Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Bandcamp’s New Facebook Page Tab App Lacks Features But Makes Selling Music Cheap and Easy
- How Facebook Could Make Credits for Websites Work: Optional, Then Mandatory
- Featured Facebook Campaigns: Fisher Price, Fox, Century 21, Jeep
- Buddy Media’s ReachBuddy Lets Brands Embed Facebook Page Tab Apps on Websites
- Birthdays, Scribd, Spotify, The Guardian and Music Apps on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Apps by MAU
| Bandcamp’s New Facebook Page Tab App Lacks Features But Makes Selling Music Cheap and Easy Posted: 24 Oct 2011 06:54 PM PDT
Bandcamp criticizes the social network as a place for musicians, calling it “just another part of a good overall distribution strategy” in the launch materials for its app and saying Facebook Pages are cluttered with distracting content and ads. By waiting this long to build a Page tab app for Facebook, though, Bandcamp has given its competitors a big head start in terms of functionality and user base. It will need to close these gaps to remain attractive to artists who have much to gain from Facebook’s massive audience, and to increase its own revenues.
Bandcamp was founded in 2008, long before RootMusic and ReverbNation began growing the user counts of their Page tab apps. The service lets musicians create a homepage from which visitors can stream their music, view their upcoming tour dates, join their mailing list, download tracks, and buy their albums. The site acts as a publishing platform, as artists don’t necessarily need a record label if they can distribute their music for profit through Bandcamp. At launch, the site’s simple design and reliability made it a refreshing alternative to Myspace. In the early days of music Page tab apps on Facebook, it offered arguably stronger, cheaper branding and distribution services than RootMusic’s BandPage and ReverbNation’s BandProfile. It also offered a wide range of sharing capabilities including powerful Facebook news feed sharing option that allowed users to stream music in-line from te feed or begin a purchase flow with a single click.
With time, though, Bandcamp’s competitors replicated its rich news feed stories, branding, and distribution, and staying out of Facebook app development began looking like a misstep. Now, traffic measurement service Compete shows Bandcamp having roughly 800,000 monthly unique visitors and its new Page tab app has 90,000 monthly active users, while RootMusic’s BandPage hosts 250,000 artists, and has 1.3 million daily active users and 28 million MAU according to AppData. Bandcamp users can visit the Facebook app or follow a prompt on their Bandcamp profile to access instructions for adding the Page tab app to their Facebook Page. Once installed, the app shows the same streaming, download, purchase, and sharing options as on artist’s Bandcamp page. If visitors go to download a track, they’re directed back to a Bandcamp download page. If they go to make a purchase, a payment flow is initially shown in-line before sending users to PayPal to complete the transaction.
The list of features missing from the app is long. To start with, there’s no way to automatically send updates when content is added, nor customize the app’s chrome, take in mailing list signups, display videos or photos, or require users to Like the Page, send a tweet, or sign up for email updates in order to access the app or specific content.
The one thing Bandcamp’s app handles very well is selling music. Musicians can easily upload music to Bandcamp and immediately begin selling it. Bandcamp takes a just 10% cut of sales with no upfront costs, and artist can require downloaders to join their mailing list. This beats RootMusic’s options of free downloads through Soundcloud or links to other music stores such as iTunes, and ReverbNation’s mp3 store which takes a large $3 cut per album. Bandcamp also lets artists cheaply give music away, as they can pay Bandcamp 2 cents a song to let fans download music for free. Bandcamp’s Page tab app works well for artists that want to sell their music directly through Facebook. For smaller artists trying to scrape by, that might be the most important thing. However, its weak customization and lack of fan-gating options means that for now, artists thinking about the long-term, who are signed with labels, or that sell their music through iTunes and Amazon, may be better served by a more full-featured Facebook apps. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How Facebook Could Make Credits for Websites Work: Optional, Then Mandatory Posted: 24 Oct 2011 03:22 PM PDT
Facebook will need to make a choice regarding exclusivity and Credits for Websites. Requiring Credits to be the exclusive payment method for Facebook-logged in users would allow it to essentially charge websites for access to its identity platform. A rollout without exclusivity requirements could get more websites to adopt Credits. Therefore, we believe that similar to how Credits were at first an option but then later required to be the sole payment method for Facebook.com games, Facebook may be best off initially allowing websites to use Credits alongside other options and later making them mandatory.
