Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook Hires Team From Sofa, a Dutch Development and Design Company
- Facebook for BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet v1.0.5 Adds Video Uploads, Still No Events
- MerchantCircle Survey Indicates Plenty of Runway for Facebook Ads Among Local Businesses
- Sequoia-Backed Taykey Mines Trends in Real-Time to Power Cost Per Action Ad Targeting
- How to Build a Customized Facebook Landing Page Using Iframes
- Facebook Hires and Departures: Interns, Global Brand Partnerships, Operations and More
- Facebook Careers Postings: Singapore, São Paulo, Engineering, Marketing, Communication and More
| Facebook Hires Team From Sofa, a Dutch Development and Design Company Posted: 09 Jun 2011 06:28 PM PDT Facebook has hired the team of Amsterdam-based startup Sofa, and will incorporate it within its design group. The talent acquisition does not include the Sofa’s software products, which include Kaleidoscope for tracking differences in text and images, Versions – a Mac client for Subversions which offers code version control, Enstore for managing sales and accounting of physical retail stores, and ecommerce platform Enstore. The Sofa team will move to Palo Alto to work at Facebook HQ, but its products will remain live and supported. "We were just blown away by the Sofa team's work, from their Mac and web software to the interfaces and brand identities they created for clients,” Facebook director of design Kate Aronowitz said in a statement. “The more we got to know them, the more we realized that their passion for working in small teams and iterating to find solutions to hard problems matched our own culture. We can't wait for them to join the team."
Aside from working within the design team, Sofa’s expertise could help Facebook with a variety of products. Its knowledge of tracking file changes could keep Facebook from indexing redundant data, such as when identical copies of a photo are uploaded. Its experience building ecommerce products could allow Facebook to offer better support to the growing developer ecosystem of Facebook Page ecommerce storefronts. The Sofa team could even work farther behind the scenes, assisting with development of Facebook’s internal engineering tools it has built to handle the unique complexities of its scale.
This is Facebook’s seventh talent-focused acquisition this year, following personal analytics developer Daytum, HTML5 experts RecRec, hyper-local advertising startup Rel8tion, feature phone app developer Snaptu, social recruiting site Pursuit, and group messaging service Beluga. | ||
| Facebook for BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet v1.0.5 Adds Video Uploads, Still No Events Posted: 09 Jun 2011 05:51 PM PDT BlackBerry released an update this week of its Facebook for BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet mobile app that gives uses the ability to upload videos, select albums to add photos to, and improves the interface for search, Pages, and the news feed. The app still lacks Events, which we see as a glaring omission for any somewhat-mobile Facebook app, even if you don’t consider tablets truly mobile. BlackBerry released the first iteration of its Facebook app for PlayBook at the beginning on May, about two weeks after the launch of the device itself. Some reports and BlackBerry have said sales are healthy, including one estimating 250,000 units sold in the first month. A conflicting report from a source at Best Buy stated that sales had missed goals by 90% and the return rate was high.
Facebook apps have been pegged as big drivers of engagement on mobile devices, so a strong and innovative version for PlayBook could help sales of the device that analysts say is crucial to the future of Blackberry developer Resarch In Motion (RIM). Facebook for BlackBerry PlayBook v1.0.5′s ability to upload video to Facebook is unique amongst official Facebook mobile apps. This, along with its multi-pane Chat interface from the initial version, help it stand out from Facebook for Android and iPhone (also used for iPad). The PlayBook’s video recorder shoots in 1080p, so users could easily record and upload a high-def video of a demo at business conference. Other improvements bring the PlayBook app’s design in line with that of iPhone and Android devices. Pages can be accessed from a button in the Friends section, users can filter search by friends, everyone, or Pages, and a ‘+’ button beside news feed stories allows users to quickly add Likes or comments without leaving the news feed view. Photos can be uploaded to a specific album, and links to settings and the Help Center are readily available.
