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Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook roundup: Yahoo, IPO, Windows Phone, security

Posted: 27 Apr 2012 06:00 PM PDT

Yahoo files more patent claims against Facebook - Yahoo today filed two more advertising-related patent infringement claims against Facebook. Yahoo criticized the social network for purchasing patents specifically as means of retaliation against Yahoo. Facebook responded with the following statement, ”We remain puzzled by Yahoo’s erratic actions. We disagree with these latest claims and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously.”

Instagram acquisition may delay IPO - Reuters reports that Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and recent patent purchases may delay its IPO by about a week, pushing the initial public offering to later in May.

New Facebook for Windows Phone App - The new Facebook app for Windows phones includes features such as full thread messaging, the option to tag friends at locations, delete posts and comments, and ability to Like comments.

Facebook focuses on security - Facebook is testing a new product called Support Dashboard, which gives people who use Facebook more insight and visibility into what happens after they report content or other users on the site. From the Support Dashboard, users can see if their report has been reviewed by Facebook and receive an alert when a decision has been made about a report.

Facebook Offers now available to partners through API; no date for wide release

Posted: 27 Apr 2012 02:26 PM PDT

Facebook added support for creating and managing offers through the API this week, but a spokesperson tells us that this is only available to select partners who already have access to the self-serve version of the feature.

Offers are a new story type for page owners to post coupons that users can collect from News Feed or ad units. The feature is still in beta for premium advertisers and a limited number of pages in the U.S., New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, Japan, and Turkey. Facebook says it plans to launch offers widely in “coming weeks,” which might mean months from now based on how Facebook has used the term in the past.

Making offers available through the API means developers can integrate the feature into their social media management platforms. Even though the feature isn’t available to all pages yet, developers will be able to prepare for it. Although offers are free to create, businesses can buy Sponsored Stories to expand their distribution. Companies working with the Facebook Ads API will likely want to bring offers functionality to their ad tools so that advertisers can create and promote an offer from a single dashboard.

 

Facebook platform supports more than 42 million pages and 9 million apps

Posted: 27 Apr 2012 12:05 PM PDT

There are now more than 42 million Facebook pages and 9 million Facebook apps, according to a recent amendment to the social network's filing for an initial public offering.

The number of pages on Facebook with 10 or more Likes has increased by 5 million since Dec. 31, 2011, and the number of apps and websites that integrate Facebook are up by 2 million since that date. These new totals show that Facebook's platform continues to grow in ways beyond new users. It also shows just how much is competing for users' attention these days.

Facebook did not provide a category breakdown of the 42 million pages on Facebook. However, in a letter to prospective investors, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared that more than 4 million businesses have pages on the site. Other pages on the social network — including many of the most popular ones — are pages for popular figures, movies and sports teams. A large proportion of pages are also likely to be fan-generated community pages. Unclaimed locations also account for some of these pages, although Facebook has been working to eliminate duplicates.

The number of apps and websites connected to Facebook is likely to quickly grow past 9 million. With Open Graph integration proving to be a large source of traffic for third-party apps and websites, we can expect many more blogs and media sites, as well as mobile games and other apps to implement aspects of the platform

Along with stats about pages and apps, Facebook provided other updated figures for photo uploads, interactions and friend connections in its filing this week. Between Jan. 1 and March 31, there were more than 300 million photos uploaded to the site each day — up from 250 million per day in Q4 2011. Users also generated an average 3.2 billion Likes and comments each day in the first quarter of 2012 — up from 2.7 billion per day in Q4 2011. And Facebook now has more than 125 billion friend connections between its 901 million monthly active users.

Armies of Magic, ReverbNation, Ustream, tabs, more on this week’s emerging Facebook apps by MAU

Posted: 27 Apr 2012 09:53 AM PDT

Games and tabs were super popular on our list of emerging Facebook applications by monthly active users this week. We define emerging applications as those that ended with between 100,000 and 1 million MAU in the past week.

