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Inside Facebook

Plink raises angel round for Facebook Credits loyalty program

Posted: 02 Apr 2012 01:53 PM PDT

Plink, a Facebook Credits-based rewards program, closed an angel investment round of $633,000 at a $5 million valuation.

Consumers who sign up for Plink can earn Facebook Credits when they use their credit card at brick-and-mortar locations, such as Taco Bell, Quiznos and 7-Eleven. Plink is one of a few companies betting on the rise of the social network’s virtual currency, Credits.

"Facebook Credits are proving to be the missing ingredient that bridges the gap between social media marketing and offline sales," Plink co-founder Peter Vogel said in a press release.

When Plink launched in January, we applauded how the program connects offline transactions with people's online profiles without placing additional onus on consumers or businesses. Credits accrue and can be redeemed with ease, similar to Frequent Flier Miles. The idea of Facebook Credits being used as rewards is an interesting one; people who might not see value in spending actual money for the virtual currency can earn Credits through Plink, for example, and then might be more likely to spend those Credits on virtual or digital goods. Brands end up subsidizing transactions that help developers and Facebook monetize.

The dilemma now, however, is that Credits are primarily used among players of social games because Credits are only mandatory for in-game transactions, not other digital goods. Studios that offer movies on the social network can use PayPal, thereby avoiding Facebook’s 30 percent fee. Media companies won't start offering content for Credits until they see demand, but consumers won't care about Credits until there is content worth spending them on.

Until Facebook makes a push to make non-gamers aware of Credits and get non-game developers to implement the currency, the efforts of Plink and companies like Ifeelgoods could be the primary drivers of the Credits economy. Ifeelgoods works with brands to offer Credits in return for user actions like watching a video or sharing a marketing message.

Angel investment firm Ahlborg Acquisitions and Matomy Media Group, which offers affiliate marketing and reward-based advertising platforms, participated in the round. Plink says the investment will go toward building the product and developing partnerships with restaurants and retailers. Last week, the company announced a partnership with more than 3,500 Arby's restaurant locations.

Top 25 Facebook games of April 2012

Posted: 02 Apr 2012 12:59 PM PDT

April Fool’s Day has come and gone, meaning it's safe for us to take a look at the top 25 Facebook games without fear of prank entries.

We start with the top 25 games by daily active users (which is the best way to gauge a title's core audience), where only seven of the games on this month's list saw gains. The largest gain belongs to Zynga Slingo at 3.6 million DAU with second place going to Rovio’s Angry Birds at 1.67 million DAU. The former launched in March and the latter in late February, meaning neither game had anywhere to go but up in the early part of their life cycles. King.com’s Bubble Witch Saga, meanwhile, had the third-highest gain of April with 600,000 new DAU, moving up to the No. 6 spot on the list from last month.

The largest losses for the month belonged to CastleVille and CityVille, respectively.

Moving on to monthly active users, which measures a title’s overall reach on Facebook, Zynga’s CityVille saw a repeat performance from last month. Even though the game lost 2.3 million MAU, it had almost 9 million more than the No. 2 game, Texas HoldEm Poker. The largest loss belonged to The Sims Social, which dropped by 2.9 million MAU. This traffic dip is in spite of the recent content expansion that launched on March 21, letting players’ Sims acquire careers.

Almost half the games on this list saw gains in April. The largest gain belongs to Angry Birds, with 16.1 million new MAU. Zynga Slingo wasn’t far behind, gaining 12.3 million MAU. As previously noted, both of these are newer games, so such high gains aren’t too surprising at this point. Bubble Witch Saga and Fruit Ninja Frenzy both tied for the third-highest gains, each earning 2.6 million MAU.

This post originally appeared on our sister site, Inside Social Games.

Facebook tries star ratings, home page requests to push users toward games

Posted: 02 Apr 2012 10:08 AM PDT

In a continued effort to drive users to play social games, Facebook reintroduced star ratings and homepage requests on the site last week.

The social network now shows star ratings within games discovery modules on the right-hand side of pages and in the card that appears when users hover over the name of an app from within News Feed. Some users now also see game-specific requests in addition to other outstanding app requests on the right-hand side of their home pages. These features are similar to ones that existed previously but were removed within the past two years.

The reemergence of star ratings on the site is somewhat of a surprise. The social network eliminated app reviews and ratings in October 2011. It seemed Facebook would focus on helping users discover games through their friends rather than anonymous ratings, which could be manipulated by developers and biased players. Now instead of having a reviews tab that anyone can access at any time, Facebook randomly prompts users to rate apps while or after they use them. It also asks for ratings when users remove an app, which could unfairly decrease a developer's star count since people who want to remove an app are likely to give it a poor rating.

A game's average rating appears in hovercards and in sidebar units that recommend new games and encourage players to return to games they've tried before. Some users are even seeing a “featured apps” section of the games discovery page that includes ratings. Star ratings seem rather unhelpful in letting a user know whether they'll actually enjoy a game, but the appearance of stars could make users subconsciously more likely to click over to a new title. Ratings might also be used behind the scenes to affect Facebook’s algorithms, and they could have been a factor in how the company determined its “top” games of 2011.

