Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook Developer Groups Make App Role Assignment More Efficient, Could Increase Groups Usage
- New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Context Optional, EA, Lolapps, Amazon and More
- With Voice Calling, Facebook’s Skype Partnership Will Offer Alternatives to Traditional Carrier Plans
- Mobile, Horoscopes, Pages, Phrases, Calendar, BandPage and More on This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Apps by DAU
| Facebook Developer Groups Make App Role Assignment More Efficient, Could Increase Groups Usage Posted: 10 Aug 2011 02:54 PM PDT Facebook is rolling out a new feature that makes it simpler for developers to assign multiple people to a role within one or more apps. In the Roles section of the Developer app, every member of a selected Facebook Group can be simultaneously assigned to a role: Developer, Administrator, Tester, or Insights User. This will make it significantly faster to add sets of team members to a role within multiple apps. It will also familiarize developers with Facebook Groups which could encourage them to use the microsharing tool both professionally and socially.
The Groups product was released in October to help users share with specific subsets of their friends. Application roles were introduced in January to improve app security by allowing developers to give certain team members limited privileges rather than full access to edit or even delete their app. Now these features have been combined and developers will gain access to the new Developer Groups tool over the next few weeks. To use it, developers can go to the Roles section of the Developer app and click the “Add” link next to one of the role types. They’ll then be given the option to add an existing closed or private group of people to that role, or create a new Group within that role that can also be reused later.
Adding a Group to a role will generate a post to that Group and notify its members. Note that only closed or private Groups can be used to assign roles, not open groups, because otherwise unauthorized users could add themselves to a role-assigned Group and gain access to the corresponding privileges in the application.
Along with speeding up role assignment, Developer Groups may be intended to increase usage of the Groups feature in general by exposing it to more Facebook power users. In April Facebook said 50 million Groups had been created, and in July it said 50% of all users were in a Group and that the average Group had seven members. While these are impressive stats, Facebook probably still wants higher penetration. The nature of Groups is such that one user often does the legwork of creating a Group and inviting friends, and then all members get to benefit. By making usage of Groups a component of application management, Facebook can expose the feature to developers. These people are probably more likely to be Facebook power users, and therefore be willing to take the time to create and populate Groups, increasing overall usage. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Context Optional, EA, Lolapps, Amazon and More Posted: 10 Aug 2011 12:41 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 Context Optional, King.com, Electronic Arts, Billing Revolution, lolapps, Playfish, Amazon.com, Kabam and Metamoki.
 
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. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 10 Aug 2011 10:53 AM PDT Facebook’s Skype integration is set to include outbound calls to landlines and mobile phones along with group video chat, Skype’s Vice President Neil Stevens said. Forbes reports that the features will be implemented once the initial one-on-one video chat between Facebook users is rolled out completely — a month after launch it’s still only available to 1% the global user base. The planned features may reduce the need for users to run Skype’s dedicated desktop app, though some may still cost users Skype Credit to access. Stevens also said a Skype/Facebook mobile calling app will become available. This could come as a feature in Facebook’s new standalone mobile group chat app Messenger, which was released yesterday and that 9to5Mac discovered includes hidden code and images indicating eventual support for video calling. The logos are even similar, as shown in my mashup below. The addition of these features could help Facebook join smartphone OS developers in encroaching on traditional mobile carrier revenue streams such as SMS and voice calling plans. A Skype-enhanced Facebook Messenger could also pull engagement away from the native communication apps of handset makers including Apple. Both of these scenarios would require Facebook’s app to have a frictionless design and massive traction in order to challenge the straightforward voice, SMS, and messaging apps shipped with today’s smartphones.
Facebook and Skype worked together in the past to integrate features such as the news feed and phonebook into the Skype desktop app. Then in July the two announced a deep, long-term partnership and launched intra-Facebook video calling. The simple, light-weight, in-browser extension of Facebook Chat used an automatically downloaded plugin to process calls so users wouldn’t have to launch a separate desktop app. Skype’s voice-over-internet-protocol technology allows for cheaper voice calling than landline and mobile phone carriers offer, and video calling that can be more fun and intimate than voice calls. When combined into Facebook Messenger, which lets users communicate in real-time over push notifications, Facebook Chat, and Facebook Messages rather than sending overpriced SMS, Facebook will have an app capable of largely replacing a user’s expensive landline, mobile voice, and SMS plans. The partnership could create a significant revenue stream for Facebook as well. Facebook would likely get a revenue share of what its users spend on Skype Credit to make outbound calls or conduct group video conferences. This could come as direct cut from Skype, or Facebook could require users to buy Skype Credit with Facebook Credits on which the social network levies a 30% tax. Competing with AppleApple’s recently announced iMessage push-messaging service and FaceTime mobile and web video calling app could be bested by the Skype-enhanced Facebook Messenger. This is because they clumsily requires users to know the Apple email address of those they’re trying to reach, or both be on iPhones, as TechCrunch’s MG Siegler points out. Facebook Messenger only requires users to be Facebook friends or know each other’s phone number, and already runs on both iOS and Android. Facebook’s internally developed Twilio-style API-to-SMS system could be used to alert those without the app that someone is trying to video call them and that they should download Messenger. Better functionality won’t help if the labor of downloading Facebook Messenger prevents it achieving the traction necessary to challenge native handset communication apps. Facebook does have a massive potential audience, but would likely have to heavily cross-promote the app across its interfaces in a way that could annoy users to even approach this level of traction. Accelerating Shift of Carriers to Date RevenueThe more users on Skype and push-based mobile messaging platforms, the less revenue mobile carriers can make on voice and SMS plans. The carriers are already preparing for the shift towards data plan-based business models, but voice and SMS will remain major revenue streams for the next few years. Facebook’s Skype partnership and Messenger could accelerate the shift.
Before, Skype and push messaging were more the domain of technology professionals and early adopters, but Facebook has the potential to bring them more mainstream. Those looking to cheaply make international calls to their grand parents, and teens with limited funds seeking to stay in constant contact with their friends might use Facebook’s app rather than voice and SMS. Realistically, without a its own smartphone or mobile OS, Facebook can probably only offer a pale version of what it really wants to. Without being shipped with phones, a Skype-powered Facebook Messenger may only gain enough traction to take some engagement and revenue from mobile handset makers, OS developers, and carriers. Still, these were spaces Facebook wasn’t in a month ago, so its progress and potential are still quite disruptive. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 10 Aug 2011 08:07 AM PDT
Top Gainers This Week
Facebook for Every Phone grew by 2.3 million DAU this week and another mobile app, mobile messenger eBuddy, grew by 104,800 DAU. Horoscope apps The Fortune Teller with more than 1 million DAU and Astrology with 169,400 DAU were on the list; the apps provide daily horoscope or tarot results.
Page tab apps Static HTML: iframe tabs grew by 717,600 DAU, Pages + by 197,200 DAU and Static Iframe Tab by 104,700 DAU. The rest of the list was a mixed bag. YouTube's app grew by 464,600 DAU. BandPage by RootMusic grew by 385,900 DAU and MyCalendar grew by about 301,900 DAU both mostly in the United States. Phrases, not available in the US, grew by 230,600 DAU. Socialcam is an app to help users share videos on Facebook with 190,200 DAU. Windows Live Messenger grew by 180,800 DAU and Turkish video app FizTube World’s by 101,900 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. |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Inside Facebook To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |