gravatar

Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook stock back up, Nasdaq under fire, Yahoo settlement close, and more on this week’s news roundup

Posted: 08 Jun 2012 06:00 PM PDT

Facebook stock ends week on a high note – Facebook closed today at $27.10, up 3 percent from Thursday. Shares fell below $26 on Wednesday, their lowest since the company's initial public offering on May 18, which priced shares at $38. News about the company’s App Center, mobile ads and a ComScore report about Facebook ad effectiveness could be restoring some investor optimism.

Wall Street criticizes Nasdaq compensation plan – Nasdaq proposed Wednesday to earmark $40 million to compensate investors for losses that resulted from trading problems during Facebook’s initial public offering, but industry executives have raised objections and question whether regulators would approve the plan. Losses across Wall Street have been estimated between $100 million to $200 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Facebook-Yahoo agreement could be on the way – All Things D reports that Yahoo and Facebook are working on a deal that would put an end to the patent infringement lawsuit and counterclaims between the two companies. Sources say the key terms include a cross-licensing agreement and an even deeper integration of Facebook into Yahoo and vice versa.

Court decides Facebook must reveal cyberbullies' identities – A U.K. woman has won court backing to force Facebook to reveal the identities of cyberbullies who targeted her with “vicious and depraved” messages on the website, The Guardian reports. The woman plans to bring a prosecution against at least four users, after the court said Facebook should reveal their names, email and IP addresses. This is believed to be one of the first cases where an individual has successfully taken legal action against Facebook to reveal the identities of cyberbullies.

GLAAD recognizes Facebook with award – Facebook received a Special Recognition Award from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) at an awards ceremony on Saturday night for its efforts against bullying, as well as the site’s inclusive options for LGBT users. Facebook Washington DC’s Andrew Noyes and Head of Diversity & Inclusion Sara Sperling accepted the award on behalf of the company.

Facebook to help users remove DNSChanger virus – Facebook will begin to notify users whose computers are likely infected with DNSChanger malware and direct them to instructions on how to clean their computer or networks. All computers still infected with DNSChanger malware will no longer be able to access the Internet after July 9, as part of an effort to prevent the virus from spreading any further.

Credit agency may use Facebook data to influence credit score – A German credit agency plans to use Facebook and other social networks to find information that might have bearing on a user's credit score, German broadcaster NDR reported Thursday, citing confidential internal documents.

How Facebook is redefining mobile app discovery

Posted: 08 Jun 2012 02:26 PM PDT

Facebook launched two game-changing features for mobile app developers this week: App Center and mobile-only Sponsored Stories.

App Center's "send to mobile" button is an efficient way to get users to download a mobile app after learning about it on a desktop, and Sponsored Stories offer unparalleled targeting options for advertising on mobile devices. These things, combined with Facebook single sign-on and Open Graph, give developers important new channels for growing their mobile apps. By expanding these capabilities and giving developers better ways to track how Facebook impressions lead to downloads — maybe even working with Apple directly — the social network could prove itself as an indispensable component of all mobile applications.

Facebook is already a growing source of mobile app discovery, driving users to the Apple App Store more than 83 million times in May. Now with App Center, Facebook has organized applications by ranking and categories to make it easier for users to find applications they might like. Most importantly, users can find an app on the desktop App Center and send a link to their mobile phone. Users will almost instantly receive a push notification that takes them to the appropriate mobile app store to download the app. Getting users from the desktop to a mobile device can be cumbersome. Sometimes developers ask users for their phone number or email address to send them a link. Some have even tried QR codes. But with Facebook, the process is seamless. If the feature gains traction in App Center, we could imagine Facebook creating a plugin that would allow developers to put a "send to mobile" button on their websites.

The social network also introduced mobile-only Sponsored Stories this week. Previously, there was no way to run a Facebook ad campaign that only appeared on users' phones and not on the desktop site. Now, developers can benefit from Facebook's demographic- and interest-based targeting options and promote their apps directly in users' mobile News Feeds.

Sponsored Stories work differently than traditional ads in that advertisers pay to promote organic activity to a user's friends. For example, after someone uses a mobile app, their Facebook friends will see a story that says "[Your friend] used [this app]" or "[Your friend] played [this game]." If an app integrates Open Graph to include specific actions like "completed a quest," "listened to a playlist" or "went on a run," a developer could pay to promote those stories, too. Clicking on those stories from the mobile feed will take users to a download page. See the photo to the right for an example of the type of mobile app story that could be sponsored.

