Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Flickr Expands Facebook Sharing Capabilities, Settles Into Photo Syndication
- Facebook Now Allows Personal Profiles To Be Converted Into Business Pages
- Google +1 Challenges the Cross-Web Presence of Facebook’s Like Button
- Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: EA, Playfish, Betfair, & More
- Salesforce Buys Social Media Monitor Radian6 to Bring Brand Mentions Into CRM
- Badgeville Helps 50 More Websites Gain Facebook Likes and Engagement
- Horoscopes, Mobile, Quizzes, Photo and More on This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Apps by DAU
| Flickr Expands Facebook Sharing Capabilities, Settles Into Photo Syndication Posted: 30 Mar 2011 06:44 PM PDT Flickr has revamped its social media sharing features, increase the prominence of share buttons and allowing more content types to be distributed. The changes come as a sign that Flickr has accepted its role as the number two photo site behind Facebook, and is ready to focus on helping users syndicate their photos to other destinations.
Once the world’s largest photo sharing site, Flickr was usurped by Facebook and its viral friend tagging. The site became more of a tool for professional and semi-professional photographers since it allowed high resolution uploads, but Facebook added its own high-res option in September 2010. In January 2011, Flickr’s parent site Yahoo! began allowing new users to register and login using their Facebook credentials, and Flickr soon followed suit. While certainly a useful option, it was also signal that Yahoo and Flickr had conceded to Facebook and needed to re-concentrate on their strengths. The enhanced Facebook sharing options point to photo syndication as that strength. Facebook doesn’t offer any syndication options but some of its users operate blogs and other social media presences that users want their photos on too. Flickr can serve this syndication need, letting users upload and distribute rather than trying to be a photo-viewing destination. The tiny gray “Share” button in the top corner of photo pages have been replaced by a much larger, more colorful sharing panel that displays the Facebook icon. With one click, users can launch the Facebook share composer and publish to the news feeds of friends.
The social media sharing panel, which also supports email, Twitter, and Tumblr, now also appears on photostreams, sets and groups, making it easy to share a collection of photos. Users who aren’t signed in can now access the sharing panel, and private photos are allowed to be shared. With improving sharing, Flickr may actually be able to draw new signups from Facebook, who can easily join thanks to it accepting OpenID. Similar to MySpace before it, Flickr has moved to differentiate itself from Facebook rather than compete directly. While not the most glamorous strategy, it is one that will keep Flickr relevant into the future. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Now Allows Personal Profiles To Be Converted Into Business Pages Posted: 30 Mar 2011 02:55 PM PDT For the first time, Facebook now allows personal user profiles to be converted into official business Pages, turning all their friends into fans. The “Profile To Business Page Migration” tool will help people who either created a personal profile for a business before Pages existed, or accidentally started accumulating fans as friends instead of Likes.
The migration tool should come as exciting news to business owners struggling with the decision of whether to continue a profile with its limited capabilities, or start a Page from scratch with zero fans. Facebook has not formally announced the tool, but it appears to be available worldwide. Facebook has added a new Help Center article on converting profiles to Pages with details about the migration process. Any user with a verified account can use the migration tool. Their profile photo will be transferred, and all their friends will be converted into users who Like their Page. All other profile content, including additional photos and wall posts will disappear and all Like connections to other Pages will be severed. Therefore, anyone using the migration tool should consider using Facebook’s Download Your Information tool first to back up their content. It appears that users with less than 100 friends can rename their new Page during the migration process giving them a chance at rebranding, but those with more than 100 friends must use their profile name. Converted Pages don’t appear in the interests section of users who were previously friends with the profile and were migrated, limiting the potential for the tool to be used for bait-and-switch. Also, users are not notified if one of their friendships has been converted to a Like.