The most recent version of Facebook for BlackBerry Smartphones allows users to choose when they delete Messages whether to delete them from just their device, their Facebook account, or both. The PlayBook update allows for Message deletion, but only from both your device and account at the same time. V1.0.5 does not resolve the app’s lack of Facebook Groups or Events. With the PlayBook catering to business networkers who often attend business conferences and mixers, the omission of Events is difficult to understand. The feature’s presence in even the earliest iterations of most Facebook mobile apps would suggest it isn’t a difficult technology problem to solve. While unique features may attract attention, a Facebook mobile app needs to cover the basic Facebook experiences, and the PlayBook’s doesn’t yet. | ||
| MerchantCircle Survey Indicates Plenty of Runway for Facebook Ads Among Local Businesses Posted: 09 Jun 2011 04:30 PM PDT While 66% of small businesses have used Facebook for marketing, only 22% have used Facebook ads, according to MerchantCircle, the largest online network of local business owners. The company released its quarterly Merchant Confidence Index survey of 5,000 local business owners today, and other findings include the following: two thirds of those who’ve used Facebook ads would do so again, location-based marketing is declining, and interest is on the rise for group deals, especially those published by familiar entities including Facebook and Google. The survey’s results indicate that Facebook’s self-serve advertising business, which account for a very significant portion of its total revenue, has plenty of room to grow. If Facebook can convince more local marketers on the site to advertise, it could fuel big total revenue gains that might improve its standing in the event of a long-anticipated IPO.
While the sample size is relatively low compared to the amount of marketers and advertisers on Facebook, MerchantCircle doesn’t overtly tout an Facebook-related services, so the data shouldn’t be biased. Here are the core findings of the study: Facebook Ads
The high awareness of Facebook Ads, coupled with the 44% difference between marketers and advertisers shows that there’s great potential for the self-serve ad product to grow. Facebook could increase the percentage of repeat advertisers and counter the biggest reason for not repeating by improving its education efforts and providing advertisers with best practices for targeting, creative, and bid management.
Daily Deals
Facebook’s daily deals service Facebook Deals is off to a shaky start, with anecdotal evidence suggesting few purchases due to weak value and low quality of available deals. However, MerchantCircle’s data indicates businesses are interested in using the service. Facebook needs to consider subsidizing Deals so it can hook users with huge discounts, and should consider improving copy-writing and design to make Deals more compelling. Location-Based and Mobile Marketing
Facebook’s location-based deals service Checkin Deals that builds on Places hasn’t seen much adoption despite it being a free way to inspire users to promote a business to their friends through checkins. Again, Facebook needs to provide better educational resources, perhaps in the form of webinars or live seminars in key markets to jumpstart business adoption of Checkin Deals.
Overall, the data tells a story of how Facebook holds significant marketing and advertising potential for small and local businesses. However, without large dedicated ads or marketing teams they can’t get a good enough understanding of social to dedicate spend there. While Facebook has purposefully tried to keep its number of employees low to maintain the startup feel, the strategy may be inhibiting it from conducting the education and outreach efforts that could accelerate growth of its business. | ||
| Sequoia-Backed Taykey Mines Trends in Real-Time to Power Cost Per Action Ad Targeting Posted: 09 Jun 2011 12:36 PM PDT
The company tracks social media mention and search trends in real-time to take advantage of urgent advertising opportunities and interest-based targeting parameters to power Facebook, Twitter, and search campaigns. Here’s a closer look at what it provides to advertisers on and off Facebook. How Taykey WorksLet’s take a look at an example of an advertising campaign powered by Taykey. A singing contest television show such as X-Factor could hire Taykey for a month-long campaign on what amounts to cost per Facebook Like model, where the client pays a price per Like and sets a goal of the total Likes they want. Taykey would then monitor social networks, news, blogs, and searches for trends in the behavior and interests of the show’s target age and location demographic. It could determine what other TV shows or musical artists the audience Likes, and then run a series Facebook ad campaigns for the X-Factor Page targeted at people with those Likes. Taykey co-founder and CEO Amit Avner tells us that “if X-Factor judge Paula Abdul falls off the stage, we’ll know in five seconds and go buy ‘Paula Abdul’ Google search keyword ads” to preempt the oncoming rush of searches for that keyword. Taykey might also purchase Twitter trending topics, or ads on Bing, Myspace, Digg in an effort to drive its own cost per Facebook fan as low as possible to make the maximum margin on the deal with X-Factor. Otherwise, X-Factor might just target 18-35 year old women, whereas Taykey would target those with interests related to the show, such as those who Like competing show American Idol. Taykey says its patent-pending algorithm mines data from across the web, deduces keywords and sentiment, and maps the data to demographic and psychographic profiles. It then specifically targets those with the right profile, relieving brands from having to constantly discover new targets. Without using cookies or tracking of individuals, it shifts spend from one trend to the next attain the optimal CPA.
