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Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook roundup: iPad, Ceglia, India, security

Posted: 06 Apr 2012 06:00 PM PDT

Facebook updates iPad app – Facebook updated its iPad app to support retina display, as well as allowing offline chat, photo and friend bug fixes and more.

Ceglia can’t search Zuckerberg’s files – Attorneys for Facebook and would-be Facebook owner Paul Ceglia met this week. A judge ruled that Ceglia’s lawyers can’t access Mark Zuckerberg’s personal computers, or question him for the lawsuit. [Image via Facebook]

Facebook adds 8 Indian languages for mobile users - Over the next few weeks, Facebook will begin allowing users in India to access the site via mobile in eight new languages.

Security bugs affects Facebook apps on jailbroken phones - CNET reported that Facebook’s iPhone app is not secure because it does not encrypt log-on credentials. Facebook responded and let users know this security threat only affects phones that have been jailbroken or compromised some other way.

How will Facebook respond to the growth of Pinterest? A look at the social network’s history with competition

Posted: 06 Apr 2012 12:54 PM PDT

A report from marketing services company Experian says Pinterest is the third most popular social network in the U.S. after Facebook and Twitter.

In past years when a social platform started to get traction as Pinterest has, Facebook responded by launching features inspired by its would-be competitors. There was the switch to a real-time feed in response to Twitter and the addition of check-ins when Foursquare was hot. But with Pinterest, things might be different.

Pinterest's status as an Open Graph partner potentially prevents Facebook from feeling a need to copy the app since it is essentially part of the platform already. The social network might also be clearer about its own direction at this stage, learning lessons from past knee-jerk reactions that ultimately didn't take off on the site. Finally, Pinterest's core functionality is one that already exists on Facebook: sharing links and images. We might see the social network take some design cues from the pinboard site, but it seems unlikely that Facebook would make any major overhauls or new products in response to Pinterest.

Open Graph as protection?

As an Open Graph partner, Pinterest's site and mobile app integrate Facebook in a way that publishes activity to Timeline, Ticker and News Feed. The pinboard site is growing at the rate it is — 17.8 million unique U.S. visitors in February spending an average of 89 minutes per month on site — in part because of Facebook. Pinterest activity is featured prominently in News Feed and a number of celebrities, including Katie Couric and Vanessa Hudgens, share their pins with Facebook subscribers. Pinterest gets traffic and new users; Facebook gets data that it can use to improve its algorithms and ad targeting. For example, Ads API partners can target users by what they've pinned or pinners and boards they follow. This option isn't available to self-serve advertisers yet, but is likely part of the future of Facebook's ad platform.

When networks like Twitter and Foursquare started to become popular, they were seen as more of potential a threat to Facebook because they were collecting data about connections between people and interests that Facebook couldn't access. Now Foursquare, along with Tumblr, Path, Instagram and other alternative social networks, have integrated Open Graph and essentially become a part of Facebook. (We've wondered whether Twitter would ever do the same.)

Lessons learned?

Most of the projects Facebook built as a reaction to another growing service did not last very long. In March 2009, the social network changed its algorithm-sorted News Feed to a real-time stream à la Twitter. By October that year, it added a "top stories" view to allow users to switch between real-time and a more curated feed. In 2010, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted to us that he felt he "paid too much attention" to Twitter.

Then there was the rise of location-based services with Foursquare and Gowalla attracting a lot of press. Facebook announced "Places" in August 2010, giving users the ability to check into places from their mobile phones. From the start, Facebook took a platform approach to location, partnering with other check-in services for the launch, but eventually the company realized the check-in mechanism was only part of the equation. It decided to phase out Places in favor of location tagging for any photo, status update, event or Open Graph action. The company also recently acquired Gowalla.

That same summer in 2010, Facebook debuted Questions, a Quora-like application to ask and answer questions publicly. The feature never made it out of beta. Instead, the project pivoted and Facebook released Questions as more of a polling mechanism in 2011. From what we can tell, Questions hasn't ever taken off among users, though many page owners use the feature to engage fans. Facebook hasn't improved the product much since launch. In fact, it took nearly a year for Questions to ever appear in the mobile feed, and users still can't add new questions from mobile devices.

