Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- “Boost Comment” Lets Facebook Comments Box Plugin Admins Surface Quality Comments
- Wildfire Expands From Contests to Full-Fledged Page Management with Social Marketing Suite
- Facebook’s “Comments” Sponsored Story Ad Unit Engages Users With Questions
- Frank Sinatra, Justin Bieber, YouTube, The Simpsons and More on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages
- New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Work4 Labs, BranchOut, Wildfire and More
| “Boost Comment” Lets Facebook Comments Box Plugin Admins Surface Quality Comments Posted: 21 Jun 2011 05:36 PM PDT Admins of websites using Facebook’s Comments Box social plugin can now push the best comments on a post to the top thanks to a new “Boost Comment” moderation option. While Facebook already sorts comments by relevance and a user reputation score, Boost Comment gives admins the power to control which comments are most visible. For websites inundated by trolls and low quality comments such as “First!”, the ability to control the order of comments could be a big selling point for the Comments Box.
Facebook relaunched the Comments Box social plugin for third-party websites in March. It has since increased the size of the news feed stories generated by comments, added the ability to export comments, provided login options for AOL, Yahoo!, and Hotmail. It later added Comments Box performance stats to Insights and a subscribe button to comment threads. By mid-April, 50,000 websites had integrated the plugin, but it is competing against comment plugin providers that have been in business for years and developed more streamlined moderation flows. Facebook’s primary advantage over competing comment plugin providers is its massive social graph, and its ability to drive topical awareness and engagement via exposure in the news feed. Facebook’s addition of Boost Comment shows Facebook is trying to use its reach and untraditional features rather than core functionality to draw websites. How to Boost CommentsWhen admins moderate comments from either the dedicated comment moderator tool or the moderator view on a post, they can click the “Moderation” link to reveal several options. Now, in addition to “Approve Comment”, “Hide Comment” and “Ban User”, admins can select to “Boost Comment” This pushes that comment to the top of the reel. If an admin boosts multiple comments, they’ll appear in reverse chronological order of boosting, so the last comment to be boosted appears first. By clicking the “Moderation” link on an already boosted comment, admins can select “Unboost Comment” to rebury it.
Admins can use the feature to promote the most thoughtful comments to set an example, those they think will spark conversation to gain more traffic when replies are pushed to Facebook, or those written by site admins to surface official comments. Facebook currently doesn’t allow visitors to Comments Box-integrated sites to select how comment reels are sorted. Others plugins such as Disqus let readers sort by parameters such as chronological order, most popular now, or best rated, but none of these are as good a filter as a human admin. Boost Comment gives significant new editorial control to admins. Since they are already reading the comments for moderation purposes, the addition of a sorting option in the same flow is intuitive and useful. Whether admins use the feature to enhance discussion, or just to promote flattering comments and bury critical ones is up to them. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Wildfire Expands From Contests to Full-Fledged Page Management with Social Marketing Suite Posted: 21 Jun 2011 12:40 PM PDT Promotion app developer Wildfire is broadening its service offering with the release of its new Social Marketing Suite. In addition to its Promotion Builder, Social Marketing Suite clients will have access to Page Manager for creating Pages and custom apps, Messenger for scheduling posts and monitoring mentions, and Dashboard for tracking performance analytics. WildFire will now be competing in the relatively crowded Page management space with established, well-funded companies including Buddy Media, Involver, Vitrue, and Syncapse. Though its Promotion Builder clients will no longer have to look elsewhere for Page management, WildFire will have to work hard to retain its best-in-class distinction for contests as it assigns resources to its new products.
