Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook Will Remove the Discussions Tab App From Pages in One Month
- Facebook’s News Feed Changes May Be Reducing Impressions, Increasing Feedback for Page Posts
- Facebook Platform Updates: Frictionless Requests 2.0, OAuth 2.0 and HTTPS Deadlines Tomorrow, FMBL Ending June 2012
- Maximizing Conversions From Facebook Ads Through Day- and Week-Parting Strategies
- The Guardian, Photos, Page Tabs, Cards and More on This Week’s Top 20 Emerging Facebook Apps
| Facebook Will Remove the Discussions Tab App From Pages in One Month Posted: 30 Sep 2011 03:44 PM PDT Facebook has begun notifying Page admins that it will be removing the Discussions tab application from all Pages on October 31, 2011. The in-house app, also known as Discussion Boards, allows Pages to host simple forums. However, Facebook says “The best way to encourage conversation and feedback is through posts and comments on your wall”. It will therefore eliminate the Discussions app, despite AppData showing that it has 22 million monthly active users. Getting conversations to happen on the wall will make them more visible, and thanks to the new Friend Activity default tab app, the change will make Pages more immediately relevant to users. This is important to Facebook as Pages are not currently getting many views, which reduces the product’s value to brands and makes them less likely to pay Facebook to advertise for their Pages. The removal of old Discussions threads could anger some users and Page admins.
Facebook launched the Discussions tab alongside Pages years ago to permit longer-form, threaded conversations about specific topics within Pages. The app had as many as 54 million MAU and 27 million daily active users in December 2010. It has since declined to 22 million MAU and 914,000 DAU. The upcoming removal of Discussions tabs is confirmed by the Help Center document. This is linked to in the alert to Page admins about the change which appears atop some Pages. It appears that Pages can no longer install the app. Earlier this month, Facebook informed Page admins it would be removing the Send an Update direct communication tool.
Users still engaged with the app or that had important conversation on it in the past may be displeased to find their threads erased. Page admins who conducted customer service on Discussions or that had invested time into moderating threads might also be angry. At this time, Facebook doesn’t appear to offer any way to export content from the app before it’s removed. Tips for how to moderate your Page’s wall in order to avoid customer services problems and help your business can be found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s comprehensive guide to marketing and advertising through Facebook. [Thanks to Dan Birdwhistell for the tip] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook’s News Feed Changes May Be Reducing Impressions, Increasing Feedback for Page Posts Posted: 30 Sep 2011 02:42 PM PDT Since Facebook combined the Top News and Most Recent tabs into a single, hybrid news feed last week, we’ve been watching for fluctuations in the volume of Page posts and other content types seen on the site’s home page. A study by EdgeRank Checker shows that impressions per post are down 33% but that Likes and comments are up 17%. However, there hasn’t been enough time or data since the changes to make an accurate assessment of the impact of the changes. But if this data holds true over time, Facebook may have succeeded in making the news feed more engaging. Brands trying to reach the biggest possible audience with institutional marketing through their Pages may be hurt by the change, while those aiming to drive clicks and discussion may be helped by the new hybrid feed.
We’ve also seen steep increase in the presence of reshared content, particularly single photos. This may be due to Facebook showing the number of times a post has been reshared next to its comment count, and the increased display size of photos shared to the news feed. Before the news feed change, Facebook users could choose between a Top News feed of the most relevant content and a Most Recent feed of other posts in reverse-chronological order. Page updates would frequently appear in the Most Recent feed. This meant more savvy users who switched between the two tabs had a place to go to absorb lots of Page update impressions, but novice users who stayed on Top News might only see the occasional Page update The hybrid feed combines these two tabs, generally showing more popular content while minor updates are displayed as activity stories in the home page’s right sidebar Ticker. It means users who don’t act to filter their news feed may see more Page content, but more experienced users may see less. In the first days after the change, it seemed like the news feed had very little Page content in it, but that those that did appear were generally very popular and compelling. EdgeRank Checker’s study seems to confirm this hypothesis that Page updates are appearing less frequently but that they’re being targeted better such that they reach users more likely to think they’re relevant and so leave feedback. The study looked at 1500 randomly selected posts over two time periods, from September 14th to 19th and from the 23rd to 28th, and selected to measure impressions, Likes, and comments before and after the news feed change on the same days of the week.
