Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- How to Grow Your Page with Like Count Milestone Campaigns
- New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: SponsorPay, Zen Entertainment, Tagged, Dynamic Signal and More
- Facebook Launching Ad Hoc Group Chat, New Chat Design, Skype Video Calling
- Zuckerberg Confirms That Facebook Has Reached 750 Million Monthly Actives
- Live-Blogging a Facebook Chat Product Launch at the Start of “Launching Season 2011″
- Birthdays, Spotify, Friends, Mobile, Horoscopes and More on This Week’s List of Top Gaining Apps by DAU
| How to Grow Your Page with Like Count Milestone Campaigns Posted: 06 Jul 2011 01:33 PM PDT
The following is an excerpt. The complete article, available in our Facebook Marketing Bible, includes the full eight steps to make sure you take for doing a promotion, as well as notes on having back-up plans, as well as what to watch out for in Facebook’s Promotions Guidelines. While listening to and engaging with your customers is the top priority for all brands with a presence on Facebook, growing the number of Likes on your Page is also of major importance. There is no recommended maximum for a Page's Likes – the bigger, the better. In previous articles we have looked at the value of incentivizing the Like on Facebook Pages, and one of the best ways to do this is through the use of a promotion that encourages existing fans to share and recommend the Page to their friends in exchange for a reward once a predetermined number of Likes has been reached. By evangelizing fans in this way you can benefit from the positive effects of word-of-mouth and personal recommendation, driving the size of your Facebook community to the next level.
In this article we will look at how marketers and brands can utilize existing fans to drive new Likes to Facebook Pages via the use of Like targeting. Who Should Do This?Because they depend heavily on fan involvement, Like targeting promotions work best on Facebook Pages that are already well-established with an engaged and receptive audience. New Pages or those with a low number of existing Likes should build the community size using CPC and other methods before attempting promotions of this kind. Driving fans towards a Like total in exchange for a reward, particularly if that is a discount, works best on Facebook Pages where the brand has something to sell, preferably via an online store that is tied to the Page. Because these kinds of promotions depend so heavily on fan involvement and building a sense of urgency, they should not be overused — no more than one to two times per year for smaller Pages, and possibly every other year for larger Facebook communities. The Promotion1. Decide On The Number Of Likes To Be Targeted And How Long The Promotion Will LastThese are both key factors – a small number of Likes can obviously be realized in a shorter period of time, but might be unsatisfying for all concerned, while promotions that go on too long (or indefinitely) won't hold the interest of your community. Both the marketer and fans want this to succeed – the latter want the prize, and the former wants the boost in community size (and to avoid egg on face at all costs). Hence, it is important that both the target and timeframe are realistic. The optimal combination is a healthy Likes target over a fairly strict timeframe that carries a sense of urgency but seems achievable with effort, energizing the community into taking action. For example, a page with 3,000 existing Likes might utilize a promotion that targets reaching 5,000 Likes in 10 to 14 days. That same page could also target 10,000 Likes in a month, but 25,000 Likes over two to three months would be unadvisable. Move through milestones naturally and organically. The full article, which covers eight steps to make sure you think through when doing a promotion, can be found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network's complete guide to marketing, advertising, and ecommerce on Facebook. Other steps cover how to prime the existing user base for the promotion, as well details on running ads to support the promotion, and much more. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 06 Jul 2011 12:01 PM PDT The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms. Here are this week's highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at SponsorPay, Zen Entertainment, PopCap Games, Tagged, King.com, Dynamic Signal and Pontiflex.
Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Launching Ad Hoc Group Chat, New Chat Design, Skype Video Calling Posted: 06 Jul 2011 10:29 AM PDT CEO Mark Zuckerberg today announced that Facebook would be launching several new features, including ad hoc group chat, a new design for its Chat interface, and a Skype integration to allow for video calling. These features are already live for some users, and the global roll out to the rest of the user base will happen quickly.
Ad Hoc Group ChatUsers will be able to choose multiple friends and begin a Group Chat instantly, without previously having created a Group with those friends. While Chatting with one friend, a drop down will allow users to “Add Friends to Chat”. This opens a type ahead, with each entered friend being added to the conversation. This way, rather than having to purposefully start a group chat, it can organically grow out of a standard one-on-one chat.
If added users are online, they’ll see messages as Chat. Otherwise, the group chat messages will appear in their inbox. Group chat also works with Facebook’s mobile interfaces, in the sense that mobile users can be added to a group chat and see messages from all other participants, though they won’t be able to add new people to the conversation. Facebook has taken precautions to alleviate privacy issues that could arise from one user adding others to a private one-on-one conversation that might contain sensitive content. Project Manager Peter Deng tells us that, “When you take a one-on-one chat and turn it into a Group chat, you don’t bring over the Chat history. You have a clean slate. People can add to that, but by then they know they’re not talking one-on-one.” Facebook explained that 50% of users are already using its Groups feature, with an average of seven users per group. The pre-made group chat feature was apparently very popular, and the company figured that making the feature available ad hoc between friends who weren’t already in a Group together would further increase usage.
