gravatar

Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook simplifies event creation, makes event pages more like groups

Posted: 14 Mar 2012 02:29 PM PDT

Facebook updated its event creation flow so that fewer fields are required to make a new event. Posts on an event page Wall are now sorted by activity, as they are in groups, so posts get pushed to the top of the page when they receive comments.

These changes and others introduced today are meant to make Facebook's event product more useful for planning casual get-togethers in addition to more formal events. For example, users no longer have to indicate a time and location for an event, allowing plans to be more fluid.

As the social network plateaus in new user growth, it must focus on maximizing engagement. The latest updates to events are smart improvements, but in order to really be useful in helping users meet up, Facebook will need to add to its mobile apps. Users cannot currently create events from the native iOS or Android apps, and the mobile touch site has not been updated to reflect today's changes.

Events now support different timezones and include a new privacy option. Previously, events were either public (as in open to everyone on Facebook including non-friends) or invite-only. Now events can choose the “Friends” setting so any friend can see the event and join without requiring a user to manually invite each friend. When users invite friends, they'll get a notification if the friend decides to join the event.

"I think this will feel more similar to inviting someone via SMS/email and getting back their response," Facebook engineer Bob Baldwin said in a post about the changes.

When users decline an invitation, only the user who invited them will get a notification. Additionally, posts from people who decline will be filtered out of the Wall and accessed from a "View Declines" link instead. This keeps the focus on the people who will attend. Previously it was common for some event pages to be filled with comments from people who couldn't make it.

The event page now also includes the option to ask a question. This could be helpful for users trying to decide on event details. Event pages also suggest additional people to invite, as we first spotted last month.

A few months ago we saw Facebook testing a “Make plans” option in the homepage publisher — the area from which users create status updates and post photos. So far this hasn’t rolled out to all users, but after today’s improvements, this could be coming soon.

New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: Offerpop, BrightRoll, PowerReviews and more

Posted: 14 Mar 2012 12:00 PM PDT

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms.

Here are this week's highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at Offerpop, Planned Parenthood, PowerReviews, TinyCo, High 5 Games, Addmired, Mob Science, Checkpoint Studios, PopCap, Nickelodeon, BrightRoll, King.com and Index Middle East Ltd. Co.

Index Middle East Ltd. Co.

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

Facebook adds recommendations box to Timeline pages associated with locations

Posted: 14 Mar 2012 10:46 AM PDT

Pages that switch to the new Timeline format will now display user recommendations in a box beneath friend activity and include a prompt for people to write their own recommendations.

This was a feature on the old version of pages, but when Facebook first released the redesign, recommendations were not visible. Recommendations are still only enabled for pages that are associated with locations. Users can't write recommendations on pages for brands and artists unless page owners provide an exact address in their About sections.

The new recommendations box is less discoverable than it was on the previous version of pages, where it was featured on the right hand side. We’ve seen Facebook prompt users to write recommendations after Liking a page, but this does not seem to occur consistently. Recommendations could be a very useful feature for users, but with all the options on pages — Like, message, add to interests, write a post, view tab apps — it becomes difficult to organize from a design perspective. Recommendations, however, could also become part of the publisher box where users can make posts and upload photos to a page.

Facebook is still tinkering with the layout and features of Timeline for pages. Although the new design highlights which of your friends Like a page and any posts they might have made about that page, Facebook still hasn't added information about your friends that have worked for a company or attended a school, for example. Previously these items were shown in a box on the top right of a page. (See image right.)

A representative from the social network tells us, "The pages redesign is new, and Facebook is still figuring out the details of how everything will look."

8M pages switch to Timeline; Facebook offers education tools to ease transition

Posted: 14 Mar 2012 08:58 AM PDT

More than 8 million pages have adopted the new Timeline format ahead of the March 30 deadline when all pages will be converted automatically, Facebook says.

There were more than 37 million pages with 10 or more Likes as of December 2011, so about 20 percent of pages have voluntarily converted to Timeline. According to the company, more than a million pages per day switched to the new design immediately following the launch on Feb. 29. Facebook did not share how this compares to previous product rollouts.

To help page owners with the transition, the company created LearnFacebookPages.com and the Facebook Marketing Classroom. The Learn Facebook Pages site is a narrated tutorial including quiz questions at the end of each section. It is available in five different languages. The Marketing Classroom is a tab application on the Facebook Marketing Solutions page that includes videos and worksheets on the new pages and ad offerings. The page also streams live video courses, including one Thursday about Sponsored Stories.

See our complete overview of the pages redesign here.

Draw Something, birthdays, Formspring, Microsoft, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by DAU

Posted: 14 Mar 2012 08:11 AM PDT

The game Draw Something topped our list of growing Facebook applications by daily active users this week. There were also a pair of apps by Microsoft, some birthday apps, Timeline apps and more.

The titles below grew between 230,000 and 6 million DAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

Name DAU Gain Gain,%
1.   Draw Something by OMGPOP 10,200,000 +6,000,000 + 143%
2.   Birthday Calendar 2,300,000 +2,220,000 + 2,775%
3.   Spotify 6,500,000 +1,100,000 + 20%
4.   Angry Birds 2,900,000 +900,000 + 45%
5.   Bing 4,200,000 +500,000 + 14%
6.   MiCalendario – Cumpleaños 1,100,000 +360,000 + 49%
7.   Formspring 560,000 +340,000 + 155%
8.   Bubble Witch Saga 5,900,000 +300,000 + 5%
9.   Microsoft Live 19,500,000 +300,000 + 2%
10.   MyCalendar – Birthdays 2,300,000 +300,000 + 15%
11.   Pandora 1,500,000 +300,000 + 25%
12.   Yahoo! 2,300,000 +300,000 + 15%
13.   Zynga Slingo 470,000 +280,000 + 147%
14.   Family Tree 550,000 +270,000 + 96%
15.   Shufflr 530,000 +270,000 + 104%
16.   Photo Roll 320,000 +260,000 + 433%
17.   Scribd 890,000 +250,000 + 39%
18.   Hoop De Loop Saga 550,000 +240,000 + 77%
19.   BranchOut 720,000 +230,000 + 47%
20.   Solitaire Blitz 240,000 +230,000 + 2,300%

As mentioned, Draw Something by OMGPOP topped our list of apps growing by DAU, with more than 6 million alone during the past week. Every other game paled in comparison to that growth. Then there were two types of birthday apps. American Greetings' Birthday Calendar, which creates a calendar interface allowing users to select friends to whom to send e-cards and the MiCalendario – Cumpleaños or MyCalendar – Birthdays variety, which auto-selects all of a user's friends for app requests.

Timeline apps on our list included Spotify, with a whopping 6.5 million DAU, and a good amount of growth in the United Kingdom. Formspring is back with its Timeline app and BranchOut has added a button allowing users to invite all their professional friends to the app with just one click.

Microsoft made the list twice, with its Bing app and Microsoft Live app, which asks users to consolidate their Facebook profile with their Windows Live profile. Other apps of note included Pandora, Yahoo and Family Tree,  a genealogy app that works better the more people you invite to use it.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday.

torsdag den 15. marts 2012 at 08.05