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Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook helps Instagram with unique Open Graph app rollout

Posted: 09 Apr 2012 11:35 AM PDT

Facebook and Instagram have been working together for weeks on an Open Graph integration for the mobile photo sharing app, Inside Facebook has discovered.

Facebook, which announced today that it acquired Instagram for $1 billion in cash and Facebook stock, has helped Instagram roll out a Timeline application to groups of users in stages without any friction on the user side.

Open Graph lets applications create “actions” that can be published automatically to Facebook. These apps compile user activity over time and share summaries of that activity on Timeline. For Instagram, that action is “took a photo.” We first saw evidence of an Instagram Open Graph app in mid-March. Late last week, we noticed a few more users who got access to the app, but even today it has not gone live for all Instagram users who have connected their accounts with Facebook. (See the difference in how Instagram posts to Facebook with and without Open Graph below.)

This type of rollout is possible because Facebook is automatically updating user permissions. Previously, users who authorized Instagram to connect with their Facebook account enabled the “post on my behalf” permission. This is the permission any app uses to post to a user’s Wall. With the addition of Open Graph apps that publish to boxes on user’s Timelines, there is a new “post on my behalf” permission seen circled below.

We discovered and confirmed with Facebook that it worked with Instagram directly to enable this Timeline permission without requiring users to re-authorize the application. In the case of Instagram, this makes sense since the setting does not change the controls users have or what the app can publish. It simply optimizes the format of posts and helps organize user’s photos on Timeline. Users still have a clear choice whether or not to share their photo on Facebook when they create an image in the Instagram mobile app. Presenting users with an auth dialog for a second time when the change does not affect user privacy in any way simply wouldn’t be good user experience.

Whether or not Facebook will allow other developers to do the same is unclear. A spokesperson told us on Friday, ”We’re currently working with a small set of partners to test extending the publish_stream permission to include the Open Graph publish_actions permission to enable apps to publish to Timeline.”

Facebook did not respond to requests for additional comment and clarification after the news about the Instagram acquisition was revealed.

Instagram users have long been able to post their photos to Facebook. Originally, these appeared as links with small thumbnails that took users off-Facebook. Earlier this year, Instagram incorporated the social network’s Photos API so that images would appear full-size and be collected in a Facebook album. Now with Open Graph, the app publishes photos in such a way that they are compiled in a box on users’ Timelines (see right). The app also publishes stories in the format: “[User] took a photo with Instagram.” This links to the photo and to the Instagram app, which are more likely to drive traffic and new users to Instagram than the previous way of publishing did.

Now that Facebook has acquired Instagram, the mobile photo sharing app is likely to have access to additional APIs and beta features so that it can optimize its Open Graph app.

With Open Graph integration

Without Open Graph integration

Facebook acquires Instagram for $1B

Posted: 09 Apr 2012 10:06 AM PDT

Facebook acquired mobile photo sharing application Instagram and its team for about $1 billion in cash and Facebook stock, according to a press release.

The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close later this quarter. The acquisition is likely to drive Facebook’s valuation even higher when the company goes public, as it is expected to later this spring. Instagram was previously valued at $500 million when it raised $50 million in a series B round led by Sequoia Capital that closed just before the Facebook acquisition, according to TechCrunch.

The app will continue under the Instagram name and continue to support posting services beyond Facebook. Users can continue to have followers and follow people without connecting with them directly on Facebook

"Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people," Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post.

In the past, Facebook has bought companies for talent and either shut down their services or incorporated them into Facebook. Gowalla, for instance, closed its location-based service last month. Group messaging app Beluga became Facebook Messenger.

Zuckerberg noted that this is the social network’s highest profile acquisition, and said that the company does not expect to make others like this in the near future, perhaps to prevent speculation on whether Facebook would buy Pinterest.

“This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.”

In July 2011, we suspected that Facebook would release an Instagram competitor when leaked images of a Facebook mobile photo sharing app were discovered. The project never materialized. There were rumored reports of Facebook trying to buy Instagram several times over the past 18 months. Google apparently had talked to Instagram as well. It seems Facebook finally sealed the deal when it offered the mobile photo sharing company twice as much as it had been valued at previously.

We will update this post with more information as it becomes available.

Exclusive: Facebook helps Instagram with unique Open Graph app rollout

 

Yahoo, Scribd, Draw Something, Instagram, Pandora, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by MAU

Posted: 09 Apr 2012 08:42 AM PDT

Yahoo's news reader application topped our list of apps growing by monthly active users this week. The Washington Post's Social Reader, as well as games, a few video apps, professional networking apps and others made up the list. Interestingly, the addition of Instagram for Android devices also pushed this app to make our list.

Titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 300,000 and 3 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.   Yahoo! Reader 29,100,000 +3,000,000 + 11%
2.   Scribd 21,100,000 +2,800,000 + 15%
3.   Social Reader 14,000,000 +2,100,000 + 18%
4.   Draw Something by OMGPOP 33,200,000 +1,400,000 + 4%
5.   Zynga Slingo 14,000,000 +1,400,000 + 11%
6.   Rotten Tomatoes 15,600,000 +1,300,000 + 9%
7.   Pandora 11,700,000 +900,000 + 8%
8.   Instagram 7,300,000 +800,000 + 12%
9.   Flixster 1,600,000 +670,000 + 72%
10.   Angry Birds 20,800,000 +600,000 + 3%
11.   MyCalendar – Birthdays 31,700,000 +600,000 + 2%
12.   İzlesene 7,000,000 +500,000 + 8%
13.   TripAdvisor™ 18,500,000 +500,000 + 3%
14.   BranchOut 12,500,000 +400,000 + 3%
15.   Dailymotion 5,900,000 +400,000 + 7%
16.   Hoop De Loop Saga 4,900,000 +400,000 + 9%
17.   Identified 4,200,000 +400,000 + 11%
18.   schoolFeed 11,500,000 +400,000 + 4%
19.   Birthday Cards 3,300,000 +300,000 + 10%
20.   Il Mio Calendario – Compleanni 3,800,000 +300,000 + 9%

Yahoo! Reader is a web integration that generates feed and Ticker stories when users read news articles. The Washington Post's Social Reader has similar functionality, but articles are displayed within the Facebook canvas.

Mobile game Draw Something by OMGPOP has been growing tremendously in recent weeks. This week it tied with Zynga Slingo at 1.4 million MAU.

Scribd, the document sharing site that uses Facebook login made the list, as did professional networking apps that post activity to Timeline: BranchOut and Identified. A few birthday calendar apps made the list. These ask users to invite their friends to use the app before use. Rock You's Birthday Cards sets up a visual calendar of your friend's birthdays, allowing you to click on their photo to customize a birthday card.

Rotten Tomatoes' Open Graph integration allows users to share their movie reviews and movies they want to see. Flixster works similarly, but the app also allows users to send each other full-length movies to watch on Facebook. Open Graph video sharing sites İzlesene and Dailymotion made the list and music app Pandora did, too.

Finally, the long-awaited Instagram Android app was just released last week, pushing the photo app to No. 8 on the list.

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.

tirsdag den 10. april 2012 at 07.40