gravatar

Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook Launches Music Dashboard That Shows What Friends Are Listening to Across Services

Posted: 23 Sep 2011 01:10 PM PDT

Thanks to the integrations Facebook launched with Spotify, Rdio, and many other music services at yesterday’s f8 conference, users are now finding out what their friends are listening to in the home page’s Ticker. To make it even easier to discover music, Facebook has launched a “Music” dashboard that shows users trending albums, top songs, featured music services, and a stream dedicated to the recent listens of all of a user’s friends. Clicking through to a playlist appears to be one way to activate the dashboard and make its bookmark appear in the home page’s left sidebar, though this direct link also works.

The Music dashboard will allow users to actively and efficiently seek discover new music in addition to passively seeing what friends are listening to while browsing the news feed. The “Featured Music Services” panel could be an important driver of growth for Facebook’s lesser known music partners, and it could also become a way for Facebook to monetize music by charging for placement in the panel.

Rather than showing bookmarks for individual music partners, it seems that Facebook has decided to aggregate all the services into a single hub. In the future, it could gain more engaging features such as the ability to set up simultaneous listening between friends similar to Turntable.fm. It could also serve as a payment portal through which users could buy their subscriptions to partnered music services with Facebook Credits. This would provide a direct way for Facebook to get a cut of the revenue partners are earning from the exposure and user growth they get on the site.

It’s unclear whether the Music dashboard would preclude partners from developing native versions of their services that live within the Facebook chrome as canvas apps. Such apps could silo users, and make them less likely to discover music from friends that use a different service than them. With the dashboard, a Spotify user could see a friend was listening to something on Rdio, click through the story and download Rdio, find it better fits their design and music library needs, and end up becoming a paying Rdio user.

However, Facebook also allows users to discover a song from a service they don’t use and rather than having to download that partner’s app, they can play the song in an app they already have. For example, a Spotify user could see a friend had listened to a song on Rdio, click the play button in the Music dashboard story, and use the small link in the prompt to launch or download Rdio to instead listen on Spotify. The relatively small size of the link to play a song in one’s native service could be Facebook’s way of getting users to try out multiple services, and prevent an app with an early lead such as Spotify from pulling back users who might have been prepared to try a different service.

Current Dashboard Features

The Music dashboard dynamically displays different content depending on the recent activity of a user’s friends. The Friends’ Music section of the dashboard shows full size rich media stories about the listening activity of friends, complete with play buttons on songs that launch their corresponding desktop or web applications. Most of these stories otherwise only appear in the Ticker as simple text activity stories that must be hovered over and expanded to reveal play buttons.

With the Playlist section, Facebook will reward music services that make it easy to create and publish mixes. As playlists automatically continue to play without users have to select the next song they want to hear, this section of the dashboard will facilitate a laid-back listening experience. It could also get users to burn through the free listening time users get with the unpaid tiers of some music partners, which could lead users to hit their limit faster and get them to buy subscriptions.

Users have begun to receive notifications when a friend sees a story about their listening activity and clicks a play button on of the songs. These notifications direct users to an Activity section of the Music dashboard, which encourages them to comment in order to start a conversation about a song them and a friend both listened to. Right now this is the closest thing to real-time social activity around music, but simultaneous listening or dedicated listening Chat could be on the way.

As part of its partnerships, Facebook may have promised free placement in the Featured Music Services panel in the right sidebar of the Music Dashboard. This could give services that haven’t gained any users in a network a way to gain a foothold and begin growing through exposure in the Ticker. However, Facebook could also opt to charge music services for this real estate. We’re waiting to hear back from Facebook about how services are chosen for placement.

Even without more engaging features, the Music dashboard could become stop on users’ routine browsing flow around Facebook. While the Ticker may remain the primary way users discover new music because of its prominent presence on the news feed and its eye-catching movement, that Music dashboard could become the place users to go to find something to listen to right now.

How to Use the Facebook Timeline: A Complete Walk-Through of the Redesigned Profile

Posted: 23 Sep 2011 12:22 PM PDT

Timeline, the redesigned version of the profile that Facebook launched yesterday at f8, gives users much more flexibility in how they present themselves. Users can customize their banner image, make certain types of content more prominent, and decide what moments of their life they want to feature. Everything users have ever posted to Facebook is now much more accessible, so most will want to browse through their Timeline and ensure all their content is appropriate and has the right privacy settings.

Here we’ll walk-through all the new features available in Timeline, how to control what’s displayed, and discuss how Timeline will impact users and the rest of the site. Facebook has struck a balance between creating a common structure for all profiles but giving users to ability customize the way they present themselves within those boundaries. In this way, the site has become more personal without following Myspace’s mistake of allowing users so much freedom over arrangement of core features that browsing becomes confusing.

Those who want to early access to Timeline can sign up at its new about page. It’s also possible to get a developer release of the Timeline now. To get access, those who aren’t already developers users must  have a verified account and install the Developer app, then create an application, click “Get Started Using Open Graph”, edit some settings, then wait a few minutes and return to their profile. They should see the Timeline, and can select to make it visible it to their friends immediately or it will be automatically published on September 29th, 2011.

Cover

At the top of the Timeline is the Cover, a giant banner image. Users can select any of their their album photos as their Cover, or upload a new image. Once selected, users can click on their Cover to bring up options to reposition it, choose a new image, or remove their current Cover.

With this option, Facebook has given users more control over the look of their profile than ever before. It may also lead to the rise of applications that let users create collages or other special images specifically for use as Covers.

Info

Below the Cover users see the biographical information that previously appeared on their Info tab. This includes their work, education, current city, and hometown. There’s also an “About” link that expands the Info section to reveal work and education details, a “History by the Year” of a user’s employment and schooling, a user’s Relationships and Family connections, their About Me text, favorite quotes, basic info and contact info. Users no longer have the option to “Feature” certain friend lists, family members, or Groups.

To get users to keep their Info up to date, there are edit links in the expanded About section and a big Update Info on the main Timeline view. By getting people to share as much biographical information as possible, Facebook gains valuable data that it can charge advertisers to use for targeting their ads.

Featured Content Categories

Beside the Info section, the Timeline displays four channels of different types of content. By default, these are Friends, Photos, Map, and Likes, but users can click a drop-down to swap in other categories into the featured slots. When viewing a friend’s Timeline, this drop-down reveal the non-featured categories.

The categories users can choose from include:

  • Friends – Displays all of a user’s friends including a overlaid count of their mutual friends. When expanded, friends can be searched through or sorted by characteristic. A privacy control and link to the Find Friends feature appear in a user’s own Friends section.
  • Photos – All of a user’s photo albums and videos, followed by their tagged photos and videos. Each album includes a privacy control. As the old photostrip has been replaced with the Cover this this photos section, users must pick one photo to represent them instead of five.
  • Likes – A user’s Liked Pages sorted by category, with their Favorite Likes shown first followed by links to see all Pages in that category. Below, a user’s Liked Pages are displayed in reverse chronological order. With access from the main profile view, Pages now have a bigger opportunity to gain new Fans from users browsing the Likes of their friends.
  • Map – A Bing map of all of a user’s location-tagged posts and updates.The map can be sorted by categories such as photos, event check-ins, or restaurants. Zooming in and clicking on an individual pushpin displays the original update.

  • Subscribers – All of a user’s public and friend subscribers, and settings to control notifications and privacy.
  • Subscriptions – The people a user is subscribed to.
  • Notes – One column of the Notes written by users, and another of Notes that tag them. There are also links to write a new Note and view drafts.
  • Apps – Users can add any of their installed apps into the category channels. When clicked on, they display a dedicated timeline of all a user’s activity within the app. Users can also see the most recently used apps of friends. The ability to display Apps more prominently in the profile could lead to a boom of development of utility apps similar to those that appear in the Profile Boxes a few years ago.
  • Certain preferred media partners, such as Spotify and Hulu show a special “All Time” of a user’s most frequently consumed content, such as their one most watched video and a list of their other “Top Videos Watched”. The ability to display Apps more prominently in the profile could lead to a boom of development of utility apps similar to those that appear in the Profile Boxes a few years ago. Facebook also automatically creates categories that aggregate specific types of media activity, such as “Music” category that shows Spotify and Rdio activity together.

Activity Log

Above the featured content categories is a button called View Activity that shows a red counter of posts and info that require approval before appearing on a user’s profile. When clicked, the button reveals the Activity Log, a private log of all of a user’s activity since the joined Facebook. Downward arrow buttons next to each piece of content let users select its privacy and whether its featured on, allowed on, or hidden from a user’s Timeline.

