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Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook stock above $30, denial of IPO fraud, alliance against ad scams and more on this week’s news roundup

Posted: 15 Jun 2012 06:00 PM PDT

Facebook shares are back above $30 for the first time since May, closing today at $30.01 — up 6 percent from Thursday.

Earlier today Facebook filed a motion to consolidate the 40-plus class-action lawsuits against the company following its initial public offering. The filing claims the company did nothing wrong in the weeks leading up to the IPO and suggested that Nasdaq's technical issues on the first day of trading "created market uncertainty and caused investor losses." Earlier this week, a Texas court rejected a petition seeking documents and oral dispositions from top Facebook executives to determine if the company defrauded investors.

It's unclear whether the post-market-close announcement that CTO Bret Taylor would leave the company will affect the company's stock price on Monday. Shares were down slightly in after-hours trading.

In other Facebook-related news this week:

Facebook joins alliance to fight ‘bad ads’ — Facebook joined Google, Twitter and AOL in an alliance this week against ads that deliver malware, direct users to scams or try to sell counterfeit goods. The alliance will develop industry policy recommendations and best practices, as well as share information about “bad actors" who might try to advertise on a new network after being shut down by another.

App Center now available on iPad — The Facebook App Center is now available to some iPad users as part of the social network's gradual rollout of the new dashboard. The App Center is available on the web and mobile devices to help users discover new Facebook-integrated applications.

Facebook completely open sources Ringmark — The social network announced on Thursday that its mobile browser test suite, Ringmark, is now completely open source. Facebook has also added drawing performance tests to the Ringmark repository to help game developers and others test a mobile browser's animation speed.

GraphEffect raises $12M — Social marketing and advertising collaboration platform GraphEffect announced Wednesday that it secured $12 million in financing. The platform, which builds upon the Facebook Ads and Insights APIs, recently added a "story manager" feature to help users understand how their posts are performing and then easily turn those into promoted units. GraphEffect can also now deliver ads within News Feed and mobile devices. CEO and co-founder James Borow says the company has more features in the works, including a full page publishing tool.

AdParlor to give job offer to future winner of Facebook Hackathon — Facebook ad optimization company AdParlor has promised to make a job offer to whoever wins the Facebook Hack in Toronto on Saturday. The winner will also get a new iPad.

Birthday Reminder, SimCity promotion, Songza, Pot Farm, Opera Mini, more on our top 20 emerging Facebook apps by MAU

Posted: 15 Jun 2012 04:26 PM PDT

Birthday Reminder took the top spot in our top emerging Facebook applications this week with a 165 percent gain in monthly active users.

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 from between 130,000 and 560,000 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

Name MAU Gain Gain,%
1.  Birthday Reminder 900,000 +560,000 + 165%
2.  SimCity Social: Get free stuff 580,000 +410,000 + 241%
3.  Songza 360,000 +310,000 + 620%
4.  Custom Tab | Star #3 680,000 +300,000 + 79%
5.  Baseball Heroes 920,000 +290,000 + 46%
6.  【猛將無雙】★★★★★ 超人氣!你的朋友都在玩 739,091 +279,091 + 61%
7.  Zaman Tünelinden Kurtul 510,187 +250,187 + 96%
8.  HTML Page Tab #9 660,000 +240,000 + 57%
9.  What your Relationship Status says about you! 440,000 +210,000 + 91%
10.  Pot Farm 900,000 +200,000 + 32%
11.  Jetpack Joyride 940,000 +180,000 + 29%
12.  Veetle 230,000 +160,000 + 229%
13.  Preguntas y Respuestas 280,000 +150,000 + 115%
14.  Opera Mini 380,000 +150,000 + 65%
15.  HTML Page Tab #10 610,000 +150,000 + 33%
16.  BILD Profil-Badges 150,000 +149,200 + 18,650%
17.  Journey of Jesus: The Calling 620,000 +140,000 + 29%
18.  Sweepstakes 720,000 +140,000 + 26%
19.  Global.mnet.com 200,000 +130,000 + 186%
20.  Hangman 220,000 +130,000 + 144%

Birthday apps like Birthday Reminder typically grow quickly because they prompt users to share messages and invite their friends to the app, but there is often little reason for users to return.

No. 2 on our list, SimCity Social: Get free stuff is a page tab application where users can collect virtual goods by Liking the SimCity Social page, sharing posts on their Timeline, and providing an email address. It has grown to 580,000 MAU in about a week and a half.

Music service Songza came in at No. 3, likely as a result of its new iPad app. The web and mobile versions integrated Facebook Open Graph in September, and now with new iPad users, the app saw 620 percent growth in the past week.

No. 10 Pot Farm continues to experience a resurgence, steadily approaching 1 million MAU where it had been two years ago.

No. 14 Opera Mini has been rising quickly since its new browser for feature phones and Blackberry launched at the end of May. The browser includes a “Smart Page” feature that provides a summary of news from a user’s Facebook and Twitter accounts.

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 CTO leaving company to build future start-up

Posted: 15 Jun 2012 03:20 PM PDT

Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor announced today that he will be leaving the company later this summer to start a new business with friend and Google App Engine founder Kevin Gibbs.

