Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- New “Choose What You See” Filtering Options Could Be Coming to Facebook News Feeds
- Facebook Adds “Hide All From [Advertiser]” Feedback Option to Punish Spammers
- Movies, Community Pages and Music on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages
- New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Wildfire, Nanigans, Work4 Labs and More
| New “Choose What You See” Filtering Options Could Be Coming to Facebook News Feeds Posted: 30 Aug 2011 03:00 PM PDT
According to a message that users are seeing about the feature, options for filtering include regular material like photos and status updates, additional information including comments and check-ins, and major life events like job changes and family births. The message links to a URL that is currently not live for those users seeing the message, according to our reader. You can see for yourself, here. Presumably, the “subscriptions” link described by our reader would contain a more comprehensive administrative view of each users friends, the current sharing settings of their feeds, and options to adjust. Before we get any further, we should provide the usual caveats about why one must not assume that this change is a fact: we have not been able to independently reproduce this message on our accounts, the screenshot may be fake, Facebook may decide not to launch the feature as seen, etc. We’ve asked Facebook for comment and we’ll update if we hear back. All that said, we’ll note that this type of interface is not wholly new. In previous years, Facebook provided a set of sliders that allowed users to manually adjust the number of various types of posts. It since moved towards an algorithmically-determined feed, and then a raw stream of updates, and then a hybrid of the two — that, as we covered last week in detail, is still undergoing significant changes. A variety of other companies that provide social feeds, notably FriendFeed, have also experimented with more granular options for what types of content you can consume from friends. However, Facebook’s previous filters didn’t allow you to specify the posts you saw by type, by individual friend. Facebook has continued to change the news feed as it tries to find a balance between simplicity and flexibility. Many users might not care about granular filtering, but those who are trying to keep close (or distant) track of specific friends should find the new feature useful. Given the recent rollout of changes to how publishing works, perhaps we’ll see changes soon to how information can be consumed. We’ll be covering as we learn more. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Adds “Hide All From [Advertiser]” Feedback Option to Punish Spammers Posted: 30 Aug 2011 10:01 AM PDT Facebook has confirmed that it is testing a new feedback option for the ads shown on its site, that allows users to block specific advertisers from reaching them. The “Hide all from [advertiser]” option is appearing to some users when they ‘x’ out an unwanted ad, in addition to the existing option to select why they they clicked to remove the ad. When apps and Pages have their posts hidden from the news feed, Facebook’s quality ranking system decreases the prominence of that entity’s posts to all users. If Facebook applies the same quality ranking algorithm to ads, being hidden through the new feedback option could decrease the prominence of an all of an advertisers’ ads. This could encourage them to use more responsible, less spammy ad creative to avoid being hidden. Alternatively, if Facebook doesn’t apply the quality ranking system, being hidden might actually improve an advertiser’s click through rates because those who otherwise wouldn’t click can exempt themselves from impressions. Either way, if rolled out the ad feedback option could improve the Facebook experience for those sensitive to the content of the ads they see. Facebook has long allowed users to provide feedback on ads, providing users with choices such as “uninteresting”, “misleading”, “sexually explicit”, or “repetitive” when they ‘x’ out an unwanted ad. This data helps Facebook refine its ad targeting algorithm, identifying if certain types of ads are relevant to a user, or are being shown too frequently. We also assume that advertisers receiving negative marks about the content of their ad creatives are subject to reprimand or throttling of the placement of their ads. This would keep advertisers from using aggressive or spammy tactics to boost CTR at the expense of the user experience. Now when some users ‘x’ out add, they see the option to either “Hide this ad” or “Hide all from [advertiser]“, in the case of our example “Hide all from Buy South Africa Online”. If a user chooses the latter, they’ll see the message “Ads hidden. We’ll try not to show you ads from [advertiser]“. The term ‘try’ is likely used because advertisers could reach users that have hidden them by creating new ad accounts under different names. Users then have the options to select why they hid the ad, or unhide the advertiser. Facebook recently disabled a number of apps that were receiving high volumes of negative feedback on their news feed and wall posts. This led to an outcry about a lack of transparency around enforcement, so Facebook launched feedback analytics and benchmarks for apps, so developers could determine when they were being too spammy. Facebook explained that apps receiving negative feedback would see negative impacts on their EdgeRank, or the prominence of their posts in the news feed. It’s believed that a similar system punishes spammy Pages. That same quality ranking system could apply to advertisers as well, and the “Hide all from [advertiser]” option would give users a way to explicitly fight back against those showing them objectionable ads. Advertisers receiving high volumes of negative feedback could possibly have their ads shown in lower positions in the ad stacks that appear in Facebook’s right sidebar. By increasing the repercussions for aggressive or spammy advertisers, Facebook may be able to provide a more appealing browsing experience, and attract high quality brands to market on its platform | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Movies, Community Pages and Music on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages Posted: 30 Aug 2011 09:15 AM PDT
Pages on our list included Community Pages this week. Listening to music grew by 1.5 million Likes, growing most of that in a few days, to 2.1 million; the Page is dedicated to enjoying music and appears to have no affiliation. The band Everything's Page grew by more than 1 million Likes; it's a Community Page that grew most of these Likes, 741,600, in a few days. The Music Community Page grew by 438,700 Likes. Irish rock band The Armada's Community Page grew 431,200 Likes to 493,700 in a few days. Then the Community Page of Gospel music grew 35 million with 410,600 in the span of a few days.
TV shows included the Indonesian "My Family" with most of its 1 million Likes, 979,000, occurring in a few days. "Islam KTP" is another Indonesian TV show, but this is the Community Page that grew to 828,200 Likes with 734,800 this week. Finally, a Filipino show, "Arti Sahabat" grew more than 354,300 Likes in a few days to 672,800 Likes.
Movies on the list included "The Smurfs" grew by 485,400 Likes to 3.3 million; the Page is running a related contest. "Harry Potter" saw 447,000 Likes this week to grow to 33.7 million; the "Harry Potter" Community Page was also on the list, growing 405,100 Likes to 17.8 million. A 2009 Indian movie, "3 Idiots" grew 413,600 Likes to 5.7 million in the span of a few days. "Titanic" Community Page grew 409,500 Likes to 13.5 million. "Ghostbusters" saw 403,700 Likes this week to grow to 800,800, thought most of that came in the span of a few days. Finally there was "Twilight" with 398,700 Likes to 22.2 million as the next installment in the franchise is set for a November release.
Other Pages on the list included Vodafone Egypt, which seems to be organic growth of 933,900 Likes to 942,200 this week. Sports teams were on the list, too; Official Detroit Red Wings grew 494,800 Likes to pass 1 million in a few days but Real Madrid C.F. grew 395,800 Likes to 19 million this week, all organic it seems. Japanese comic book series, Detective Conan, grew more than 440,900 Likes to 471,300 in a few days and Facebook's Page grew 406,500 Likes to 51.7 million. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Wildfire, Nanigans, Work4 Labs and More Posted: 30 Aug 2011 08:32 AM PDT In a relatively quiet week of hires this week among companies active on the Facebook platform, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Arielle has started work as a junior product manager at brand promotions provider Wildfire Interactive (although LinkedIn shows her starting in June). If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com, and we'll get it into next week's post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes directly from company updates from LinkedIn. Looking for new opportunities? Check out the Inside Network Job Board, which shows the latest openings at leading companies in the industry. Here's this week's list of hires:
Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry. |
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