New Chat Design“It’s been hard to start a conversation before”, says Deng. Now, Facebook will snap on a Chat sidebar if there is enough room in a user’s browser, making it easier to browse Facebook while Chatting. “This makes it so users who have wide enough screens will have an easier time initiating conversations” says Zuckerberg. Deng tells us that the goal was to make Chat more a part of the browser. “As you’re browsing Facebook, conversations with friends will always be one click away.” The new sidebar Chat design also includes a more prominent iteration of an older feature called “Limit Availability on Chat”. This allows users to select which of their friend lists they appear available for Chat to. They can select to appear available or unavailable to different lists.
Previously, users had to select which lists to show in chat, and then click on a green pill icon to become available or unavailable to friends in that list. With how buried and difficult to understand this feature was, it probably wasn’t used very often. The new design presents users with a clear “Limit Availability” option within the Chat panel. The added prominence of this form of privacy settings may be able to combat a major issue with the Chat product – – the desire to not be interrupted. Users can Chat with close friends without being interrupted by those they’re less familiar with. Alternatively, users can Chat only with their professional contacts or co-workers during the day. By being able to select exactly who one appears available to in an intuitive way, users may be more comfortable leaving Chat on. Skype Video CallingThe Facebook Skype video calling feature will require users to download a plugin. However, if a user hasn’t installed the video chat plugin, they’ll be able to receive an invite to a video call, download the plugin on the spot, and begin video calling. This is different from traditional Skype where both users need to have downloaded Skype before hand.
Video calling can be reached from a new Call button on a friend’s profile or from the Chat panel. Users see a “Set up video calling” prompt within Facebook, click to accept, and the 29 kb plugin downloads and installs within the browser. Users can then begin their video call. A recipient receives an alert that they’re being called, and can then accept or decline.
The video call window is a separate browser window from Facebook, meaning users can browse around Facebook or other websites while carrying on a video call. Users can select to mute themselves or change their audio input options.
Update: Facebook has set up a landing page for video calling that allows users who haven’t received the roll out of the feature to gain access. A Help Center article about video calling also includes some more details:
Zuckerberg says that Facebook will begin with one-on-one video calling. However, there may be potential for group video calling in the future. Tony Bates, Skype’s CEO, says that his company is ”considering having Skype paid products within the [Facebook] product.” In fact, Skype’s consumer head head of consumer product Neil Stevens says that soon users will be able to click on highlighted phone numbers within Facebook to initiate a Skype voice call with them. This will be a paid service, though its unclear whether users will pay Skype directly or purchase calling minutes with Facebook Credits. Other features in the works include Facebook to Skype client calling and group video calling.
Previously, Facebook had worked with Skype to add features from the news feed into Skype’s desktop software. This new partnership between Skype and Facebook worked such that Skype built the downloadable plugin, and Facebook worked on the user flow and getting two people connected as quickly as possible once they’ve sent a video call request. Phillip Su, the feature’s engineer, tells us it should not present a traffic issue that could cause Facebook to load slower because 95-98% of the traffic of a video calls passes peer-to-peer, and not through Facebook. Su tells us that the majority of Facebook’s web users connect via broadband, so video calls should run at relatively high definition most of the time. However, Skype’s technology will degrade video quality when necessary but always maintain the audio feed in order to “preserve the impression of continuous connection” says Su. The video call feature has been in development since before Microsoft moved to acquire Skype. It was also being prepared before Google launched its video call feature Hangouts. Deng tells us “we’re in the business of giving users the best features we have available”, and that this was ready, so the company launched it. However, we’ve heard rumors that the feature could have been even better if given more development time, so perhaps launch was accelerated to prevent Google from gaining a lead in the space. Deng tells us that Facebook will be watching the level of adoption and user behavior for all of the new products, and will then determine where to go next in terms of features and presentation. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Zuckerberg Confirms That Facebook Has Reached 750 Million Monthly Actives Posted: 06 Jul 2011 10:28 AM PDT Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that Facebook had surpassed 750 million monthly active users today at a product launch in Palo Alto. He said the company had declined to announce it earlier because it’s become focused on other metrics, including how actively users are sharing information. “Hopefully, we’ll get to a billion at some point,” he said. “I think people generally think that’s going to happen at some point.” The announcement suggest that Facebook’s growth, at least in terms of raw monthly actives, is continuing at a linear, not exponential, pace. The company has been growing at just under 50 million monthly actives every two months since late 2009. It last said it was at 500 million monthly actives a year ago. Zuckerberg said he believes social networking is moving into a different era — one that is more predicated on the strength of connections rather than the quantity of users or ubiquity of the technology. “Social networking is at an inflection point,” he said. “Mostly it was about connecting people and there was still this question about whether social networking was going to be this widespread, ubiquitous service in the world. That chapter is more or less done at this point.” | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Live-Blogging a Facebook Chat Product Launch at the Start of “Launching Season 2011″ Posted: 06 Jul 2011 10:15 AM PDT Today, Facebook is launching a new product at its Palo Alto headquarters. The company has done far fewer press events like this in 2011 versus last year, especially last fall. The previous one was in early April, about something different — its Open Compute data project. Our paraphrased live-blog, below:
10:14 Mark Zuckerberg is on: Today marks the beginning of “launching season” of 2011. [He tells a story about a neighbor asking for video chat.] But I want to talk about the bigger trends. It’s always about connecting people. “Looking at all these new people getting connected.” Until the last couple of years, most people really had open questions about whether social networking would be something that reaches everyone in the world. That chapter is more or less done at this point. Sure, we’re not everywhere yet. But there’s this clear arch where now the world generally believes that it is going to be everywhere. People want to stay connected. Somebody’s going to be building tools. Metric has been user growth. One of our engineers at a hackathon built a visualization of the world, between people in different places. The next five years? Yes, connecting us, but it won’t be wiring up the world. It’ll be about the cool apps you can build, this wiring and social infrastructure. It really reminded me of those maps of the internet. When it was first developing, really serious companies built up in specific areas, where it’s the best that they can do. 10:20 One thing that’s important is how you measure these things. If you measure in active users, that doesn’t tell you everything. The amount of stuff that the given user shares today is about twice the amount they shared a year ago. Then twice as much a year from now [and so on]. They started off sharing one thing a week, then sharing a ton of stuff.
One of my investors likes to say that humans are bad at estimating exponential growth. If you took a piece of paper and folded it 50 times, most people think it’d go a few feet, but it’d actually go to the moon and back 10 times. It’s growing at a much faster rate than user growth. We’ve grown to 750 million users. But sharing has grown much more. [Then he talks about Moore's Law.] 18 months from now, 36 months from now, we see our own growth and the growth of the Facebook ecosystem, you can plot this same sort of trend out into the future. 10:25 What types of apps will need to exist 3 to 5 years from now? If you look at where the site started off, you can see that people share .1 things a day. Then built more and more. Photos. Way before mobile photos, so mostly big albums. Once every few weeks on average. Then news feed increased the rate of flow. Platform brought a whole new wave. Then the Like button, Groups, lighter-weight messages. More than 4 billion things shared every day. The stuff that we’re doing today doesn’t have to do with today. There are three specific things. 1. Group Chat. More than half our users are using Groups. Really powerful. Not everyone does sharing. We want to make it so you can do ad-hoc chat as well. 2. New Chat design. Reported awhile ago that there are billions of messages going through our chat system per day. One thing that’s been surprising to us is how hard it is to find people who are online. If we can make it so people who have the screenwidth to run the normal Facebook and run a buddy list, we think a lot of people will want this. We’re already one of if not the biggest chat service in the world. 3. Video calling. We’re doing this with Skype. This is symbolic of the type of way we’ll do these things. As I was talking before about building these social apps on top of this social infrastructure. 10:30 I can go to Peter’s profile [an engineer], something will pop up on his screen showing that I’m calling him. Then download the plugin and we start chatting. The system already knows we’re connected. Not the case like with traditional Skype where both people need to download it beforehand. Something else about our relationship with Skype. We want to focus on social and let the others do other things. [Peter Deng, the engineer, comes on stage.] People love groups, and love chatting with them. Because these groups are on average 7 people per group, you really have these intimate conversations. Ad Hoc Group Chat. Let’s you immediately create new groups. New Design. Takes into account your browser. Automatically shows you side bar if your browser is wide enough. Also shows friends who are not available. You can still send them messages. One-click access to people you message most. Simplified Chat. Adapted design to what we’ll be doing in the coming months. In addition, an icon for Now Phillip is going to give a demo of video calling. 10:35 Hi, Im an engineer in Facebook’s Seattle office. A great feature that we’re rolling out today, you can get to not just through the chat tab but through the profile. Click, call, connect immediately. Instead of just telling you about the feature, let me show you the feature working. [He shows the feature working.] 