Credits Benefits and CostsFor background, Facebook launched Credits in the summer of 2010 to simultaneously make it easier for game developers to accept payment for virtual good and to give itself a 30% cut on virtual good transactions. Users buy Credits from Facebook with their credit card, PayPal account, mobile phone, gift cards, or offers. Rather than having to enter payment details in each different game or with each developer whose games they play, Facebook Credits allow them to enter payment details once with a single, theoretically more trusted vendor (Facebook) and then spend across different games and developers. Initially game developers could provide the option to pay with Credits alongside their other payment methods. They would then redeem with the Credits spent by their users with Facebook for 70% of their value. In July 2011, Facebook began requiring all game developers to exclusively process payments through Credits, while utility app developers could (and still can) choose whether or not to use them. Then, Facebook began allowing mobile app developers to process payments with Credits earlier this month. Offering Facebook Credits as a payment option is a trade-off for developers. Benefits include the ability to:
Developers must also endure several drawbacks if they offering Credits as a payment option. Most importantly, they must pay Facebook a 30% tax. Additionally, developers lose flexibility in how they optimize virtual currency costs to maximize sales. Some people don’t trust Facebook and may be more likely to submit credit card information to a game developer than to the social network. Developers are also less likely to earn money off of breakage, where users buy their proprietary virtual currency but never end up spending it. Though there haven’t been many prolonged outages in the past, if the Facebook Credits system went down, those relying on it to process payments could miss out on sales until service was restored. Finally, Facebook can impose its own exclusivity policies on how Credits can be used alongside other payment options. Facebook allowed the game developers to flourish using any payment method they wanted on the Facebook.com Platform before eventually requiring Credits to be their exclusive way of processing payments. In this way, the gaming industry invested in developing for the Facebook Platform rather than competitors such that it had little choice but to accept Facebook’s 30% tax when it became mandatory. In many cases, developers would prefer Facebook not implement exclusivity policies, though they begrudgingly accepts them and the 30% as the cost of being able to do business on the Facebook Platform. Facebook Credits for Websites and ExclusivityIn the first round of testing for the new Facebook Credits for Websites program, the social network is working with online gaming portal GameHouse. In two specific games, if users are logged in to GameHouse via their Facebook Credentials they’ll be prompted to pay for virtual goods with Credits and won’t see the credit card and PayPal options. In this way, Credits are the “exclusive payment method for users logging in through Facebook”.
If the tests go well, Facebook could roll out Credits for Websites to more beta partners and eventually to all websites. Here are some of the exclusivity structures it could use, how they would impact developers, and the likelihood that Facebook would choose each potential structure: Exclusive for all users - Websites can only use Facebook Credits as a payment method if it’s the only option they give to users, even those without Facebook accounts. This would prevent developers from monetizing significant portions of their users who don’t have a Facebook account or don’t log in with it. Therefore it wouldn’t be worth it for developers to switch to Credits exclusively. It’s very unlikely that Facebook would choose this structure. It only works on Facebook.com because every user there must be logged in through Facebook. No Exclusivity - Websites can offer Credits as a payment option as well as other options such as credit cards and PayPal. Though it would clutter their payment flows, developers could offer Credits as an additional option to lower the payment barrier for those who maintain a balance of the virtual currency. It would help with monetization of international and teen users without forcing developers to pay a 30% cut on all of their transactions. At first, Facebook may choose to roll out Credits for Websites without exclusivity. This would lower the risk and cost for developers such that Facebook could to get the maximum number of developers to add Credits as a payment option. Getting a wide base at first would also help Facebook push more users to start carrying a balance of Credits because they’ll see them as more widely applicable. Though it would complicate enforcement, Facebook could require Credits to be listed equally or at least alongside credit card and PayPal options so developers wouldn’t bury Credits behind additional clicks to dissuade users from paying through a taxed method. Exclusive for Logged in Facebook Users – Websites that want to utilize Facebook as an identity provider to power their registration and login systems would have to exclusively use Credits as their payment method for Facebook-logged in users. This creates a value exchange where developers can’t piggyback on Facebook identity without paying for it. If developers want to monetize their users but not use Facebook Credits, Faceboo could deny them access to its identity platform.