A drop-down in the top right corner lets users filter to only see certain types of activity or content published through specific apps. By visiting the Activity Log after using an app with persistent permission to share a activity, users can hide specific actions such as listening to an embarrassing song or watching a controversial video. As there is no “incognito mode” or way to preemptively prevent certain activity of an approved app from being published, this is the only way to hide specific actions.

Users should considering browsing through all their content in the Activity Log and ensuring they at least know what they’re sharing and with who. As the Timeline makes this content much more accessible to others, users should make sure nothing added to Facebook long ago is visible to the wrong people.

Besides the View Activity button on the Info panel is a settings drop-down that lets users preview their profile from the privacy perspective of a specific friend. There’s also a link to creating an embeddable profile badge for websites.

Timeline Publisher

A publisher on the left side of the Timeline lets users post new updates. If a user scrolls beneath the publisher, a floating bar appears allowing them to publish without returning to the top of the Timeline. In addition to the standard status update and photo options, a Places button lets users compose an update that includes a tagged location.

There are also five new types of updates that let users share important life events in more detail than a profile info change or status update. When an user indicates they are publishing a life event, Facebook knows to publish this more prominently in news feed, to a wider set of friends, and to those who’ve specifically subscribed to their life events. The types will also give Facebook more data on a user’s identity and behavior that could be used for ad targeting.

The new publishing options are:

  • Work and Education:  Started a new job, graduated from a school, or military service.
  • Family and Relationships: Got engaged, got married, had a child, got a pet
  • Living: Moved, bought a home, got a roommate, bought a car (there’s no options for motorcycles or boats)
  • Health and Wellness: Broke a bone, had surgery, overcame an illness
  • Milestones – Learned a language, got a license, traveled, achievement or award,
  • Other Life Event – A free form story

Recent Activity

At the top right of the Timeline below the Info section is a panel of a user’s “More Recent Activity” such as Liking Pages, new friendships, subscribing to someone’s updates, installing new apps, and more. Individual activity stories can be hidden from the Timeline, or all past and future activity stories of that type can be hidden. An edit icon lets users manage what story types they’ve hidden.

Panels for a user’s recent Music, Video, and other media types appear in this area as well. This lets a user’s friends get a quick snapshot of what they’re listening to, watching, or reading.

Timeline

Below all these other features is the Timeline itself, a reel of all of a user’s important updates from their time on Facebook. A set of links in the top right corner of the profile lets users skip to a specific month, year, or the beginning of the timeline. By scrolling to the bottom of the Timeline, older updates are displayed. Previously, users had to scroll to the bottom of a wall to view older content, and couldn’t navigate to different time periods on the profile. Timeline makes content posted even years ago accessible with a few clicks, meaning the history of a user’s time on Facebook factors much more heavily into how they’re perceived.

Hovering over an update on one’s own Timeline reveals options to hide, feature or change its date. By clicking on the center line running down the middle of the Timeline, users can insert new content at specific dates in the past.

In some cases when users scroll to the start of a month or year on the Timeline, they’ll see summaries of all their activity in that time period, such as friendships, wall posts from friends, Event RSVPs, Likes, Places tags, photos. There’s also a special panel that displays all of wall posts a user got on their birthday. At the very bottom of the Timeline, users can edit the story about their own birth.

Privacy

Facebook preserves the privacy settings Timeline users had previously set for the profile walls. The relatively new “Limit the Audience for Past Posts” privacy control lets users apply the “friends only” visibility setting to anything they’ve published publicly or to more than just their friends. Before the launch of Timeline this wasn’t as necessary, as it was so difficult to get to old content. With the Timeline’s navigation bar making older content more accessible, users may want to use this privacy control to limit the visibility of posts they published to “everyone” years ago.

Users can now grant applications persistent permission to share their activity to the Ticker and Timeline. Therefore, users should occasionally check their Activity Log to make sure they’re comfortable sharing all the things they’ve listened to or watched.

The Facebook user base’s reaction to forthcoming rollout of the Timeline is likely to be mixed. Some will enjoy the customization features and ability to use Facebook as digital scrapbook they can share with friends. Others might feel the Timeline violates their privacy by making their older content so visible. In reality, this content was already available, it was just harder to get to.

