Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook Roundup: Credits, Deals, Hacker Hire, TV, Hulu, Lawsuits, and Thailand
- Zynga Files to Go Public — Our Coverage
- Zynga Shows Off Strong Financials but Questions Remain Around Impact of Credits, Off-Facebook Revenue
- Gamers Can Now Buy Facebook Credits in 32 More Currencies, Including the Chinese Yuan
- Facebook Asks Users to Clean Up Its Location Database with Places Editor and Favorite Places
- Dating, Photos, Chat and More on This Week’s Top 20 Emerging Facebook Apps by MAU
| Facebook Roundup: Credits, Deals, Hacker Hire, TV, Hulu, Lawsuits, and Thailand Posted: 01 Jul 2011 07:45 PM PDT
Antitrust Complaint Filed Against Facebook Over Credits – Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group, has filed an antitrust complaint with the Federal Trade Commission regarding Facebook's Platform currency, Credits. Their complaint is that Credits is an "anticompetitive" virtual currency that could drive up prices of virtual goods. Facebook Deals Coming to Three More Cities – Facebook tell us it is expanding the beta test of its prepaid coupon service Deals from its initial five cities to include Charlotte, St. Louis, and Minneapolis. Facebook says early feedback from businesses has been positive, though we haven’t seen much adoption in San Francisco. Facebook Hires Hacker – Facebook hired George Hotz, the guy who jailbroke the iPhone. He’s now helping Facebook create its iPad app. Photos From Facebook's New Office – Gawker published photos from Facebook's new headquarters in Menlo Park, which the company plans to start moving to soon. The gallery depicts an open office floor plan similar to the current Facebook HQ’s design. Facebook Pitches Social Program Guide to Media Industry – Facebook’s SVP of Strategic Partner Development Andy Mitchell spoke at at the PromaxBDA conference, telling media industry representatives about how a television program guide that showed what a viewer’s friends watch could get people to watch more. Hulu Botches Facebook Connect Integration – A error in how Hulu implemented a Facebook login system on its video site caused people to become logged in to the accounts of other users. Hulu claims responsibility for the problem and says no highly sensitive information was exposed. The site will remove the Facebook integration temporarily before trying another implementation. Facebook Scores in Ownership Lawsuit – Paul Ceglia, a man in New York who claims to own most of Facebook, has been ordered to give Facebook access to his emails and computer. The company is set to accuse him of forgery. American Express Launches Free Social Media Monitoring Tool - In a bid to help and attract small businesses, American Express launched a free tool called YourBuzz that lets businesses monitor mentions of them on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and other web services.
Thailand Bans Facebook Before Vote – The Thai government has banned Facebook political campaigning the day before a Saturday vote for prime minister. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Zynga Files to Go Public — Our Coverage Posted: 01 Jul 2011 05:19 PM PDT
We’ve been covering the story over on Inside Social Games and Inside Mobile Apps. Here are the links to our coverage: Zynga Files S-1, Plans to Go Public and Raise $1 Billion, Overcoming Credits Costs Zynga Paid $53.3 Million in Cash and Stock For Newtoy, IPO Filing Shows Pincus Sold $109 Million in Stock Back to Zynga in March 2011 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 01 Jul 2011 05:18 PM PDT It’s been a hectic four years since Zynga launched on the Facebook platform, and in most ways the business the company is now showing off to the public is extremely impressive. Revenue is on a run-rate towards $1 billion this year, following nearly $600 million last year, and the company’s games reach nearly 60 million people around the world every day. There’s a lot for investors to like once Zynga makes its initial public offering.
As you can see in the graphs we’ve made above and below using data from Zynga’s S-1 filing today, the company has grown its way to profitability, even as it faces an increasing set of costs associated with the business. Total revenue is climbing towards $250 million per quarter, and since last year it has been handily beating total costs. Digging into the costs, you can see in the second graph that research and development has taken a bigger place at Zynga, which isn’t surprising given its push to improve its technology, build higher-quality games, and expand into new areas like mobile and a site it is reportedly working on called ZLive. The weakness that many developers know well, and that the filing details in the risk section, is the company’s dependence on Facebook. It explicitly notes that communication channel changes and a variety of other factors that have and will affect the business, with Credits being the latest issue. > Continue reading on Inside Social Games. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gamers Can Now Buy Facebook Credits in 32 More Currencies, Including the Chinese Yuan Posted: 01 Jul 2011 02:40 PM PDT Today Facebook announced that Facebook Credits can now be purchased in 32 additional currencies, including the Chinese Yuan, Korean Won, Israeli Shekel, and Singapore dollar, bringing the total number of supported currencies to 47. Facebook also plans to up the number of alternative payment through which users can pay for the Credits to 50. These newly supported currencies and payment options will make it easier for international gamers to become paying customers. The ability to monetize users from around the world is one of the core benefits of Credits to developers, so its fitting that Facebook would make this announcement today on the deadline for all Facebook games to move to Facebook Credits as their exclusive payment method.