If the test is any indication, Facebook may eventually want this to be the way Credits for Websites works. Third-party sites would be taxed for access its its identity platform the same way Facebook taxes developers on Facebook.com. At first it might allow Credits for Websites to be used without exclusivity, but eventually it might give sites warning that it would become the mandatory payment method for Facebook-logged in users. Facebook has already carried out this strategy of luring developers with an untaxed Platform, then giving them the option and incentives to use its taxed universal currency, and then finally making Credits the exclusive payment method with games on Facebook.com, and canvas utility apps might be next. A similar long-term strategy for Facebook Credits for Websites could be the best path to monetizing transactions for games, media, subscriptions services, and more across the web. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Featured Facebook Campaigns: Fisher Price, Fox, Century 21, Jeep Posted: 24 Oct 2011 11:27 AM PDT Charity was a notable function of the Facebook campaigns on our list this week. A Fisher-Price campaign in Australia and New Zealand leveraged the brand's products to inspire brand loyalty. 20th Century Fox created a website treasure hunt to promote a new film and Century 21 is incorporating Facebook into real estate purchases. Then Country Financial, Jeep and Publishers Clearing House used contests to engage fans this week while MassMutual used a campaign to sell fans on life insurance. You can see all of this week’s featured campaigns in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of over 100 other Facebook marketing campaigns by top-performing brands and other organization on Facebook.
Fisher-Price Australia and New Zealand's Community GivingGoal: Page Growth, Charity, Engagement, Network Exposure Core Mechanic: A voting campaign that revolves around a charity component. Method: Fisher Price basically has two things going on here. One is an app that allows users to look over the company's toys from different eras and share their favorite one. The other component, the main one, is a Like-gated contest in which voters must recruit members of their community to vote for a prize pack for a particular school or child care facility. Users can either nominate a place or vote for one, which then publishes to the stream. We spoke to Votigo's co-CEO and founder Mike La Rotonda, who told us how his company's technology powered the contest, and shared some insights about charity campaigns. "In general, we've found that these types of promotions with a charity or community component tend to do very well," he told us. "You really get that entire local community, everyone affiliated with a kindergarten for example, to come together. [So] you're getting a larger pool than an individual entrant, [with] people reaching out to friends and family to vote." La Rotonda furter told us that charity campaigns usually also carry a greater viral impact than other campaigns. "In a normal campaign, we'll see a 30% viral bump, in a charity or community-type of promotion, we see closer to the 50% range." Impact: The Page has 10,300 Likes and about 1,400 people are talking about the Page as of Monday morning. The campaign has about 742 submissions, more than 14,000 votes and the campaign which started in mid-September and runs until mid-December, took the Page from 550 Likes to 9,500 in a single month. The National Audubon Society's "The Big Year" ContestGoal: Engagement, Page Growth, Branding, Network Exposure Core Mechanic: A website treasure hunt directing users to more than 100 websites to collect dozens of virtual birds in preparation for the upcoming film "The Big Year" by 20th Century Fox in conjunction with the National Audubon Society.
Method: The campaign runs from October 11 through November 7 and the first 200 players to collect all of the birds win prizes, including a grand prize trip for two to the Galapagos Islands. "The Big Year" is a movie in which characters compete to see the most North American birds in one year, so the NAS integration is an imitation of the film online. The Like-gated promotion on the NAS Page has users register for the app by inserting their email addresses, then users have a chance to either run into the birds online, trade with other users, find out more about the birds by visiting the NAS website, and join the organization. Impact: The Page currently has about 30,000 Likes and PageData shows growth in recent days. This campaign has good engagement over time with the NAS, which is consistently driving traffic to its site or inviting users to join. The treasure hunt is both fun and pertains to the point of the campaign — birds. Want to learn how top brands are designing their Facebook marketing campaigns? See the Facebook Marketing Bible for detailed breakdowns of hundreds of Featured Campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Buddy Media’s ReachBuddy Lets Brands Embed Facebook Page Tab Apps on Websites Posted: 24 Oct 2011 10:09 AM PDT Buddy Media has announced several new features to its social marketing suite, including ReachBuddy that lets brands embed on third-party websites the widgets they use as Facebook Page tab apps. ReachBuddy will help brands gain more exposure for the contests, discounts, sweepstakes and content apps the build for Facebook. This will in turn make BuddyMedia more of a cross-web publishing platform than a dedicated social media tool.
