Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- The Top 25 Facebook Games for August 2011
- Facebook Officially Launches Ads API, Opening Efficient Ad Management Tool Development
- Even as Android Eclipses iOS in U.S. Mobile Subscribers, It Still Lags in Facebook Mobile’s Footprint
- Roost Local Scorecard Helps Businesses See If Their Facebook Fans Live Nearby
- Featured Facebook Campaigns: Alamo Rent A Car, National Geographic Channel and Fox
- Facebook, Vodafone, Alcatel Lucent Developing $100 Facebook Phone
- Page Apps, Dating, Mobile, Calendars, Photos, Badges, Video and More on This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Apps by MAU
| The Top 25 Facebook Games for August 2011 Posted: 01 Aug 2011 07:26 PM PDT Kicking off the month of August on Facebook are many of the games we’re very used to seeing in the top 10, and most of which belong to Zynga: CityVille, FarmVille, and newcomer Empires & Allies. A couple of up-and-coming games catch our eye, however, toward the lower end of our top 25 Facebook games by daily active and monthly active users. Gardens of Time, meanwhile, maintains steady growth even as Playdom moves on to launching newer titles. We begin with daily active users, which is a better measure of overall audience engagement. Fourteen games in our list experienced losses in DAU, the largest of which occurring Zynga’s CityVille and FarmVille. Empires & Allies manages a small gain, meanwhile, which makes us wonder about the traffic targets Facebook and Zynga agreed upon in exchange for title exclusivity on the social network as the game’s MAU has remained mostly flat since July 17.
As for games new or at least renewed on this list, we see arcade classic newcomer Tetris Battle moving up half a dozen spots to land at No.19. Playtika’s slot machine sim, Slotomania, lands at No.22, suggesting that despite some reported glitches and gripes among users, the developer is putting funds from itspartial acquisition by Caesars Entertainment to good use. Meanwhile, down at No.25, Zoo World 2 makes its first appearance after launching in mid-June. The game is currently being fitted with developer RockYou’s new ad platform. > Continue reading on Inside Social Games. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Officially Launches Ads API, Opening Efficient Ad Management Tool Development Posted: 01 Aug 2011 12:19 PM PDT Facebook today announced the official launch of Ads API, which allows developers to create tools and services that programmatically create, buy, and manage Facebook ad campaigns. The Ads API had been in limited private beta since late 2009, and has been used by brands via third-party providers to run and optimize multi-million dollar ad campaigns too complex to conducted through Facebook’s self-serve ad tool. Developers can now apply to join the program, which may lead to the rise of many new Ads API tool and service providers. The influx might create new small acquisition targets for Page management companies, or commodify ads management, with an economy tier of tools and services emerging to serve smaller advertisers. Alternatively it might lead Page management companies to build ads products and services in-house, slowing the recent wave of consolidation between the two industries.
Before the start of the Ads API program, the bulk uploader system for the manual self-serve tool was the most efficient way to run ads on Facebook. This restricted large scale ad purchase, A/B testing and dynamic bid optimization, making it difficult for advertisers to obtain optimal performance and see the potential of Facebook ads. Until now, only a few dozens developers had been admitted into the Ads API beta program, making those with access attractive for partnerships and acquisitions. With big advertisers increasingly moving spend to Facebook and few providers but few companies, those few with access had the potential to make a lot money. Some offered full-service managed spend where the provider would collect the margin it could make after arranging a cost per click or cost per action with advertisers. Others developed licensable tools for advertisers and agencies and charged a percentage of total spend. The lucrative business led to the quick rise of companies such as TBG Digital, Spruce Media, and AdParlor, as well as Facebook ad divisions of search advertising providers like Efficient Frontier. This morning, Facebook reached out to us saying “Today, Facebook's Ads API is out of beta and available for developers”. Those with plans to build an Ads API tool or service can now apply for the program. The application process requires developers to explain what they plan to build, what resources they’re dedicating to the build, and to have run more than 10 million Facebook ad impressions. It says those planning to “build value for users and marketers” are most likely to be accepted, and those that apply can expect a response within two weeks.
