Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook tests new icon to indicate whether activity will be shared after users click links
- Socialcam, Viddy, Instagram, Metacafe, Candy Crush Saga, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook pages by MAU
- How social video apps leverage Facebook Open Graph to rapidly gain new users
- This week’s headlines from across Inside Network
| Facebook tests new icon to indicate whether activity will be shared after users click links Posted: 30 Apr 2012 03:11 PM PDT
A small icon appears next to the name of social news readers and social video apps within News Feed. When the icon is grey, sharing is disabled and users can click on a link knowing that others won’t be able to see their activity, for example, if a user has set the app’s default privacy to “Only Me.” When the icon is green, social sharing is enabled. Users can hover over the icon to see to whom their subsequent activity will be visible. These icons appear within the mobile and desktop News Feed, but not on users’ Timelines.
For now, the company seems to be testing a number of options in order to find a future balance between making sharing as easy as possible and still letting people have control over their experience. This is increasingly important as websites and apps can now ask for permissions once and then automatically publish stories to Ticker, Timeline and News Feed when users take action like reading an article, listening to a song or watching a video. Since these apps are so new, there is a lot of variation in how developers make users aware of what they are agreeing to share and how they give users the option to opt-out. By experimenting on its own site and giving third-party developers some freedom to try different approaches, Facebook can discover best practices and ultimately define policies. Until then, some users might be hesitant to add any new applications or click on news and video links. Other users might want to set certain apps to be visible to “Only Me.” This gives users a chance to experience new apps without fear of over-sharing, and the option to chronicle their activity for themselves alone. Users can later widen the scope of who can see their activity once they trust an app. The easiest way to do this is from the activity log. See the last two screenshots below for an example.
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| Posted: 30 Apr 2012 09:04 AM PDT
Titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 700,000 and 13.5 million MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook. Top Gainers This Week
Socialcam grew by 13.5 million MAU and Viddy by 12.8 million MAU. These apps allows users to create and watch videos, sharing activity to Facebook each time. The mobile photo sharing app Instagram continue to grow significantly, as did the document sharing integration, Scribd. Two music applications, Pandora and Spotify, made our list, as well as a pair of quiz applications that publish feed stories with each answer. Metacafe's Timeline app led a list of website integrations that made our list, including Yahoo! Social Bar, Flixster and Dailymotion. These apps tend to institute automatic sharing for users who visit the sites. Finally, games on the list were led by King.com's Candy Crush Saga. 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. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How social video apps leverage Facebook Open Graph to rapidly gain new users Posted: 30 Apr 2012 09:00 AM PDT Two new mobile video apps — Viddy and Socialcam — have shot into the top 25 most popular Facebook apps by monthly active users this week.Their developers have both raised funding from prominent investors, with valuations likely influenced by Facebook's recent $1-billion-acquisition of Instagram. But as these and other Open Graph-enabled video applications are gaining between 1 million and 5 million monthly active users a day seemingly without advertising, pundits and investors should be aware of the mechanics in place that lead Facebook apps to grow faster than ever. Developers might also want to look to these apps as examples, but the true test will come in the next few weeks when we can see whether these apps can maintain regular engagement among a sizable percentage of new users. The following video apps are within the top 40 most popular Facebook apps by monthly active users, according to our AppData tracking service. We'll look at how these apps use Open Graph to maximize impressions and gain new users. We'll also address some of the privacy controls they've put in place to allow users to limit what they share. DailymotionDailymotion‘s web integration is the No. 9 Facebook app with 27.3 million MAU. When users visit Dailymotion.com, there is an option to log in with Facebook, but it is not required. When users click on a Dailymotion link from Facebook, however, they are immediately directed to an auth dialog asking for Timeline publishing permissions. After users accept by clicking "go to app," they can watch the video. Social sharing is automatically enabled but the site offers a "remove from Timeline" button.
So far the app doesn't share stories about any other activity besides watching videos. Uploading a video or subscribing to a channel, for instance, doesn't generate a Facebook story. The app also doesn't share stories when users watch videos directly from a Dailymotion user's channel. This is good because these videos autoplay and might otherwise lead some unwanted links to be shared with friends. Unlinking a Facebook account from a Dailymotion account is relatively difficult to do from Dailymotion’s website, but users can always remove the app from their Facebook app settings. ViddyViddy, currently No. 11 with 24.8 million MAU, is an iOS app that allows users to add Instagram-like filters to short videos. Unlike Instagram, it has a full website where users can browse and play videos, follow other users (like Mark Zuckerberg and Snoop Dogg) and mark videos as favorites. These actions all generate Timeline stories, creating aggregations like the one below.
Although the app has been at the top of the iPhone charts, it's unclear what proportion of the app's active Facebook users have downloaded the mobile app versus logged into the website. When users click on a Viddy video from Facebook.com, they are presented with an auth dialog. People can watch Viddy videos without logging in if they go to the site directly. After accepting Timeline permissions by clicking "Okay, watch video," users are taken to the Viddy site where they have the option to turn broadcasting on or off, as well as remove posting permissions for particular actions so users can decide to share videos that they like or comment on, but not those that they simply watch.
The iPhone app lacks any notifications that users are sharing their activity, and the only way to disable sharing — even temporarily — is to go to “settings,” followed by “configure services,” and then “Facebook.” From there users can unlink their accounts, turn off publishing or de-authorize specific permissions. SocialcamSocialcam is No. 24 with 17.7 million MAU. It is similar to Viddy in that it allows users to add filters and share videos from their smartphones, though it also seems to include a number of YouTube videos. Unlike Viddy, Socialcam has an Android version. The app also has a website from which users can view videos and follow other users (including Britney Spears and MC Hammer), which raises the same question as Viddy: how many active Facebook users have downloaded the mobile app versus logged in from the web.
When users click on any Socialcam video link, they get an auth dialog, whether they came from Facebook or directly. This makes it seem as though users have to allow Timeline permissions in order to watch a video, but if a user clicks "cancel," they will be able to view the clip without logging in and sharing their activity. If users do accept permissions by clicking "Okay, watch video," social sharing is enabled, and activity will be posted back to Facebook after users get about halfway through a video. Socialcam also offers a remove from Timeline option, and the ability to separately de-authorize publishing permission for viewing activity and other actions, including liking and commenting.
MetacafeMetacafe, which is No. 36 with 13.2 million MAU, seems to offer users the clearest explanation of what is being shared when they visit the site and how to disable it. This web integration prompts users with an auth dialog when they click over from the social network. After clicking "log in with Facebook," users face a second step where they can choose which actions to share back to their Timelines. When users play their first video, even though watch activity is "on," Metacafe doesn't publish a story until users explicitly click "Add it." From that point on, activity will be shared on Facebook until users turn activity "off" or "undo" an individual story. For now, the app does not seem to share any other actions besides “watch.”
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| This week’s headlines from across Inside Network Posted: 29 Apr 2012 07:58 AM PDT A roundup of all the news Inside Network brought you between April 23 and 28.
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