The Page management giant also launched C-Rank, a system for scoring and benchmarking Facebook and Twitter that will help brands track their performance. Additionally, clients can now create custom dashboards tailored for different team members such as marketers or community managers to improve the efficiency, compose content for other team members to publish in a way that facilitates corporate/local franchise hierarchies similar to Hearsay Social, and license custom packages of Buddy Media products to keep costs down for brands in specific verticals.
A core part of Buddy Media’s Facebook Page management business is the licensing of its suite of custom tab applications that brands can embed on their Pages. Brands can choose from templates to skin in order to easily offer promotions such as sweepstakes, discounts and user-generated content contests. They can also add content apps to let them distribute their Twitter, YouTube, or Flickr updates. Most brands are working to build their Facebook fan bases, in some cases Like-gating their Page tab apps so users must become fans to use them. However, some still get much more traffic on their websites, or often create micro-sites for special initiatives. Now, rather than rebuilding widgets that duplicate the functionality of their tab apps, Buddy Media clients can use ReachBuddy to embed these apps on sites outside of Facebook. ReachBuddy launch partner Pepsi used ReachBuddy to add video to a microsite promoting a partnership with television show The X-Factor. Rather than embedding a YouTube video, Pepsi was able to easily configure a white-labeled video player for the site through the simple ReachBuddy interface.
Brands have an ever increasing number of ways to distribute their content, between websites, microsites, Tumblr, and now Google+ planning to launch brand pages that can host applications. Redundantly building rich functionality into each of these distribution channels is a waste of resources. By allowing brands to build first for Facebook, the biggest platform, and then replicate their apps across the web, ReachBuddy will make Buddy Media more valuable to clients trying to take advantage of the whole evolving social landscape. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 24 Oct 2011 08:37 AM PDT
A birthday calendar application topped our list of the fastest growing by monthly active users this week, but a half dozen were Page tab apps, three were apps for musicians to integrate with their Pages, then Spotify, Scribd and a Halloween costume app rounded out our list. The titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 400,000 and 2.3 million MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook. Top Gainers This Week
As previously mentioned, MyCalendar – Birthdays is an app that grew by 1.5 million MAU and asks users to first invite their friends to use it before being able to add their birthdays to a customized calendar. Page tab apps on the list this week included one interesting highlight, which is Wildfire's iFrames app. There was Static Iframe Tab with 1.2 million MAU, Static HTML: iframe tabs with 1 million MAU, PM Custom Welcome Tab with 800,000 MAU, Wildfire’s iFrames for Pages with 600,000 MAU, Welcome tab app for Pages with 600,000 MAU and then iwipa: HTML + iframe + FBML with 400,000 MAU. Musician applications on our list this week included BandPage by RootMusic with 500,000 MAU, BandRx with 400,000 MAU and finally Band Profile: Profile Pages for Musicians, which can automatically synchronize with ReverbNation, with 400,000 MAU.
Rounding out the list was Scribd with 900,000 MAU; the Connect integration has added several social components, including allow a Facebook Connect login, a Share and a Like button attached to each document. The Guardian's app continues to grow with 470,000 MAU. Halloween costume app Disfrázate, which allows users to "try on" costumes them publish photos of themselves dressed up to the stream, grew by 450,000 MAU. Banner de perfil en espagnol, which allows users to select from among different photos and then create an image across the top of their profile, grew by 400,000 MAU. Finally, there was music app Spotify, which grew by 400,000 MAU. All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday. |
Musician profile website and publishing platform 
As 
Last week Facebook announced the first test of 
Functionally, it works because only logged in Facebook users would see the option to pay with Credits, and those with an existing balance of Credits would be able to pay instantly. People using a third-party website without signing in through Facebook would only see more traditional payment options, or could also be given the option to log in through Facebook to pay through Credits.
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