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Inside Facebook

Facebook for Every Phone, Snaptu, Facebook Marketing, Kobe Bryant, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook pages

Posted: 29 May 2012 05:14 PM PDT

Mobile, marketing and sports were popular on our list of the fastest growing Facebook pages this week.

Pages on our list this week grew from between 441,600 to 3.8 million Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks page growth across Facebook.

# Name Total Likes People Talking About Daily Growth Weekly Growth 
1   Programa Pânico 4,845,463 70,766 +9,874 +3,842,060
2   Facebook for Every Phone 91,990,154 2,854,483 +343,111 +2,773,409
3   Snaptu 8,150,715 8,008 +1,402,809 +1,407,182
4   Facebook Solutions Entrep… 1,411,339 593 +7,286 +1,392,659
5   Facebook-Marketingkonzepte 1,411,173 1,756 +7,472 +1,387,624
6   Facebook Marketing 1,411,424 9,738 +7,209 +1,375,171
7   Facebook Marketing 1,411,271 1,718 +7,357 +1,368,611
8   Facebook Marketing 1,411,328 727 +7,299 +1,361,051
9   Facebook Marketing 1,410,680 1,325 +7,603 +1,354,284
10   Facebook Marketing 1,411,162 933 +7,482 +1,345,123
11   Listening to music 5,546,585 338,005 +261,116 +1,035,428
12   Leo Messi 36,095,834 218,372 +25,586 +751,247
13   Kobe Bryant 12,877,578 143,113 +12,459 +539,475
14   Adele 29,268,531 571,120 +74,417 +530,207
15   Titanic 24,392,905 497,230 +58,145 +470,336
16   Target 12,906,579 466,823 +98,646 +463,812
17   Big Babol Official Page 462,787 77 +1 +456,087
18   Facebook 67,323,681 516,358 +62,223 +445,888
19   Ray-Ban 3,929,644 448,047 +59,280 +444,624
20   Rihanna 56,570,407 569,172 +65,877 +441,564

Brazilian TV show Programa Pânico topped our list after a huge single day spike, which is likely the result of page consolidation. Facebook for Every Phone and Snaptu took No. 2 and No. 3, respectively. Interestingly, Facebook for Every Phone is the mobile application for feature phones that was built by Snaptu. The social network acquired Snaptu in 2011. The Snaptu page hasn’t been updated since then, so its growth seems to be from page consolidation. The Facebook for Every Phone page continues to have a lot of momentum following the app’s recent product updates.

A group of Facebook marketing pages in different languages took the next seven spots on the list. This seems to be related to a test that lets pages customize their presence for different regions while maintaining a unified total Like count across all pages.

Athletes Leo Messi and Kobe Bryant made the list likely because of their recent performances. Target continues to grow as the result of its Sponsored Stories campaign. Ray-Ban is heavily promoting its new Legends campaign with a Facebook app. The page is also sharing posts to past points on its Timeline.

Italian gum company Big Babol seems to have also grown from page consolidation. Adele, Titanic and Rihanna continue to appear on our list as the result of organic growth and momentum.

Facebook shares fall to $28.84 on first day of options trading

Posted: 29 May 2012 03:38 PM PDT

Facebook shares fell more than 9 percent today, closing at $28.84 on the first day of options trading, which allows investors to bet on the future of the stock with less money at risk.

Today marks the first time the company’s shares dropped below $30 after its initial public offering earlier this month, which priced shares at $38. Facebook now has a market cap of about $79 billion, down from the $104 billion IPO valuation. The broader market was up today with the Nasdaq, Dow and S&P all gaining over 1 percent.

Facebook’s stock had a low of $28.65 today as the company debuted in the public options market. An option is a contract that gives investors the right to buy or sell shares at a specific price on or before a certain date. It does not give investors any ownership of a company. Options can be used to bet on the direction of a stock’s price through “calls” and “puts.” When investors buy a call option, they can purchase a stock at a set price any time before the option expires. When investors buy a put option, they can sell a stock at the strike price any time before the expiration date.

According to Bloomberg, the volume for puts exceeded calls by 1.2-to-1, indicating that many investors believe Facebook’s share price will continue to decline over the next month. The outlet says June $30 puts were the most common, followed by June $34 calls and June $32 calls.

