Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook Adds 14 Day Restoration Window to the Page Deletion Process
- Bookmarklet Lets Facebook Users View the “Friend Rankings” List of Those They Interact With Most
- Outside Lands Music Festival: A Facebook Marketing Case Study for Live Events
- Facebook Careers Postings: Recruiting, Legal, Marketing, Operations and More
- Facebook Hires and Departures: Data Center, Marketing, Communications and More
| Facebook Adds 14 Day Restoration Window to the Page Deletion Process Posted: 18 Aug 2011 01:45 PM PDT If an administrator selects to delete one of their Facebook Pages, it will now remain visible to the public for a 14 day restoration period in which the admin can cancel the deletion before it becomes permanent. Admins can also opt to “unpublish” their Page if they want it immediately removed from public view. Previously, admins could instantly delete their Pages permanently. The change to the Page deletion process is likely designed to give admins a second chance if they impulsively decide to delete their Page but soon reconsider. It should also help prevent Pages from unauthorized deletion by a malicious admin or hacker, and reduce the number of customer service inquiries Facebook receives about unwanted Page deletions.
The Page deletion flow is now as follows:
 The Likes and content a Page accumulates over time are valuable. Facebook doesn’t want users to throw it all away only to regret their decision later and have to go through the negative user experience of having to rebuild their Page from scratch. Promotion of Pages through Facebook Ads is a key source of revenue for the site, so keeping more Pages active is in the interest of the social network’s bottom line as well. The change should help Facebook protect itself from customer service inquiries asking for permanently deleted Page to be reinstated. The option improves security for Pages, as one admin getting their account hacked or one disgruntled admin can’t unilaterally delete a Page without fellow admins having the chance to avert the deletion. This should make admins more comfortable granting additional team members admin privileges because no one person can instantly the Page. Page Deletion and the Pharmaceutical IndustryPage deletion has become a serious issue for the pharma industry lately. Previously, Facebook allowed Pages for pharmaceutical companies and communities for specific diseases run by these companies to keep their walls closed to comments. Typically Pages can close their wall to posts by users but not prevent them from commenting on the Page’s posts.
These Pages are now losing this privilege, leading some pharmaceutical companies to delete these Pages rather than risk inflammatory comments about side effects or objectionable content be posted to their walls, which could in turn incite regulatory scrutiny. Pages that represent specific medications may still keep block all user generated content from their walls. By surfacing the unpublish option in the deletion flow, Facebook may be able to convince admins of these Pages to hide them from the public until a later date once they’ve developed a moderation strategy or struck a new deal with Facebook. Note that the Manage Permissions also includes permits admins to unpublish their Page without initiating the deletion process. [Thanks to Kevin Evanetski for the tip] |
| Bookmarklet Lets Facebook Users View the “Friend Rankings” List of Those They Interact With Most Posted: 18 Aug 2011 12:18 PM PDT Facebook users can currently see the usually hidden list of which friends they interact with most by running a line of JavaScript through a bookmarklet created by developer Jeremy Keeshin. When the bookmarklet is clicked while one browses Facebook, an overlay called “Facebook Friend Rankings” appears in which the lower the number next to a friend’s name, the more a user communicates with, views the profile of, and searches for that friend or other Facebook user. The information exposed by the JavaScript might alarm some users, as they might not expect that Facebook had been quantifying their behavior so exactly to power products such as the relevancy-filtered Top News feed, search results, and who appears at the top of their Chat buddy list. It could raise privacy concerns as friend rankings indicate who users “Facebook stalk” the most and could be embarrassing if leaked to the public by a hacker or bug.
Facebook calculates the friend ranking scores by analyzing all of a user’s on-site behavior and connections. Other signals in addition to those listed above that likely contribute to these scores include who a user is tagged in photos with, how many mutual friends they, if they Like the same Pages or are members of the same Group, if they check in together, and if they have matching biographical characteristics such as current city, hometown, employers, or education history. The score evolves and becomes more accurate over time. Facebook uses the friend ranking score to increase the relevancy of its products by making sure users see news feed stories about the people they’re most interested in, can quickly find them in search and Chat, and receive push notifications about them on their mobile devices. Facebook engineer Keith Adams confirms that a user’s browsing behavior only impacts what they themselves see, and that viewing tons of photos of a certain friend won’t make a user appear in that friend’s news feed any more frequently. Users have long been interested in finding out who browses their profile though this information is not available, leading the rise of fake “profile spy” applications that are actually scams. These scores have been built from years of data and thousands of actions, and the ability to customize the site for relevance is one of Facebook’s greatest strengths. The lack of this data would hamper the functionality of competing social networks such as Google+, even if they had your friend list. At the top of the friend rankings list users will see their closest friends, people they’ve interacted with a lot recently, and those they frequently visit the profiles of. At the bottom they may see non-friends who they’re connected to through mutual friends or who they used to be friends with. By using the right-click option “Inspect Element” in Google Chrome or Firebug in Firefox, users can view the file “first_degree.php” which includes the friend ranking data. Facebook pre-loads this file to speed up typeahead search results. In it, users will notice “tokens” associated with some friends. These are alternate names that can be used to initiate a friend tag in a status update or photo or find these friends in Facebook search, and include long and short forms of common names, familial relation types, and old names of users who’ve since changed their Facebook name. For example, a friend named Richard would have the tokens “rick” and “dick”, while a friend that a user has confirmed as their brother would have the token “brother”.
Users who want to view their friend rankings should do so now as Facebook may modify its code to prevent users from seeing this data. This is because knowledge that such a list even exists could scare users into avoiding any embarrassing browsing behavior. It’s these extended viewing sessions of an ex-lover’s photos or the wall of an admired peer that help drive the social network’s massive average time-on-site, so Facebook probably doesn’t want users to think these friend rankings could ever see the light of day. |
| Outside Lands Music Festival: A Facebook Marketing Case Study for Live Events Posted: 18 Aug 2011 09:45 AM PDT Facebook can be a powerful tool for promoting live events. Not only can organizers create a Facebook Event for their conference, party, concert or other function, they can create a Facebook Page and applications for it, and encourage users to checkin via Facebook Places. This past weekend, the San Francisco’s Outside Lands Music Festival used several of these channels to achieve strong attendance, including selling out all 60,000 tickets for Saturday of the three-day concert. Here we’ll look at how Outside Lands successfully used its Facebook Page and apps to promote the event, and how it could have improved its Facebook Places strategy to get more users to check in.
Facebook PageThe center of the Outside Lands marketing strategy was its Facebook Page. This was the fourth year of the festival, so when it came time to announce this year’s lineup it already had roughly 35,000 fans. By placing both Like button to share the URL, a link to the Page, and a Like Box to directly drive Likes of its Page, Outside Lands gained a big batch of new fans when it announced the artists that would play this year’s festival. Fan re-sharing links to the website posted to the news feed by the Outside Lands Page also likely secured Likes for the Page.
Following the event, Outside Lands added a big Like Box social plugin to the home page of its website so it could secure more fans to market next year’s festival to. Now the Page has 67,380 Likes — double the amount it had a year ago and more than the total capacity of the festival.
People often buy tickets to events because their friends are going. To keep people excited and talking about the festival, the Outside Lands Page posted updates to news feed almost every day in the months leading up to the event, and ramped up to multiple posts per day in the last two weeks. It posted compelling news and content such as updates to the lineup, ticket giveaways, interviews and videos of artists set to play, and links to its website, Facebook Event, mobile app, and Twitter account. During the event, it posted photo albums and videos of performances, set time changes, and questions about what attendees were enjoying. The festival’s Page strategy could have benefited from reposting content uploaded by fans and recognizing contributors to engender additional good will. Facebook Event and Apps Outside Lands set up its official Facebook Event five months ahead of the festival date. Its info included a punchy description of the festival, the full lineup of artists playing, and links to its other web presences. The Outside Lands Page posted links to the Event multiple time, and RSVPs triggered news feed stories for the Event seen by the friends of attendees.
The Outside Lands mobile app allowed users to login to Facebook and then post status updates about the festival from within the app. Quick links let them easily cross-post to Twitter and add an Outside Lands Twitter handle mention or hashtag. The Facebook integration was relatively buried, so it only saw 2,955 logins in the last month. Event promoters should strongly consider creating or licensing their own Facebook Event RSVP app for embed on their website. Outside Lands’ Facebook Event could have been better used as an archive of important information, such as set time changes, that otherwise could easily be missed in the churning stream of updates from its Page. A more prominent Facebook integration in the mobile app and a prompt to share some Outside Lands branded content and links to the news feed could have helped promote the event. Facebook PlacesThe one major flaw in Outside Lands’ Facebook strategy was how it used Facebook Places. The address of the festival wasn’t added to the Facebook Page or Event, so neither had Places functionality — the ability for users to check in and notify their friends that they were at the festival. Without an official Place to check in to, users had to create their own unofficial Places.
Outside Lands still received approximately 7,000 checkins, but they were splintered across 40 unofficial Places. This prevented users from getting a comprehensive list of friends at the festival through the “Here Now” feature. It also reduced the likelihood of the festival being featured in aggregated Places checkin news feed stories that cluster checkins by multiple groups of friends into one big, compelling story.
The lack of an official Place also meant that users accidentally Liked the unofficial Places, costing Outside Lands’ Page valuable fans. All event promoters should be sure to add the address of their venue to their Facebook Page and Event to improve the checkin experience for users and gain more Facebook exposure. As a whole, Outside Lands executed a strong Facebook marketing strategy. It provided compelling content, cross-promoted its presences and apps well, and was able to gain a lot of fans and checkins. These efforts will pay off next year when it comes time to market the fifth edition of the festival, as more people will have heard of Outside Lands and receive updates about it in their news feed. |
| Facebook Careers Postings: Recruiting, Legal, Marketing, Operations and More Posted: 18 Aug 2011 09:15 AM PDT
Posts added this week on Facebook's Careers Page:
Jobs posted by Facebook on LinkedIn:
Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry. |
| Facebook Hires and Departures: Data Center, Marketing, Communications and More Posted: 18 Aug 2011 08:40 AM PDT
New hires per LinkedIn and Other Sources:
Prior listings now removed from the Facebook Careers Page:
Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry. |
The festival worked with SonicLiving to develop a RSVP app for their Facebook Event that it embedded on its website. It allowed users to if which of their friends planned to attend and add their own RSVP. The app was a big success, with 5,961 monthly active users, meaning a significant portion of its total 21,714 ‘Attending’ RSVPs were made from the app.
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