Facebook was also temporarily distracted by Groupon and Instagram. The social network's pre-paid deals service was discontinued after about five months. A rumored photo sharing app that appeared to support filters — based on leaked images in June 2011 — was never released.

The social network did have success with its group messaging strategy. In early 2011, mobile apps like Beluga, GroupMe and Fast Society were taking off. Facebook bought Beluga and had the team convert the app into the standalone Facebook Messenger app. The app has been one of the Top 100 free iPhone apps since it launched in August 2011, and remains popular on Android as well.

What might Facebook do?

There's clearly something to the Pinterest phenomenon, and Facebook seems to have its eyes on the pinboard site. Zuckerberg created an account a few months ago and he even Liked a site called Friendsheet that makes users' Facebook News Feeds appear like Pinterest boards.

Facebook might not feel the need to recreate Pinterest on its own site, but the social network could take inspiration for smaller features through design or the way it simplifies sharing. Facebook, like Pinterest, has long offered plug-ins to make it easy to share links on the site. But unlike Facebook's share button, Pinterest's "pin it" button focuses on image thumbnails. Pinterest users can see all their thumbnail options at once, whereas Facebook users have to cycle through images one by one (see images below for comparison). We might see Facebook change this and we might also see the social network increase the size of link thumbnails in News Feed.

We probably won't see Facebook buy Pinterest. The product does not incorporate any unique technology the social network needs and the company is already valued incredibly high. Pinterest was most recently valued at $200 million, but some investors have suggested it could be worth $1 billion. Even if Facebook was interested in the company, it would be unlikely to sell at this point. Pinterest can continue to grow and develop a business model, all while functioning on top of Facebook's mutually beneficial Open Graph.

Dropbox, videos, Soul Crash, Pose, Digg, hi5, more on this week’s top 20 emerging Facebook apps by MAU

Posted: 06 Apr 2012 10:00 AM PDT

Dropbox topped our list of emerging Facebook applications by monthly active users this week after the app started giving bonus storage space to people who refer friends to use it. Then a few video apps, games led by Soul Crash, mobile fashion app Pose, Digg's Timeline app, hi5 and a few other apps rounded out our list.

This week’s top apps grew from between 100,000 and 280,000 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

Name MAU Gain Gain,%
1.   Dropbox 390,000 +280,000 + 255%
2.   Siz.net 550,000 +260,000 + 90%
3.   Social Video 600,000 +260,000 + 94%
4.   Soul Crash 770,000 +220,000 + 40%
5.   Download Your Information 700,000 +210,000 + 43%
6.   Gangs of Boomtown 290,000 +210,000 + 480%
7.   Friend Hug 180,000 +170,000 + 1,700%
8.   ปฏิทินของฉัน 820,000 +170,000 + 30%
9.   Township 530,000 +150,000 + 39%
10.   Fairy Farm 410,000 +140,000 + 52%
11.   Pose 320,000 +140,000 + 78%
12.   Best Arcade Games 170,000 +130,000 + 325%
13.   Flying Kingdoms 520,000 +130,000 + 33%
14.   Rollercoaster Mania 710,000 +130,000 + 27%
15.   Digg 650,000 +120,000 + 23%
16.   Pet City 940,000 +120,000 + 16%
17.   Idle Worship 330,000 +110,000 + 50%
18.   Picture Pals 230,000 +110,000 + 92%
19.   Daily Mood 280,000 +100,000 + 56%
20.   hi5 510,000 +100,000 + 24%

Document sharing service Dropbox announced on its Facebook page and blog that users could earn extra storage space by inviting friends to use it. A pair of video apps, Turkish website Siz.net and Facebook canvas app Social Video, followed. Then about half the list was made up of games, led by Soul Crash.

Friend Hug allows users to send virtual gifts to each other, posting to the feed. ปฏิทินของฉัน is a calendar app asking users to invite their friends to make said calendar and Daily Mood publishes feed stories of a user's mood or that of their friends.

Pose, the mobile photo fashion sharing app, saw its Timeline app grow in popularity. A number of celebrities, including Rachel Zoe, have been using the app and allowing their public subscribers to see their activity. Then there was Digg's Timeline app, which functions like a social news reader. Finally, hi5 made our list for the second week in a row. The company was recently acquired by Tagged, and has incorporated Facebook logins, according to a company representative.

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.

lørdag den 7. april 2012 at 07.52
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