Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- At f8, Facebook Developers Could Get a Smarter Way to Structure Their News Feed Stories
- Facebook Officially Launches Smart Lists, and Special Friend Lists That Influence the News Feed
- Movies, TV, Soccer, Music, Best Buy, Angry Birds, Zynga and More on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages
- New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Work4Labs, Shop.org, Nanigans and More
- Last Week to Pre-Order Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2012
| At f8, Facebook Developers Could Get a Smarter Way to Structure Their News Feed Stories Posted: 13 Sep 2011 03:58 PM PDT While Facebook product launches tend to get the most speculation before the f8 developer conference – there are 750 million users who care, after all — the company has often used the conference to push grand presentations that instead target developers. That trend may be the case again next Thursday, we’re hearing from a trusted source with some knowledge of what the company has planned. Developers might be getting new access to Facebook’s news feed, building off of the graph API that Facebook presented at last year’s f8. They’d be able to provide new structure to the information they share into the news feed, allowing Facebook’s news feed algorithm to present it to the audience most likely to find it relevant and engage with it.
The goal is to help developers focus on sharing what’s right for users (not just their own traffic and revenue numbers), while giving the users themselves a more subtle and serendipitous experience. With a more structured input of information, Facebook could then match content to users who’ve previously enjoyed similar content. It could also measure which developers are producing the most beloved content, based on factors like users resharing or hiding the story, and reward the developer with more visibility for their stories. That would create a more virtuous cycle where high-quality developers become more prominent, inspiring more user engagement that benefits both developers and Facebook, the company no doubt hopes. Structured Content for Enhanced RelevancyTo understand what the changes mean, one example might be the well-understood problem of social game spam. Say a user achieves a new high score in Scrabble, an event that’s exceptional enough that they want all of their friends to know about, not just their Scrabble-playing companions. A developer could structure the story about the high score to signal to Facebook that it is of more general interest to all of a user’s friends, or maybe just the larger subgroup of friends who have played some social games on Facebook, but have not installed Scrabble. In another situation, a local business discovery app could structure the content shared by its users such that Facebook knows its more relevant to local users. The content would then appear more prominently in the news feed to those living in the same city as the user posting it. This isn’t just about games and apps. The change would impact anyone sharing any information to Facebook, including all of the sites that have installed the Facebook Like button and other plugins since they launched at f8 last year, or integrated with Facebook Connect (in total, Facebook’s official stats say that more than 2.5 million sites have integrated it so far). Currently, the Graph API allows developers to provide a variety of more straightforward meta data about the content they publish, like the title of the info they’re sharing, a blurb, etc. But Facebook has used other signals in its news feed algorithm to figure out what to share and with whom, such as who a user’s closest friends are based on photo tags and who’s Liked a user’s previous posts. The Context Is Right for This Launch In the past, Facebook has taken blunter measures to fight spam, with methods such as clumping all stories from specific applications into a single thread, and hiding most stories about social games from friends who have not installed the app.
It has also taken a still-changing approach to how users make the news feed work for them. It has constantly iterated on the news feed algorithm since bringing it back a few years ago, and tested features that ask users how often they want to discover new games, or what types of content they prefer to see in the feed.
Just today, it officially launched a variety of Smart Lists and special lists – automatically created and populated lists of a user’s local friends, coworkers, and those that share other characteristics, and lists of best friends and distant contacts whose members appear more or less in the standard view of a user’s news feed. It’s probably not a coincidence that this particular launch is coming now. Users can apply the Friends Lists as news feed filters, but Facebook could allow developers target some stories to these lists as well. For example, the Scrabble high-score story could be formatted to be shared with the “Acquaintances” list, while less monumental stories would be formatted to just appear for “close friends.” That example is, to be clear, just a guess based on what our source has said. Thinking more long-term, Facebook has steadily laid the foundation for this move over the years. The first f8, in 2007, was where the app platform was unveiled. Facebook Connect came in 2008, which started Facebook’s reach outside of the site by helping people to log in using their Facebook identities. The Graph API came at its next conference, last year. In addition to the consumer-facing social plugins and instant personalization, the company created the Open Graph protocol system for assigning web pages meta data that improves the format of news feed stories shared from them. The plugins utilizing this meta data pushed Facebook across the web. All that effort on the part of Facebook and its growing ecosystem now makes this change a natural progression. In this context, the other big and interesting things that Facebook is rumored to be launching — a music platform that might include a scrobbling tool, a mobile web development platform, an iPad app — are more pieces of the puzzle that Facebook has been putting together. That is, making anything, from a catchy song to a popular mobile game, get the exposure it deserves to the users who want it. The move would also aid Facebook against long-time competitor for owning and distributing the world’s information: Google. The launch of better methods for sharing quality information into Facebook could help it improve its news feed and box out Google, which is trying to move its new social alternative Google+ to the mainstream. Last year was about Facebook pushing itself out to the world via plugins, this year could be about pulling more of the world into Facebook. Want to join us for some casual drinks, rumor and speculation the night before f8, come to the Inside Network happy hour next Wednesday at Mercury Lounge in SF. RSVP here to get a free drink on us. Josh Constine co-authored this article. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Officially Launches Smart Lists, and Special Friend Lists That Influence the News Feed Posted: 13 Sep 2011 10:00 AM PDT Facebook today officially launches several improvements to its Friend Lists feature that can be used to define privacy settings and filter the news feed, including some changes that leaked last week. As we covered in depth then, users now have automatically created, populated and updated Smart Lists of their family, co-workers, classmates, and local friends. Additionally, users can now add friends to an “Acquaintances” list whose members will appear less frequently in the news feed, and a “Close Friends” list of people who will appear more frequently in news feed and whose updates will trigger notifications. By building or starting these lists for users, Facebook may be able increase adoption of the Friend Lists feature, leading users to control their privacy more nimbly, increase the relevance of their news feeds, and share a wider range of content with more specific audiences. However, a lack of granular control of Close Friends’ opt out notifications may push users to quickly turn them off or forgo adding friends to the special list, and the fact that members of lists are revealed when users publish to them might scare users away from the feature.
We recapped the history of the four year old Friend Lists feature last week, describing how they’ve never been widely used due to the chore of making them and their buried place in the interface. Their potential to get users to publish content more often but to fewer people is important to the long-term health of Facebook and its ability to fend off competitors focused on micro-sharing such as Google+. The addition of characteristic-based Friend Lists could get users to share more personal, professional and local content with relevant audiences, rather than spam friends on the other side of the country about making dinner plans, or offend co-workers or family with racier photos and jokes. Bookmarks, Smart Lists, and Special ListsWith today’s update, manually created Friend Lists, Smart Lists, and the special lists are now easily accessible from bookmarks in the site’s left sidebar. When clicked, they filter the news feed to only show updates from their members. More, fewer, or no bookmarks will appear depending on user’s engagement with the feature. Users will also be able to easily publish a post to one or more Friend Lists, as they’re now included in the new audience drop-down of the news feed publisher.
Facebook’s Director of Product Blake Ross tells us their old location “was not discoverable” and that the bookmark system will make Friend Lists optional for those who want them without “fundamentally changing the behavior” of those who don’t. The Smart Lists are populated based on information explicitly included in the profiles of friends. Users will have one list of family members, one for each of their work places, one for each of their schools and colleges, and a local friends list of those living within 10 miles of their current city. Users can customize the mile radius of the local friends Smart List using a slick map feature to include friends in nearby cities.
Mimicking some of the most frequently manually created Friend Lists, Facebook now creates Acquaintances and Close Friends lists by default, but doesn’t auto-populate them. Those added to the former, like distant friends and old colleagues, will only have their most important content, such as marriages and moves, appear in a user’s news feed. Those in the Close Friends list will have more of their content appear in a user’s news feed, and each update they post will trigger Facebook and optional email notifications. Users can manually add or remove members to any of their lists, and Facebook is making this editing process easier too. With a very similar design to Google+, user profiles now display a button allowing for instant admission into a list, rather than forcing users to go back to the Friend List editor. Users can even preemptively assign a potential friend to lists while they await a response to their friend request. Suggestions for people to add to a list, based on their similarities with existing members, will now appear beside the news feed when that list is applied as a feed filter.
Notification Overload and Privacy ConcernsAs we saw when Facebook temporarily made game requests trigger notifications, those about other users can drown out more pressing notifications about posts to a user’s wall or photo tags. Ross tells us Close Friends is designed for users with fewer friends, but the site’s early tests showed they aren’t annoying for those with large, active networks. Still, those who don’t want a big influx of notifications may have to choose whether to simply turn them off or not get the full value out of the list’s ability to influence the news feed by only adding a very small number of friends. One significant privacy issue is that when users see a post in the news feed because they’re a member of a Friend List published to by a friend, they can see who else is included in that list. Ross explains that this lets users know how public any comments they leave on the post will be, and that users won’t see the name of the list. Still, Friend Lists and their members have always been private unless explicitly featured in a user’s profile, and being forced to reveal their members might make users weary of publishing to them. Ross tells us with time Facebook may add more types of Smart Lists, but only ones based on explicitly stated profile information. The changes to Friend Lists, which will roll out soon, have the potential to bring on a new era of micro-sharing on Facebook if the site can learn how users want to apply them. To help it improve the feature and quiet claims that it doesn’t listen to its users, Facebook is encouraging people to leave feedback on a newly created “Facebook Lists Team” Facebook Page. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 13 Sep 2011 08:30 AM PDT
Pages on our list this week required 245,700 and 887,800 Likes to make the top 20 this week. We compile these lists with our PageData tool, which tracks Page growth across Facebook.
Movies on our list this week included "Amelie" with 887,800 Likes to grow to 914,600, although it appears to be a Page consolidation. Then "Titanic" with 409,500 Likes to grow to 13.4 million. "Harry Potter" grew by 347,600 Likes to pass 34.3 million and "The Smurfs" grew to 336,700 to pass a total of 4 million. TV shows included "Tyler Perry’s House of Payne" with 488,700 Likes to grow to 1.4 million and "Family Guy" with 248,700 Likes to 37.6 million.
Football (soccer) figured prominently on the list this week, too with three players' Pages and one team on the list. Neymar Jr. Oficial grew by 330,500 Likes to 1.2 million, although it appeared to be a Page consolidation. Then Leo Messi by 286,300 Likes to 24.6 million and Cristiano Ronaldo to 283,900 Likes to 33.8 million. Finally the team FC Barcelona grew by 245,700 Likes to 20.1 million. Music Pages on the list included the Community Page Music with 327,700 Likes to reach 27.5 million, Rihanna's Page grew to 293,700 Likes to 44.9 million, Eminem's Page grew by 273,000 to 46.8 million and Adele's Page grew to 247,100 Likes 5.6 million.
The rest of the Pages included Best Buy with 379,900 Likes to 4.7 million. Facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake! grew by 333,000 Likes to 445,400 this week while Facebook's actual Page grew by 322,200 Likes to 52.4 million. Then Angry Birds grew by 275,900 to 7.1 million, Texas Hold’em Poker grew by 266,600 to 49.9 million and, finally, YouTube by 250,500 Likes to 44.9 million. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Work4Labs, Shop.org, Nanigans and More Posted: 13 Sep 2011 08:18 AM PDT Marketing, ads, sales and software staff were brought on by a handful of companies this week and Shop.org also named a new board member. 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. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last Week to Pre-Order Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2012 Posted: 13 Sep 2011 08:00 AM PDT
2011 will be remembered as the year that Zynga filed for its IPO, Google launched Google+, and Facebook executed the Credits transition. With the first potential social gaming IPO, Zynga plans to raise up to $2 billion to fund its continued global expansion. Meanwhile, Google is putting its weight behind what appears to have the potential to be the most serious competitor to Facebook as a social gaming platform in North America since the demise of MySpace. And at the same time, developers are still navigating through the Facebook Credits migration, while many are also expanding substantially onto mobile platforms to increase growth and expand reach.
