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Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook roundup: stock up to $33, creative execs join Facebook council, Payvment offers 1-click ad buying and more

Posted: 22 Jun 2012 06:38 PM PDT

Facebook stock up 10 percent - Facebook shares closed at $33.05 today, up 10 percent from last Friday. Despite some bad news regarding a legal settlement that will allow users to remove their names from Sponsored Stories, optimism is growing for Facebook’s potential future to create an ad network. The company also announced subscription billing and a move away from its virtual currency Credits toward a broader payments platform that allows developers to sell items in a user’s local currency, i.e., dollars or euros.

Facebook forms creative council – Facebook announce its inaugural Facebook Creative Council, which convened in Cannes this week. Similar to the the Client Council announced last year, the Creative Council will help Facebook identify priorities for agency creatives. Members include Jeff Benjamin (JWT), Colleen DeCourcy (Socialistic), David Droga (Droga5), Rob Feakins (Publicis), Toshiya Fukuda (777), James Hilton (AKQA), Linus Karlsson (McCann), Amir Kassaei (DDB), Nick Law (R/GA), Mike Lazerow (Buddy Media), Tor Myhren (Grey), Rob Reilly (CPB), Mark Tutssel (Leo Burnett) and Mark Waites (Mother).

AmEx and Facebook team up for small business contest – American Express OPEN and Facebook launched its second annual "Big Break for Small Business" contest. Five small business owners will receive house calls from American Express OPEN and Facebook marketing specialists who help transform a business’ social media efforts. Winners will also receive $25,000 in cash to go toward the social strategies they learn. Every small business that enters the contest will get $50 in free Facebook advertising credits. American Express Cardmembers and merchants who enter will receive $100 in advertising on the site.

Users get easier opt-out from notifications - Facebook introduced a new way for users to opt out of notifications from apps, groups, or other sources that send them. People have always been able to opt out on the Notifications Settings page, but now users can opt out directly from the notifications drop down menu.

Payvment adds one-click Facebook ad buying – E-commerce platform Payvment announced a new one-click Facebook ad buying service this week to give merchants a way to turn promotional Facebook posts into ads and target users based on their shopping patterns.

New Louisiana law requires sex offenders to list status on social sites – Louisiana sex offenders must now state their criminal status on Facebook and other social networking sites. The law, which is the first of its kind in the U.S., requires sex offenders to list the crime for which they were convicted, the jurisdiction of conviction, a description of their physical characteristics and residential address.

Study: 24 percent of top websites integrate Facebook - According to a study by Pingdom, 24.3 percent of the top 10,000 websites in the world include Facebook integration on their homepages, this includes Facebook login and Facebook plugins such as the Like button. A total of 49.3 percent of the top 10,000 sites include basic links to Facebook.

GE launches HealthyShare Facebook app - GE launched a new Facebook Timeline-enabled app called HealthyShare, a tool for people to share their health goals, track their progress and use friends as sources of motivation toward achieving those goals. The app, which was timed ahead of the Olympic Games, was developed in partnership with Facebook.

 

 

Yahoo Toolbar, How Hipster Are You, Smule, Dove sweepstakes, more on this week’s top 20 emerging Facebook apps

Posted: 22 Jun 2012 04:31 PM PDT

Yahoo! Toolbar led our list of emerging applications by monthly active users this week.

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 130,000 and 720,000 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

Name MAU Gain Gain,%
1.  Yahoo! Toolbar 840,000 +720,000   + 600%
2.  How Hipster Are You? 630,000 +626,000   + 15,650%
3.  Smule 670,000 +400,000   + 148%
4.  SimCity Social: Get free stuff 950,000 +370,000   + 64%
5.  Custom Tab | Star #3 940,000 +260,000   + 38%
6.  Relationship Status Analysis? 650,000 +210,000   + 48%
7.  HTML Page Tab #10 820,000 +210,000   + 34%
8.  HTML Page Tab #6 820,000 +210,000   + 34%
9.  Embassy Suites 366 Days of More Sweepstakes 220,000 +200,000   + 1,000%
10.  Bubble Raider 520,000 +180,000   + 53%
11.  Songza 540,000 +180,000   + 50%
12.  Static HTML… [Ninth Tab] 560,000 +180,000   + 47%
13.  Preguntas y Respuestas 440,000 +160,000   + 57%
14.  YOU DON’T KNOW JACK 220,000 +150,000   + 214%
15.  Dove Men+Care – Dadism Sweeps 170,000 +140,000   + 467%
16.  Hier Zukunftsdaten abholen! 210,000 +140,000   + 200%
17.  Veetle 370,000 +140,000   + 61%
18.  Dungeon Blitz 380,000 +140,000   + 58%
19.  Opera Mini 510,000 +130,000   + 34%
20.  Woobox Custom Tab | Arrow #5 510,000 +130,000   + 34%

Yahoo! Toolbar is a browser extension for Internet Explorer and Firefox that gives users quick access to email, weather, stock reports and Facebook. The Facebook integration brings in a user’s News Feed, profile and notifications.

No. 2 How Hipster Are You? is a quiz app that includes a series of questions to determine a user’s “hipster” percentage. The app has grown incredibly quickly from users posting their results to Timeline and friends seeing the activity in News Feed.

Smule is a mobile developer that seems to have a number of music apps under the same Facebook app ID.

Three promotional tab applications made the list: No. 4 SimCity Social: Get free stuff, No. 9 Embassy Suites 366 Days of More Sweepstakes and No. 15 Dove Men+Care – Dadism Sweeps.

Other top emerging apps included a number of customizable tab builder applications from Woobox and Thunderpenny.

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.

