Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook Roundup: Lobbying, Mobile, Google+, Winklevoss and More
- Facebook Shows Event Wall Photos in RSVP News Feed Stories
- Facebook Deals, Three Months In: Product Testing and More Cities
- Hulu, BeKnown, MySpace, Dating and More on This Week’s Top 20 Emerging Facebook Apps by MAU
| Facebook Roundup: Lobbying, Mobile, Google+, Winklevoss and More Posted: 22 Jul 2011 06:40 PM PDT
Judge Dismisses Second Winklevoss Lawsuit – Reuters today reported that Facebook was awarded a dismissal of a second lawsuit filed by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. The suit, filed in Boston, had sought to bring the twins more money on top of the $65 million settlement they had already received as the outcome of a suit claiming they came up with the idea for Facebook. Facebook Testing a Phonebook App – VentureBeat reported that Facebook may be testing a phonebook app for mobile users, allowing them to see their contacts on Facebook as a phonebook and then dial them directly from the Facebook app on their phones. However, this could have been developed by Google to deepen the integration of Facebook with its mobile OS.
“Who Owns Facebook?” Website - Venture capital directory publisher Massinvestor has launched a website called “Who Owns Facebook?” that features profiles of all of Facebook’s biggest stock holders. Fraction of Facebook for iPhone Users Complaint About Bugs – The Financial Times reported this week that there is a “revolt” amongst Facebook for iPhone users regarding bugs in the latest version of the app. In fact, the 20,000 users complaining make up just a tiny fraction of the app’s 84 million monthly users, and therefore does not represent widespread discontent. Which Facebook Employees are on Google+? – AllFacebook reported this week that a slew of Facebook employees are on Google+, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and several members of the executive team. Here's a list of some of them. Harvard President Slams Winklevoss Bros – Larry Summers, who was president of Harvard University when the Winklevoss twins had their spat with Mark Zuckerberg over the founding of Facebook, seems to have been no fan of the brothers. He basically called them a vulgar name, hinting that they are jerks.
Other Announcements:Buddy Media Expands to Europe – Buddy Media announced this week that it would open a European headquarters in London. myYearbook, Quepasa Merge – myYearbook and the Quepasa Corporation agreed to merge this week, bringing the social game developer and Latino social network together. The $100 million deal reaches across Latin America, includes 70 million registered users, 2.2 million mobile app installs and 11.5 million mobile game installs. French MXP4 Opens US Office, Signs Deal – French developer of music-based social games MXP4 will move business operations of its Bopler Games unit to a new office in Los Angeles, closer to US record labels. The week prior, MXP4 signed a deal with EMI to bring the music of the record label’s artists into Bopler Games. Wispor Launches Using Faceboom Comments Plugin – Wispor is a newly launched discussion-based social network where users can start conversations about any topic. The site is built on top of the Facebook Comments Box social plugin in what appears to be the deepest integration of the commenting widget to date. Third-Party Facebook Photos App Pixable Adds Video – Pixable, a Facebook app we’ve previously covered that helps users sort through all the photos their friends upload, now allows users to browse videos uploaded or shared by their Facebook friends. RootMusic BandPage Launches Social Touring Feature – BandPage, a Facebook app that allows bands to set up a profile and stream their music, has launched an integration with concert date tracking services Songkick, Bandsintown, and SonicLiving. The Social Touring feature allows musicians to automatically have their tour dates imported to their BandPage from these services. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Shows Event Wall Photos in RSVP News Feed Stories Posted: 22 Jul 2011 04:06 PM PDT When Facebook shows users news feed stories about events their friends have RSVP’d to, it now also shows photos uploaded to the event’s wall. These photos should make event stories more eye-catching and increase earned RSVPs. Event admins should therefore add wall photos to their events to gain news feed visibility.
The Events feature hasn’t received many major changes over the years, to contrast with other Facebook products that seem to be in constant flux. Here are the minor changes that have been implemented since 2009:
Now, if users RSVP to a Facebook event that has had photos uploaded to it’s wall, these photos will be displayed in the news feed story about the RSVP. A user’s friends can then click to view these photos in-line. Unfortunately, these stories don’t appear to pull in photos accompanying check-ins by friends. The inclusion of check-in photos in the feed story could help users find out what an event in progress looks like in real-time.
Because the RSVP stories about events with wall photos appear much bigger in the news feed, we recommend that all event promoters upload additional photos to the walls of their events to take advantage of this opportunity for more news feed exposure. This will help them attain more RSVPs, and remind those have RSVP’d to attend. [Thanks to Eti Suruzon for the tip] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Deals, Three Months In: Product Testing and More Cities Posted: 22 Jul 2011 02:30 PM PDT Facebook Deals, the company’s Groupon-style pre-paid coupon service, has now been live in beta for almost three months. While it so far hasn’t achieved the instant success some expected, Facebook has been cautious with promotion of the product rather than spam its news feed with Deals announcement. Deal quality and usage has been relatively low, from what we’ve seen, but the company is also continuing to refine the product and launch to more cities, as it explains below. Overall, the revenue potential for Facebook Deals is still promising, especially when you consider that the company wouldn’t need to buy ads promoting it — a major cost for other pre-paid coupon providers active on the platform, like Groupon and Living Social. Here, we’ll look at how the product is evolving, and what its best prospects are for gaining traction.