Director of Engineering Mike Vernal and Director of Mobile Engineering Cory Ondrejka will continue to lead in his absence, AllThingsD reports. Taylor, who joined the company as director of platform products through its acquisition of FriendFeed in 2009, became CTO in 2010, not long after the introduction of the Open Graph Protocol. At the time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Taylor “helped shape my thinking on products, engineering and strategy in many ways.”

Taylor is the first high-level employee to leave Facebook since the company went public. TechCrunch reports that many more employees, including one executive, are rumored to be leaving soon.

"Cross-pollination among companies is what drives so much of innovation, so I would not project a lot onto this event," he told AllThingsD. "I am really confident that the mobile and platform leaders at Facebook can deliver what needs to be done."

Before Facebook and FriendFeed, Taylor was co-creator of Google Maps and the Google Maps API. According to AllThingsD, Taylor says he had “always been upfront” with Zuckerberg about his desires to one day start another company. Taylor says he had not decided what area his new start-up would focus on, though we imagine it will have a mobile focus. Taylor has been largely involved in pushing Facebook’s mobile platform forward.

“I’m very proud of our recent accomplishments in our platform and mobile products, from Open Graph and App Center to Facebook Camera and our iOS integration,” Taylor said in a Facebook post. I’m even more excited for the world to see all the amazing things these teams have coming.”

Read an interview we did with Taylor not long after he took on the CTO role here, and watch a video of his fireside chat during Inside Social Apps 2011 here.

BuzzFeed gets permission to use Facebook social plugins for ‘shareable ads’

Posted: 15 Jun 2012 01:09 PM PDT

Social news and entertainment site BuzzFeed has gotten permission from Facebook to use social plugins in advertisements on its site.

Facebook guidelines prevent third-party advertisers from using any platform integrations, such as the Like button or other plugins, in their ads without written permission from the social network. Mashable discovered new shareable ads on BuzzFeed, and Facebook confirms it is conducting "a small test" with "a select group of marketers" to allow this usage on some sites. It did not provide any examples beyond BuzzFeed.

Facebook would not comment on whether it is sharing ad revenue with BuzzFeed or other publishers who use its social features in advertisements. Although the company might not be doing so now, this could be an option for future monetization. More likely, Facebook is simply giving permission to BuzzFeed to use its plugins because its advertisements are more content-based than promotional. Instead of running banner ads, BuzzFeed displays posts from "featured partners" in line with its other articles. These stories share the same style as BuzzFeed's other posts, for example, a post from Jack Daniels about "Easy party tricks to impress your friends" or a photo post from Hidden Valley Ranch about "10 foods made better with ranch dressing."

These paid sponsors also get a branded BuzzFeed page with their articles, links to their sites and a Facebook Like box plugin, placement of which is typically not allowed to be bought or sold, according to Facebook guidelines. The social network probably wants to avoid being associated with scam sites that might sell placement of Like buttons or Like boxes. BuzzFeed, however, was an early Open Graph partner and seems to have a similar philosophy to Facebook about how ads should be shareable content, not interruptive.

Page management platform Hearsay Social partners with media companies to help marketers with content curation

Posted: 15 Jun 2012 10:49 AM PDT

Marketing software company Hearsay Social today announced the launch of Content Exchange, a partnership with several media companies to provide marketers and salespeople with web content they can share with their fans and followers.

Regularly having brand-relevant content to post is one of the biggest struggles for social media marketers. Content Exchange could help marketers find and post that content more efficiently. In addition to letting users search for content by topic, keyword or location, the platform sorts and prioritizes links based on what's being most shared around the web. Once marketers find articles they want to share on their social media channels, they can create and schedule posts directly from the platform, which will also track engagement metrics.

Hearsay Social CEO Clara Shih calls Content Exchange "the iTunes for social media content." She says the goal is to democratize the process of social media marketing and free up people's time without compromising the output. Hearsay specializes in software for companies with relationship-based sales, such as financial advisors, real estate professionals or insurance agents. She says the company was built around the idea that individuals at the local level didn't always have the experience or time for social media marketing, so Hearsay features a content library for the parent company to populate with photos, links and apps that local representatives can customize and use on their pages. Shih says that it became clear about a year ago that even marketers at the corporate level were struggling to find content to share. The company worked with its customers — including Northwestern Mutual, State Farm, Farmers Insurance and 24-Hour Fitness — to better understand what type of content was important to them and how Hearsay could streamline the curation process.

Content Exchange launched with partners Demand Media, Tribune Media Services and Thomson Reuters. E-How, Livestrong, Cracked and the Chicago Tribune, are among some of the contributing sites. Additionally, with Hearsay's compliance features, companies can filter out content that includes profanity or otherwise might not be appropriate for their audience.

Also today, Hearsay Social shared the results of a Mainstay Salire study, which indicated that the platform helped drive ROI for clients, delivering between 50 and 500 percent increases in revenue performance, doubled sales conversion rates for promotions, 2X-5X increases in local fans, and up to 50 percent reduction in social media management costs.

lørdag den 16. juni 2012 at 07.22