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Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook updates Locations app, but feature still only available to select pages

Posted: 25 Apr 2012 01:29 PM PDT

Facebook recently relaunched its "Locations" app that allows users to search directly from a company's page to find business locations near them.

The feature, which helps organize corporate and local pages, had to be redesigned to fit the new Timeline layout. The Locations app is only available to select brands working directly with Facebook. A spokesperson from the social network could only tell us that pages have to ask Facebook to enable the app, but she could not provide details about what makes a company eligible for the feature.

Facebook's Locations app first appeared in August 2011 as part of a limited private test of parent-child page management tools. Since then we've had a number of readers inquire about when the feature would be available publicly, but it seems Facebook is reserving this for select partners for now.

Corporations like Starbucks, Macy's and Home Depot are among those with the Locations tab, but it's unclear whether companies have to make a certain size advertising spend to qualify or simply be well-known. Businesses with access to a Facebook account representative or working with one of Facebook's Preferred Marketing Developers certified in Pages should connect with those contacts to request access to the app. Other businesses will have to develop their own store locator applications.

Facebook's native Locations app overlays store information on a Bing map within a tab on a company's page. The map defaults to a tight radius around the user's current location, but refreshes with additional results when users re-orient the map. Users can also search by city, state or zip code. The tab is not available from Facebook's mobile site or applications.

Partners with access to the feature can manage their corporate and local pages using the Pages API and a basic admin interface. Hearsay Social, which was initially involved with Facebook in developing the management system, provides additional features and regulatory compliance for companies with both corporate and local pages. Hearsay CEO Clara Shih says her company was not involved in the latest update to the Locations app, though customers including 24 Hour Fitness use it. She did not have any information about how companies outside of her customer base could get access to the feature.

Here are links to a number of pages’ Location tabs:

Facebook partners with anti-virus software makers to provide free computer security

Posted: 25 Apr 2012 10:08 AM PDT

Facebook today announced the Antivirus Marketplace, a partnership with Microsoft, McAfee, TrendMicro, Sophos, and Symantec, to provide the social network’s users with free six-month licenses to anti-virus software.

The anti-virus partners will augment Facebook’s URL blacklist system with their own URL blacklist databases. The companies will also contribute to the Facebook Security Blog to provide information about how users can protect their accounts and keep Facebook safe for other users.

With 901 million monthly active users, the social network is a prime target fo malware, viruses, phishing attacks and spam. Facebook has made several improvements to its automated enforcement — including self-XSS protection and quickly blocking apps, profiles or links that a certain percentage of people mark as spam — and user-facing security protections, like login approvals and remote log-out, but providing anti-virus software adds another layer of security.

The company has worked with McAfee in the past to give users free and discounted anti-virus protection. Symantec, which produces Norton anti-virus software, has maintained an app on Facebook since 2010 that scans users’ News Feeds for unsafe links. The company also helped Facebook identify a data leak in 2011. Sophos is an interesting partner since the security software developer has been quite critical of Facebook in the past.

Users can visit the Facebook Security page to access the free software downloads and receive updates about protecting their accounts.

Yahoo, Metacafe, birthdays, games, Spoitfy, BranchOut, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by DAU

Posted: 25 Apr 2012 08:37 AM PDT

Web integrations, music apps, games, horoscopes and a few other applications made our list of the fastest growing apps by daily active users this week. The titles below grew between 200,000 and 1.9 million DAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

Name DAU Gain Gain,%
1.   Yahoo! 7,200,000 +1,900,000 + 36%
2.   Metacafe 1,900,000 +1,893,000 + 27,043%
3.   Yahoo! Social Bar 4,800,000 +1,800,000 + 60%
4.   Birthday Calendar 1,400,000 +1,280,000 + 1,067%
5.   Socialcam 1,300,000 +1,080,000 + 491%
6.   Siz.net 1,300,000 +710,000 + 120%
7.   Daily Horoscope 4,400,000 +700,000 + 19%
8.   Microsoft Live 13,000,000 +700,000 + 6%
9.   schoolFeed 4,700,000 +600,000 + 15%
10.   Bing 4,200,000 +400,000 + 11%
11.   Onedate 450,000 +390,000 + 650%
12.   Bubble Witch Saga 6,600,000 +300,000 + 5%
13.   Diamond Dash 4,600,000 +300,000 + 7%
14.   Pandora 1,700,000 +300,000 + 21%
15.   Spotify 5,400,000 +300,000 + 6%
16.   Candy Crush Saga 940,000 +290,000 + 45%
17.   Terra 460,000 +280,000 + 156%
18.   BranchOut 990,000 +220,000 + 29%
19.   Static Iframe Tab 520,000 +200,000 + 63%
20.   Texas HoldEm Poker 7,400,000 +200,000 + 3%

Yahoo! and Yahoo! Social Bar were both very popular, growing by almost 2 million DAU. Social Bar is Yahoo’s Open Graph news reader, whereas Yahoo is simply Facebook login for the main site and other services. Website integrations from Metacafe, Siz.net and Terra have been on our lists frequently. These apps tend to leverage Open Graph sharing techniques. Music apps Pandora and Spotify grew by the same amount, 300,000 DAU, as did the most popular game on our list, Bubble Witch Saga.

A popular app for creating customized birthday calendars of your friends, Birthday Calendar, grew considerably. Mobile video app Socialcam grew by more than 1 million DAU. The Microsoft Live login app was popular, along with Bing's search integration. The rest of the list included a horoscope app, school networking app, dating app, and professional networking tool, BranchOut.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday.

New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: Nixon Peabody, Courier.com, SponsorPay and more

Posted: 24 Apr 2012 10:12 PM PDT

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms.

Here are this week's highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at: Courier Publishing, Nixon Peabody, SponsorPay, Warner Brothers, Circle of Moms, Kobojo, Kixeye, Nuukster, EA, Machine Zone, GameHouse, King.com,

 

 

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

torsdag den 26. april 2012 at 07.28