Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook Notifies Admins That Content but Not Members of Most Old Groups Will Be Migrated
- New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Blue Fang Games, Idle Games, Kabam & More
- Facebook’s Self-Serve Ad Tool Now Includes a Creative Library
- Facebook Ads API Tool Efficient Frontier Acquires Page Management Tool Context Optional
- The 25 Most Liked Pages on Facebook, Spring 2011
- Birthdays, Security, Badges, Mobile and Spotify on This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Apps by DAU
| Facebook Notifies Admins That Content but Not Members of Most Old Groups Will Be Migrated Posted: 04 May 2011 06:23 PM PDT Facebook has begun notifying admins of old groups that much of the content of these community discussion spaces will be archived — in other words migrated to the new Groups feature. However, group members won’t be ported unless the Page is eligible to upgrade instead of archive. Facebook is recommending admins save their old group content before the upgrade or archive, though it doesn’t specify how.
Now when admins visit their old groups that don’t qualify for an upgrade, they’ll see a prompt at the top of the screen explaining the archiving process. Old groups will have their photos, wall posts, discussion threads (which will become wall posts), and group descriptions migrated, but not their “recent news”, group officer titles, info box, group network, or members. Admins of archived old groups will have to re-add their current members, so therefore they should manually copy down the names of their members to facilitate the invite process if they want to reactive the group. A Help Center article linked to in the notice explains the different migration process for those admins who receive the option to upgrade their old groups. They’ll see an “Upgrade This Group” prompt at the top of the old group, and members will also be able ask the admin to carry out the upgrade. All the same content will be ported over as is with old group archiving, except group members will automatically be added to the new Group. There is no way for old group admins or members to request the upgrade option instead of the archive option. Facebook may have already decided which old groups will receive which option, so it may be futile to try to ramp up activity in an old group in hopes of attaining the upgrade option.
Overall, Facebook has done a good job of giving advance notice of the deprecation process for old groups and clearly explaining how it will be completed. It could better explain that “saving” old group content really means writing it down or copy and pasting it, though. With key content being preserved to avoid a backlash, the only thing users have to gripe about is not having their members ported. And since new Group content can trigger notifications and appear in the news feed, it makes sense for Facebook not create an opportunity for spammers by forcibly adding users to the new version of a group that hasn’t been active in years. [Thanks to Jim Hanas, Director of Social Media at Sonnet Media for the tip] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Blue Fang Games, Idle Games, Kabam & More Posted: 04 May 2011 01:00 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 Blue Fang Games, Idle Games, Kabam, Sharkius Games, Synapse Games, and Loot Drop.       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’s Self-Serve Ad Tool Now Includes a Creative Library Posted: 04 May 2011 12:23 PM PDT Advertisers on Facebook that use the self-serve ad tool now have access to a creative library that includes all the combinations of images, headlines, and body text they’ve previously used in ads. These creative sets can be renamed or pulled into new ads, and creative sets can be uploaded without associating them with a particular ad. The creative library will help to improve the efficiency of A/B testing, running multiple campaigns, and rotating creative, assisting smaller advertisers without big enough budgets to use third-party Ads API tools.
Facebook has offered a “Create Similar Ad” feature for some time that lets users duplicate a previous creative and targeting set. However, advertisers might not always want to have to undo all their targeting parameters just to use the same creative. Starting an ad from the creative library gives advertisers a clean targeting slate. When advertisers visit the self-serve ad tool, they’ll now notice a “Select Existing Creative” link in the top right corner. When clicked, advertisers can select from any creative set they’ve previously used. They can search for specific creatives by name, though not by words in headlines or body, which might be useful. They can also filter to see creatives assigned to specific campaigns or that aren’t associated with any campaign.
To access the full-featured creative library, advertisers can either visit http://www.facebook.com/ads/create/creative.php or click the “Creative Library” bookmark in the Ads & Pages manager’s left sidebar. This opens a list of all existing creative sets, lets admins edit the names of the sets, preview how they would look in an ad, start a new ad using one of the sets, or upload a creative set without assigning it to a campaign. More information about the creative library can be found in the Facebook Help Center. By using ad creatives from the library that have already been published, advertisers may be able to expedite Facebook’s creative approval process that can cause a delay between a few minutes and a few days between when ads are submitted and published. It’s not exactly clear at this time how the approval process treats creatives from the library, though. To truly take advantage of Facebook advertising, buyers must multivariant test creative and targeting combinations and shift budget towards the best performers. To do this at scale, advertisers need to use the Facebook Ads API, but signing with one of the Ads API tool or service providers can require a big budget. For smaller advertisers, the creative library will make testing of a few dozen combinations easier, helping them come closer to compete with those able to test thousands of variants. [Thanks to Amit Lavi for the tip.] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Ads API Tool Efficient Frontier Acquires Page Management Tool Context Optional Posted: 04 May 2011 11:37 AM PDT
Facebook ad spend is growing, Page management being commodified as free products are released, and the connection between advertising and Page management is deepening due to Facebook’s Sponsored Stories ad unit. These factors could inspire a trend where cash-flush Ads API companies purchase or partner with Page management companies. Efficient Frontier is primarily a search and display ad company, but seeing the shift in spend towards social, it developed an Ads API tool so clients wouldn’t have to look elsewhere for a way to run their own large scale ad campaigns on Facebook. The tool’s multi-channel interface helps advertisers balance spend between search, display, and social to maximize returns.
However, by being rooted in slower evolving ad channels, Efficient Frontier is slightly less agile in responding to Facebook’s changes. For instance, Justin Merickel, the company’s VP of Marketing told us it added API access to Facebook’s social ad unit Sponsored Stories on April 16th, a month after private beta access to the Sponsored Stories API opened on March 8th. Other Ads API companies that don’t handle search or display reportedly only took a few weeks to include Sponsored Stories in their services, with TBG Digital reporting that it started running Sponsored Stories through the API as soon as March 16th, though we are awaiting confirmation on these dates from Facebook. Some consider Efficient Frontier to be relatively weak Facebook advertising solution since the tool has social tacked on rather than as core of its targeting and optimization technologies. The need for more social expertise may have contributed to the company’s decision to make its first acquisition a dedicated social engagement tool. Efficient Frontier CEO David Karnstedt acknowledged that it needed to close the social gap, saying "Our heritage is that we were early in optimizing search engine advertising for clients, so we wanted to expand our efforts exponentially with Context Optional, since social is different than search." Context Optional has been helping brands market themselves through Facebook since its launch in 2006. Its suite of apps, analytics tools, and viral marketing services for Facebook,Twitter, and LinkedIn have helped many Fortune 500 companies grow their fan bases, including Allstate, Ford, Microsoft, AT&T, eBay, and CNN.
Page management services were crucial to brands in the early days of Facebook because they didn’t understand how to get started, create apps, or derive value from the social network. However, with time, marketers have learned the ropes of the Platform and many small companies now offer cheap or free ways to create promotional apps. As core Page management services become commodified, the industry needs to find new sources of revenue — namely advertising. There’s great potential for synergy between companies from the two industries. For instance, Context Optional’s team could create a new branded app for a client, which would then be promoted with ads purchased through Efficient Frontier. Page management companies also hold demographic and engagement data on users that can help improve ad targeting. The acquisition is a smart move for Efficient Frontier. Context Optional’s Co-Founder and CEO Kevin Barenblat says the acquisition makes sense because”[it and Efficient Frontier's] respective clients are asking us for a