Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook Page Managment Giant Buddy Media Acquires Social Ecommerce and Analytics Provider Spinback
- Facebook’s Failed Privacy PR Campaign Against Google: An Industry Practice, Poorly Done
- Inside Network Acquired by WebMediaBrands
- Understanding the New Connections, Reach and Audience Funnel Data in Facebook’s Ad Manager
- Facebook Partners with Web of Trust to Protect Users From Malicious Outbound Links
- Facebook Careers Postings: Dublin, Marketing, Data Centers, Sales and More
- Facebook Hires and Departures: Platform Ops, Sales, Recruiting, Engineering and More
| Facebook Page Managment Giant Buddy Media Acquires Social Ecommerce and Analytics Provider Spinback Posted: 12 May 2011 05:24 PM PDT
This acquisition of both the team and technology follows our predictions that expensive Facebook Page management services are becoming commodified by companies offering free products, so the Page management industry needs to explore new revenue streams by expanding into ad buying or ecommerce through partnerships and acquisitions.
Buddy Media got an early start in the industry, helping brands market themselves on Facebook since the Platform opened in late 2007. At time, there were few powerful Page management tools, let alone free ones, and brands didn’t have any experience and therefore needed helped. Since then, Buddy Media has signed some of the world’s most prominent brands, grown to over 170 employees, and raised $38.3 million, including a massive $23 million Series C round in October 2010. Now, though, solid free tools and Page tab app suites are proliferating and brands are gaining the experience necessary to require less hand-holding with day-to-day Facebook Page operation. More brands are still shifting marketing focus towards Facebook, but commodification means the Page management industry’s largest companies will eventually need to seek additional revenue streams if they want to keep growing, or even avoid shrinking. The most obvious expansion area is facilitating Facebook ad purchases by their clients — a lucrative business where they can license tools or charge a percent of the growing Facebook ad spend of big brands. The other is ecommerce, where they can also license Facebook ecommerce storefront and analytics solutions.This appears to be just what Buddy Media plans to do with Spinback, its first full-fledged acquisition. Spinback’s two main offerings are EasyShare, a product and purchase social sharing widget, and EasyTrack, which provides analytics on this sharing and the sales it generates. These technologies will allow Buddy Media to inform clients about what social channels are driving sales, what products are being shared most frequently and creating the most revenue, and who are the most active and influential customers and customer segments. Spinback has signed over 20 retailers as clients since it launched in October 2011, with clients seeing an average increase in incremental revenue of $2.10 per Facebook wall post, and a conversion rate of 10.9% for Facebook shares leading to purchases. The five-person company’s founding CTO, Paul Boutin, was formerly the founder and CTO of Payvment, the most popular Facebook ecommerce storefront application. The acquisition will allow Buddy Media to attract more retail and ecommerce clients, and offer a wider range of services to Spinback’s and its existing clients. It will also protect it from commodification as brands mature from establishing a Facebook presence to attaining a healthy return on investment in social. | ||
| Facebook’s Failed Privacy PR Campaign Against Google: An Industry Practice, Poorly Done Posted: 12 May 2011 02:16 PM PDT In a spectacularly failed attempt at undermining the competition, Facebook has admitted that it hired public relations giant Burson-Marsteller to plant news articles promoting a supposed privacy problem with a Google social product. Up until today, Facebook had usually been on the receiving end of this sort of tactic — its attempt to go on the offensive is most notable for its underhanded ambition and failure. Here’s a quick look at what happened, followed by our analysis. Journalists-turned-Burson-employees Jim Goldman and John Mercurio approached a number of journalists and privacy advocates in recent weeks, attempting to generate negative coverage of Google social search. In an email exchange with privacy advocate Christopher Soghoian, Mercurio asserted that “Google is collecting, storing and mining millions of people's personal information from a number of different online services and sharing it without the knowledge, consent or control of the people involved.” USA Today appears to have almost gone to press with that angle, but was alerted by others and published an exposé of the pitch instead, as well as a strong push back on the claim. ”Social Circle in fact allows Gmail users to make social connections based on public information and private connections across its products in ways that don’t skirt privacy,” it wrote, which is pretty true. If you want to take a look for yourself, check out Google’s help materials (and discussion among upset users), or read Search Engine Land‘s excellent dive into it. Burson refused to disclose the client, until Newsweek’s Dan Lyons gained evidence that singled out Facebook, and got a confirmation out of the company. According to his article, the reasons Facebook did the campaign are as follows: “First, because it believes Google is doing some things in social networking that raise privacy concerns; second, and perhaps more important, because Facebook resents Google's attempts to use Facebook data in its own social-networking service.” On the latter issue, Google tried to scrape Facebook user data, then won most of the press to its side when Facebook blocked its attempt. At the time, it appeared as if Google knew how Facebook was going to respond, and fully intended to create a press win. Which brings us to the next point, which is that Facebook itself has been a target from competitors. After launching the Like button, the Graph API and other web-wide, currently successful efforts to win over users and advertisers at its f8 developer conference in April of 2010, Facebook was within days targeted by high-rankings members of Congress over potential privacy violations. These members of Congress, as we discussed at the time, displayed a poor understanding of the