The best features of the Nike+ Timeline integration and how developers should apply them to their own apps

Posted: 22 Jun 2012 01:02 PM PDT

Nike launched Facebook Timeline integration for the Nike+ Running app for iOS and Android this week.

With the app, users can share their runs and track their progress on Facebook, but Nike has added several features that distinguish it from other workout apps. It also serves as an example for how other apps can implement Open Graph in a way that makes users want to share more of their activity. Here are some of the highlights of Nike+ Running and what other developers could take away from the integration.

Friend tagging

It sounds simple: users can tag the friends they run with. But even though Facebook has allowed friend tagging in third-party apps since March, Nike is one of the few developers we've seen take advantage of it. Apps that allow users to share actions they might be taking with friends — watching a movie or going to a restaurant, for example — should consider integrating this feature to help users tell richer stories and give their app greater reach. Photo and video sharing apps should especially allow friend tagging.

Compelling News Feed stories and positive rewards

A unique feature of Nike's Facebook integration is the option for users to let their friends know they have begun a run and then receive feedback in the form of cheers as they go. Whenever friends Like or comment on a user's Nike+ post, the runner will hear cheering sounds through their headphones or phone speakers. It's not only encouragement to keep running, it's a reward that can only be attained by using the app. We’ll likely see some apps copy the feature, but even if they use a different mechanism, developers should consider what reward their own users get by using their app and sharing activity with friends. This is a problem for some social reader applications, for example. Many users can't see a benefit to sharing articles with their friends in this way.

Developers need to be thoughtful about what actions they promote in the feed so that users don't feel as though they are spamming their friends. Users also want to feel cool or appreciated, so when they share a story from an app and it gets a lot of feedback, they are more likely to keep using that app and telling their friends about it.

Detailed Timeline summaries

Nike+ tracks how far, how fast and how frequently users run and then aggregates this information in Timeline summaries. These aggregations also include a list of users' "running buddies" who are most frequently tagged in their run stories and "fans" who most frequently Like or comment on users' Nike+ activity.

Interesting summaries like these could encourage users to use an app more frequently so they can keep track of their progress, remember important events or learn something new about themselves. Developers should consider what are the most interesting and useful monthly and yearly summaries to include on users' Timelines. By creating more detailed maps of their Open Graph actions and objects, developers can help users see trends in their own lives over time. For example, a check-in app could indicate the type of restaurant a user most frequently dined at in a given month. Movie apps could share how many films starring a particular actor that users watched in the past year.

Full control over sharing

The Nike+ mobile app clearly asks users whether they want to share a run on Facebook. Users have the option to share a map of their run or not. Giving users these controls helps them feel confident that the app will only post what they want to share with friends. Because some early apps did not give users clear enough controls, many users are now very concerned about whether Open Graph apps share their activity automatically. Nike is among a number of developers that have been pushing the standards forward to include more transparency and user controls in their apps.

Readers can download the Nike+ app from the Facebook App Center here.

First hints of a Facebook ad network: Sponsored Stories appear on Zynga.com

Posted: 22 Jun 2012 09:13 AM PDT

Zynga's off-Facebook games platform Zynga.com now displays Facebook ads and Sponsored Stories, as part of what could be the beginnings of a Facebook ad network across the web.

According to the Facebook Help Center, “When you connect with Facebook on Zynga.com, you’ll see personalized ads and sponsored stories. The Facebook ads you see on Zynga are the same ads you see on Facebook.com.”

Those ads appear in the sidebar, which is where we've previously seen Zynga serve ads via Google AdSense. The site still runs Google ad services, as seen with the Fab.com banner at the bottom of the screenshot below.

Last year, Facebook told us it had agreed to work with Zynga to provide ads on their properties beyond Facebook, though at the time it was unknown what the “Zynga Platform” would be. Facebook is sharing a percentage of ad revenue with Zynga, but those percentages have been redacted from regulatory filings available here.

Both Sponsored Stories and traditional Facebook ads — those with headlines and body copy — appear on Zynga.com. It’s unclear whether ads for competing games are prevented from being displayed on the site. We’ve reached out to both companies for more details.

[Update 6/22/12 9:52 a.m. PT - Facebook provided the following statement, "We have had a close relationship with Zynga for a number of years and we think we can deliver value to Zynga and to the people playing their games by showing the same ads that they see on Facebook. We will not be showing ads on other sites at this time." Facebook did not clarify whether competing game-related ads would appear next to Zynga.com games.]

Unilever’s charitable app uses Timeline and subscription billing; Facebook agrees to take only 5 percent of transactions

Posted: 22 Jun 2012 08:58 AM PDT

Unilever today launched a charitable Facebook app called Waterworks, which integrates Open Graph and the social network’s new subscription billing option to raise money and awareness to help bring clean drinking water to areas in need.

Users connect the Waterworks application, allowing permission to post to Timeline, and set a daily donation between $0.10 and $1.00. Users are paired with “Waterworkers,” women in water-poor communities who help distribute water purifiers and sachets of drinking water. Each Waterworker is given a mobile phone that includes a custom Waterworks app to allow her to share photos and stories that will show up within the Facebook user’s app and through notifications. Stories will be published to News Feed and Timeline about the progress a user’s donations have made.

The innovative app was produced by Betapond, a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer that had early access to APIs announced this week, including subscription payments and the new Open Graph-enabled Like action. Betapond says Facebook agreed to take a 5 percent transaction fee rather than its traditional 30 percent. As we’ve written about previously, the social network has a history of working closely with charitable organizations, and groups that are looking to run large-scale campaigns to support a cause should consider talking to Facebook directly or working with a Preferred Marketing Developer that has a close relationship with the company.

lørdag den 23. juni 2012 at 07.22