Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook roundup: password privacy, IPO, engineering, Hacker Cup, more
- The Facebook Marketing Bible: New and Improved for March 2012
- Facebook logout ad price equal to takeovers on other sites; advertisers still question value
- Friends, Digg, Gogobot, Hey Tell, tabs, games, more on this week’s top 20 emerging Facebook apps by MAU
- Facebook pushes Credits promotion with in-game units for first-time payers
| Facebook roundup: password privacy, IPO, engineering, Hacker Cup, more Posted: 23 Mar 2012 06:00 PM PDT
Zuckerberg could be taking less visible role in IPO – The Wall Street Journal reported that CEO Mark Zuckerberg's recent behavior hints that he may not be playing a visible role in the company's IPO. As evidence the WSJ offers that he was absent at a meeting of analysts and bankers at Facebook HQ recently. Facebook mirrors Apple with low R&D investment – Bloomberg reported that Facebook spends less on engineering and research and development than other Internet firms, specifically by not relying on outsiders for this work. According to the report, Facebook spends 10 percent of sales on R&D.
Facebook Hacker Cup crowns winners – The 2012 Facebook Hacker Cup went down March 19 in Menlo Park, Calif. First place went to Roman Andreev, of Russia, who finished in one hour and four minutes and won the $5,000 first place prize. Tomek Czajka from the U.S. won second place and $2,000, finishing in one hour and five minutes. [Image via Facebook] Google has higher employee satisfaction than Facebook – For the first time in four years, Facebook ranks lower than Google in employee satisfaction, according to Glassdoor. Google's rating on the employer ratings site is now 3.9, while Facebook's rating is 3.7. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Facebook Marketing Bible: New and Improved for March 2012 Posted: 23 Mar 2012 02:37 PM PDT
In the March 2012 we cover new and emerging topics for marketers and advertisers, including Timeline for pages, the upcoming Recommendations Bar Social Plugin, and an analysis of the fluctuations of Facebook advertising rates. In addition, this month we’ve launched a brand new website and content structure so you can find what you’re looking for faster. It’s mobile-friendly too, so you can read it on any smartphone or mobile device. About the Facebook Marketing BibleThe Facebook Marketing Bible has enabled thousands of brands, app developers, content publishers and businesses of all sizes to do more with Facebook, from the basics of creating a successful fan page, to the complexities of social plugin integration on an off-Facebook website. The Facebook Marketing Bible includes hundreds of pages of strategies, comprehensive how-to guides and case studies analyzing today's most successful marketing and advertising campaigns on Facebook. Take a tour of the Facebook Marketing Bible. Recent Additions to the Facebook Marketing Bible:
Ready to take your marketing and advertising campaigns to the next level? Subscribe to the Facebook Marketing Bible today. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook logout ad price equal to takeovers on other sites; advertisers still question value Posted: 23 Mar 2012 12:11 PM PDT Facebook's initial asking price for premium ads including placement on the logout page was $710,000 per day in the U.S., according to an Ad Age source who was briefed before the product announcement at the end of February. The figure is a total price for the large logout display and smaller homepage ad units, which Facebook sells as a bundle. Ad Age says the breakdown was $550,000 for the homepage ads and $160,000 for the logout page. The total cost is comparable to homepage takeovers on portals like Yahoo, YouTube and MSN, but not all advertisers will see Facebook offering equal value. In previous years, Facebook "reach block" ads — homepage units that reach all of a specified demographic on a given day — cost between $300,000 and $500,000. But compared to takeovers on other sites, which are much more prominent and allow animation upon page load, Facebook's offering seemed weak. Since then, the social network modestly expanded the size of ads on the homepage, allowing slightly larger images and including more social context, such as thumbnails of friends who are connected to the brand. The logout page ad is a significantly larger unit, more banner-like than anything Facebook has offered in the past. See this example from Ford Mustang that ran this week.
Advertising executives we've talked to are intrigued by the new format, but have concerns about the value of an ad that shows at the end of a user's session rather than while they're logged in. The logout ad also does not appear to some of the social network's most active users: those who are logged in all day on their computers and mobile devices. To compete with portals for major advertising dollars, Facebook will have to convince brands and agencies that its more reserved ad style combined with the power of the social graph is more effective than traditional buys. Until then, we'll continue to see advertisers spending the bulk of their budgets in other areas, even if they're driving traffic to Facebook apps and pages. Absolut Vodka, for example, has a YouTube takeover today that leads to a Facebook tab (see below). In this situation, Google gets the big money and Facebook only gets the peripheral benefit of another pageview with a few sidebar ads and possibly some engagement elsewhere on the site. When the company goes public later this year, there will be increasing pressure on Facebook to monetize more aggressively.
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| Posted: 23 Mar 2012 10:05 AM PDT
Friend and calendar applications, as well as games, and Timeline apps comprised our list of emerging Facebook apps by monthly active users this week. The apps grew from between 170,000 and 370,000 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
Melhores Amigos and Meilleurs Amis are the same app, but in different languages. They ask users to invite all of their friends to see an integration with their top friends' photos, statuses, birthdays, and more. A calendar app also appeared on our list in a pair, 내 캘린더 and ปฏิทินของฉัน, and operated similarly, in that users must invite all of their friends to the app before seeing their customized calendar. Timeline apps that made the list include news site Digg, travel app Gogobot, and social browser RockMelt. Hey Tell is a mobile voice messenger app that last week added the ability to log in with Facebook, thus the sharp rise in users. Games were led by the Arabic مدينة الأهرامات, which had 100,000 MAU on any other game. Tabs on the list were interesting because one in particular, TradableBits, is optimized for Timeline. Many page tab applications have been losing daily and monthly active users as pages convert to Timeline, which does not allow default landing tabs. As a result, companies have been trying to adjust their strategy, as we’ve seen several band apps do. 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. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook pushes Credits promotion with in-game units for first-time payers Posted: 23 Mar 2012 08:36 AM PDT Facebook developers can now display Facebook-sponsored promotions in their games to encourage players to make a first-time purchase, according to a post on Facebook’s developer blog. "New payer promotions," which the social network created in February, give users who haven't bought Facebook Credits before an extra $4 of in-app currency when they buy $1 in Credits. Facebook has advertised this promotion through offer walls and sidebar modules, but with today's announcement, it will also get in-game placement. The offer is meant to turn casual social gamers into paying players. Once users add billing information to their accounts and experience the in-game advantages that come from spending Credits, they are more likely to continue to buy virtual and digital goods within applications. Facebook says early data shows that about 20 percent of the users who make that first-time purchase spend more within a month.
It is unclear how much control developers have over where the icon appears in the game. In the example provided by Facebook, the offer is placed on the right-hand side of the screen, an area used in most games for less game-critical features. This might not be the most optimal spot to get a user’s attention, but it could be more effective than sidebar modules (see below).
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Facebook calls out employers asking for user info - Facebook 
The in-game promotions are available through DealSpot. After developers add a piece of code to their games, players who have not previously purchased Credits will see an icon promoting the offer. TrialPay, which controls DealSpot, 
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