EdgeRank Checker believes the difference may be in part due to Facebook causing posts to decay faster. This means the news feed is giving more prominence to recently published updates than it did before. We believe this increased time decay may cause Page posts to quickly drop down into the “Recent Stories” portion of the news feed if they don’t see much engagement, reducing impressions. Compelling and relevant updates by Pages may be tagged with the Top Story blue corner, and therefore be given prime placement near the top of the feed, causing users to take the time to read and engage with them rather than skimming by them once they start scrolling. Another contributing factor may be that if a user hasn’t logged in to Facebook for a few days, they’ll only see massively popular or relevant posts at the top of the news feed, and Page posts don’t usually have such as high EdgeRank score. Therefore, the top spot may be less likely to be filled with a Page update now than before, reducing impressions. Increased Presence of ReShared PhotosThe other most noticeable change we’ve seen in the news feed is the presence of more reshared photos. We don’t have data to support this claim, but single reshared photos seem to be appearing in the news feed much more frequently .There are several factors that may have contributed to this:
The increased feed prominence of single photos makes Facebook a more powerful viral distribution platform for photo-based memes. Facebook even took advantage of this itself to spread a photo debunking the myth that it might start to charge users for access in the future. However, the increased prominence has also given rise to spammy apps that publish photos tagging multiple friends. This is because reshares of these photos include links back to the apps that help them grow. One called My Friends DNA by Shoutflow quickly rose to 41,000 DAU but has since dropped to nearly zero, indicating it may have been temporarily shut down by Facebook.
Facebook has plenty of data on the volume of different content types in the old news feed. With time, it may try to align new content volumes with the old ones, or improve the EdgeRank news feed sorting algorithms to favor posts that are frequently Liked, commented on, and reshared, rather than simply viewed. it will take some time before enough data becomes available to conduct accurate analysis of the impact of the news feed changes. There is a chance that Facebook has decreased the EdgeRank of Page posts, but brands and Page management companies should consider holding their concerns until more data becomes available. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 30 Sep 2011 12:49 PM PDT Yesterday, Facebook announced updates to the Requests 2.0 including the introduction of frictionless requests that don’t require users to complete a Requests dialog. This could get users to send more Requests, helping apps gain new users and reengage existing users. However, some users might opt in to frictionless requests without fully understanding the feature’s implications, and later be surprised to find out their in-app actions have been sending Requests to their friends It also set the deprecation schedule for FBML. Support will be discontinued on January 1st, 2012, and apps using FBML will cease to work on June 1st, 2012. Last week’s Platform Update also noted additions to the Graph API, a change to setAutoResize, and a new way for developers to have their apps indexed. Finally, tomorrow is the migration deadline for OAuth 2.0 and HTTPS. Requests 2.0 UpdatesPreviously, developers had to force users through a Requests dialog every time they want to send a Request. Developers can now enable frictionless requests, which allows them to automatically send Requests on behalf of its users when a user opts to send a Request to a friend they’ve already sent one to.
If enabled, when users go to send their first request to a specific friend, they’ll see a checkbox for “Don’t ask again before sending Requests to [this friend] from this app.” Next time they opt to send a Request to that same friend from that same app, the Request will be automatically sent without interrupting usage of the app. As Requests are an important driver of growth and retention for apps, making it easier for users to send Requests should help apps increase their user counts. Frictionless Requests may also be compatible with Facebook’s forthcoming HTML5 mobile app platform, which will allow users to send Requests that are delivered as notifications. Facebook is also implementing a new breaking change to Requests 2.0 that will improve its performance. A new migration setting called “Requests 2.0 Efficient” is now available in the Developer app. When activated this “changes the format for request IDs in the JavaScript requests callback method.” Developers should make the change to their JavaScript and then enable the migration.