This increase in access to the Ads API will undoubtedly impact that third-party Facebook tool and service provider landscape. Experian recently bought Ads API developer Techlightenment, and Vitrue partnered with TBG Digital, but these types of companies might now be more inclined to develop their own ads products. Before, most ad tool or service providers required a minimum spend on the advertiser’s part, but free basic tools might bring efficient ads management to local and small businesses. In the end, the one standing to gain the most is Facebook, which is now billing the Ads, Pages, and Insights API as the combined Facebook Marketing API program. More competition among third-party providers should reduce their fees, drawing the long-tail of advertisers in, with improved ad performance inspiring greater spend. It will also allow big Page management companies with large lists of existing brands to integrate the Ads API, leading big brands to easily pair its Facebook Page and application campaigns with ads. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 01 Aug 2011 12:00 PM PDT Android may now be bigger than iOS in terms of mobile subscribers in the U.S. But in so far as app developers are concerned, iPads and iPods are still handing Apple’s platform the lead in terms of unique users. We periodically look at active usage of Facebook’s various smartphone clients to get some insight into market sizing on top of the statistics that Nielsen, Comscore and companies themselves like Apple and Google publicly report. Not every smartphone user downloads or actively uses Facebook. Nor does the social network have perfect geographic reach as it’s banned or still growing rapidly in some regions of the world. But Facebook is one of the most broadly accessed smartphone apps in the world and so it provides a window into how many smartphone users are willing to download apps on each platform. The company most recently said it had more than 250 million monthly active users on mobile devices in March. So let’s take a look: iOS-Android Gap Is Narrowing RapidlyRegarding the iOS-Android horserace, Apple’s platforms is still ahead of Google’s but by a narrower margin than when we looked at it six months ago. Facebook for iPhone has just under 86 million monthly active users to Android’s 54.2 million. Six months ago, it was 63 million Facebook for iPhone monthly active users to 25.3 million Android ones. The Android client is adding 1.8 million more monthly active users a week while iOS is growing at a rate of 1 million per week. The Android app is also stickier with a bigger DAU/MAU ratio (or the fraction of monthly actives that access the app every day).
The difference between these figures and what Nielsen is reporting probably has to do with the addition of iPod Touch and iPad users. Even as Comscore has said in the past that Android has more U.S. mobile subscribers than iOS does, it also reported in April that iOS had a 59 percent larger reach in the U.S. than Android did because of these extra devices. Regarding both companies’ official numbers, Apple said two weeks ago that it has cumulatively sold 222 million iOS devices. Google said it had seen 135 million Android device activations during its earnings call the week before. > Continue reading on Inside Mobile Apps.
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| Roost Local Scorecard Helps Businesses See If Their Facebook Fans Live Nearby Posted: 01 Aug 2011 11:00 AM PDT Roost, developer of a social publishing platform, today launched a new tool for local businesses on Facebook that helps them determine what percentage of their fans actually live close enough to be customers. Roost Local Scorecard breaks down where a Page’s fans list as their current city, and provides tips for gaining more local fans and engaging them. By using Roost Local Scorecard, Page admins can determine how to revise their publishing and advertising strategies to maximize the positive impact of Facebook on their business.
San Francisco-based Roost develops free Facebook and Twitter publishing tools for professionals, small businesses, and consultants and agencies, as well as a premium tool for real estate agents. Businesses submit their zip code and industry, and Roost provides recommendations of relevant content to post from local and popular news news outlets. The free Local Scorecard app, built on Facebook Connect, is designed to bring in new customers for Roost by alerting businesses to their publishing needs. Users grant the app extended permissions and it analyzes one or more of their Pages. The app then displays which cities and countries their fans are from, gives them a score for how local their fan base is, and provides recommendations for how to gain more local fans.
If businesses see that a high percentage of their fans are not local, they should consider changing how they market themselves. In terms of advertising, they should make sure they’re geotargeting non-fans that live nearby. They should also be sure to refine their targeting to local when advertising to existing fans to make sure they’re not promoting sales or events at their location that distant fans can’t take advantage of. When publishing updates to Facebook, a Page with a low local fan percentage should concentrate on promotions that encourage existing local fans to invite their friends to Like the Page. This can include campaigns that drive towards a Like count milestone, such as “Help us get to 100,000 fans”, or coupons that fans will want to share with friends. The local fan base percentage can indicate how a business should be using the untargeted publishing feature on Facebook. A low local percentage means Pages should publish links and other content to all their fans that can leverage distant customers, such as links to their web store. While relatively simple and clearly intended to drive leads for its own business, Roost’s Local Scorecard can reveal important information to local business owners. It’s important to keep gaining more Likes, but these are only valuable if local businesses know where they’re coming from and how to engage them to drive a return on their social media investment. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Featured Facebook Campaigns: Alamo Rent A Car, National Geographic Channel and Fox Posted: 01 Aug 2011 09:24 AM PDT Contests with different types of prizes were utilized by a rental car company and TV networks this week to recruit and engage fans. We've excerpted two of the campaigns below. You can see the full week's coverage in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of dozens of other featured campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.
Alamo Rent A Car's Make Your EscapeGoal: Page Growth, Product Purchase, Engagement Core Mechanic: A sweepstakes that awards users a vacation. Method: By Liking the Alamo Rent A Car Page, users may enter for a chance to win $5,000 towards a vacation this summer. The contest runs until August 29 and the contest asks users to join the company's mailing list, and also gives entrants a chance to earn rewards if they are already members of the company's club. Impact: The Page has about 32,200 Likes so far, but could have probably grown more by publishing a feed story when a user entered the contest. Overall this is a good contest because it does provide a prize, and gives customers and those who are members of the company's rewards club extra chances to win, thus promoting brand loyalty.