Users can select which currency they see prices in and pay with by mousing to the top right corner of Facebook, and clicking Account -> Credits Balance -> Preferred Currency. If a gamer’s home currency isn’t supported, they can still use American Express, Discover, JCB, MasterCard, Visa and PayPal, which Facebook accepts worldwide. They could also use one of the alternative payment methods, which include money transfers through services such as Western Union, mobile payments by Boku or Zong, debit systems, and some online currencies such as MOLePoints. Still, the ability to buy Credits with any local payment form should increase the likelihood that users from these countries will monetize. This may be especially true for younger users who can’t access credit cards or other financial instruments. Smaller developers should benefit from the expanded currency options the Credits support, because they don’t have the resources to secure international payment options for their proprietary in game currencies. Meanwhile, large developers that already have users bases in the newly supported countries should find it easier to get them to purchase virtual goods. Support for the Chinese YuanThe inclusion of the Chinese Yuan as a supported currency is a bit curious, since Facebook is banned in China. Though the Yuan is an option in the Preferred Currency selector, it isn’t mentioned in the announcement, nor is it included in the Help Center document listing supported currencies.
Support for the Yuan will allow Chinese using Facebook while abroad to see prices in a currency they’re familiar with. It could also allow developers to monetize small percentage of the country who are hackers, government officials, or that can otherwise circumvent the Great Firewall of China. There’s also the outside chance that support for the Yuan could be a building block in a strategy to launch Facebook in China. As the last developers switch over to Credits today, anything Facebook can do to smooth the dip in revenues that may occur when users are forced to adopt new purchase habits will help its standing with the developer community and the long term health of the Platform. Below is the list of newly supported currencies:
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| Facebook Asks Users to Clean Up Its Location Database with Places Editor and Favorite Places Posted: 01 Jul 2011 01:04 PM PDT Facebook is currently testing three new features designed to allow users to help the site improve the location database that powers its checkin service Places. The Places Editor app allows users to add missing information to Places, as well as flag duplicate Places that are sometimes added by other locations services including Foursquare and Gowalla. The Favorite Places sidebar module lets users vote which of two Places they prefer, and the Add Category link on news feed checkin stories lets users tag Places with their type. We believe Facebook is using the data to surface higher quality Places when users checkin and search the site, keep the database tidy so that different users check in to the same Place when they’re actually at the same location, and to improve ad relevance.
Facebook launched its checkin service Places in August, using Localeze to initially populate its location database. However, after nine months of use, the Places database has become a bit of a mess. Places and Localeze are not synced, so the Places database does not always accurately reflect new or changed location, or contain pertinent data like a location’s website or category. Users sometimes add duplicate Places instead of checking in to official existing ones. Slightly different duplicate versions of Places are also sometimes added when users of third-party location services such as Foursquare and Gowalla publish their checkins to Places. The result is that when users go to check in from their mobile device, they have to choose between a set of duplicates. For example, trying to check in to popular San Francisco hang out Dolores Park returns over a dozen duplicate Places. This splinters the checkins of users who are actually in the same location across multiple Places, reducing the value of the Here Now feature that shows friends and other users who are checked in to the same Place. It also prevents Facebook from displaying aggregated checkin news feed stories that inform users when multiple groups of friends are at the same Place, or from returning accurate search results.