In 90 days on January 1st, 2012, all apps will be opted into both Requests 2.0 Efficient and Upgrade to Requests 2.0. Developers should make sure they’re ready to prevent breakage. New apps are now opted into both these migrations and cannot opt out. Apps are also now responsible for deleting old Requests. Details for making the migration are available in the Requests documentation. FBML DeprecationFacebook announced over a year ago its plans to deprecate FBML. In March 2011, it ceased to allow new FBML apps to be created. Now it has scheduled the final two steps of the deprecation. On January 1st, 2012 Facebook will stop supporting FBML and cease to fix bugs except for those related to privacy and security. On June 1st, 2012, Facebook will remove all FBML endpoints and any apps built on the language will stop functioning. The deprecation will make Facebook app development more accessible as programmers won’t have to use a proprietary language. The two main parts of FBML that remain useful to developers are Requests and Static FBML. Requests can now be handled with Requests 2.0, and Static FBML can be replaced with iframe apps. Several Facebook Preferred Developer Consultants offer free iframe app builders, including Wildfire Interactive. Facebook has also worked with Wildfire to offer a FBML to iframe migration tutorial. XFBML will not be deprecated. Platform UpdatesAs detailed in a Platform Update, problems with FB.Canvas.setAutoResize have forced Facebook to rename the call for controlling how an app is displayed on the Canvas page. The function is now named FB.Canvas.setAutoGrow and only works for increasing the size of an app. To shrink an app, Facebook recommends using “FB.Canvas.setSize with a height parameter to set the iframe height explicitly.” FB.Canvas.setAutoResize will be deprecated on January 1st, 2012. Mutual friends between two users can now be retrieved from the Graph API with the call: The following information about an application can now be pulled from the Graph API:
To do so, developers can use the call To simplify how apps are indexed by Facebook’s internal search engine, now when apps reach 10 month active users they are queued to be indexed in the next index rebuild which happens ever two to four weeks. Developers no long need use the setting page’s Submit to Search link. This will make sure apps that are gaining users aren’t accidentally left out of search. OAuth 2.0 and HTTPS Migration Deadline TomorrowIn May, Facebook announced that developers would eventually need to migrate to a more secure way to pass access tokens and allow users to browse their apps over a secure HTTPS connection. This followed a security issue where apps were found to be leaking permissions tokens that could give third-parties unauthorized access to user data. The migration becomes mandatory tomorrow, October 1st, 2011.
Developers must use OAuth 2.0 for authentication, encrypt access tokens, and have an SSL certificate and provide a secure browsing URL. To assist developers, Facebook has released admin.setAppProperties which allows the necessary settings changes to be made programmatically. FBML apps must also have SSL certificates and secure browsing URLs. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Maximizing Conversions From Facebook Ads Through Day- and Week-Parting Strategies Posted: 30 Sep 2011 10:51 AM PDT
The following is an excerpt of an entry in our Facebook Marketing Bible. The full version contains advertising strategies for using Page Insights, tracking tags, and your business’ identity to determine when is the optimal time to run ad campaigns. Scheduling is one of the only ways to narrow the targeting of Facebook ads without having to pay more. By running campaigns when their target audience are more likely to convert, advertisers can attain a higher return on investment on the Facebook ad spend. Different demographics are more likely to make purchases at certain times of day, so reaching them with ads at those peak times can boost sales. Companies should determine when these peak times are, either by analyzing conversion data and thinking about the behavior of their customers, and then pause and unpause their campaigns to run ads at those times.