An Acquisition Target?Wildfire was founded in 2008 and has only taken $4.1 million in funding since. The company saw that brands needed promotion and engagement apps to draw users to their Page and attain Likes, so it built a suite of app templates including sweepstakes, contest coupons, group deals, and quizzes. While other companies needed much more funding to build out a wide range of products, Wildfire concentrated on its core competency, now powering 100,000 promotions and only releasing a social media monitoring tool late last year so brands could track the success of their promotions. Now the industry is consolidating with older internet companies and Ads API services acquiring Page management companies. We also see some middle market Page management services becoming commodified as satisfactory free tools proliferate and Facebook provides more native Page administration functionality, including moderation. Therefore, Wildfire’s service offering expansion could be an attempt to position itself for acquisition. Otherwise it will have to leverage its existing Promotion Builder client base to pull top brands away from the other Page management companies. Regarding the consolidation, Wildfire co-founder and CEO Victoria Ransom tells us “there’s no doubt that will continue. Social media marketing is a revolution, and there will be other big companies looking to get into it.” She says appearing attractive to acquirers hasn’t been a focus, and that the company ” has its head down, executing on the business”, growing from 10 employees to 120 since the beginning of 2010 mostly through investing profits. The combination of a comprehensive service offering and little funding could make Wildfire an easy Facebook play by older email and internet marketing companies looking to instantly break into Facebook marketing without spending as much as when Efficient Frontier bought Context Optional for $50 million. Social Marketing Suite FeaturesWildfire’s Social Marketing Suite builds on its existing Promotion builder and integrates its monitoring too. None of the features seem especially unique, but they cover the essentials. Page Manager lets clients build custom landing tabs and Facebook Page tab applications that host contests and other engagement mechanisms. Brands can also install plug-and-play pre-made applications. The tool also allows for easy localization of Pages for different languages.
Messenger tracks what users are saying about a brand and allows them to respond to generate good will and tend to customer service issues. Page updates and responses can be scheduled for maximum visibility and streamlining of work flow. Similar to HearSay Social, Messenger supports a corporate/local structure by allowing updates to be deployed to multiple Pages. For instance, the corporate branch of an insurance company could design a promotion and write updates that comply with industry regulations, and then have the updates posted by each of the Pages representing the companies local branches. Dashboard provides standard social media marketing analytics as well as tracking the spread of viral campaigns from “views to entries, shares, invites, and conversions” says Ransom. Brands can also compare their performance against competitors thanks to data on 30 million Facebook Pages and Twitter accounts that Wildfire collects. Ransom tells us that clients will still be able to pay for Promotion Builder on a per promotion basis. The Social Marketing Suite will be subscription based, though, allowing unlimited promotions and use of features. At first, only higher tiered plans with robust customizability will be available, costing in the low thousands per month, but plans in the low hundreds per month will eventually launch. Powerful promotional apps are still something many brands are willing to pay thousands a month, but some of the other features available in Social Marketing Suite can attained for free or cheap from other third-party providers. Wildfire will need to upsell its current clients on why unified suite is the best choice for them, or it risks diluting its focus without enough reward. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook’s “Comments” Sponsored Story Ad Unit Engages Users With Questions Posted: 21 Jun 2011 10:55 AM PDT
The Comments Sponsored Story was the result of a challenge Facebook posed to ad agencies to suggest a new way for brands to engage users, as AdAge covers. The ad’s low barrier to participation and subsequent free exposure in the news feed means it has great potential to provide a high return on investment. Comments will be the first Sponsored Story not found in the self-serve ad took, and will instead only be available to those with premium advertising accounts, according to the article. To use it, brands will work with a Facebook rep to take a question asked in one of their Page updates, and display that within a text field in the Sponsored Story. When users comment, their friends may see that comment just above the ad’s content, or as a separate news feed story, allowing them to join the conversation. By displaying interesting photos, videos, or text and inviting users to answer a funny question or share a personal anecdote, brands can augment their Comments ads with content that will be highly relevant to the participant’s friends who will see it. In this way, brands get users to generate more compelling ads from the ground up than they could possibly from the top down. Launch partners for the ad unit include Allstate Insurance and Hallmark. For example, Allstate Insurance will run Comments Sponsored Stories that display a humorous video about kids wrecking a car’s interior, and ask users what was the worst thing their kid has done to a car. Earned Views Boost ROIFacebook launched its social ad unit Sponsored Stories in January to allow brands and app developers to increase the reach of news feed stories about Likes of their Pages, shares through their apps, checkins to their Places, and their own Page updates by displaying them as ads as well. In April, Facebook launched three more Sponsored Stories types that promote user Likes of Page updates, Likes on third-party websites, and usage of apps and games. Pre-launch tests by Facebook indicated Sponsored Stories led to brand lift and increased ad recall, engagement, and likeliness to recommended a brand or app to friends. Independent tests by third-party Ads API service provider TBG Digital indicate Sponsored Stories have a 46% higher click through rate, a 20% lower cost per click, and an 18% lower cost per fan than Facebook's standard ad units.
