Inside Facebook

Facebook redesigns permalinks to match Timeline, adds buttons for Like, subscribe
NPR seeks to help media organizations geotarget Facebook content at scale
Draw Something, Angry Birds, Rotten Tomatoes, Trip Advisor, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook app by MAU
Facebook provides more insights about referral traffic for mobile apps
This week’s headlines from across Inside Network

Facebook redesigns permalinks to match Timeline, adds buttons for Like, subscribe

Posted: 19 Mar 2012 03:24 PM PDT

Facebook updated the design of the permanent link page for individual posts to reflect the look and feel of Timeline this week. It also added a prominent Like button for pages and a subscribe button for users who allow subscribers.

Every post on Facebook has a unique URL that displays the content by itself. This page, called a permalink, can be accessed by clicking the timestamp of a post. Previously Facebook showed this content on a white background, but with the change to Timeline, the design became outdated. Now content displays on a light blue background. Interestingly, this also changes the background of Facebook ads and other modules. It's unclear whether this will affect clickthrough rate in any way.

Also significant is the addition of Like and subscribe buttons for posts from pages and people that users are not connected to. This was not previously a feature of permalink pages, but the change could lead pages to gain more Likes and people to gain new subscribers. For now, this only applies to link and text-only posts, not photos or posts using Facebook Questions.

NPR seeks to help media organizations geotarget Facebook content at scale

Posted: 19 Mar 2012 02:22 PM PDT

NPR plans to develop an application called GeoGraph, which will expand upon its efforts to improve Facebook engagement and media consumption by geotargeting posts. The public radio organization says Facebook has committed to support the endeavor.

NPR found success with an initial experiment that led to record traffic and an increase in Likes, comments and shares, but to scale the test, the organization will need to use Facebook's API. NPR detailed its plans in an application to the Knight News Challenge, a media innovation contest. The project could have an impact on how other media companies — and possibly brands — distribute content through Facebook.

In October 2011, NPR began its experiment with Seattle member station KPLU. Each day or so, NPR would post a KPLU story to its Facebook page, but it would use Facebook's geotargeting capabilities to limit the audience to only Seattle residents. NPR ultimately posted about 50 geotargeted KPLU links over a four-month period. The posts accounted for 12 percent of KPLU.org's total traffic during that time. The test also resulted in record traffic to the website, both for a single month and a single day.

NPR found that local stories outperformed global stories six-to-one in terms of engagement rate on Facebook (likes, comments and shares as a percentage of unique viewers of a post). Anecdotally, NPR noticed deeper conversations in the Facebook comment threads of local stories.

Geotargeting posts is a lesser-known feature of Facebook pages that we've detailed in The Facebook Marketing Bible. Geotargeting allows organizations to maintain one large page, while sharing more content per day with audiences that are more likely to engage with each post.

To expand geotargeting beyond a single city, NPR wants to build GeoGraph using Facebook APIs. It explains GeoGraph as "a newsroom tool to manage the pitch-to-publish process" that "addresses unique editorial and localization needs of news organizations where publishing directly through Facebook or other tools fail." The project could lead more pages to take advantage of this strategy. The organization says it plans to make the tool publicly available and documented so others can replicate it.

According to NPR, Facebook Journalist Program Manager Vadim Lavrusik will provide support through the process. A Facebook spokesperson tells us the company will provide NPR with feedback about best practices and technical implementation of APIs, but it will not fund the project or devote a set number of hours to the effort.

Draw Something, Angry Birds, Rotten Tomatoes, Trip Advisor, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook app by MAU

Posted: 19 Mar 2012 09:30 AM PDT

Mobile game Draw Something topped our list of growing Facebook applications by monthly active users this week with a huge 9.1 million MAU. Facebook canvas games also saw significant growth. Five saw more than 1 million MAU.

Titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 800,000 and 9.1 million MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Draw Something by OMGPOP	19,400,000	+9,100,000	+ 88%
2.	Angry Birds	16,600,000	+6,400,000	+ 63%
3.	Rotten Tomatoes	6,100,000	+2,600,000	+ 74%
4.	Yahoo!	22,100,000	+2,400,000	+ 12%
5.	BranchOut	9,300,000	+2,000,000	+ 31%
6.	Static HTML: iframe tabs	79,300,000	+1,700,000	+ 2%
7.	Zynga Slingo	2,300,000	+1,540,000	+ 203%
8.	Fruit Ninja Frenzy	8,100,000	+1,200,000	+ 17%
9.	Marvel: Avengers Alliance	2,400,000	+1,100,000	+ 85%
10.	İzlesene	4,600,000	+1,000,000	+ 28%
11.	Texas HoldEm Poker	34,200,000	+1,000,000	+ 3%
12.	TripAdvisor™	16,100,000	+1,000,000	+ 7%
13.	Between You and Me	6,000,000	+900,000	+ 15%
14.	Bubble Witch Saga	17,200,000	+900,000	+ 6%
15.	Hoop De Loop Saga	2,600,000	+900,000	+ 63%
16.	Static HTML… [Third Tab]	6,700,000	+900,000	+ 16%
17.	Truths About You	3,700,000	+900,000	+ 32%
18.	Solitaire Blitz	930,000	+820,000	+ 745%
19.	60photos	4,600,000	+800,000	+ 21%
20.	Identified	1,800,000	+800,000	+ 80%

As mentioned, Draw Something by OMGPOP topped our list of growing apps. This is a mobile app that allows users to login with Facebook and challenge their friends to a Pictionary-like game. The Facebook canvas version of Angry Birds also saw some big growth with 6.4 million new MAU.

The Rotten Tomatoes Timeline app grew by 2.6 million MAU and Yahoo‘s social reading integration grew by 2.4 million MAU. Professional apps BranchOut and Identified both made the list. BranchOut is an Open Graph app, but Identified hasn’t taken advantage of Timeline and Ticker capabilities yet. İzlesene is a Turkish video sharing site that has integrated Open Graph.

A pair of quiz apps, Between You and Me and Truths About You, made the list. Then there was a TripAdvisor web integration that allows users to see the traveling activity of their friends.

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.

Facebook provides more insights about referral traffic for mobile apps

Posted: 19 Mar 2012 09:00 AM PDT

Facebook added a mobile referrals dashboard so developers can track and analyze traffic from mobile devices, the company announced in a blog post Friday.

Developers can now view mobile app clicks by day, device and source. The insights also provide mobile referral data by age, gender, language and country. This real-time information can help developers understand their audience and how Facebook's mobile platform is or isn't helping them get distribution for their apps. The device and demographic data is also likely to help developers’ marketing efforts and allow them make more informed decisions about the direction of their product.

Facebook recently added game stories in News Feed as a way for users to discover apps on their mobile devices. Developers can now see the distribution of referral traffic from the mobile feed, versus mobile search, bookmarks, notifications and Timeline. This might allow developers to better understand Facebook’s mobile platform and decide which discovery channels to emphasize. It might also highlight areas that Facebook needs to improve in order to provide enough value to mobile developers.

The new insights are available for all apps that integrate Facebook, including native iOS and Android applications. They can be accessed from the “Mobile” tab underneath “Traffic” in the app insights dashboard.