Migration will be especially useful for users who initially planned to use their profile to promote a small business, such as an event promotion company or consultancy, but eventually hit Facebook’s 5000 friend limit. It will also allow those promoting a business with a personal profile to begin using third-party Page applications that allow them to set up a Like-gated landing page, run contests, collect email addresses, and recreate functionality from websites. The tool also allows Facebook to gracefully shift users towards terms of service compliance, as representing a business or other non-human entity with a profile instead of a Page is prohibited. There is no way to convert a Page to a user profile, so users should be sure they want to migrate before doing so. They won’t be able to write on the walls of friends or see their updates in the news feed once they become a Page. Facebook could do more to warn users of this during the migration process, but overall, the option is a huge win for would-be Page admins. [Thanks to Amit Lavi for the tip] Strategies for Page admins and a walk-through of all the changes from the February 2011 Page redesign can be found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network's guide to marketing and advertising on Facebook. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Google +1 Challenges the Cross-Web Presence of Facebook’s Like Button Posted: 30 Mar 2011 02:01 PM PDT Google today launched a new feature called “+1″ that allows Google Profile users to endorse search results, ads, and soon web pages. +1 could be the social layer Google has said it was developing for its product line, or at least part of it. Currently, +1 will help Google contest Bing’s Facebook-powered social search, and bring social context into its AdWords ads product, which has encountered new competition from Facebook’s interest, demographic, and friend connection-targeted performance ads.
In a few months, Google plans to allow websites to add +1 buttons, which will improve a site’s search ranking when clicked. This incentive could lead to rapid integration across the web, challenging Facebook’s domination of the embeddable plugin space that has given the social network’s name and logo real estate on many of the internet’s most popular destinations. Google users could previously see recommendations on search results sourced from the Buzz or Twitter updates of those they followed. Now a test group of users and any who manually enable the new endorsement feature can click +1 buttons on search results and AdWords ads to append their name and face to the results or ads seen by their Google, Gmail, Gtalk, Buzz and Reader contacts. Its unclear if the +1 will appear to a user’s friends in any of these channels as viral distribution.
+1′s Advantage Over the Like Button+1 offers a lighter weight method of expressing affinity for something than the Like button, which subscribes users to updates from the button’s owner. This means Google users might be more generous with their +1s, endorsing search results or ads they think their friends would find interesting, even if they don’t want to click or open a communication channel with the entity.
Google could begin factoring a user’s previous +1s into the relevancy algorithm for serving AdWords, or even its other ad products. We’ve speculated that Facebook might introduce an Open Graph ad plugin that could allow advertisers to use the same targeting parameters from Facebook across the web. +1-powered ads could reduce the margin by which an Open Graph ad plugin could improve on existing advertising solutions. +1 to Incentive Integration with SEOWhile social media sharing buttons for Twitter, Digg, and even Google Buzz are shown on blogs and news sites, Facebook’s Like button and other social plugins have been integrated into more than 2.5 million websites, including ecommerce, brand, and web service sites. Facebook released an analytics tool for these integrations earlier this month, convincing more holdouts. This presence has helped Facebook continue to grow its user base, as site visitors who want the benefits of these plugins must sign up for accounts. The forthcoming +1 for websites, would raise a site’s PageRank with every click, creating a very strong SEO incentive for integration. Facebook might no longer be the only web service with a strong cross-web presence. While Facebook has developed a significant lead in plugin integrations and social context ads, +1 could level the playing field, and serve as a basis for more social networking features from Google. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: EA, Playfish, Betfair, & More Posted: 30 Mar 2011 12:00 PM PDT 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 EA, Playfish, Betfair, Digital Chocolate, Pocket Gems, and TinyCo.
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. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Salesforce Buys Social Media Monitor Radian6 to Bring Brand Mentions Into CRM Posted: 30 Mar 2011 11:37 AM PDT
Radian6 will continue to operate independently, and customers won’t experience any stoppage of service. The acquisition for $326 million in cash and stock will help Salesforce upsell Radian6 clients, who include Microsoft, Comcast, and Pepsi, to packages where brand mentions can be efficiently linked to customer profiles. Radian6 will be able to more rapidly iterate on its products thanks to Salesforce’s immense resources.
Brands popular amongst more Facebook-savvy users who’ve engaged the site’s privacy controls may therefore be missing a lot of their mentions. However, when the public Facebook data is combined with monitoring of Twitter, YouTube, blogs and more , it can produce a rough aggregate impression of a brand. Radian6′s Engagement Console, released last year, allows clients to tag specific mentions and assign employees to respond. As more of the world adopted social media, Salesforce needed access to Radian6′s data to help its clients identify potential sales targets or brewing customer service problems. In the summer of 2009, the two companies began an integration allowing social data to be transferred from to the other. Salesforce already has its own Facebook monitoring tool within its Service Cloud product, as well as the Faceconnector app for pulling personal Facebook info into CRM. Still, it seems the integration with Radian6 was so popular and core to Salesforce’s business that it decided to acquire the company.