Avner explains to us that brands advertising on Facebook often target an age, gender, and location demographic that is too wide and unfocused, leading to lower conversion and rapid burnout. Taykey pinpoints the interests of these audiences to run a series of campaigns that keep conversion rates higher over time than more general campaigns. For instance, instead of targeting 18-24 year old males in New York City that Like ‘hip hop’, Taykey would determine specific artists such as “Jay-Z”, or television shows such as ’106th & Park’ to target the fans of. Taykey and Real-Time Facebook AdvertisingThe 19-employee Tel Aviv-based company was founded by three former members of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s intelligence arm, and has now secured a total of $12 million in funding. Several Fortune 100 companies have already run campaigns targeted by Taykey’s algorithm, including Pepsi, for which it attained 46,000 Likes in two days at half the projected spend. It will use use the new round of funding, joined by Softbank Capital and Crescent Point, to hire engineers in Tel Aviv, Israel and to build out a New York sales office.
As more brands realize the concrete value of Facebook fans, CPA ad services such as Taykey will become crucial to attaining large volumes of fans at the lowest possible price. While more well established Ads API tools and services will likely continue to manage much of the Facebook spend of the world’s biggest brands, real-time focused advertising services can complement a marketing mix by exploiting fleeting low-cost pockets of conversions. | ||
| How to Build a Customized Facebook Landing Page Using Iframes Posted: 09 Jun 2011 11:46 AM PDT
Luxury apparel brand Lacoste has built up a Page on Facebook that has almost six million fans, and it has done so with the help of a landing page that encourages first-time visitors to immediately interact with it, either by Liking the Page or by using a branded application. While Facebook by default sends users straight to a Page’s Wall, Lacoste provides a good example of why you should consider a more sophisticated approach to engaging users — especially because Facebook itself has recently changed the options for what you can and can’t do with Pages. In the following article, we’ll explain the necessary steps for creating a quality custom landing page for your Page.
In March 2011 Facebook removed the Static FBML app for Facebook, which was the popular choice for building customized landing pages and other tabs in Pages. While existing tabs using the Static FBML app continue to function for now, new tabs cannot be built in this way. Instead, customized tabs on Facebook Pages need to be created as a new app via the Facebook Developers site, with your chosen content then embedded using an iframe. Although Page owners who use Static FBML will need to adapt, the change is overall a win for the ecosystem. Whereas Static FBML pages were fully hosted on Facebook and had some limitations, you can embed any kind of web page into an iframe, giving the developer unlimited possibilities. It's now very easy to add crowd-pleasing functionality such as images, video and tweets, as well as back-end technology such as Google Analytics for tracking usage. And, because these pages are hosted on your website, you have complete control over how everything looks and works. You can read the full article, including a step-by-step guide to setting up customized landing Pages using iframes, in our Facebook Marketing Bible. | ||
| Facebook Hires and Departures: Interns, Global Brand Partnerships, Operations and More Posted: 09 Jun 2011 08:30 AM PDT
New hires per LinkedIn and Other Sources:
Recent departures, per LinkedIn and Other Sources:
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: Singapore, São Paulo, Engineering, Marketing, Communication and More Posted: 09 Jun 2011 08:00 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. |
Cost-per-action social media and search advertising service 
The “Related Adverts” 
There were a few interesting hires at Facebook this week, as deduced from Facebook’s 
Facebook is looking to make several hires at its Singapore and São Paulo offices this week, according to its Careers | You are subscribed to email updates from Inside Facebook To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |