Inside Facebook

Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2012, Is Here
Wall Street Journal’s Facebook App WSJ Social Unites Article Suggestions From Editors, Friends, and Likes
Facebook Combines Most Recent and Top News Into a Single Feed, Adds a Real-Time News Ticker
Platform Update: New Bug System and Platform Live Status Page, Credits Features, Event APIs
Movies, Music, Games, Angry Birds, Rihanna, “The Smurfs,” and More on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages
New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Vitrue, Brighter Option, Wildfire and More

Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2012, Is Here

Posted: 20 Sep 2011 09:30 PM 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.

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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. The big picture? The social gaming market will reach $1.6 billion overall in 2012.

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

Facebook Credits and the New Monetization Landscape: Early Results - Now that the transition to Facebook Credits was completed on July 1, what are the early results that developers are reporting? We take an in depth look at metrics and trends.
Will 2012 (Finally) be the Year of Mobile Social Games? – Now that mobile games monetizing through the virtual goods model are becoming a bigger market in the US and around the world, many social game developers have expanded their efforts to tap these new platforms as well. Will 2012 finally be the year that social games take significant root on mobile?
Social Game Development and Design – How do small, medium, and large developers organize their teams? What do development cycle times for original titles and "expansion packs" look like? What is the role of testing and metrics in the development process? A few key game genres with proven mechanics and monetization have spawned dozens of fast followers. Understand how publishers are continuing to innovate as we head into 2012.
Monetization Data and Payment Trends– Now that developers have proven the virtual goods model, what are ARPUs, ARPPUs, and LTVs really like for different game genres? What is the lifetime value of users, and how long do players stick around? We take an in depth look at monetization methods and rates, and shed light on where payments are headed in the coming quarters.
Customer Acquisition and Marketing Trends – As the social gaming landscape has evolved over the past four years, so have the ways that developers acquire and retain new users. How have user acquisition costs changed, and what do Facebook's changes spell for the future of the marketing funnel? We take an in depth look at data and trends.
Facebook's Platform Changes, and What's In Store for the Future – Facebook has continued to change Platform communication channels and functionality over the last year, significantly altering the way social games reach users through Facebook. Continued change is likely – what will it be, and how will it impact the industry? Finally, will we see another platform (like Google+) emerge? Our overview covers these developments, their impact on the industry, and what else is in store.

What you get

In addition to our deep dive into key aspects of the social gaming ecosystem, the report also offers extended coverage on:

A brief history on the evolution and growth of this space in the US, including a description of all key players and how they rose to the top.
Total social gaming market size estimates for 2012.
Our take on the key issues facing the growth of social gaming, including our outlook and projections for 2012.

See the full table of contents below:

Table of Contents

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:

A detailed overview of the current state of the industry
Specific estimates on market size by segment
Diagnosis of key opportunities and issues by segment

About the Authors

Charles Hudson

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.

Justin Smith

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): $2,495

OR Buy Single Report: $995

Company Index: 50 Cubes, 51.com, 6waves Lolapps, A Bit Lucky, Activision, AddictingGames, AdParlor, Aeria Games, Amazon, Aol, Apple, Applifier, Appstrip, Arkadium, Atari, Aurora Feint, Bebo, BigFish Games, Bigpoint, Blackhawk, Boku, Booyah, Boyaa, Broken Bulb Studios, Cafe.com, Cie Games, CrowdStar, DeNA, Digital Chocolate, Digital Sky Technologies, Disney, Electronic Arts, ELEX, Facebook, Five Minutes, Friendster, Funsockets, Funzio, Gambit, GameClosure, GameDuell, GameHouse, Gameloft, Glu, GMG Entertainment, Google, Gree, Grey Area Labs, GSN, Happy Elements, HeyZap, Hi5, InComm, iWin, Kabam, Kaixin001, Kongregate, Kontagent, Microsoft, MindJolt, Mixi, MSN, MySpace, News Corporation, Nexon, ngmoco, Nintendo, OMGPOP, Orkut, Papaya Mobile, PaymentPin, PayPal, Peanut Labs, Playdom, Playfirst, Playfish, PlaySpan, Pocket Gems, Pogo, PopCap Games, QZone, Real Networks, Red ROot Labs, Rekoo, RenRen / Xiaonei, Rixty, RockYou!, Scoreloop, SGN, Shanda, Slashkey, Slide, Sometrics, Sony, SponsorPay, Storm8, Super Rewards (Adknowledge), SupersonicAds, Target, Tencent, The9, TheBroth, TinyCo, TokenAds, TrialPay, Twitter, Ubisoft, Viacom, Viximo, VKontakte, Wooga, Yahoo, Zong, Zynga

Wall Street Journal’s Facebook App WSJ Social Unites Article Suggestions From Editors, Friends, and Likes

Posted: 20 Sep 2011 02:31 PM PDT

The Wall Street Journal today launched its news reader Facebook app WSJ Social. It lets users view streams of stories sorted by the newspaper’s staff, their friends, or a Facebook news feed-style algorithm that shows stories with the most Likes. Stories can be instantly shared with Facebook friends using Like buttons, and users can reach a leaderboard by getting the most subscribers.

The release of the canvas app shows that the WSJ sees potential in Facebook beyond driving referral traffic. Rather than complicate its website with tacked on plugins of stories Liked by friends, it has created an entire experience around customization and recommendations. By hosting the app within Facebook, WSJ may also be hoping to suck up some of the social network’s massive time on site, and make users feel more comfortable sharing links to the publication.

The WSJ.com does currently display Facebook’s Like button and Comments box on its website, though these don’t help organize the site’s content by relevancy to the viewer. However, Facebook’s news feed has revealed the stickiness of an algorithmically sorted stream of content chosen by friends. WSJ Social will allow the publication to experiment with personalization similar to the news feed without disturbing the traditional, lightweight, professionally-curated news reading experience its core audience expects from WSJ.com.

When users read articles within the app, they’ll see the Facebook Comments box prominently displayed in the sidebar rather than buried at the bottom of the page. They’ll also only see the Facebook Like button — no Twitter, Google, or other sharing plugins. In this way, the proliferation of WSJ Social-style apps within Facebook, such as the app “Editions” reportedly being developed by CNN and The Washington Post, a could threaten other social platforms populated by usage of their sharing buttons on websites.

WSJ Social’s “My Latest News Feed” makes it unique from other sites such as Twitter and Facebook that let users subscribe to updates from thought leaders. This default view of the home page holds the app’s true value — combining recommendations by friends, thought leaders, and the wisdom of the crowd via the Like button with the picks of WSJ’s entire editorial staff as well as the editors of particular sections. This feed shows the articles picked by the editors a user has followed but that also have high Like counts, and is likely to present highly relevant content.

To provide suggestions of WSJ and peer editors to follow and encourage users to engage, the app offers a leaderboard of the day’s most popular editors. By Liking stories and getting friends to follow them, users can rise to this list and be subscribed to by strangers. Vanity and feeling of obligation to one’s existing subscribers could push users to frequently return to the app and share WSJ stories, driving traffic for the publication.

The presence of additional curation controls does mean less room for content. The panels representing stories in WSJ Social aren’t large enough to show blurbs or in some cases even photos that make choosing what to read easier. At the same time, the cleaner interface may be less exhausting to casual readers. Living within the Facebook chrome may also give WSJ Social advantages as Facebook moves to itself becoming a media hub with a “Read” button to help users tell friends they’ve consumed and enjoyed an article.

For the first month after launch, sponsorships from Dell and Intel will make all WSJ content available to WSJ Social users. After that, though, the app will mirror the website and requires users to pay to access premium content such as expanded coverage and article archives. The more time users spend reading the WSJ, whether on the app or the website, the more likely they are to pay for unlimited access. And with users spending so much time on Facebook, the exposure generated through WSJ could aid the publication’s bottom line as print dies out.

Facebook Combines Most Recent and Top News Into a Single Feed, Adds a Real-Time News Ticker

Posted: 20 Sep 2011 12:30 PM PDT

Facebook just announced that it is redesigning the home page’s news feed to combine the Top News and Most Recent feeds. Rather than having to choose between tabs, users will automatically see Top News content first if highly relevant updates have been published since they last checked Facebook, and see Most Recent content first if they’ve been visiting frequently. A Ticker in the right sidebar will display a firehose of real-time updates that users can click to expand and engage with.

Taking the burden of choice off of users by showing them both relevancy filtered and a raw stream of updates at the same time will ensure there is always something compelling waiting on the home page. This could help Facebook turn quick visits to check for new messages or notifications into longer sessions. The merger of the feeds will also keep users from missing important updates or being bored by seeing identical updates in both feeds.

Facebook product manager Keith Schacht tells us “This about seeing the most important content no matter how frequently you check Facebook.” He explains that the improved news feed is akin to a newspaper that shows you the biggest news that broke since you last read rather than just the headlines from the last day. Some users will ge the updated home page today, and Facebook will be fully rolling it out in the coming weeks.

A Single, Dynamic News Feed

When users return to the redesigned home page, they won’t simply see the same feed they were last viewing. Instead, they’ll see a Top News segment at the top of the feed displaying important stories by close friends or those with lots of Likes and comments that they haven’t seen yet, followed by Most Recent-style content.

If nothing critical has been published since their last visit, they’ll immediately see “Recent Stories”. Those with lots of friends or especially active networks might see Top News if they haven’t visited in as little as 15 minutes, though it may take hours for less connected users.

Facebook’s EdgeRank news feed sorting algorithm can be taught a user’s preferences with in-line controls. Clicking ‘X’ next to a story brings up options to mark or unmark an update as top news. Along with the recently added Subscribe options for managing the frequency and types of posts in the feed, these controls will allow power users to refine their news feed. The wide variety of news feed options might overwhelm novice users, but Schacht says they were designed so they could be ignored if users don’t need them.

To further enrich the home page, photos posted to the news feed will appear larger than before. For instance, a post about new photos being added to an album will show the most popular photo from the album at roughly four times the standard news feed photo size. This may get users to open more photos from the feed and begin sifting through albums — an activity that generates tons of time-on-site for Facebook.

Real-Time Ticker

To replace the separate Most Recent feed, Facebook has added a real-time firehose of all updates by all of a user’s friends to the right sidebar. The Ticker is even more comprehensive than the old Most Recent feed that would still filter out minor updates about some friends.

To make it small enough to fit beside the primary news feed, the Ticker shows activity stories in plain text such as “Kate O’Neill added a new photo to the album Mobile Uploads”, rather than actually showing the photo. Users can hover over a Ticker update to view a popover of the full story it describes, and click to add Likes or comments. For screens of adequate size, the Ticker snaps to the right sidebar above the Chat buddy list, and users can use a sliding divider to choose to see more Ticker updates or more online friends.

While the old separate feeds did update in real-time, Schacht tells us it wasn’t fast enough to inspire conversation. The Ticker is designed to surface currently occurring activity. For instance, Schacht says ”maybe mutual friends are have a conversation shown in the Ticker. You join in and have the serendipitous moment of a shared conversation in real-time.” In this way, users can have an ad hoc online meetup, like a Google+ Hangout that occurs in the feed rather than video.

Simplicity for New Users, Hidden Options for Veterans

With the average Facebook user having less than 200 friends but some having over 1000, Facebook’s design must accomodate a wide variety of use cases. Smart Lists, Subscribe, the rumored Read, Watched, and Listend buttons, and today’s news feed changes all seem to promoting an interface where users don’t have to make any choices or do any work by default, but can opt to refine their experience.

In this case, novice users who visits the home page will immediately see popular stories first, recent stories if they’ve read all the popular ones, and real-time stories in the periphery without a single click. Power users can then apply Friend Lists filters, mark or unmark stories as Top News, and dial up or down the presence of specific friends to customize the news feed.

Facebook tells us tests of the redesign have received “positive reactions” from users. However, when we spotted the single news feed and Ticker last month, the response from those seeing it was almost universally negative. Though Facebook users are always resistant to change, some had valid points about the Ticker being too cumbersome and requiring too many clicks to scan large volumes of updates.

It may take some getting used to, and Facebook will need strike the right balance between Top News and Recent Stories in the primary feed, but the redesign could make Facebook a more relaxing experience. Rather than having to click multiple tabs, worry major updates have slipped by, and miss content Facebook hasn’t deemed important enough, all this content will be immediately available from the home page.

Platform Update: New Bug System and Platform Live Status Page, Credits Features, Event APIs

Posted: 20 Sep 2011 10:48 AM PDT

Over the past week and a half, Facebook has posted to the Developers Blog announcing several new tools, protocols and capabilities for developers. These include

Better ways to submit bugs and track the API heath of the Platform,
Changes to the DealSpot and Games Dashboard Featured Status incentives for developers who have integrated Facebook Credits
A migration system where breaking changes are only pushed on the first day of the month
Support for OAuth 2.0 with XMPP
The deprecation of Auth 1.0 and the FB.Data call
The ability to manage Events and upload high-resolution photos via the Graph API
A more direct way for games to handle link clicks on the canvas page
The option to detect and control flash object visibility in apps

New Platform Tools

The Facebook Platform Live Status page has been redesigned and augmented with new functionality. Developers now see the current health of the Platform and when the latest JSON push was completed, followed by a list of the five latest Platform issues and graphs of the average API response time and error count.

Additionally, developers can hook their apps up to a feed of the JSON pushes so they can set their apps to begin automated testing once a push has completed. This will help developers ensure their tests are being performed on the latest code.

Facebook is replacing the Bugzilla bug tracking system developed by Mozilla with its own system that won’t require a separate log in. Developers will first see the top 20 trending bugs and options to search for, browse, and filter bugs by phrase or tag. Once devs have found a report about their bug they can subscribe to email updates, notify Facebook they’re experience it too, discuss workaround with other developers.

In order to speed up the resolution process, devs must include repro steps including IDs and access tokens in order to add a new bug report. Bugzilla is now read-only so devs should begin using the new Bugs tool. Slow bug resolution has been one of the biggest problems with the Platform. By developing a system that reduces the number of redundant bug reports and relieves the Facebook team from having to reach out and ask for repro steps, the site may be able resolve bugs more efficiently.

High Level Changes

On October 14th, Facebook will open to all Facebook Credits developers several of the special incentive features that were initially used to encourage early adoption of Credits as a currency and payment method.

Developers will gain the ability to target specific demographics with DealSpot, a TrialPay-developed system that shows in-game icons leading to offers users can complete to earn Facebook Credits. DealSpot presents offers to users that might not have visited the offer wall, so developers looking to augment sales of virtual goods with another revenue stream should strongly consider activating the feature.

All developers will also gain access to broad category targeting, which lets them target Facebook Ads to users based on their interest in anything related to a selected topic. Facebook actually began testing this feature in April as an alternative to targeting specific keywords. The ability to target all social gamers rather than just fans or the Pages of certain games, Broad Category Interest targeting could help developers attain more new customers with less effort spent on ad targeting.

Facebook’s free marketing system known as Games Dashboard Featured Status and Social Placements will also become available to developers of games integrated with Credits. Games eligible for the promotions are “evaluated on a case by case basis, such as for game quality, genre and new functionality”. The system will be especially helpful to developers that are building great games but that don’t have big marketing budgets.

Recently, Facebook announced that developers would have a minimum of 90 days between the announcement of a breaking change and its implementation. To make adapting to these changes more predictable, Facebook now says it will only push breaking changes on the first day of any given month. This will reduce stress for developers, since they won’t have to worry that they may have missed an announcement about a breaking change that could suddenly take their app down.

For example, Facebook announced on September 16th that the FB.Data calls for waiting until specific queries were completed to perform an action will be deprecated. As such, the FB.Data calls will be deprecated on the first day of the month following the minimum 90 day period, January 1st, 2012.

Developers of XMPP Facebook Chat clients can now begin migrating to OAuth 2.0. They can use access tokens over SSL rather than sig and session_key parameters. As such, Facebook will deprecate Auth.promotesession on October 1st. The move to OAuth 2.0 will protect Chat clients from some types of data leaks.

A reminder, mandatory migration to OAuth 2.0 is coming on October 1st. Developers will need to have switched to the new JavaScript and PHP SDKs by then.

Specific Changes

Developers can now manage invite lists and check RSVP status for Events using the Graph API in addition to creating and deleting Events. This could help developers create powerful interfaces for professional event managers, or create an Events dashboard for users.

Facebook improved its Photos product last month, increasing the maximum photo size from 760 to 920 pixels. Photos uploaded through the Graph API can now have a maximum size of 920 pixels as well. However, photos returned through the API will still have a maximum size of 720 pixels, so there are no actual changes to what’s received from the API or FQL. The change will keep users from abandoning photo upload and editing apps when they want to upload high resolution photos.

By using FB.Canvas.SetUrlHandler, developers can now select to have clicks of links related to their apps from ticker stories, bookmarks, bookmark drop-down Requests and Request Notification stories be handled in-line in the apps. Previously, these clicks would needlessly redirect a user when they were already viewing the app the link led to.

For example, if an app employs FB.Canvas.SetUrlHandler, a user who clicks on a ‘your move’ Request or an achievement story while already viewing the app that published the Request or story wouldn’t be sent to the corresponding URL, but would be brought to the corresponding screen within the app. This should decrease load times and bounces from users clicking links on the Canvas page.

Flash applications using wmode=”window” rather than the recommended wmode=”opaque” can now pass a callback function to hideFlashCallback to FB.init to customize the visibility of flash elements when popups are shown. Previously, Flash objects could become hidden when popups were shown.