The addition of app-specific requests on the right-hand side of the home page is a return to functionality from years ago. In 2010, Facebook made invites and requests less noticeable by moving them to the left sidebar. It wasn't until January of this year that outstanding app requests were reintroduced to the right of News Feed. All requests were grouped under a single link until last week when we began to see app-specific requests appear as well (see right).

The social network continues to test a number of different modules, links and promotions to drive users to discover or further engage with games. It's clear Facebook wants to increase the number paying game players on its platform and expand its payments revenue. Less than 2 percent of the social network's 845 million monthly active users paid for virtual goods in 2011. As such, payments accounted for 15 percent of the company's total revenue. The rest came from advertising. Getting more users to play games and pay for virtual goods within those games would help Facebook diversify its revenue and be seen as a more solid investment.

Draw Something, Rotten Tomatoes, Yahoo, TripAdvisor, Yelp, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by MAU

Posted: 02 Apr 2012 09:10 AM PDT

Draw Something topped our list of growing applications by monthly active users this week, among a handful of other games. Timeline apps from Rotten Tomatoes, BranchOut, Tripadvisor, Yahoo and others gained a significant number of new users.

Titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 600,000 and 5.1 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 31,100,000 +5,100,000 + 20%
2.   Zynga Slingo 12,300,000 +3,700,000 + 43%
3.   Rotten Tomatoes 13,700,000 +3,500,000 + 34%
4.   Scribd 17,300,000 +2,000,000 + 13%
5.   Static HTML… [Sixth Tab] 3,400,000 +1,800,000 + 113%
6.   Angry Birds 20,000,000 +1,400,000 + 8%
7.   Cities I’ve Visited 3,200,000 +1,300,000 + 68%
8.   MyCalendar – Birthdays 30,900,000 +1,300,000 + 4%
9.   BranchOut 11,900,000 +1,100,000 + 10%
10.   Yahoo! Reader 25,700,000 +1,100,000 + 5%
11.   Identified 3,600,000 +1,000,000 + 44%
12.   Static Iframe Tab 9,300,000 +900,000 + 11%
13.   Texas HoldEm Poker 35,500,000 +900,000 + 3%
14.   TripAdvisor™ 17,900,000 +900,000 + 5%
15.   Hoop De Loop Saga 4,400,000 +800,000 + 26%
16.   Static HTML… [Fifth Tab] 2,500,000 +800,000 + 47%
17.   İzlesene 6,300,000 +700,000 + 17%
18.   schoolFeed 11,100,000 +700,000 + 7%
19.   Yelp 14,100,000 +700,000 + 5%
20.   Marvel: Avengers Alliance 3,800,000 +600,000 + 19%

The mobile Pictionary-like game Draw Something led all of the apps on our list with 5.1 million MAU, beating any other game and most apps by several millions of MAU.

In addition to games, there were a number of Timeline apps on the list this week. Rotten Tomatoes' Open Graph integration allows users to share their movie reviews and movies they want to see. Cities I’ve Visited allows users to pin cities they’ve been to and rate travel experiences. İzlesene is a Turkish video website that has Open Graph enabled to share what users watch. BranchOut and Identified are professional networking apps that post activity to Timeline. Yahoo! Reader is a web integration that generates feed and Ticker stories when users read Yahoo articles.

Scribd is a document sharing site that uses Facebook login. TripAdvisor and Yelp use Facebook to personalize their websites for users based on their friend’s activity. Finally, online yearbook social network schoolFeed is a canvas app that presents opportunities for users to interact with former classmates.

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 makes search, about section less noticeable in latest redesign of groups

Posted: 02 Apr 2012 08:30 AM PDT

Facebook rolled out an update to group pages that implements tabs underneath the cover photo and makes the about section and search option harder to find.

When the social network redesigned groups last month to include a cover photo, the image would appear slightly transparent, and colors would be restored when users hovered over it. This action would also temporarily hide links to photos, docs, events and the list of all members. Now the transparency is gone and those links have a permanent place as tabs. This is more functional and aesthetically pleasing.

Two aspects of the design that don't seem to be improvements, however, are the change to the page's "about" section and search feature. Previously, there was a section on the right-hand side of the page that displayed information about the group. Many groups used this post rules or helpful links. Now, users won't see this unless they click the "about" tab. Similarly, there used to be a search bar beneath the cover photo, but it’s currently hidden behind a small magnifying glass icon. This means users will be less likely to use search to find out if a topic has already been discussed in a group. It's possible that users didn't take advantage of this feature much before so Facebook made it less prominent, but that seems counterproductive.

The social network is likely to continue to tinker with the design of groups to maintain consistency across the site. Currently, groups look more like News Feed than profiles or pages. This is useful for groups that function as discussion boards or collaboration tools, but might not be right for groups of family members, friends or teammates. These people might want Timeline features like posting milestones and displaying large photos. We'll be interested to see what direction Facebook takes. So far the company hasn't shared any information about the number of active groups or how the product is most commonly used.

Previous design for groups

tirsdag den 3. april 2012 at 07.50