Now what Facebook needs to do is close the loop between when a user discovers an app on the social network and when they download and use it. Currently, there's no clear way for a developer to know how exactly many mobile downloads were driven by Facebook. The company could one day provide information about how many users who clicked on an app from News Feed or App Center ultimately authorized permissions for that app. This could be especially useful considering Apple's moves away from Unique Device IDs (UDIDs) to track and identify users. There have been some rumors that Facebook and Apple are working together on an iOS integration that could include Like buttons in the App Store. We could imagine even deeper integration that further reduces the number of steps to download an app and connect it with a user's Facebook account.

The Wall Street Journal today claims Apple plans to release a new way for mobile app developers to track who uses their software. Though it made no specific mention of Facebook, the story's unidentified sources say the company is likely to rely on a sequence of numbers that isn’t tied to a specific device. If this turns out to be a Facebook ID, it would be a very strategic alliance against the companies' common enemy: Google. Apple doesn't want to be a social network, and despite rumors of a Facebook phone, Facebook probably doesn't want to be a hardware company. Instead, it is positioning itself as a "growth engine," as Facebook product manager Matt Wyndowe and others said at the App Center launch event in San Francisco on Thursday.

Even if an Apple partnership doesn't materialize, Facebook's "send to phone" button and Sponsored Stories are already powerful new components of that engine, as more mobile developers will likely discover over the next few months.

Join the Inside Network Happy Hour / PageData Launch in San Francisco

Posted: 08 Jun 2012 12:00 PM PDT

Join us for a casual celebration at the Inside Network Happy Hour / PageData Launch in San Francisco. Grab a drink on us and meet others within the Inside Network community of Facebook developers and marketers.

We’re also excited to be celebrating the launch of PageData, our Facebook pages tracking service. We hope you’ll join us!

Details are below – we look forward to seeing you there!

Inside Network Happy Hour / PageData Launch
When: Wed, June 13 – 6 PM to 8 PM
Where: Mars Bar - 798 Brannan St, San Francisco

RSVP here.

Dragon City, Lol Turtle, Tumblr, Glassdoor, more on this week’s top 20 emerging Facebook apps by MAU

Posted: 08 Jun 2012 11:46 AM PDT

Topping our list of emerging applications by monthly active users this week was canvas-based RPG game Dragon City.

We define emerging applications as those that ended with between 100,000 and 1 million MAU in the past week. This week’s top apps grew between 140,000 and 540,000 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

Name MAU Gain    Gain,%
1.  Dragon City 890,000 +540,000    + 154%
2.  Lol Turtle + 540,000 +530,000    + 5,300%
3.  Tumblr 990,000 +450,000    + 83%
4.  Song Pop 470,000 +440,000    + 1,467%
5.  Baseball Heroes 630,000 +370,000    + 142%
6.  Birthday Reminder 340,000 +310,000    + 1,033%
7.  Jetpack Joyride 730,000 +310,000    + 74%
8.  Custom Tab | Star #2 510,000 +290,000    + 132%
9.  Glassdoor 850,000 +280,000    + 49%
10.  House M.D.: Critical Cases 990,000 +250,000    + 34%
11.  Zaman Tünelinden Kurtul 260,000 +230,000    + 767%
12.  HTML Page Tab #9 420,000 +230,000    + 121%
13.  Pot Farm 680,000 +230,000    + 51%
14.  Social TwitCam 190,000 +186,000    + 4,650%
15.  Smarter Than A 5th Grader? 890,000 +180,000    + 25%
16.  Tu estado de animo hoy 270,000 +160,000    + 145%
17.  Slide.ly – Photo Music Videos!        . 150,000 +140,000    + 1,400%
18.  The Fan Machine 450,000 +140,000    + 45%
19.  HTML Page Tab #10 460,000 +140,000    + 44%
20.   Referral 570,000 +140,000    + 33%

Meme sharing site Lol Turtle + saw a big spike in users since launching its Facebook integration that allows visitors to share funny or inspirational images on their Timelines. It came in at No. 2.

No. 3 on our list, Tumblr, is approaching 1 million monthly active Facebook-connected users since its big gain this week. No. 10 House M.D.: Critical Cases is also expected to pass 1 million users this weekend. Career resource site Glassdoor seems to have made a push to get users to connect with Facebook, as it’s up nearly 50 percent this week.

Games, quizzes, photo-sharing and welcome tab apps rounded out the list.

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.

lørdag den 9. juni 2012 at 07.29