Sponsored Stories leverages the strength of Facebook’s enormous audience and usage to offer advertisers bonus earned exposure on top of their paid clicks. With brands concentrating on their social media ROI, Sponsored Stories could lead them to shift spend away from search, off-site display, or event TV to Facebook where they might get news feed exposure and two clicks for each click they pay for. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 21 Jun 2011 09:18 AM PDT
Top Gainers This Week
Topping the list was the Official Grease Movie Page, with 2.8 million new Likes, totaling more than 4 million. Then there was the Frank Sinatra Page with 1.1 million new Likes, growing the Page to 1.3. million. Each of these Pages grew by the millions of Likes in the span of two days, suggesting consolidations of unofficial Pages.
Also on the list were a few tech companies, Facebook with 772,400 new Likes to grow to 46,5 million and YouTube with 695,900 new Likes to grow the Page to 39.7 million. Then there were media Pages. "The Simpsons" grew by 605,200 Likes to each 30.5 million. "South Park" grew by 534,400 Likes to reach 30.4 million by promoting Like-gated content and "Family Guy" grew by 494,400 to reach 33.7 Likes by publishing photos and videos related to the show. "Harry Potter" grew by 505,300 Likes to come in just under 27 million Likes after releasing more trailers and media information as the countdown to the final film continues.
Cristiano Ronaldo's Page grew by 513,300 Likes to reach 29.4 million. The rest of the Pages are music. Justin Bieber's Page grew by 1.8 million Likes by promoting his new video and single, as well as asking fans to vote for him in an MTV contest. Katy Perry's Page added over 1 million Likes by providing new photos and video updates. Rihanna's Page grew by 750,200 Likes with Twitter updates, tour photos and updates. Shakira's Page added 712,600 Likes after updating from her tour with videos. Eminem's Page grew by 686,400 Likes.
Lady Gaga's Page grew by 631,700 Likes with a combination of promoting her new album and marriage equality, and also asking fans to vote for her on MTV's contest. AKON's Page grew by 546,600 Likes to reach 26.2 million, Lil Wayne's page grew by 517,700 Likes to 27.6 million and Linkin Park grew by 479,600 Likes to almost 31 million after promoting their song on a summer blockbuster soundtrack. Beyoncé continued to promote her upcoming album, adding 476,700 Likes to reach 24.5 million and Avril Lavigne added 469,800 Likes to reach 22.5 million after updating and asking for support on that MTV nomination. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Work4 Labs, BranchOut, Wildfire and More Posted: 21 Jun 2011 08:13 AM PDT Work4 Labs made a big hire this week of Brian Louie as Vice President of Sales; he previously worked at Monster Worldwide. Other companies hired a few interns, operations personnel and account staff. If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com, and we'll get it into next week's post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes directly from company updates from LinkedIn. Looking for new opportunities? Check out the Inside Network Job Board, which shows the latest openings at leading companies in the industry. Here's this week's list of hires:
Context Optional (part of Efficient Frontier)
|
Facebook has released its eighth Sponsored Story ad unit. Called “Comments”, it draws from a Facebook Page’s posts to generate a display ad that poses a question beneath the ad’s content, inviting users to give their opinion or participate in a conversation. If users leave a comment, it can become visible to their friends as both a Sponsored Story and as a news feed story — the latter driving earned views and clicks of a brand’s content at no additional cost.
Comments will give brands with premium advertising accounts more flexibility in how they use Sponsored Stories. Rather than placing a call to comment in the body of the ad with a Page Post Sponsored Story and hope users click the small feedback button to reveal the comment text field, the Comments Sponsored Story makes the text field persistently visible and fills it with the call to comment.
| 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 | |