Inside Network is proud to announce a new original research report by Justin Smith and Charles Hudson that is exclusively focused on the future of the social gaming market, entitled Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2012. This is Inside Network's third annual edition of the Future of Social Gaming report. It will be released on September 20, but is available for discount pre-order now. How big is the market, and where will social gaming go in 2012? How will existing players fare as Facebook Credits shifts the social gaming landscape and continued changes to the platform? Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2012 provides deeper insight into social game monetization, development, customer acquisition, and the key questions facing the space in 2012 than you'll find anywhere else. About the Report Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2012 gives you an inside view of the future at this critical juncture in the intersection of social networking and online games. We have compiled months of original research from dozens of top executives and entrepreneurs from all parts of the social gaming ecosystem to produce eye-opening source data and analysis that is not available anywhere else. Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2010 takes the closest look at the present state of social games and the future of this strong but still rapidly changing industry. What We Cover
What you get In addition to our deep dive into key aspects of the social gaming ecosystem, the report also offers extended coverage on:
More Data, More Actionable Insights In 2011, social games continued to show what kind of value can be created on top of social networks. 2012 will be an even more important year. Social gaming, powered by virtual goods, continues to expand. If you're involved, or are considering jumping in, Inside Virtual Goods will be one of your most important tools. One year of original data and exclusive in-depth reports delivered on a quarterly basis is $2,495 and contains:
About the Authors
Venture Partner, SoftTech VC, CEO and Co-Founder, Bionic Panda Games Charles Hudson is a Venture Partner with SoftTech VC and the CEO and Co-Founder of Bionic Panda Games, a mobile games company based in San Francisco, CA. Until February 2010, he was the VP of Business Development for Serious Business, a leading producer of social games. Zynga acquired Serious Business in February of 2010. Prior to Serious Business, Hudson worked at Gaia Interactive, Google, IronPort Systems, and In-Q-Tel. Hudson also founded Third Power LLC, a conference and events company that was acquired by WebMediaBrands. Charles holds an MBA and BA from Stanford University.
Founder, Inside Network Justin Smith is the founder of Inside Network, the first service dedicated to providing news and market research to the Facebook platform and social gaming ecosystem. Justin leads Inside Network’s analyst services, manages Inside Network’s AppDataservice, and serves as co-editor of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games. Inside Network was acquired by WebMediaBrands (NASDAQ:WEBM) in May 2011. Prior to Inside Network, he was Head of Product at Watercooler, now Kabam, a leading social game developer on the Facebook Platform. Prior to Watercooler, Justin was an early employee at Xfire, the largest social utility for gamers, which was sold to Viacom in 2006. Justin holds a degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford University, where he was a Mayfield Fellow and a recipient of the Terman Award in Engineering. Get The Annual Membership Get Annual Membership (Includes Report + 3 Additional Quarterly Issues):
OR Buy Single Report:
* Pre-order discount ends September 19, 2011. All pre-ordered reports will be delivered on September 20, 2011. Although the report will not be released until next Tuesday, September 20, we are offering a special pre-order discount for those who purchase now. A one year subscription is $1,995 until September 19, at which point the price will go to US $2,495. The one year subscription includes three quarterly updates on key developments in the space. Or, you can download just this report. The pre-order price is $795 until September 19, at which point the price will go to US $995. |
Charles Hudson
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