Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook Revamps Page Suggestions, Adds Page Invites Manager to Page Browser
- Independent Mobile App Store GetJar Goes Social, Adds Facebook Integration
- New Jobs This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Wooga, Lolgames, A Bit Lucky & More
- Facebook Snags Product Designers From NY Personal Analytics Startup Daytum
- Facebook Tests Optional Broad Interest Category and Family Status Targeting
- Turkish Videos, Music, iPad, Connect and Affection on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
| Facebook Revamps Page Suggestions, Adds Page Invites Manager to Page Browser Posted: 27 Apr 2011 06:13 PM PDT Facebook has changed the way users send, receive, and respond to Page suggestions — also called Recommended Pages or Page invites. Only Page admins can send suggestions, and they can only suggest their own Page. Users now receive these via “Recommended Pages” sidebar modules that show the name of the suggester and an option to Like. If users click “See All” on the module, they’re taken to a new “Page Invites” section of the Page Browser where they can delete suggestions or view the Pages. Page suggestions are now less visible than when they appeared on the friend requests page and the now-removed home page Requests panel. However, their more social nature should help to offset harm the channel change’s harm to growth of small Pages that use the feature to start building their fan base.
Facebook introduced Page suggestions as an option for both users and admins in March 2009. These suggestions appeared on the friend requests page and on the home page Requests panel next to friend, app, group and other requests until January 2011 when Facebook began phasing out the panel in favor of bookmarks. Later that month, Facebook changed Page suggestions so they could only be sent by admins, not users, significantly reducing the amount of Page suggestion spam sent. Facebook has also dropped the cap on how many suggestions can be sent at once. Now, the Requests panel is gone and Page suggestions don’t appear on the friend requests page. Instead, users will see them within the Recommended Pages right sidebar module that occasionally appears when browsing the site. Previously, this module only showed Pages that Facebook automatically recommended because they had similar audiences to a user’s existing Likes or were Liked by their friends.
Page suggestions in the module show the name and picture of the Page, a Like button for the Page, and the text “[Friend who is the Page's admin] suggested you check out his / her Page.” This informal language makes the suggestions seem more organic and compelling, and less coercive than the old request-style language that informed users they’d been “invited” and should “Confirm” or “Ignore” the suggestion to Like a Page.
Facebook has succeeded in revamping Page suggestions in a way that cleans up the home page and requests channel while reducing suggestion spam. Some Page admins might not like the reduction in their visibility, but because the remaining visibility is now a more social and seamless part of the user experience, we don’t expect a significant drop in conversion rate of Page suggestions. [Thanks to Brittany Darwell for the tip] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Independent Mobile App Store GetJar Goes Social, Adds Facebook Integration Posted: 27 Apr 2011 02:50 PM PDT
GetJar, an independent app store backed by Accel Partners that says it has powered 1.5 billion downloads to date, launched a Facebook integration today that lets users share their download activity and use “like” and “dislike” buttons to help friends decide what apps to install and what to ignore. > Continue reading on Inside Mobile Apps. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| New Jobs This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Wooga, Lolgames, A Bit Lucky & More Posted: 27 Apr 2011 01:30 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 wooga, lolgames, A Bit Lucky, Funcom, and Digital Chocolate.
   Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps 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 Snags Product Designers From NY Personal Analytics Startup Daytum Posted: 27 Apr 2011 12:31 PM PDT
This talent grab could help Facebook offer new options for tracking personal achievements, or allow users to visualize data from their existing Facebook content, such as mentions of keywords in status updates or frequency of correspondence with specific friends. These “acq-hires” are becoming more frequent for Facebook as it looks to secure talent in areas it sees as important to the service’s future. So far this year it has picked up teams from HTML5-focused Recrec, social recruiting service Pursuit, feature phone app porter Snaptu, and hyper-local mobile advertising startup Rel8tion. It also bought both the team and product from group messaging app Beluga. Daytum allows users to manually enter data through the web or mobile app such as trips to the gym, films watched, or types of food consumed. Users can set goals and track their own performance. Free accounts let users track a limited number of data points, while a $4 / month subscription gives them unlimited data tracking and more visualization options.
Remembering to enter data can an accomplishment of its own, so users had to be diligent to derive value. Now imagine a similar service but that could automatically track and visualize Facebook behavior such as photo uploads, Places checkins, or wall posts. While there’s no telling exactly what Case and Felton will work on, their expertise could help Facebook increase it’s utility as a diary, personal organizer, or to-do list. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Tests Optional Broad Interest Category and Family Status Targeting Posted: 27 Apr 2011 11:33 AM PDT Facebook has made several new self-serve ad targeting options available to a test group of users, including family status such as “Parents”, “Engaged (< 6 months)”, or “Newlywed (< 1 year)”, as well as “Has birthday in < 1 week”. Those in the test group have the option to target ads to broad categories of interests, such as musical genres, types of sports, activities such as photography, and professional categories such as real estate, in addition to traditional precise interest targeting. If the tested targeting options were fully rolled out, they could give novice advertisers easier ways to target large relevant audiences, and make Facebook a more accurate advertising channel for brands and small businesses with customers in specific life phases.