The Wall Street Journal suggested that options trading contributed to Facebook shares’ overall decline today. Other factors could include the lawsuits and controversy that have resulted from the social network’s IPO, as well as rumors that Facebook could be building a phone or buying a browser.

New Facebook platform industry hires: Buddy Media, Wildfire, Kontagent, Identified, BranchOut

Posted: 29 May 2012 02:01 PM PDT

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com, and we'll get it into our next post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes either from the companies themselves or from company updates from LinkedIn.

Looking for new opportunities? Check out the Inside Network Job Board, which shows the latest openings at leading companies in the industry.

Here's this week's list of hires:

Buddy Media 

  • Tom Callen, Account Executive –former sales executive at Wildfire Interactive, Inc.
  • Anna Meskishvili, Marketing – former public relations account executive at Privy, Inc.

Wildfire

  • Chris Marty, Recruiting – former admissions counselor at Goucher College.
  • Kathryn Sahr, Sales Associate – former web content/marketing intern at Tundra Specialties.
  • Erica Weindruch, Sales Associate – former leasing consultant at Renter’s Refuge.

Kontagent

  • Erik Lewis,  Data Scientist/Account Manager – former teaching assistant at UCLA

Identified

  • Mohamad Tarifi, Director of Research and Development – former experience at Ignition Entertainment, Convert Global, Capital One and Amazon.
  • Sungwook Yoon, Data Scientist — former research scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center.
  • Baljinder Singh, Senior Software Developer — former developer for SuccessFactors, CommVault, Guavus Networks Pvt Ltd, and GlobalLogic.

BranchOut

  •  Paulo Cordeiro, Advogado (attorney) — former attorney at SCF Advogados

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Facebook introduces ‘trending videos’ module in News Feed, redesigns ‘trending articles’ layout

Posted: 29 May 2012 12:54 PM PDT

Facebook has added a "trending videos" feature to highlight social video activity within News Feed, similar to how the social network promotes social reader articles.

Video applications like Socialcam, Viddy and Chill have grown quickly as the result of Open Graph integration, which shares users' activity to the feed. The trending videos module organizes this activity into a single unit so that video stories do not dominate News Feed. Some social reader apps experienced a decline in monthly active users when Facebook introduced "trending articles" in April. Video apps could see a similar trend, but they may benefit in other ways. For example, users might be less inclined to mark video stories as spam or hide all stories from a particular app now that they are featured in this more structured unit.

Screenshots of the desktop and mobile view come from The Next Web, which first covered the trending video feature.

With the introduction of trending videos, Facebook has also redesigned its trending articles module. The obtrusive gray bar above the stories has been replaced by a more modest header, which includes the social network's news icon. The thumbnail that accompanies an article has been pushed closer to the center of the feed rather than being flush left, where they seemed to overpower the much smaller user thumbnails that typically take that position. However, this appears to limit the number of characters that are displayed for an article’s headline.

Similar to the mobile version of the unit, the desktop version now shows a small preview of the next article in the series, encouraging users to click to see more. The feature also includes a green icon to indicate that clicking the link will share activity back to a user's Timeline. The icon will be gray if the user's privacy settings will keep that activity hidden.

Overall, the feature is a better visual fit than previous iterations. The title of the feature still seems to a misnomer, however, as many of the so-called "trending" articles and videos have only been read or watched by a single friend. Occasionally users will see content that only they have viewed become displayed in their own News Feed as "trending.”

New trending articles design

Previous trending articles design

Asking for Open Graph app permissions: Involver shares best practices following success of Ad Meter campaign

Posted: 29 May 2012 10:29 AM PDT

Social marketing platform Involver found that integrating Open Graph to let users share their app activity with friends led to a 20 percent viral boost for the USA Today Ad Meter application.

The app, which presented users with a number of Super Bowl commercials to watch and rate, asked for permissions up front and then shared users' actions seamlessly, rather than disrupting the experience with frequent prompts to share. The Ad Meter, which was the first large-scale marketing campaign to use this new type of sharing, had 11 percent of users opt in and authorize Open Graph publishing. Even with a small proportion of users enabling automatic sharing, the app significantly increased its reach.