10:40 Tony Bates comes on. The partnership started off with us taking feeds, contacts, integrating IM. We’d already cracked the desktop. We started to make our way into the living room. There’s no greater place to get to the web than Facebook. The technology itself, it’s tough. We’re getting to billions of people. When we started working on this about 6 months ago, it became clear that we could establish a long-term strategic benefit for both of us. We have folks [across the world] working on it. We have a shared vision of what communication can mean. [Zuckerberg is back on.] 10:45 Bates and Zuckerberg are answering. All are Zuck unless otherwise noted. Q: What about group video chat? What do you think of Google Hangouts? A: We had worked together before the Microsoft acquisition. I wouldn’t rule anything out. Wouldn’t undervalue what we’re doing today. Most chat is one-to-one. You’ll see a lot of companies that hadn’t traditionally looked at social networking in their apps, that will look at it. Netflix comes to mind. They want to do social stuff well. They haven’t, traditionally. Now that there’s the social infrastructure in place, we’ll see a lot of companies trying to build on top. Q: For Tony. Any issue with people switching from Skype to Facebook usage? A: For us the most important thing — our goal is a billion [users] and this will help us get there. We talked about it early on. Q: How would you accept a video integration? A: [Zuckerberg re-explains video chat.] Q: What’s in it for Skype, financially? A: Bates: We’re not talking about features, but I did allude to the fact that there’ll be a way to get Skype paid products. Q: What about mobile applications on tablets and smartphones? A: Mobile not ready yet. Inbox is actually the same as the IM that pops up, but you can also have those conversations from your inbox in mobile. These are mostly web features for now. We develop in an iterative way, making one thing really good. Q: Our question of the impact on the infrastructure. This is obviously a huge load. Build your own data centers? We’re definitely on this trend now, given the scale of usage and information flowing through the network, where we’ll be building our own network. Skype worked because it was all peer-to-peer. That part is built by Skype, and the reason they have such widespread adoption, before broadband, they had a way of doing video calling that was low bandwidth but good enough that people loved it. Bates: Think of this as a mini Skype client, powered by the same technology. Q: What is the current overlap between Facebook users and Skype users. A: [Neither knows. They don't track.] Q: Any financial terms? To what degree did Microsoft relationship play in. Same free Skype service, but trimmed down to fit within Facebook. Now we’re figuring out what to do next. Before it’d been inside Skype. This turn is inside Facebook. We’ll see what demand there is. Group chat, etc. We have a really good relationship with Microsoft. Then Bing. Now this. It would have been fine when you were an independent company, too. But now that you’re owned by Microsoft, this gives a sense of stability too. Bates: The day we announced, we went to see Mark. It was one of our most strategic relationships. Q: What’s happening in terms of group management and friend management over time? A: People are sharing with different audiences. If this doubling keeps on playing out. 32x times in 5 years, etc. Some are going to be passive. Please share this app. Another one is going to be mobile. Now instead of just being at a computer, it’ll be mobile. Who you share with, social norms, small groups. We’ve focused on groups. The definition is a group in which everyone in it knows everyone else in it. We’ve just found that the majority of users don’t want to take the time to configure things themselves. Even just accepting friends, they’ll never go out of their way. They’ll be passive, and only get pulled in when enough of their friends pull them in. One of the reasons that half of the user base. Friend lists — only ever 5% of the user base has ever adopted those. Biggest traffic driver is apps — integrate. Mobile is by far the second. Third is segmentation into groups, etc. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 06 Jul 2011 08:21 AM PDT
Top Gainers This Week
Birthday Calendar grew this week by 3.3 million DAU; the app creates an interface with a user's photos and birthdays in calendar form, allowing them to add events to it. Spotify grew by 1.2 DAU, almost entirely in the United Kingdom; the app allows Facebook users to use Spotify inside of Facebook. Then there were, as usual, a variety of friend apps.
60photos grew by 569,900 DAU by allowing users to rate friends' photos as "nice" or "pass," posting to the photographer's Wall when rated "nice." Social Statistics is an app that publishes a list of your top 10 "fans," and grew by 490,700 DAU. 21 questions grew by 359,000 DAU; the app asks questions of a user's friends, publishing a story to their Wall with answers. Between You and Me is an app that grew by 149,700 DAU and is a quiz app for friends, publishing a story to their Walls with an answer.
Mobile apps included Snaptu's Facebook for Every Phone which grew by 148,400 DAU, eBuddy, which grew by 123,700 DAU mostly in Mexico, Indonesia and India. The app allows users to use Facebook chat on their mobile phones. HTC Sense, then, grew by 114,300 DAU mostly in the United States. Finally, Daily Horoscope grew by 333,400 DAU and is a horoscope that grew mostly in the US. The app gives users the option to publish daily to their Wall. The Fortune Teller is another horoscope app with 128,700 DAU. Static HTML: iframe tabs is a Page tab app with 286,700 DAU, Turkish video app Video Yeri grew by 211,600 DAU and Windows Live Messenger grew by about 209,000 DAU. All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday. |
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