specific issues. It was very odd to see them react so quickly to such a nuanced issued. A well-placed person at another tech company told us at the time that they believed the politicians had been directed to the issue by another company. Powerful interests are of course always attempting to manipulate the media to their own advantage, often in behind-the-scenes and underhanded ways. Google itself has been a victim of both public and secret (misleading) efforts by Microsoft over the years, sometimes with aid from Burson. So, what stands out about this case is that Facebook went after Google in such an underhanded way over such a weak claim, and that it failed in its efforts so publicly. At this point, both Facebook and Burson have tried to backtrack, or at least sideways-track. The latest comments from both companies, below. You’ll note that they contradict each other, as others already have. First, Burson, in an email to PRNewser. Now that Facebook has come forward, we can confirm that we undertook an assignment for that client. The client requested that its name be withheld on the grounds that it was merely asking to bring publicly available information to light and such information could then be independently and easily replicated by any media. Any information brought to media attention raised fair questions, was in the public domain, and was in any event for the media to verify through independent sources. Whatever the rationale, this was not at all standard operating procedure and is against our policies, and the assignment on those terms should have been declined. When talking to the media, we need to adhere to strict standards of transparency about clients, and this incident underscores the absolute importance of that principle. Meanwhile, Facebook tells All Things D that it was intending something more above-board. "No 'smear' campaign was authorized or intended. Instead, we wanted third parties to verify that people did not approve of the collection and use of information from their accounts on Facebook and other services for inclusion in Google Social Circles—just as Facebook did not approve of use or collection for this purpose. We engaged Burson-Marsteller to focus attention on this issue, using publicly available information that could be independently verified by any media organization or analyst. The issues are serious and we should have presented them in a serious and transparent way. You and your readers can look at the feature and decide if they have approved of this collection and use of information by clicking here when their Google account is open: http://www.google.com/s2/search/social. Of course, people who do not have Gmail accounts are still included in this collection but they have no way to view or control it." Regardless of how either party feels about how the effort has been received, both appear to have taken serious brand damage — at least in those circles that care about nasty press battles — and they’ll need to work hard in the coming years to put this behind them. | ||
| Inside Network Acquired by WebMediaBrands Posted: 12 May 2011 01:50 PM PDT We are very excited to announce today that Inside Network has been acquired by WedMediaBrands! Our full team will be joining WebMediaBrands and we will be staying in our Palo Alto offices. More coverage of the news is up here, here, here, here, and here. As the newest member of the WebMediaBrands family, we will continue to focus on building out our industry-focused sites, including Inside Facebook, Inside Social Games, and Inside Mobile Apps; our research and data services, including AppData, Inside Virtual Goods, Facebook Marketing Bible, and Inside Facebook Gold; and events, including Inside Social Apps. Over the past several years, WebMediaBrands has developed a powerful network of news, events, education, and research services for the social media industry. We’re excited to be joining forces and combining our efforts to move even faster to deliver products and services to what are in our view two of the most exciting areas in tech over the coming several years – the social and mobile application ecosystems. Together, we expect to continue focusing on building the highest quality news, research, data, and events serving all of the entrepreneurs, developers, marketers, and analysts that make this industry so vibrant. We’re very thankful to get to work with all of you. We’re looking forward to what’s ahead! | ||
| Understanding the New Connections, Reach and Audience Funnel Data in Facebook’s Ad Manager Posted: 12 May 2011 11:32 AM PDT
The following is an excerpt from the Facebook Marketing Bible, the comprehensive guide to marketing and advertising your company, app, or brand using Facebook. The full version of this article, available through a Facebook Marketing Bible subscription, includes detailed strategies for using the audience funnel and reach data that Facebook recently added to its Ad Manager to run more effective advertising campaigns. Last week, Facebook’s Ad Manager began showing several new types of data that can help advertisers — if they know how to use them. Most importantly, advertisers can now see post-impression conversion data about what kind of social actions have been taken within 24 hours of a user seeing an ad. By optimizing for these “connections”, as they’re called by the Ad Manager, rather than cost per thousand impressions (CPM) or cost per click (CPC), Facebook advertisers can better ensure their ads for Facebook properties are generating a return on investment. Facebook now provides data on an ad’s reach, or how many unique users of a targeted audience see an ad, in the data charts and the audience funnel. It also shows the frequency of a given ad, denoting the average number of times each person you reach saw your ad. Here we’ll explain strategies for creating and tracking ad campaigns that produce high social action conversion rates, explain how to control your reach, and walk-through using frequency to recognize when to rotate ad creative. Optimizing for Connections One of the columns in the data provided by the Ads Manager is Connections. This denotes how many people Liked your Page, installed your application, or RSVP’d for your Event within 24 hours of seeing the ad. If your advertisement is designed to drive these types of conversions, you want to work towards achieving the lowest cost per connections, not the lowest cost per click.
