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Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook adopts new terms of service and data use policy following low voter turnout

Posted: 11 Jun 2012 05:42 PM PDT

Facebook adopted a new Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities on Friday after a user vote failed to generate enough response to be considered binding, according to a note on the Facebook Site Governance page.

In its second-ever user vote, users had the option to vote for Facebook's existing policies or new proposed policies through a relatively simple app. Although 297,883 people voted for Facebook to keep its existing policies, overall not enough users participated for the results to become a mandate. According to Facebook's governing documents, results are only "advisory" when fewer than 30 percent of all monthly active users vote.

In this case, many of the votes for the existing policy were the result of an activist campaign that actually calls for sweeping changes not offered by either policy. The vote itself was triggered by the campaign, in which user Max Schrems encouraged thousands of users to comment "I oppose the changes and want a vote about the demands on www.our-policy.org." Facebook always gives users the option to review proposed policy changes, but if more than 7,000 users comment on those changes, the policy is put up to a vote.

“We did reach the threshold because a viral meme was created, and unfortunately the result is a vote," Facebook Chief Privacy Officer for Policy Erin Egan told TechCrunch earlier this month.

The newly implemented policies do not include any major changes to how the social network collects or uses user data. The changes are mostly updated wording — for example, using "Timeline" instead of "profile" — and added clarification about existing policy. Clearer examples and user tips have been added to the Data Use Policy per recommendations from the Irish Data Protection Commissioner's Office, which audited the social network's data collection practices last year.

"We strongly believe these updates provide you with more detail and transparency about our data protections and practices," Facebook wrote in the note announcing the decision to adopt the proposed policies. ”We received a great deal of positive feedback about these changes from our regulators and the many other stakeholders – including privacy and consumer groups – we consulted about these revisions.”

Facebook says it will review its site governance process following the low participation. A total of only 342,632 users voted. That's about 0.38 percent of active users, and only 15 percent of people who Like the Facebook Site Governance page, which posted several times about the vote. Facebook also ran mobile and desktop ads to encourage participation. As far as we know, the company did not send emails or prompt users with messages above their News Feeds, which might have resulted in more feedback.

The new Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, also known as a terms of service agreement, is available here. Facebook’s Data Use Policy, formerly known as its privacy policy, is here.

Facebook tries promoting games with notifications

Posted: 11 Jun 2012 03:51 PM PDT

Facebook appears to be testing a way to drive users to re-engage with games by sending them a new type of notification, we've discovered.

Some users are seeing notifications about their friends playing games. These notifications, which are different from requests, appear to come from Facebook, not the game itself. The notifications include the "Play now" call to action, which the social network uses in its sidebar modules, like the "Games You May Like" module seen below.

[Update 6/11/12 5:54 p.m. PT - Facebook confirms, "We are testing this feature as part of ongoing tests to help people discover and reengage with apps and games and drive meaningful traffic to developers."]

Facebook frequently tries new sidebar modules to promote games discovery, but we've never seen the company use notifications in this way. This placement could lead more users back into games than sidebar modules do because users receive a red notification icon at the top of all Facebook pages and will see a pop-up in the bottom left corner of the page if they happen to be on Facebook.com when the notification comes through.

Some users might be frustrated by notifications that are not actual games requests. This could backfire if users decide to hide all notifications from a game, thinking the notifications are from the developer rather than Facebook. However, the test is likely limited to a small proportion of users and the social network can gather information and consider the results before implementing the feature more widely. From what we've seen, users only receive notifications for games they've already played, but Facebook could be running other variations of the test.

In the past, Facebook has had to limit developer access to notifications to prevent spam. Between February 2010 and February 2011, developers could not send any notifications, and email was the only app-to-user communication channel. App requests sent by friends began to appear in the notification center again in December 2010. When Facebook enabled app-generated requests again in 2011, it did so without allowing the requests to generate notifications the same way as user-generated requests do.

Facebook hires development team from Pieceable Software

Posted: 11 Jun 2012 01:18 PM PDT

Facebook has hired the three people behind Pieceable Viewer, which is software that allows developers to demo their iOS apps on the web.

According to Pieceable’s website, Facebook is not acquiring the company, technology or customer data. This is similar to another recent “acqui-hires” of mobile photo sharing app Lightbox and UX design firm Bolt Peters. In these cases, the team joins Facebook and their existing companies and projects are dissolved. Pieceable says its viewer will be available until Dec. 31, and an open source version will be offered to developers in the fall.

Pieceable did not indicate what area it would focus on at Facebook, except saying, “We can't wait to begin working with the Facebook team to help our friends, family, and more than 900 million others connect and share in new ways.” The team could become involved somehow with Facebook’s mobile platform, however since Pieceable built desktop software, it might become part of another project.

Pieceable Viewer made it easier for developers to test and demo their iOS apps by creating web-based versions that used Flash to simulate app functionality. See a sample here. The team also developed a visual editor for people to create mobile apps without writing code.

The company began last year with seed funding from I/O Ventures. The team has only three employees: co-founders Bob Ippolito, Fred Potter and Jameson Hsu. Ippolito and Hsu had previously co-founded in-game advertising network and payments platform Mochi Media, which was acquired by Shanda Games in 2010. Potter had founded BerryStore, which let users browse, download, rate and review Blackberry apps. That company was acquired by Mogees in 2009.