It may take some time for users to clean up their Timeline, but once they’re comfortable sharing everything on it, we think it will become popular and make the profile a much more accurate and vivid representation of people’s identities. When users want to get to know a new friend they won’t just browse all their photos, they’ll be able to scan everything they’ve ever shared, which could significantly increase the amount of time people spend on Facebook.

Join Inside Network at Socialize West — October 20 – 21, 2011

Posted: 23 Sep 2011 12:20 PM PDT

As acquisitions and IPOs abound in the industry, virtual goods and social gaming have proven to be a key part of monetizing social media.

This fall, we invite you to join the conversation with Inside Network's Justin Smith and Eric Eldon as they lead discussions on the economics of virtual goods and social games at this year's Socialize West, happening October 20 – 21 in San Francisco.

About the Sessions

Measuring the Health of Your Virtual Economy

Eric Eldon, Editor at Inside Network

Managing a growing virtual economy is not easy. What should you track? What are the key indicators of a healthy virtual economy? Our panel of metrics and economy experts will share their thoughts on this important subject.

Social Games 2015: Where to now?

Justin Smith, Founder at Inside Network

Over the last two years social gaming has quickly established itself as highly profitable business model in the interactive entertainment industry. But now that the word is out, where do we go from here? Or, more formally, how does one build a long-term sustainable business in social gaming? This panel will briefly cover the history of social gaming and provide an assessment of the current landscape, but will predominantly focus on how social gaming will move forward in the next few years. Key topics covered include: consolidation, licensing and venture capital.

About Socialize West

Socialize gathers professionals from all aspects of the social media spectrum: social gaming, virtual goods, startups, mobile and media: business owners/leaders, business development, strategy/operations, and marketing.

Learn more about Socialize here.

Facebook Hires and Departures: Analysts, Engineering, Recruiting, Engineering and More

Posted: 23 Sep 2011 09:20 AM PDT

Facebook looks to have hired account managers, analysts, engineers, recruiters, operations, policy, communications, and other staff from posts on its LinkedIn feed and jobs that disappeared from the company’s Careers Page.

New hires per LinkedIn and Other Sources:

  • Stefan Cataldo, Account Manager CEEMEA – formerly an Account Manager at Google.
  • Leila Summa, Client Partner – formerly worked as the Head of Digital Marketing and SOcial Media Director for Migros-Genossenschafts-Bund.
  • Yi Wang, Software Engineer Intern – formerly a Research Assistant at the University of California, Riverside.
  • Michael Fox, Director, Global Vertical Marketing – had previously worked as the Head of U.S. Market Solutions at Facebook.
  • Thach Nguyen, Software Engineer – formerly a Software Engineering Intern at Google.
  • Nasser Alsherif, Analyst – previously worked as a Research Assistant at the American University in Cairo.

Prior listings now removed from the Facebook Careers Page:

  • Analyst, Measurement Solutions (Palo Alto)
  • Analyst, Measurement Solutions (New York)
  • Analyst, Pricing and Yield (New York)
  • Audience Researcher (Palo Alto)
  • Partner Engineer
  • Manager, Site Operations Engineering
  • Site Operations Engineer
  • Analyst, Measurement Solutions (Palo Alto)
  • Analyst, Measurement Solutions (New York)
  • Audience Researcher (Palo Alto)
  • Director of Policy (Spain)
  • Pan-Euro Communications Manager
  • Network Operations Engineer
  • DSO Account Manager, Japanese (Hong Kong)
  • Manager, Online Sales Account Management (Austin)
  • Sales Manager (Palo Alto)
  • Product Specialist, User Operations (Release)
  • Employee Relations Specialist (Contract)
  • University Recruiting and Sourcing Specialist – Dublin
  • University Recruiting and Sourcing Specialist – Contract (Dublin)
  • Product Specialist, User Operations (Release)
  • Law Enforcement Response Analyst

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Facebook Careers Postings: Engineering, Mobile, Ad Ops, EMEA and More

Posted: 23 Sep 2011 09:13 AM PDT

Facebook is on the prowl for more engineers, as usual, according to posts on the company’s Careers Page and its LinkedIn feed. The company is also looking for an EMEA Policy Manager, a mobile engineer, data center, ads ops, account management staff and more.

