Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook Roundup: BranchOut, China, Zuckerberg, Seattle, Google+ and More
- Spotify Ad Pitches Reveal More Details About Its Forthcoming US Facebook Integration
- Facebook Pages Can No Longer Tag Users in Posts
- MySpace, Photos, Chat, Video and Badges on This Week’s Top 20 Emerging Facebook Apps by MAU
| Facebook Roundup: BranchOut, China, Zuckerberg, Seattle, Google+ and More Posted: 08 Jul 2011 05:46 PM PDT
China Facebook Investment Rumor – A rumor that an official Chinese government wealth fund, SWF, was interested in a $1.2 billion stake in Facebook was shot down in part this week. GSV Purchases Facebook Stock — The small investing group has put nearly $6.6 million in Facebook, via buying the company’s stock through a second market. The move sent the small public company’s shares up by 20% as more investors in turn bought into its Facebook stake. Zuckerberg Uses Nature to Court Tech Talent - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly takes select potential employees on nature walks in Palo Alto, Calif. in which he shows them the layout of Silicon Valley companies and gives them his Facebook pitch.
ProPublica Uses Facebook for Investigative Journalism – Non-profit investigative journalism organization ProPublica recently revealed that Facebook was used to help the organization compile a database of how resources are distributed to schools. Austin City Limits Utilizes Credits – Austin City Limits released some information about a recent live concert in which 1,900 comments were made during teh show from 2,300 people watching and 100% of the people paid using Facebook Credits. Google+ Aids Social Tracking – Google's analytics tools now allow for more precise information about social engagement.
British Govt to Offer Services on Facebook – The British Cabinet Office announced that some government services might soon be available via Facebook and Twitter. Fellows App Generates Facebook Groups – The DNET team from the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon released a Fellows app this week that automatically generates groups of people in your profile based on your connections. The group conducts research on social networks. AnnouncementsAmerican Express OPEN Finalists – American Express' contest, Facebook Big Break for Small Business, selected 10 finalists. Facebook users will vote to select the finalist by July 19 on the Facebook Page. Charity Buzz to Auction Off Facebook Tour - Facebook's Director of Product Blake Ross has partnered with CharityBuzz.com to raise funds for the Peace Corp Morocco Country Fund. Parature Summer '11 Released – Parature released its Parature Summer '11 its most recent cloud platform, this week. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Spotify Ad Pitches Reveal More Details About Its Forthcoming US Facebook Integration Posted: 08 Jul 2011 04:42 PM PDT A deck of Spotify marketing materials has been obtained by AllThingsD. The deck, which the music streaming company was using to pitch advertisers in preparation of a launch in the US, includes some details about Spotify’s plans for reaching American Facebook users. It notes that these users will see music in their news feed and will be able to click through to subscribe to the service. The deck also notes that a Spotify tab application will allow Pages to offer their fans a music experience.
It’s currently unclear whether Spotify will be part of the Music Dashboard that Facebook plans to launch, be separate but with premium placement on the site thanks to a deal with Facebook, appear as standard Platform applications, or some combination. These materials don’t indicate any special treatment, implying that outside of a place in the Music Dashboard, Spotify might just be available to US users in the form of canvas and Page tab applications. Regardless, the launch of Spotify in the US could help shift music sharing on Facebook from isolated news feed posts of YouTube music videos and other links into something more structured, centralized, and archived that could drive sustained engagement. Spotify’s Facebook app has been holding at about 900,000 daily active users for several months, though it’s had several spikes up above 2 million DAU that could be due to marketing campaigns. A US launch would give Spotify access to 300 million more people and over 150 million more Facebook users. This could lead to rapid growth for the app, and the service as a whole which the company says has 1 million paying customers, and has implied has 7 million active users. The marketing materials may be a bit ambitious, though, predicting 50 million American users within the first year.
Spotify has been telling American record label executives that it could launch in the US as early as next week. It has secured US distribution deals with all the major labels except for Warner Bros. A launch without Warner would mean gaps in its catalogue, including some artists with popular Facebook Pages such as Linkin Park, Metallica, and Green Day. Still, it would have enough content to begin drawing American users to both its free ad-supported and premium subscription services, especially with distribution help from Facebook. The marketing materials primarily explain how the expanded user base that will come with a US launch will drive more users to Spotify, increasing the value of its ad inventory. Users with Spotify accounts outside the US can already share music through the news feed and use Spotify-powered apps, so it doesn’t appear that the functionality will be different. Once Spotify launches, Pages with American fan bases can start hosting branded, Spotify-powered applications. The presenting a streaming playlist of music that fans can interact with, recommend to friends, or vote on could help brands create more compelling promotions.