Taking It SlowIn March, Facebook began showing news feed stories asking users to sign up for updates about Deals in San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas, Austin and Atlanta. Facebook is both arranging its own deals and aggregating offers from deal providers including Home Run, OpenTable, and Gilt City. The Deals app, accessible through a bookmark in the right sidebar, currently shows between four and 13 available Deals in each city. Rather than Liking a Page, Facebook’s standard update subscription mechanism, signing up for Deals means users are informed of new offers directly via the news feed and email, as well as through Facebook notifications. This gives Facebook the power to freely manipulate how prominent stories about Deals are in the news feed. However, so far, Facebook has not oversaturated the feed with with Deals announcements that could increase traction but also might detract from the social content, opting to promote through home page ads and emails instead. The purchase of a Deal triggers a news feed story in the feeds of friends. While other pre-paid coupon services have to ask users to share news of their purchase with their social media contacts, Facebook does this automatically. This purchase virality could drive the success of Deals if it can gain initial traction. So far though, our San Francisco-based team has hardly seen or heard of any people purchasing Deals. My Deals app’s “Deals Friends Like or Have Bought” section only could only tell me about two friends Liking the businesses offering Deals. Low traction in San Francisco, thought of as one of Facebook’s strongholds, suggests traction is probably low in other cities as well.
Facebook’s official statement on the peformance of the Deals test to date is “the early feedback from businesses has been positive, and they have been able to find new customers to bring into their stores. Facebook has seen that people are finding a lot of Deals through their friends and that Deals found through friends have higher conversion rates for businesses. We're also seeing an increase in fans of a business after the Deal has run.” Notice that nothing is said about how many Deals are being purchased. Five New Cities, Flashier PresentationStill, Facebook tells us it is planning to expand the Deals program to Seattle, Denver, Charlotte, St. Louis and Minneapolis. Meanwhile, Google has launched its own Offers product in Portland, New York City, and the Bay Area, and plans to expand it to Austin, Boston, Denver, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Both are racing to lock down a presentation and distribution strategy that can attain a high conversion rate. As part of these these trials, Facebook is testing a more stylized, graphic-oriente, and detailed presentation format for its Deals app. This format, which can be seen when browsing Deals in San Francisco, contrasts with the original Deals app design that showed small panels with tiny pictures and nothing but the headline and price.
The new format is much more compelling allowing users to immediately see what’s included in a Deal, when it expires, and if friends have Liked it without clicking through to view it’s full description. The ability to see a social recommendation from a trusted source for a Deal should increase the click through rate and bring more users in range of actually purchasing a Deal. Facebook knows it hasn’t found the optimal design for the Deals product, and therefore has been wise not to promote it too aggressively. With time, it may be able to find a style that properly marries high value discounts with the social nature of the site. If Facebook can improve the value and presentation of its Deals, it’s not difficult to imagine friends discovering and purchasing them, inviting friends to buy them too, and planning a group outing to redeem them all within a news feed conversation. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hulu, BeKnown, MySpace, Dating and More on This Week’s Top 20 Emerging Facebook Apps by MAU Posted: 22 Jul 2011 08:18 AM PDT
There was an interesting mix of applications on our list of the the fastest growing on the Facebook platform this week by monthly active users. They included professional networking, Google+, Hulu, dating, videos, profile badges and MySpace's music app. The apps on our list grew from between 118,200 and 322,700 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
BeKnown was at the top of our list with 210,100 MAU. Then Direct Access followed with 279,900 MAU; this app doesn't appear to be an official Google+ app but asks users to add their friends to this new social network via Facebook.
Hulu was next on the list with 194,400 MAU. Hulu seems to be giving Facebook integration another try with its current Connect push. Then Turkish dating app Seçim Anketi added 177,200 MAU. Video Land, a video app, added 158,200 MAU. The German BILD Profil-Badges grew by about 141,000 MAU this week and the Myspace Music App grew by 126,100 MAU. This app claims to be a "light" version of the MySpace artist profile enabling users to share content on both networks at the same time. The rest of the list was composed of games. |
Facebook Spent 320K on Lobbying in 2Q – TechCrunch 
Talenthouse to Develop Fan Skill Competition Apps - Talenthouse is a platform for running promotions on Facebook where fans can compete to donate their skills, such as blogging or video editing, to help complete projects for their favorite celebrities. 
Facebook Report: Engaging Readers on Pages – Facebook released an 
A core deficiency in the product that may be hampering traction is the generally low value of the Deals. Several offer discounts of as little as 20% off such as $40 for $50 worth of kayak rentals. Deeper discounts are often relegated to experiences that appeal to a small audience. With Facebook trying to create a groundswell of buzz for Deals, it may need to sidestep its provider partners and subsidize businesses to offer Deals that appeal to a wide audience with discounts worth telling one’s friends about.
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