Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook Rolling Out Major Update to Ad Analytics with Audience Funnels and Reach Data
- Early Look: RootMusic Adds Like-Gating, Email Capture and More to BandPage
- Facebook Deepens Partnership with TrialPay DealSpot to Offer Credits for Watching Videos
- Facebook Allows @ Mention Tags of Friends to be Shortened
- Facebook Hires and Departures: Engineering, Recruiting, Mobile, Sales and More
- Facebook Careers Postings: Recruiting, Ads, Engineering and More
| Facebook Rolling Out Major Update to Ad Analytics with Audience Funnels and Reach Data Posted: 05 May 2011 10:54 PM PDT Some Facebook users are now seeing several changes to Facebook’s advertising analytics tool in what appears to be the start of the roll out of a major update. The changes include the addition of data on ad reach and average frequency (number of times a user has seen the same ad); a funnel showing targets, reached, and social reach; and a line graph of clicks and social actions generated by an ad. Facebook appears to be refocusing the tool on new, social key performance indicators such as Likes and app installs, and moving away from old online advertising metrics such as CPM, which isn’t even readily shown in the updated tool.
A new “Audience” funnel shows how many users were within the ad’s targeting parameters, how many saw the ad, and how many saw it with social context. This, as well as the frequency data, helps advertisers determine if an ad has exhausted its targets and either needs its creative rotated or its targeting switched to prevent the same ad from being shown too many times to the same user.
A “Response” line graph displays the clicks and connections produced by the ad campaign. This can help advertisers determine if they’re paying for clicks from the right users. A large gap between clicks and connections shows the campaign isn’t performing well, even if clicks or click through rates are high.
Some data fields that appear to have been removed from the tool include cost per thousand impressions (CPM), and daily CTR. The update answer several requests from advertisers, including the ability to see ad frequency. Highlighting social actions triggered by ads will show the strength of Facebook’s social ad units including Sponsored Stories. By moving away from data common in search and display advertising tools, Facebook is improving the social advertising analytics experience while driving home that fact that this is a radically different advertising platform than what’s available anywhere else on the internet. [Thanks to Dan Birdwhistell for the tip and screenshots] |
| Early Look: RootMusic Adds Like-Gating, Email Capture and More to BandPage Posted: 05 May 2011 05:49 PM PDT
RootMusic launched BandPage in February 2010 and it has since grown steadily to provide profiles for over 150,000 artists. Now with a total daily active user count of 1.2 million and a monthly active user count of 22.7 million, BandPage is the fifth largest application on Facebook behind several Zynga games and a rather spammy quiz app, according to our application traffic growth tracking service AppData. The company raised a $2.3 million funding round in January and another $800,000 round in March to help it hire engineers and scale to accomodate its massive traffic. While still the frontrunner in the space, ReverbNation’s Band Profile added Like-gating and custom design options to its free Facebook app in in March, which made it a slightly more powerful option than BandPage for those unwilling to pay, until now. With this update, musicians with a free BandPage Basic account can use the “Tools” button on the right of the app editor to require users to Like their Page to download or stream music. This can be an effective fan acquisition strategy for artists with a strong existing brand or valuable content to offer in exchange for a subscription to their news feed updates.
BandPage Plus clients now have access to these Like-gating and customization options and more. They can require users to sign up for their email list or send a tweet in order to unlock song streams and downloads. This means bands with email or Twitter at the core of their marketing plan can use their Facebook Page to drive engagement through these other mediums instead of worrying about their Like count.
A re-sizeable video player can be made a BandPage Plus client’s banner, and two different banners can be shown to fans and non-fans. Musicians could therefore use their non-fan banner to explain that visitors must Like their Page to access their new music video, then reveal the video front and center via the banner to those who choose to become fans. These updates strengthen BandPage’s position as the replacement for MySpace music and the destination for learning about a musician on Facebook. However, many Facebook Pages find that the majority of their engagement occurs through the news feed, not on their Page’s tabs. Therefore, going forward RootMusic may need to focus less on the Page and more on its widgets that can be shared to the news feed if it wants to retain its supremacy on Facebook. |
| Facebook Deepens Partnership with TrialPay DealSpot to Offer Credits for Watching Videos Posted: 05 May 2011 02:00 PM PDT Facebook has just announced an expansion of its partnership with social game offer provider TrialPay on its DealSpot product that gives users Facebook Credits in exchange for watching branded videos. We covered in detail Facebook and TrialPay’s initial partnered around DealSpot earlier this year, but now Facebook will be presenting the option to earn Credits for video views around the site in its sidebar modules. Video providers Sharethrough, EpicSocial, SocialVibe, and SupersonicAds will be the first companies to have their videos shown in Facebook’s sidebars as well as games via DealSpot. Facebook says the goal of the expanded partnership is to help game developers monetize a higher percentage of their users by educating users about how to earn and spend Credits and getting more of them to carry a balance of the virtual currency.