There was also an assortment of music applications and a few website integrations. This week’s top apps grew from between 90,000 and 440,000 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

Name MAU Gain Gain,%
1.   Armies of Magic 550,000 +440,000 + 400%
2.   Phrases 4 Fun 310,000 +305,000 + 6,100%
3.   Static FBML – HTML Estatico 990,000 +280,000 + 39%
4.   Woobox Custom Tab | Star #3 960,000 +230,000 + 32%
5.   Mynet 840,000 +190,000 + 29%
6.   Helicopter 420,000 +160,000 + 62%
7.   Smeet 870,000 +150,000 + 21%
8.   Angry Words (Apalabrados) 710,000 +140,000 + 25%
9.   Top Shot: The Game 260,000 +130,000 + 85%
10.   Woobox Custom Tab | Star #2 750,000 +130,000 + 21%
11.   Gangs of Boomtown 790,000 +120,000 + 18%
12.   Static HTML… [Ninth Tab] 730,000 +120,000 + 20%
13.   Township 1,000,000 +120,000 + 14%
14.   Woobox Custom Tab | Arrow #2 680,000 +120,000 + 21%
15.   ReverbNation 680,000 +110,000 + 19%
16.   Fairy Farm 740,000 +100,000 + 16%
17.   Ustream 750,000 +100,000 + 19%
18.   Grooveshark 800,000 +90,000 + 13%
19.   I AM PLAYR 960,000 +90,000 + 12%
20.   Kuis Temperamen 100,000 +90,000 + 900%

Armies of Magic from Playdom topped our list, leading the other games significantly. Others included word games such as, Phrases 4 Fun and Angry Words (Apalabrados), as well as several other adventure games. A handful of tab apps, primarily from Woobox, made the list.

Turkish website integration Mynet came in at No. 5. ReverbNation's Timeline app allows users to listen to songs and shared them to the stream. Grooveshark appeared to be a less complex integration.

Finally there was the livestream service Ustream, and Indonesian quiz app that publishes photos to the stream, Kuis Temperamen.

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 tests button that lets page owners skip complicated ad dashboard, promote content directly from their pages

Posted: 27 Apr 2012 08:32 AM PDT

Facebook will test a new “promote” button that makes it easier for pages to create Sponsored Stories directly from their posts, a company spokesperson tells us.

The button will appear from the page publisher — the box from which page owners create posts — and on posts that have already gone live. The feature is aimed at small- to mid-sized businesses that are using Facebook for marketing, but don’t necessarily have the resources to work with a Facebook ad rep or third-party partner. The social network’s ad dashboard has become increasingly complicated with untraditional ad types like Sponsored Stories and page post ads, but the promote button could make ad creation much simpler.

The promote button will let page owners pay to give their content additional exposure to their fans. If fans interact with the content, their friends might see that activity as a Sponsored Story, but there is not currently a way for page owners to create an ad targeting non-fans using the promote button. They will have to use the self-serve ad dashboard or the Ads API to do that.

“Right now this is a very small test but we will continue to iterate on the feature based on feedback,” a spokesperson says.

Facebook has been gradually encouraging page owners to pay for distribution of their content, even among fans they formerly thought they could reach for free. As it turns out, the average page post only reaches 16 percent of fans, the company revealed in February. This is the result of users connecting to more people and pages, all of whom are generating more stories than ever before. Most people wouldn’t enjoy seeing every bit of their connections’ activity in News Feed, so Facebook uses EdgeRank to filter some stories out and highlight the ones that seem most relevant to each user.

Last year the social network introduced a new type of ad that turned page posts into Sponsored Stories. That was the first time the company began to encourage businesses to spend money on engaging existing fans, in addition to running campaigns to acquire new ones. Then at the Facebook Marketing Conference earlier this year, the company revealed Reach Generator, a premium advertising solution to help large brands reach their fans through Sponsored Stories within the mobile and desktop feeds, as well as through sidebar ads. The promote button is a simple way to foster the same strategy among smaller businesses.

lørdag den 28. april 2012 at 07.17