Movies, Music, Games, Angry Birds, Rihanna, “The Smurfs,” and More on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages

Posted: 20 Sep 2011 09:44 AM PDT

A good number of the Pages on our list of the fastest growing by Facebook Likes seem to have made the list this week as the result of Page consolidations. For example, several grew by a few million or hundreds of thousands of Likes in the span of one day. Most of the Pages revolved around movies, music, or other media-type Pages.

	Name	Likes	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	Manga	3,616,265	+1,248,535	+3,392,767
2.	Transformers	8,652,304	+21,626	+1,750,700
3.	Saving Private Ryan	1,308,781	+142	+1,306,606
4.	Back to the Future Trilogy	1,329,403	+1,539	+732,669
5.	The Godfather	5,611,292	+6,191	+612,465
6.	NatGeo	3,080,243	+71,990	+466,494
7.	The Miami HEAT	4,063,727	+4,504	+445,725
8.	Titanic	13,486,119	+57,296	+409,479
9.	Girl With The Dragon Tattoo	420,131	+314	+408,975
10.	facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake!	445,351	0	+333,025
11.	Music	27,848,019	+47,330	+326,669
12.	Facebook	52,727,244	+49,186	+313,866
13.	Angry Birds	7,492,940	+56,829	+308,560
14.	Harry Potter	34,680,412	+46,970	+307,580
15.	Banda Sinaloense MS	383,725	+1,801	+283,108
16.	The Smurfs	4,316,318	+40,000	+280,756
17.	Rihanna	45,205,913	+45,566	+273,532
18.	FOX Deportes	322,720	+251	+271,943
19.	Fidel Rueda Oficial	403,507	+1,645	+270,123
20.	Leo Messi	24,887,445	+41,047	+269,339

Manga, a Community Page revolving around the Japanese comic books, grew by 3.3 million this week to most of its 3.6 million; it appeared to be a Page consolidation. Similarly, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo grew by 409,000 Likes to 420,100 in a period of two days.

"Transformers" grew by 1.7 million, mostly in a few days, to 8.6 million and has been promoting the Blu ray version of the film. "Saving Private Ryan" grew 1.3 million, most of its Likes this week. The Back to the Future Trilogy grew by 732,700 Likes to 1.3 million in a span of a few days. "The Godfather" grew by 612,500 Likes to 5.6 million, mostly in one day, and has been promoting the new game in Beta from Kabam. Then there was the "Titanic" Page with 409,500 Likes to 13.5 million, "Harry Potter" with 307,600 Likes to 34.6 million and "The Smurfs" with 280,800 Likes to 4.2 million; this last Page has been actively promoting film-related products and Pages very actively.

TV-related Pages included NatGeo with 466,500 Likes to pass 3 million; the Page has actively promoted new shows and seen steady growth. Then there was FOX Deportes with 272,000 Likes, growing to 322,700 Likes, in what seemed to be a Page consolidation.

Music Pages included the Music Community Page with 326,700 Likes to reach 27.8 million. Then there were two Mexican musicians' Pages, Banda Sinaloense MS with 283,100 Likes to reach 383,700 and Fidel Rueda Oficial with 270,100 likes to reach 403,500, that seemed due to Page consolidations. Finally, Rihanna's Page reached 45.2 million with 273,500 additional Likes this week; she's been promoting her appearances and products on the Page.

The rest of the Pages were a mixed bunch. The Miami HEAT's Page grew by 445,700 Likes to pass 4 million, partly from consolidation. The facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake! Page grew by 333,000 to 445,400 Likes. Facebook's Page grew by 313,900 to 52.7 million. Angry Birds grew by 308,600 Likes to 7.4 million and soccer star Leo Messi's Page has been recruiting visitors to Like it, resulting in growth of 269,300 Likes to 24.8 million.

New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Vitrue, Brighter Option, Wildfire and More

Posted: 20 Sep 2011 09:15 AM PDT

Companies on our list of hires this week sought several engineers, as well as account managers, sales staff and marketing personnel.

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:

Vitrue

John Ledbetter, Software Engineer – formerly a Software Engineer at Cisco Systems.
Xinjiang Lu, Software Engineer – previously an R&D Scientist at Quality Vision International.

TBG Digital

Agnieszka Langford, Display and Social Media Analyst – formerly worked as an Account Handling Intern at BEC.
Alex Abowd, Client Services Manager – previously worked a similar job, Senior Account Manager, at Millward Brown.

Brighter Option