Social media monitoring and CRM is an important of successful Facebook brand marketing, as Pages need to know what kind of content will resonate with their fans in Page updates and ads. Now brands looking for monitoring services to improve their marketing will be one step away from Salesforce’s cloud app hosting, sales, service, and communication products. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Badgeville Helps 50 More Websites Gain Facebook Likes and Engagement Posted: 30 Mar 2011 08:45 AM PDT
The new clients, including Deloitte Digital, Active.com, and Menuism, signal that more brands, news sites, and web services are turning to social rewards to increase engagement and virality.
While Facebook’s social plugins including the Like button, Comments Box, and Recommendations create distribution channels and let users see what their friends are doing, but they don’t allow sites to structure behavior to further their own goals. As expansive, content-rich web 2.0 sites proliferate, structure and guidance can be crucial to creating a sticky first-time user experience instead of one that overwhelms or confuses people. Launched in September 2010, the 20-employee Badgeville has raised $2.75 million from angel investors to develop a rewards and tracking system that accomplishes this goal. It has since turned its service into a platform and opened an API. The new clients join The Next Web, Comcast SportsNet, and several others. These websites embed Badgeville’s widget and buttons, choose a set of user actions to incentivize, and specify rewards for completing these actions. Badgeville can tap into a site’s proprietary registration system, piggyback off of Facebook Connect, or both. Sites can reward users for clicking multiple Pages and discovering “reward spots”, posting comments, clicking Like buttons on content or for a Facebook Page, posting to Twitter, buying products, watching videos, answering surveys, or registering with their email address. Rewards include points for leveling up, trophies, badges, virtual currency, discounts, and premium content.
Site admins skin their Badgeville widget to blend in with their site. Those looking to drive engagement with their Facebook social plugins can use a special Facebook-themed skin. The widget shows users a leaderboard of top fans, recent Badgeville activity from the site, the actions and scores of their friends, and their own badges and activity. Users can easily share their badges and activity to Facebook and Twitter. Admins of Badgeville-integrated sites can track the behavior of logged in users through the service’s engagement analytics tool. This provides insights into how these incentivized users behave differently their general visitor base, and
Still, with immense competition in many areas of web publishing, and brands experimenting with whatever might bring them more Facebook fans, turning even a fraction of visitors into evangelists can make Badgeville worth testing. User generated content sites who depend on this short tail of high-loyalty visitors have even more reason to try a social rewards system such as Badgeville. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Horoscopes, Mobile, Quizzes, Photo and More on This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Apps by DAU Posted: 30 Mar 2011 08:23 AM PDT
Top Gainers This Week
Daily Horoscope saw 566,700 DAU this week, growing mostly in Turkey. The app used the new Questions poll this week in its first Wall post and generally allows users to see their horoscope, as well as invite friends who share your sign to the app, and posts to your Wall daily. Horoscopes, with 108,900 DAU, supplies a horoscope to the users and asks to deliver the horoscope daily to your profile.
Mobile and iPad apps were on the list, too. Samsung Mobile's app saw 193,900 DAU this week. The Flipboard app, an iPad app used to read news and social media in a magazine layout, saw 171,500 DAU this week. HTC Sense with 109,500 DAU this week is an Android mobile app that saw steady U.S. growth this week. Rounding out the rest of the list were two Analysis of Brain apps in Chinese and Thai. 大腦分析 saw 299,500 DAU this week and การวิเคราะห์สมอง saw 261,700; the apps allow for users to publish feed stories or create a photo album published to the stream tagging friends in the process.
Then there was My Photos with 388,000 DAU, which publishes daily photos from your Facebook albums to the stream. Videoloji with 253,700 DAU posts videos to the stream daily and allows users to share and Like them. The Are YOU Interested? dating app saw 207,600 DAU and incorporates a Yes/Skip rating functionality. The Yahoo Connect app saw 155,000 DAU. Friend.ly's app, which essentially imports the website into a Facebook page, grew by 142,700 DAU. Finally, Rock You's Birthday Cards, which gives users the chance to potentially send dozens of birthday cards at once by displaying users with upcoming birthdays, saw 107,200 DAU. |
Industry leading social media monitoring company 
Radian6 taps into the Facebook Graph API
White-labeled embeddable social rewards system Badgeville announced yesterday that 
There are some issues with the rewards system, namely that it doesn’t always register site activity, so users might be denied their badge even though they shared an article. There’s also the question of what percentage of users actually care enough about the recognition and virtual goods they’re rewarded to change their behavior.
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