This is because an unqualified click, one from a user with no real interest in your Page or application, doesn’t create a return on investment. To go even deeper, a connection’s true value is based on the worth of that user. You may be able to drive a lot of clicks, or even a lot of connections for a low price by targeting less desirable demographics, such as young users in developing countries, but these won’t give you as high a return on investment as fewer connections from people with a need for what you’re advertising and the money to pay for it. To hone in on the demographics that produce the most Connections, first run a test of your ad that is targeted very broadly by demographic. Include all possible age groups, genders, countries, relationship types, languages, education backgrounds and work histories. If what you are advertising appeals to certain interest demographics, consider running a version of the test which a few dozen relevant keywords as targeted interests. Since your ads will be targeted at a wide, inclusive audience, Facebook won’t charge a very high CPC, making these types of campaigns good for testing. The longer the test the better, but those with smaller budgets should test until they generate at least 100 connections.
Then go to the Reports tab of the Ads Manager and export reports with the Report Type set to “Responder Demographics” and “Responder Profiles”. Analyze these reports looking for trends in the demographics and interests that were common to those that formed connections with your advertised properties. Then run individual campaigns targeted at these demographics and interests segments. For instance, if many of your connections came from users age 25-30, target that age group. If many came from a specific state, target individual campaigns at that state. If many had one interest you targeted but not another, target that interest in its own campaign. Access strategies for using the Ads Manager’s audience funnel and reach data, as well as Sponsored Stories and Facebook’s other social ad units in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network's complete guide to marketing and advertising on Facebook. | ||
| Facebook Partners with Web of Trust to Protect Users From Malicious Outbound Links Posted: 12 May 2011 11:00 AM PDT Web of Trust, a crowd-sourced website reputation rating service, has partnered with Facebook to protect user from clicking malicious outbound links on the social network. When users click a link to a site with a poor reputation rating, Facebook will show a warning message. The Web of Trust partnership should help reduce the risk of phishing, spam and scams on Facebook, improving security, which has been a public relations problem through the years for the social network.
With a 20 million user community and 31 million sites rated, Web of Trust will protect users in real-time, rather than focusing on preventive education like some other risk-abatement programs. In addition to phishing and scams, Web of Trust will increase protection from unscrupulous ecommerce sites and reduce the likelihood that younger users will click through links on Facebook to adult content.
When users click a URL on Facebook, the social network will scan the site to see if it has been flagged by Web of Trust. If so, users will see a message indicating that the site “has been classified as potentially abusive.” A large button encourages users to “Return to previous page” or they can click a small link to ignore the warning and continue to the site. Users can download the Web of Trust browser add-on to rate sites and help protect fellow web citizens. If more Facebook users immediately used Facebook’s own flagging system or that of Web of Trust, spammy sites that spread through the news feed via phished accounts could be blocked more quickly. To date, Facebook has worked to protect users by offering educational resources such as the Safety Center, asking users to provide information to assist with account retrieval in case they are hacked, and added security features such as account owner and login verification. It also recently extended its partnership with McAfee to eradicate worms such as Koobface through the Roadblock feature and provide a free subscription to anti-virus software. Web of Trust’s reputation model may work well for long-existing risks, but new malicious sites that pop up might not be rated before they threaten Facebook users. Facebook’s security team and internal automated systems for alerting users to malicious links will continue protect users from suspicious outbound links, but now they’ll be augmented with the power of Web of Trust’s crowd. | ||
| Facebook Careers Postings: Dublin, Marketing, Data Centers, Sales and More Posted: 12 May 2011 09:07 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. | ||
| Facebook Hires and Departures: Platform Ops, Sales, Recruiting, Engineering and More Posted: 12 May 2011 08:49 AM PDT
Posts removed from the Careers Page — which strongly suggest that the positions had been filled — included engineers and data center technicians, while LinkedIn showed mostly sales positions. Most significantly, top developer and long-time Facebook employee Joe Hewitt announced on Friday that he was leaving the company. He has been there since his startup, Parakey, was acquired in 2007. Well-known beforehand for his work on the Mozilla Firefox browser and developer bug-tracking tool Firebug, he made a wide range of contributions at Facebook, including single-handedly creating the first versions of its hit iPhone app. In a personal blog post, he says that he’s looking to create more tools for developers and designers, and hints that what he does could be mobile-related. 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. |
Buddy Media, the largest Facebook Page management company, has 
Facebook posted a slew of jobs for its Dublin, Ireland offices this week, in addition to research and marketing positions, several engineering jobs, and a few positions in data centers 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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