Here we’ll discuss findings of a study on when certain demographics are most likely to convert, then provide strategies for maximizing advertising performance through scheduling. Conversion Rates Fluctuate by Hour and DayDue to varying behavior patterns, different demographics of Facebook users are more or less likely to make purchases online at different times of day or on different days of the week. TBG Digital conducted a study on two billion cost per acquisition Facebook ad impressions that it ran for its clients. The study shows that “male consumers are 42% more likely to execute an online purchase during evening hours versus female users”. The study also indicates that “users aged 50 and above were 119% more likely to purchase online in the morning than the rest of the day.” Manual Day- and Week-Parting StrategiesThe Facebook Ads marketplace does not currently offer a day-parting option — a way to specify that ads should run at certain hours and not at others. The most granularly you can schedule your ads is by day. However, some Ads API tools and services have built unofficial day-parting systems. If you don’t use one of these tools or services, you can still manually day-part your ad campaigns. To do so, create an ad campaign and submit it to Facebook for approval. Once the ad is approved and begins to run, pause it, then unpause it at the hour you want to start running your campaign and pause it again when that time period ends. You might run ads around lunch time, in the early evening, or only on the weekends. If you specifically target men, women, or those over 50 and are looking to drive online purchases, you can take advantage of the findings above. Otherwise, you’ll need to determine when are the the optimal hours of the day to advertise for your business. To determine what hours of the day your Page or Place get the most Likes, you can try checking the notifications of new Likes in the “Use Facebook as Page” option. Check your Page’s Like notifications in the top navigation bar each hour while using Facebook as the Page you’re advertising for and note how many new Likes you’ve gotten. You can then determine at what hours your ads are driving the most Likes to your Page.
With these strategies you can get more highly qualified clicks that generate revenue and avoid paying for clicks that don’t help your business. For more strategies on using Page Insights, tracking tags, and the behavior trends of your customers to determine the best time to run Facebook ads visit the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s comprehensive guide to marketing and advertising through Facebook. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Guardian, Photos, Page Tabs, Cards and More on This Week’s Top 20 Emerging Facebook Apps Posted: 30 Sep 2011 08:11 AM PDT
The apps on our list grew from between 196,400 and 512,000 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
The Guardian app grew by 512,100 MAU this week. The beta appears to be a set of features like popular articles and an activity stream of what your friends are reading — with the stream apparently using the new frictionless sharing feature to show friends’ reading activity without them explicitly sharing each article.
Then there were a bunch of photo apps, perhaps growing due to the larger size of photos now in the Facebook stream. Write Your Name In Fire Alphabet is an app that grew 484,300 MAU. It publishes a photo story of your name written in fire when you finish using it. Friend Report Card grew by 453,300 MAU, publishes a picture to the stream with a "report card" of your Facebook friends, tagging about a dozen of them in the process. My Calendar grew by 318,100 MAU by publishing an entire year of a decorated calendar, asking you to invite your friends, and also publishing a photo notification of app use. My Friend Map publishes a map of your friends' location to the stream, tagging about 10 of them; the app grew by 257,100 MAU. Then there was Pixable with 233,700 MAU which grew mostly in India and the US and Best Profile Pic(Enhanced), which grew by 217,600 MAU, by publishing your most popular profile photo to the stream, tagging the friends who Liked it.
The rest of the list was a mixed bag, as usual. ANIMACIJE grew by 423,900 MAU and lets you publish animations to the stream. VidyoBlue is a Turkish video app that grew by 289,400 MAU and allows users to view, share, Like and comment on the videos. Deine Phrases grew by 261,700 MAU. Report Card Pick-Up 2011 grew by 260,600 MAU. fbcustom.me is a profile banner app that grew by 242,600 MAU and the Spanish greeting card app Abrazotes! grew by 206,400 MAU. Finally, Turkish Page tab app Sayfanıza Hoş Geldiniz Sekmesi Ekleyin grew by 244,000 MAU and then Static iFrame grew by 215,200 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. |
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