National Geographic Channel's Remembering 9/11 AppGoal: Network Exposure, Engagement Core Mechanic: An interactive map users may use to add a location and tell the story of where they were during 9/11. Method: The National Geographic Channel launched this app to accompany the channel's "Remembering 9/11" programming that begins at the end of the month, August 28. The app is available in nine languages, across the world; it allows users to invite friends and publishes a feed story after the user completes their information. Impact: The National Geographic Channel's Page has about 551,300 Likes and the Remembering 9/11 app is a tab on the Page with just under 200 stories uploaded in just a few days. The app does well by publishing a feed story, although a user needn't Like the NGC's Page to use it. The app is both engaging and related to the company's content, yet, the app itself does not reference the upcoming coverage, thus just using the app may not get a user to watch NGC's coverage. How are top brands in the industry designing their Facebook marketing campaigns? See the Facebook Marketing Bible for detailed breakdowns of dozens of Featured Campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook, Vodafone, Alcatel Lucent Developing $100 Facebook Phone Posted: 01 Aug 2011 09:15 AM PDT
The lower handset cost and availability of a pay-as-you-go plan could make this Facebook phone more likely to accomplish the goal of driving international growth than past Facebook phones by INQ and HTC that all cost over $200. However, it still requires a data plan and lacks the feature and software design quality of the Facebook for Every Phone feature phone app. This year Facebook has partnered with several handset and SIM card makers and carriers to release phones with special Facebook features. A key to Facebook’s growth strategy is getting those in the developing world access to more features, which leads to increased usage. The Gemalto Facebook for SIM is one of the cheapest, while still embedding Facebook functionality in a SIM card that can be used with almost any handset. The Vodafone 555 Blue will deliver deeper functionality found in the higher end HTC and INQ Facebook phones, including the ability to browse the news feed, view photos, and upload photos as soon as they’re shot through an OS based on Java. A Facebook overlay on the homescreen allows for quick access to a user’s profile, news feed, messaging and Chat. Users can press the dedicate Facebook key to reach these options, ostensibly launching the app. Facebook content updates are synced to the phone in the background. This may work well for those that only check Facebook occasionally, as there data will already have loaded, but that’s not who this handset is aimed at. Those constantly checking may wish for the manual sync was faster, and background syncing can cause the phone’s OS to slow down at inopportune times. MSN’s UK Tech & Gadgets blog did a hands-on report about the Vodafone 555 Blue and found while the the Facebook functionality was satisfactory, the phone’s low 200 MHZ processing power led to waits for loading, and a cramped QWERTY keyboard made it somewhat difficult to use. The photo browsing is apparently very slow as well. Though it’s considered a feature phone, the Blue include Opera Mini 5 for web browsing, which is a plus.
Those in developing markets who often lack consistent broadband web access and who may have used Facebook’s free 0.facebook.com may be enticed by to use the service more and invite their friends thanks to the Vodafone 555 Blue. These users may be better served by one of 2,500 handsets capable of downloading the Facebook for Every Phone app, and those in the first-world may not be willing to endure the shorter feature set and long load times. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 01 Aug 2011 08:05 AM PDT
Top Gainers This Week
Static HTML: iframe tabs grew by 3.7 million MAU, Wildfire’s iFrames for Pages grew by 543,800 MAU, Welcome tab app for Pages grew by 482,100 MAU and Pagemodo Custom Welcome Tab by 451,100 MAU. There were some other apps used as tools on Facebook's platform that were on our list, too. Facebook for Every Phone grew by 2.1 million MAU, Toolbar Widget is a downloadable browser app to allow users to update Facebook via a toolbar. Then BandPage by RootMusic grew by 558,200 MAU mostly in the United States; this app, of course, allows musicians to promote themselves on a landing tab including giving users the chance to listen to music.
Two dating apps were on the list. Are YOU Interested? grew by 822,500 MAU grew mostly in the US, India and the United Kingdom. Then Cupid grew by 667,600 MAU in UK, India and Philippines. It's interesting to note that these apps are growing in non-US markets, and given the fact they are not as often as these lists as they had been, it's breaking into these new markets that's driving a lot of the growth.
Most of the rest of the list was made up of leisure apps. 60photos grew by 3.3 million MAU; this app allows users to rate the photos of their friends, posting Wall notifications when positive ratings are doled out. PicBadges is an app that grew by more than 1 million MAU mostly in the Philippines; the Connect app adds a badge to your profile photo and publishes copious feed notifications in the process. Then there were a pair of calendar apps; MyCalendar grew by 1.7 million MAU and allows users to create a customized calendar of their friends' birthdays and MeinKalender grew by 986,900 MAU, the German app starts off by asking users to send requests to their friends to use the calendar app.
Yahoo's app grew by 642,500 MAU in the US, Video Galerisi is a Turkish video app allowing users to Like and share videos and grew by 551,700 MAU. Finally, 21 questions grew by 503,200 MAU by asking users questions about their friends, publishing a feed story to the Wall of said friend with each answer. All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday. |
Facebook and Vodefone will release Alcatel Lucent-manufactured feature phone called 
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