comprehensive solution to both acquire and build relationships with their customers.” This is probably the case with other Ads API and Page management companies too, so expect more acquisitions and partnerships in the space to emerge over the coming year. As we predicted in February, acquisitions of Page management companies are becoming more common as companies lacking them don’t want to fall further behind by taking months to develop their own. Some Page management companies like Buddy Media, Syncapse and Vitrue have grown quite large and raised over $30 million, but still may be viable acquisition targets for the largest search and display ad services providers, or Ads API companies including TBG Digital, Blinq Media, AdParlor, and Spruce Media. There are also a host of medium-size companies such as Involver, and smaller companies such as Fan Appz, Brand Glue, Likeable Media, and iPlatform that could be acquired more cheaply to bring social tools and expertise to companies looking to break into social or expand their offering. More information on the Page management and Ads API companies operating in the Facebook ecosystem can be found in the the Facebook Marketing Bible’s Facebook Marketing Service Provider Directory. It includes the areas of expertise, verticals covered, client lists, portfolio samples, news updates and contact information of organizations of all sizes who are marketing and advertising on Facebook. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The 25 Most Liked Pages on Facebook, Spring 2011 Posted: 04 May 2011 11:23 AM PDT
The only Community Page on the list is for Music — unsurprising given that 44 of the top 100 Pages are music-related. We gathered the information for our list with our PageData tool, which counts the number of Likes as Pages grow. Pages on our list ranged from 41.8 million for Texas Hold’em Poker and 21.5 for the singer Akon; last time we compiled a list, Zynga’s Poker game was still on top with 25.5 million Likes. Which is to say, top Pages continue to grow and the standard for what a “big” Facebook Page is continues to change. See how other top brands are maximizing their returns on their Facebook campaigns in the Facebook Marketing Bible. See the list below: 1. Texas Hold’em Poker – 41,879,027
2. Facebook – 39,387,704
3. Eminem – 35,055,405
4. Lady Gaga – 33,309,733
5. YouTube – 32,493,953
6. Rihanna – 31,765,115
7. Family Guy - 29,561,707
8. Shakira – 28,102,699
9. Linkin Park – 26,999,932
10. Justin Bieber – 26,493,655
11. Coca-Cola – 26,216,683
12. South Park – 26,159,052
13. The Simpsons – 25,513,539
14. Cristiano Ronaldo – 25,063,441
15. Katy Perry – 23,684,621
16. Lil Wayne – 23,684,621
17. Bob Marley – 23,673,770
18. Megan Fox – 23,479,162
19. Vin Diesel – 22,824,393
20. Harry Potter – 22,361,593
21. Twilight – 22,177,948
22. Disney – 21,942,364
23. Music – 21,638,305
24. Starbucks – 21,596,340
25. Akon – 21,563,854
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| Birthdays, Security, Badges, Mobile and Spotify on This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Apps by DAU Posted: 04 May 2011 08:10 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
The iframe + Static FBML + Welcome Tab = iwipa app added 494,600 DAU; the app allows users to create a social media welcome tab on their Pages. The Birthday Greeting Cards app, which grew mostly in the United States by 306,200 DAU, and is strange in that it asks users to buy in-app currency to send the cards and provides a payment page with a Gmail address. Up until that point, the app displays friends with birthdays, make a selection, invite other friends to sign the birthday card, send requests to your email contacts, publish to your Wall — finally, app asks you for money without actually sending any requests.
Yahoo's app grew by 262,300 DAU. The security app, Norton Safe Web, grew by 138,600 DAU; the app scans your profile for malicious links. Badges by Momentus Media is an app for Page administrators that grew by 136,800 DAU in the U.S. and United Kingdom. The Connect app allows users to create badges for their Pages, as well as create a badge tab on their Pages and invite their friends to post the badge to their Wall.
Rounding out the list was The Fortune Teller, with 128,700 DAU, which provides daily horoscopes and tarot readings. 60 Photos grew by 127,500 DAU; the app allows users to rate their friends' Facebook photos, publishing a story to the stream each time. Windows Live Messenger's Connect app grew by 122,600 DAU. The eBuddy mobile messenger app grew by 119,000 DAU. Last was the Spotify app with 107,500 DAU mostly in the U.S. The Facebook app takes you to the Spotify website to download the company's application and incorporate your Facebook network into the music community. Check in Friday to see the top emerging Facebook apps growing by 100,000 to 1 million MAU. |
Efficient Frontier
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