To initiate the DealSpot flow from within a game, users click on an icon skinned by the developer to say “Earn Free Credits” or something similar. This will open a video player which users click to start. At the end of the video, Credits are deposited into the user’s account, and they are given the choice of following links to websites or Facebook Pages for the advertiser, or filling out an optional poll. They can then spend their Credits in that game or any other that supports Credits as a payment system — which will be all games on the Facebook Platform starting July 1st when Credits become mandatory. While over 350 games now use Credits, only those that use Credits as their premium in-game currency can use this version of DealSpot. As on July 1st, 2011, developers that don’t work with Facebook’s approved offer providers (TrialPay is currently the only one) can only serve offers that don’t require identifiable information, such as videos, and they can only reward users with virtual goods, not virtual currency or Credits. Advertisers could previously go through TrialPay’s DealSpot to present videos as well as traditional paid purchase offers to users within games. But now, advertisers will also be able to gain views of their videos through Facebook’s DealSpot sidebar modules which will appear around the site to users who play games. Sharethrough, one of the video provider launch partners for this extension of DealSpot, reports that video ad campaigns within Facebook games significant increase brand awareness. Initial tests of DealSpot prior to this expansion which included paid purchase offers showed that DealSpot earned nearly twice as much revenue for developers than their offer wall, which only gives users the option to earn Credits once they’re already trying to purchase a virtual good. This shows that users that typically weren’t interested in making purchases can become paying customers if given the option to earn Credits during normal, free gameplay.
Prior to DealSpot, if a developer wanted to offer users virtual currency or gifts in exchange for watching a branded video, they had to inefficiently set up relationships with video providers one by one. The partnership between Facebook and TrialPay aggregates these providers so developers only have to deal with TrialPay, making it easier for them to earn money without hiring a large sales team. By making it easy for users to earn Facebook Credits and participate in the Platform’s virtual economy without have to pay real money, Facebook Credits Product Manager Deb Liu tells us the site hopes to “get 3, 4, or 5 percent more users to have Credits in their balance”, which would be a significant increase. The partnership could help developers make more money and make Facebook a more attractive Platform to develop on. |
| Facebook Allows @ Mention Tags of Friends to be Shortened Posted: 05 May 2011 12:21 PM PDT Once Facebook users have tagged a friend in a post or comment by typing the @ symbol or part of their name and selecting the name from a drop-down menu, they can now shorten the tag by deleting parts of the friend’s name. Previously, users had to leave the full name or the tag wouldn’t appear as an active link and trigger a notification for that friend. Facebook has also rolled out an improved version of automatic friend tag suggestions when users type a friend’s name with a capital letter but don’t use the @ symbol. Tag shortening allows users to keep posts with tags shorter, increasing the likelihood that they’ll be read instead of skimmed by. It also prevents overly formal tags from interrupting otherwise informal posts or comments.
Facebook extended its tagging feature from photos, where it had proved incredibly viral, to allow tagging of friends, Pages, Events, Groups and more in status updates in September 2009. In March, Facebook enabled tagging in comments. The Facebook for Android app allows users to tag friends in posts, but the option isn’t available in the Facebook for iPhone app, other native mobile apps, or on m.facebook.com. Facebook tested automatically showing the tagging drop down when users capitalized the first letter of a word in August, but the feature annoyed users who often weren’t trying to tag a friend. Facebook software engineer Tom Occhino now tells us this feature has been fully rolled out, but we’ve discovered it has been fixed to only show tag suggestions when users type five or more characters of a friend’s name, or type a whole name that is less than 5 characters. This should help expose the tagging feature who were mentioning the names of friends in posts but not actually tagging them. When users tag a friend in a post, it appears highlighted. Users can now delete the end or beginning of the tag, such as the first or last name, but the remaining parts of the name will still appear highlighted, and will show up as links once the post is published. If a friend has more than two names, a tag can be shortened to any adjacent names, meaning users could leave the first and middle name, or middle and last name, but they can’t just remove the middle name. Note that only tags of friends can be shortened, tags of Pages — tags of Pages, Events, Groups and other Facebook properties will become inactive if a user tries to shorten them. Users sometimes skip text-heavy posts when reading their news feed, so the ability to shorten tags should increase engagement with tagged posts. Facebook often strives to mimic communication in the physical world when designing its products. When mentioning a friend in conversation with mutual friends we often use only part of their name, but use the full name when speaking to those unfamiliar with that person. Now, the same option to choose how much of a name is mentioned depending on context is available in post tagging. Update 3/5/2011 3:45pm PST: Facebook has also rolled out an improved version of automatic friend tag suggestions when users type a friend’s name with a capital letter but don’t use the @ symbol. [Thanks to Lionel Bonnaz for the tip] |
| Facebook Hires and Departures: Engineering, Recruiting, Mobile, Sales and More Posted: 05 May 2011 09:57 AM PDT
New hires per LinkedIn and Other Sources:
Recent departures, per LinkedIn:
Prior listings now removed from the Facebook Careers Page:
Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry. |
| Facebook Careers Postings: Recruiting, Ads, Engineering and More Posted: 05 May 2011 09:22 AM PDT
Posts added this week on Facebook's Careers Page:
Jobs posted by Facebook on LinkedIn:
Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry. |
RootMusic’s BandPage, the most popular musician profile Facebook Page tab application, has 
Facebook looks to have made some interesting hires this week, according to its | You are subscribed to email updates from Inside Facebook To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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