Posts added this week on Facebook's Careers Page:

  • Engineering Program Coordinator
  • Mobile Ops Engineer
  • EMEA Policy Manager
  • Product Marketing Manager, Brand Advertising
  • Software Engineer 1109B (Seattle)
  • Software Engineer, Developer Tools (Seattle)
  • Partner Engineer (New York)
  • Partner Engineer (Singapore)
  • Partner Engineer – Marketing Solutions (Singapore)
  • Software Engineer, Data Center Tools
  • Software Engineering Manager, Data Center Tools
  • HR Business Partner (New York)
  • HR Business Partner (Sao Paulo)
  • Offer Letter Coordinator (Contract)
  • Sales Training Consultant (Singapore)
  • Intern Program Coordinator (Contract)
  • Recruiting Manager (Sao Paulo)
  • IT Product Manager, Data
  • Manager, Measurement Solutions (New York)
  • Data Center Business Operations Manager
  • Administrative Assistant
  • DSO Account Manager (Sao Paulo)
  • Manager, Account Management, Global Marketing Solutions (Austin)
  • Associate, Ad Operations – Finnish (Dublin)
  • Associate, Ad Operations – German (Dublin)
  • Strategic Partner Development, Media (New York)
  • Global Business Manager (London)
  • Account Manager – Danish (Dublin)
  • SMB Marketing Associate (Dublin)

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.

Love, Phrases, Page Tabs, Videos, Cards and More on This Week’s Top 20 Emerging Facebook Apps by MAU

Posted: 23 Sep 2011 08:34 AM PDT

The applications that grew the most on our emerging list by monthly active users this week included some love quizzes, the German Phrases app, a few Page tab apps, video, greeting cards and more. The apps on our list grew from between 147,600 and 613,900 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook. We define “emerging” applications as those that ended with between 100,000 and 1 million MAU in the past week.

Top Gainers This Week

Name MAU Gain Gain,%
1.  Your Funny Apps ! 704,086 +613,928 +681%
2.  Bubble Atlantis 983,431 +419,420 +123%
3.  Deine Phrases 420,804 +359,573 +587%
4.  Dirty Dancing 322,605 +294,636 +1,053%
5.  Sayfanıza Hoş Geldiniz Sekmesi Ekleyin 894,061 +244,019 +44%
6.  VidyoBlue 391,105 +243,145 +164%
7.  fantacalcioville 371,569 +205,027 +155%
8.  Trendkız 529,984 +196,360 +66%
9.  Angry Birds 471,344 +194,212 +70%
10.  21個問題 758,165 +189,876 +33%
11.  Greeting Cards 364,943 +174,474 +140%
12.  Are You In Love? 626,665 +168,824 +38%
13.  Jungle Jewels Flash 573,476 +167,301 +49%
14.  True Love Quiz 569,779 +162,522 +41%
15.  Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? 649,377 +159,017 +32%
16.  Intel – Welcome 446,787 +158,618 +55%
17.  Hike FREE Tab Builder for Pages: New Static FBML 873,191 +157,766 +22%
18.  Airport City 341,398 +157,420 +211%
19.  Adventure Slots 718,350 +153,076 +27%
20.  Slot City – Slot Machines 896,625 +147,551 +20%

Your Funny Apps ! is an app that grew by 613,900 MAU that offers users a choice of three different apps — Find Your Previous Life, Your Future House, Your Life Graph — and publishes the results of either quiz to the stream as a photo in its own photo album with a link to the app. Other, similar apps on our list included Are You In Love? with 168,800 MAU and True Love Quiz with 162,500 MAU. Both apps run in the same circle of asking you questions, then asking you to invite friends to the app for the answer, then  clicking for the results, then asking you to invite friends to use the app.

There was the German app, Deine Phrases, not available in the United States that grew by 359,600 MAU. Then two Page tab apps, the Turkish Sayfanıza Hoş Geldiniz Sekmesi Ekleyin by 224,000 MAU and Hike FREE Tab Builder for Pages: New Static FBML by 157,800 MAU, were on the list.

VidyoBlue grew by 243,100 MAU and is a Turkish video app that allows users to view, share, Like and comment on the videos. 21個問題 is an app that grew by 189,900 MAU and it allows users to answer questions about their friends, then posts answers to the stream. Greeting Cards is an app that provides a selection of greeting cards to be sent to a user's friends, generating a feed story, growing by 174,500 MAU. Intel – Welcome grew by 158,600 MAU.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned next week for our look at the top weekly gainers by monthly active users on Monday, the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

lørdag den 24. september 2011 at 07.50