Involver says two million video views were driven directly from the app, but another 200,000 views came as the result of people seeing their friends' "watched" or "rated" actions in News Feed. The Ad Meter had 120 additional users for every 100 pieces of content shared from the app. Overall the app reached more than 6 million unique users through News Feed, Facebook tabs, USAToday.com and mobile devices.

Involver VP of Marketing Roland Smart says the results prove the value of integrating Open Graph. He says there are several best practices developers should implement in order to increase the number of users allowing Open Graph permissions and to maximize the reach of a campaign. We have outlined his key points and provided a look at the Ad Meter user flow below. The full Ad Meter case study is available here.

1. Do not ask for permissions until proving some value.

2. Use images and a clear call to action to give users an idea of what they'll gain by granting permissions. For example, offer transparent views of content or sample content that will be revealed after authorizing the app. Once users understand the experience, they are more likely to accept the permissions.

3. Always offer an alternative experience for users who do not authorize the app. This will keep users engaged and can provide opportunities for authorization later.

4. Use the "persistent ask" or "intermittent ask" methods. With the persistent ask, a call to action stays in view so that users can decide at any time to authorize the app. Typically, the placement is unobtrusive and near an area where authorization will improve the user experience. With the intermittent ask, the call to action is removed if a user does not opt in within a set time period but it is resurfaced after a user has engaged further with the app. This can be successful in converting users since it provides a greater sense of urgency.

5. Do not ask for more permissions than necessary to provide the intended experience. Group permissions so that users only have to authorize the app once.

6. Thank users for authorizing the application and be clear about how their activity is being shared throughout the experience.

Read more about Open Graph and how it can enhance a marketing campaign here.

Socialcam, quizzes, Yahoo, Pinterest, games, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by MAU

Posted: 29 May 2012 08:25 AM PDT

Video app Socialcam topped our list of the fastest growing Facebook applications by monthly active users this week. There was also a variety of quiz apps, video website integrations, games and Timeline apps from companies like Spotify.

Titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 615,600 and 9.7 million MAU, based on our AppData tracking service.

Top Gainers This Week

Name MAU Gain Gain,%
1.   Socialcam 54,200,000 +2,700,000 + 5%
2.   21 questions 10,400,000 +2,500,000 + 32%
3.   MyCalendar – Birthdays 31,200,000 +2,200,000 + 8%
4.   Chill 14,300,000 +2,100,000 + 17%
5.   60photos 8,700,000 +1,800,000 + 26%
6.   Yahoo! Social Bar 41,200,000 +1,700,000 + 4%
7.   Mynet 7,400,000 +1,600,000 + 28%
8.   Bubble Blitz 1,900,000 +1,520,000 + 400%
9.   Sniplist 2,700,000 +1,500,000 + 125%
10.   Bubble Safari 1,800,000 +1,410,000 + 362%
11.   Zynga Bingo 2,100,000 +1,280,000 + 156%
12.   Candy Crush Saga 8,900,000 +1,200,000 + 16%
13.   Buggle 3,600,000 +1,100,000 + 44%
14.   Pyramid Solitaire Saga 3,200,000 +1,100,000 + 52%
15.   Pinterest 12,700,000 +1,000,000 + 9%
16.   Truth Game 3,400,000 +1,000,000 + 42%
17.   Between You and Me 7,500,000 +900,000 + 14%
18.   Lost Bubble 2,000,000 +900,000 + 82%
19.   Skype 15,100,000 +900,000 + 6%
20.   Spotify 20,600,000 +900,000 + 5%

Socialcam grew by 2.7 million MAU; this app allows users to take and watch videos and generates Open Graph stories in News Feed and Timeline as a result. Other video integrations that grew in the millions were: Chill, Turkish site Mynet, and Sniplist. Quiz apps that ask users questions about their friends, generating feed stories as they are answered, were also popular. These included 21 questions, Truth Game and Between You and Me.

The rest of the list was made up of a variety of apps. There was MyCalendar – Birthdays, which asks users to invite friends to the app so as to generate a customized calendar for them. The 60photos app allows users to rate friends' photos, then there were several Timeline apps, like: Yahoo! Social Bar, Pinterest and Spotify.

Games were led by Bubble Blitz this week.

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.

onsdag den 30. maj 2012 at 07.22