Therefore, for Facebook Places to be as useful as possible, Facebook needed a way improve the metadata and remove duplicate Places for locations around the world. Its answer appears to be crowdsourcing. Its first data cleanup features were Suggest Edits, shown on all Places pages, and the Community Edits tab application, shown on the Places of cities. Now, Facebook is pushing users to improve its data through a canvas app, sidebar modules, and the news feed. Places EditorSome users are now seeing a Places Editor bookmark in their right sidebar navigation menu. The bookmark opens a canvas application that explains:
Users can then select to work on adding info or removing duplicates of popular Places in their country, local Places, or Places they and their friends have checked in to. If users are in the Missing Information tab, they fill empty fields such as category and phone number, similar to Community Edits. More comprehensive information on Places will allow Facebook to stand in for a phone book or a Google search for an address, and categories in particular can assist with ad targeting.
If users are in the Duplicate Places tab, they’re shown the official or most popular instance of a Place, and asked to mark whether similarly named Places are duplicates. Sometimes these duplicates are listed as being sourced from Foursquare, Gowalla, SCVNGR or other location services. This is because checkin published to Facebook from one of these services via the API aren’t rolled in to the main Place for a location. Scrubbing Places of these duplicates will reduce confusion about which version of a Place to check in to. Favorite PlacesWhile browsing the site, some users are seeing a module in the right sidebar called Favorite Places. It presents users with two Places, typically of the same category, such as bars, or restaurants. Users are asked “Which Place do you like better?” and can hover over one to view a “Vote for this” button. Voting simply brings up another set of choices, with no clear indication of what users are accomplishing. This feature may need better messaging or positive reinforcement if Facebook wants users to vote.
Users can click a “See Your Favorites” link in the module to see a ranked list of all the Places they voted for. Facebook may use the preference data it collects from Favorite Places to to show users the Places they prefer first when they’re deciding where to check in. In this way it can make up for the inaccuracy of GPS and decrease the likelihood that users will have to scroll through many Places to find the one they’re at. It could also add the preference signal to its internal search algorithm so a search of a category returns a user’s favorite matching locations. Add CategoryWhen users viewing their news feed see checkins of friends to Places that are uncategorized, they’ll see an “Add Category” action link beside the options to Like or comment. The link opens a pop up where users can submit category tags, or click through to edit the Place through the Suggest Edits feature.
When users add Places from their mobile device, they can add a name and description, but not a category. By adding categories to these Places, Facebook can properly group them in the Favorite Places module, and more accurately target ads to the users who Like those Places. With Foursquare recently taking $50 million in funding, and other competitors like Google continuing to develop rival products, Facebook needs to keep the Places user experience as streamlined as possible. A major barrier to checking in on any location service is how long it takes. By improving the relevance of the nearby Places suggestions by combining preference and GPS, Facebook can make checking in less of a chore, and rack up more location data it can use to target ads. To learn how your business can benefit from Facebook Places, visit the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s complete guide to marketing and advertising through Facebook. [Thanks to Kevin from Social Yeah for the tips] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dating, Photos, Chat and More on This Week’s Top 20 Emerging Facebook Apps by MAU Posted: 01 Jul 2011 08:38 AM PDT
The apps on our list grew from between 119,600 and 551,900 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook. All in all, it was a pretty typical week for the emerging category, which we define as apps that ended with between 100,000 and 1 million MAU in the past week. Top Gainers This Week
Photo apps utilized different strategies to go viral in users' news feeds on our list this week. Your Previous Life grew by 551,900 MAU, asking a user to answer a question then revealing a user's "past life," publishing a photo and album to your stream. TripAdvisor TripWow grew by 164,400 MAU. The app allows users to create a 3-minute video with their Facebook photos, music, animation and then allows the user to share to the stream. Then there was FunPix, with 119,600 MAU, which allows users to Like or pass on friends' photos, with ratings posted to their Walls.
Dating apps also used photos to grow. TopFace grew by 257,100 MAU, the app asks users to rate photos of their friends, publishing the rating to their Wall, and promising that once you rate 30 you can unlock ratings of your own photos. Get Dating grew by 402,200 MAU and used a similar tactic, after rating a photo, it publishes to the Wall of your friend, but then you unlock a dating membership. Video Yeri is a Turkish video app that grew by 530,700 MAU, then Socialbox grew by 324,900 MAU, this app is a downloadable desktop chat application and finally Page tab application Welcome grew by 131,700 MAU. |
Facebook’s Upcoming "Awesome" Announcement Could Be Video Skype – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg 
How the NHL Gained 2.2M Fans - AllFacebook 
Zynga filed its S-1 today, registering its securities with the US government ahead of an initial public offering, and revealing a wealth of details about Zynga’s business past and present.
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