and everyone is welcome. Join us at the following upcoming events in your city: Washington DC Barcelona – Mobile World Congress New York City More Events — Details Coming Soon Berlin – late February | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Visa Enters Virtual Good Payment Industry with Acquisition of Playspan Posted: 09 Feb 2011 12:29 PM PST
Founded in 2006, Playspan helps developers by allowing users make in-game payments and buy Credits through Facebook’s integration of its UltimatePay product that accepts 85 local payment methods from 180 countries. Developers can integrate the pop-up UltimatePay lightbox that shows users relevant payment methods based on their location and more.
Playspan sells pre-paid Ultimate Game Cards in retail locations so users can purchase virtual currency and goods without a credit card. The company also powers custom virtual goods storefronts, lets publishers create their own virtual currency or subscription products, and provides analytics. Its services work across web and mobile interfaces and all game types, and its publisher partners include Disney/Playdom, EA/Playfish, IMVU, and Ubisoft. To date, Playspan has raised $46 million over several rounds from Easton Capital Group, Menlo Ventures, Vodafone Ventures and others. Thanks to the acquisition, early investors will see a sizable return, though late round investors may only double their money. Playspan will join electronic payment security company CyberSource that Visa recently acquired in the payment technology giant’s growing digital and mobile ecommerce division.Visa could lends its reputable brand name to Playspan’s products, increasing user trust. Our survey on user preferences for social game payments showed that Visa was a highly preferred payment method, and was significantly more preferred and recognizable than Playspan’s Ultimate Game Cards.
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| Gates Foundation Funds Inigral’s Schools Facebook App for Keeping Students Enrolled Posted: 09 Feb 2011 10:59 AM PST
The total $4 million will go towards Inigral’s Schools Facebook app, which keeps college students from dropping out by connecting them with like-minded classmates.
We previously profiled the Schools app, which colleges can license and distribute to newly admitted students. The app helps the students meet friends with similar interests, find campus groups and organizations to join, and connect with alumni. Users can Like dorms, majors, and departments, each of which has a unique page within the app. It can serve to replace the Yahoo! groups or even old Facebook groups that colleges or students would set up to meet future classmates before orientation. Inigral has been developing on the Facebook Platform since 2007, and is a Preferred Developer Consultant. Eleven higher education institutions, including Arizona State University, Hofstra, and the Academy of Art University have licensed Schools through a tiered pricing model from $10,000 to $150,000 a year depending on school size, profit or non-profit status, and need. While other apps have tried and failed to help students in a similar way, Schools is the only one devoted to Facebook and that has gained traction with both schools and students. Recently, 1,600 ASU admits signed up and formed 18,000 new friendships before the first day of classes.
The Gates Foundation believes in the app’s mission and execution. Senior program officer for Education, Postsecondary Success Greg Ratliff said "leveraging social media…is a promising approach toward improving college completion rates in the United States." Facebook benefits from Inigral’s success as well, since the app fuels the site’s growth by fostering new friendships — something Facebook itself pushes through its People You May Know and Find Friends features. Inigral’s CEO Michael Staton tells us the money will go towards building out the product for a major update in March, including features that help students find peers who’ve been through similar life experiences like a teen pregnancy. It will also go towards soliciting universities with at risk student populations that the Gates Foundation is looking to assist with Pell Grants. Inigral will also participate in a longitudinal study by the Gates Foundation that looks to identify if there is a causal relationship between the use of social networks like Facebook and completing a post-secondary degree. Staton explains that “there’s a lot of effort going into the academic support side, but not a parallel level of effort going into making sure students have a support network of friends to help them overcome obstacles.” This funding will help right the imbalance. Like Causes, Inigral’s Schools demonstrates how the Facebook Platform can be used for social good. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 09 Feb 2011 07:48 AM PST
It's important to note that Facebook said Tuesday there's a system bug affecting Connect apps, which means that the rapid growth we're seeing in some of these Connect apps may be due to the bug and not to actual growth. We’ll be covering that issue as we know more. Top Gainers This Week
Specifically, these Connect apps include: Yahoo, MySpace, Photobucket, Wikia, The Huffington Post, Hulu, Bleacher Report, MetroFlog, Kongregate Games and MyVideo. Some of these saw percentage gains of DAUs in the thousands of percent and in raw numbers they gained anywhere from 3.8 million to 188,900 DAUs. There were a pair of Turkish games on the list, too. Second on the list was Sanal Video, which grew more than 1,000% with 1.6 million users; the app shows the user a list of top videos to view and then may share on Facebook. Then there was Sanal Okey, a card-like game from Arcade Monkey, which grew by 277,500 users, or 298% percent.
Two more game apps were on the list this week. That includes AddictingGames at number 10, which grew more than 1,300% adding almost 356,000 DAUs by offering a buffet of games to users and Frenziac at number 20 by TubeYou. Frenziac is an easy game to play where the mouse collects "green blobs," and grew most of its 184,200 DAUs to number 20. Two Phrases applications — one in English and one in Spanish — were on the list this week. Phrases by Takeoff Monkey grew by about 260,000 users, but for some reason is no longer available to U.S. users, meaning most of the growth came from elsewhere, specifically Europe, Mexico and the Philippines. A similar Spanish app, Frases Diarias, saw a growth of 217,300 DAUs, 35% growth, by offering users phrases by people like Gandhi and Justin Bieber, in both English and Spanish. Finally, Groupon and LivingSocial, as well as Windows Live Messenger saw growth on our list this week. And Zynga's CityVille was there, too, adding a Groupon tie-in of free in-game currency, City Cash, with the purchase of a Groupon flower deal. The app saw a 3% growth of about 507,000 DAUs. |
The addition follows Facebook bringing the new 
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Global payments technology company Visa has 
Visa seems determined not to be left behind as more purchases move from brick and mortar retail stores to digital storefronts, games, and online media. Playspan’s technology and industry experience will help Visa stay relevant, and Visa will provide the monetization service more legitimacy.
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