Facebook tested broad interest targeting last month, but as a replacement for precise interest targeting. While useful for those less familiar with targeting ads based on the Likes of their audience, it provided less accuracy and transparency, so we recommended Facebook test or implement broad interest targeting as on option rather than a substitute. Now, those in the test group can click a “Switch to Broad Category Targeting” link to reveal the options in Facebook’s self-serve ad tool. Advertisers can include the audiences of as many of the broad categories as they want, and can pair them with demographic targeting such as age or relationship status. However, they can’t combine broad and precise interest targeting. In a tool tip, Facebook recommends advertisers to:
The complete list of Broad Category targeting options can be found at the bottom of this post. Unlocking New Advertising StrategiesAdvertisers can target sub-categories such as Music->Pop or Retail->Beauty Products rather than manually entering the Pages of several pop musicians such as Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, and Katy Perry, or several beauty brands such as Aveda, Sephora, and Maybelline. This will help their ads reach users with more obscure Likes that advertisers might not know about but that still indicate they are the relevant audience. It will also help them combine audiences of local branches of brands from a single region, such as Maybelline Singapore, Maybelline Philippines, and Maybelline Indonesia. It could also open opportunities for niche brands or services that might not have competitors with large Pages to target against. For instance, a company offering wine tours could combine the existing demographic targeting option “Married” with Broad Category targeting parameters such as Interests->Beer / Wine / Spirits or Activities->Travel.
While the interest categories enhance the existing precise interest targeting options, attribute targeting offers ways to access demographics that were previously difficult to pinpoint. The new Family Status options for targeting parents with children of different ages could help advertisers of products and services such as baby food and clothing, toys for pre-teens, or even college admissions offices. The existing “Engaged” relationship status has long been a target for wedding photographers and florists, but the “Newlywed (<1 year)” option available here could be popular with insurance and financial services providers. Bars, nightclubs, travel agencies, and big box retailers could target users with a birthday that week, while the existing option to target users on their birthday was too narrow. Using Broad Category targeting doesn’t appear to disproportionately increase Facebook’s suggested bid price per click. For instance, an ad targeted to the estimated 408,420 US users who Like classical musician Beethoven has a bid suggestion of $2.69, while targeting to the Broad Category of Music->Classical reaches an estimated 1.7 million users for $2.46. Targeting US users who are married reaches an estimated 38.8 million people for $2.20, while targeting the Broad Category “Newlywed (< 1 year)” reaches 5.6 million people for $1.74. Facebook has found a way to increase targeting options, and make the process simpler for new advertisers without cluttering the self-serve ad tool’s design. If rolled out, Broad Category targeting could further differentiate Facebook advertising from search advertising by leveraging its wealth of demographic and interest user data. After all, keyword targeting doesn’t work for everyone. For more advertising strategies, including how to use Facebook’s new Sponsored Stories ad unit, check out our Facebook Marketing Bible. Full List of Broad Category Targeting OptionsActivities
Birthday
Business / Technology
Family Status
Interests
Movie / Film
Music
Retail / Shopping
Sports
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| Posted: 27 Apr 2011 08:04 AM PDT
Our list is compiled using AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook, and covers those that gained the most users in the past seven days. Top Gainers This Week
Sanal Video, a popular Turkish video application, was first on our list. The app added 1.2 million DAU — although it has had an odd number of drastic rises and falls lately, and it has reached this level of traffic before. Video Magic added 184,100 DAU, Süper Video ! grew by 129,500 and VidyoTV Video grew by 102,300 DAU. Overall, the apps do all the same things: allowing users to view, Like and share videos to the stream. The exception is VidyoTV Video, which posts a link to your Wall every time you watch a video.
Then there were the aforementioned "affection" apps. Another Turkish app, Send Gift, allows users to send heart-shaped virtual goods to friends' Walls; the app grew by 354,400 DAU. A triage of sister apps were on the list, too: @Hugs with 155,400 DAU, @Smiles with 119,700 DAU and @Hearts with 100,500. The apps all work in a similar fashion; upon using the app a pop-up asks the user if they want to receive weekly email updates with the latest virtual goods (hugs/smiles/hearts). Then a user can select a virtual good, select which friend(s) to send it to, then the app asks you if you want to publish a feed story, and once this is done, the app asks you if you want to send more hugs/smiles/hearts because there is "no limit." Thus, the app has at least three different ways to encourage virality.
BandPage by RootMusic was on the list with 338,500 DAU; the app allows bands and fans to connect with music on Facebook. There were a couple of iPad apps. Flipboard, with 257,900 DAU, is an app that allows users to read news and social media in a magazine layout on their iPads. Then MyPad for iPad is a Facebook app for iPad with 153,500 DAU this week. Two Connect apps, Yahoo with 213,600 and Windows Live Messenger with 133,700 DAU, were also on the list. The final app on our list was Quiz Taco with 96,600 DAU; the app is a Q&A with raunchy questions of your friends, publishing a feed story with each answer. Check in Friday to see the top emerging Facebook apps growing by 100,000 to 1 million MAU. |
Users can hover over a suggestion to see an ‘x’ that allows them to delete it, or they can click “See All” to be directed to the 
The dream of having social viral channels for app discovery is still a ways off, but that doesn’t mean unofficial app stores can’t make moves in this direction.
Facebook has 
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