Headlines from Inside Mobile Apps’ WWDC 2012 coverage

Posted: 11 Jun 2012 12:53 PM PDT

Here’s a convenient spot to find all Inside Mobile Apps’ coverage of Apple’s developer conference in San Francisco this week. This is the first WWDC since the passing of Steve Jobs.

Day one kicked off with a keynote featuring current CEO Tim Cook, VP of Mac Software Engineering Craig Federighi and Senior VP of iOS Software Scott Forstall.

More as the conference progresses.

Apple brings Facebook integration to mobile and desktop OS

Posted: 11 Jun 2012 11:43 AM PDT

Apple today announced Facebook integration for iOS 6 and OSX Mountain Lion that allows users to sign in once and easily post back to the social network.

Similar to Apple's Twitter integration, iOS 6 offers the "tap to post" option directly from iOS 6, and sharing from Photos, Safari, Maps and other applications. Apple has also added Facebook messages to its address book and Facebook events to its calendar app. Across mobile and desktop, the App Store now includes Like buttons so users can see which apps, music, movies and shows their friends Like. Game Center will import friends from Facebook, though it’s unclear whether Game Center Challenges will work for cross-platform Facebook-mobile games.

Safari on OSX Mountain Lion will also support Facebook sharing, though the company did not explain much about this on stage at the WWDC. It is likely to be similar to Twitter sharing, which was announced in February. [Updated 6/11/12 1:36 p.m. - Facebook sharing will be supported in Safari, Notes, PhotoBooth and iPhoto, according to Apple's website. OS X also adds users' Facebook friends and profile photos to Contacts. Facebook notifications show up in Notification Center, and users can update their status from there.]

An Apple-Facebook partnership has been speculated about for years, but past attempts at integration apparently fell through for Apple’s Ping service and iOS 5. Late Apple CEO Steve Jobs called Facebook’s terms “onerous” in the past. Now, either through leadership changes or growing necessity, the companies are apparently able to work together. The integration could help Apple and Facebook as they compete with Google, which offers its own mobile operating system and social network.

Developers could also benefit from the partnership. Facebook single sign-on could reduce the friction associated with connecting third-party mobile apps with a user’s Facebook account, and Like buttons in the App Store could improve app discovery.

Last year Apple brought Twitter integration to iOS 5, which allowed single sign-on for Twitter use on the phone and with any third-party app. Today Apple shared that Twitter has seen a 3x growth increase in iOS users since then.

We will update with more information as it becomes available.

Images from Apple.

Bubble Safari gets a lift, Song Pop debuts on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by MAU

Posted: 11 Jun 2012 09:58 AM PDT

Zygna’s Bubble Safari picked up 9.5 million additional monthly active users to take the No. 1 spot on our list of top growing Facebook apps by MAU this week.

Titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 500,000 and 9.5 million MAU, based on our AppData tracking service.

Top Gainers This Week

Name MAU Gain    Gain %
1.  Bubble Safari 13,500,000 +9,500,000    + 238%
2.  Socialcam 76,100,000 +6,200,000    + 9%
3.  Zynga Bingo 9,700,000 +1,900,000    + 24%
4.  Lost Bubble 5,100,000 +1,800,000    + 55%
5.  TripAdvisor™ 20,100,000 +1,500,000    + 8%
6.  Bubble Blitz 4,200,000 +1,100,000    + 35%
7.  Scribd 24,900,000 +1,000,000    + 4%
8.  Truth Game 6,700,000 +900,000    + 16%
9.  Candy Crush Saga 11,300,000 +800,000    + 8%
10.  Birthday Calendar 2012      ’ 4,100,000 +700,000    + 24%
11.  Instagram 18,700,000 +700,000    + 4%
12.  Photo Love 11,100,000 +700,000    + 7%
13.  Spotify 21,800,000 +700,000    + 3%
14.  Buggle 4,900,000 +600,000    + 14%
15.  Song Pop 790,000 +600,000    + 316%
16.  Terra 6,300,000 +600,000    + 11%
17.  MyCalendar – Birthdays 33,400,000 +600,000    + 2%
18.  Are YOU Interested? 7,200,000 +600,000    + 9%
19.  Glassdoor 1,100,000 +530,000    + 93%
20.  DoAlbums 2,100,000 +500,000    + 40%

Bubble Safari’s big gain last week could be the result of an in-game promotion that sent coins to users’ friends who weren’t already playing the game. The canvas game more than tripled its MAU in the past seven days. Similar arcade games Lost Bubble and Bubble Blitz came in at No. 4 and No. 6, respectively.

Socialcam grew a bit slower than it has in past weeks, but the video sharing app gained another 6.2 million MAU to take the No. 2 spot on our list. TripAdvisor picked up 1.5 million MAU, bringing the web integration to a new high of 20.1 million MAU after a steady decline over the course of May.

Fresh Planet’s Song Pop is a new app on our list gaining quickly since it released updated mobile versions last week. The name-that-tune game that lets users challenge their friends or random opponents. Similar to Words With Friends, the game syncs across iOS, Android and Facebook canvas, so users can start a game on an iPhone, for instance, but take their next turn on Facebook.

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.

tirsdag den 12. juni 2012 at 07.33