Without an official music service of its own, American Facebook users have been in dire need of a solid solution for music streaming and sharing. Turntable.fm’s rapid ascension underscores this pent up demand. If Spotify can launch in the US ahead of Facebook’s own Music Dashboard, it could get a head start on ingraining itself into music-related user behaviors before Facebook and the other streaming services it may aggregate in the Music Dashboard have a chance. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Pages Can No Longer Tag Users in Posts Posted: 08 Jul 2011 11:38 AM PDT Facebook has removed the ability for Page admins to tag their friends when posting as their Page. Previously, Pages could use this ability to highlight people who authored content they were posting, or to thank admins and loyal fans. However, being tagged by a Page may have led users to receive unwanted friend requests. The change may be designed to push those looking to build up their name to create a Page for themselves that can be tagged by other Pages.
We received reports of this change as early as June 23rd, so after two weeks of tagging still functioning this way we’re confident this is a change and not a bug. Facebook could always reinstate the functionality, though. In September 2009, Facebook began allowing users to tag anything they were connected to, including friends, Pages, Events and later Places and new Groups as they were launched. Pages were given the same ability. More recently Facebook allowed for tagging within comments, for tags of user names to be shortened to just a first or last name, and for users to tag Pages in photos. Page admins, when posting under the alias of their Page, could tag their friends. This was helpful for Pages that represented teams, as individuals could be recognized for their contributions. For instance, the Page of a blog with multiple authors could include a tag of the user who wrote an article the Page was posting. If a a fan made an especially helpful contribution or won a contest, a Page’s admin could friend that user and then tag them in a post or a message of thanks. This ability helped Pages encourage users to be active members of their fan community. Now, Pages can not tag any users, regardless of whether that user is an admin of a Page, a friend, someone who Likes the Page, or anyone else. Facebook may have made this change because users tagged by popular Pages might receive high volumes of unsolicited friend requests. When a tagged user marked these requests as being from people they didn’t know, it could prevent those sending the unwanted friend requests from sending legitimate requests to people they knew in the future. Facebook may prefer that users who want to be recognized set up their own Pages. This way interest of other users stemming from being tagged come in the form of asynchronous Likes rather than synchronous friend requests that users might now want. Getting more people and businesses to set up Pages is also in Facebook’s interests, as Page often buy advertising to gain more Likes. There is one small exception to the tagging change, though. If Page admins click on the “Share” link on news feed or wall stories, they can select to publish it to their Page. Within that repost, the admin can tag the friends. This functionality may have been left in by accident, though, so it might be removed soon.
Facebook is constantly faced with questions like this, where it has to balance the functionality of Pages and businesses, the quality of the user experience, and its own bottom line. In this case, the benefit of Pages being able to tag users may have been outweighed by the issues that arise when users are tagged in posts that could be seen by millions of people. [Thanks to Points In Case for the tip] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MySpace, Photos, Chat, Video and Badges on This Week’s Top 20 Emerging Facebook Apps by MAU Posted: 08 Jul 2011 08:07 AM PDT
Top Gainers This Week
TopFace grew by 212,800 MAU; the app asks users to rate photos of their friends, then publishes these ratings to their Wall. OSCARS is another app that uses photos, with 176,800 MAU; the app assigns your Facebook friends Oscars titles such as "best director" and then publishes a photo to your feed, asking you to tag your friends.
Other media apps included Socialbox with 178,800 MAU; the app is a downloadable desktop chat app. Badges is an app that grew by 143,100 MAU and allows users to create badges or their Pages to be shared to users' streams. Myspace Music App grew by 138,700 MAU; the app says it is a Facebook "light" version of your MySpace artist profile. Yarasa Buluşma Noktası is a Turkish video app that grew by 120,400 MAU; the app asks users to agree to daily Wall posts repeatedly. Page tab apps Welcome Tab for Pages grew by 117,400 MAU and allows users to create animated landing tabs for their Page. And Static IFrame Tab grew by 145,100 MAU. |
BranchOut's 1 Year Anniversary - BranchOut celebrated its one-year anniversary this week and has become the largest professional networking site on Facebook with 3 million job board listings, has millions of monthly active users in 60 countries and can now be viewed in 10 languages.
Facebook to Grow Seattle Office – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg 
Import Facebook Friends to Google+ with Chrome – A Google Chrome extension 
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