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Inside Facebook

Facebook updates Messenger and Pages Manager mobile apps

Posted: 26 Jun 2012 06:04 PM PDT

Facebook updated its Messenger and Pages Manager mobile apps on Monday with new features and bug fixes.

Version 1.1 of Facebook Pages Manager for iOS adds functionality that was missing when the app was first released in May. Now page owners can view and reply to direct messages their page receives. Users can also adjust how often they receive notifications about their pages’ activity. Admins can receive push notifications for some pages and not others, or pause notifications overnight.

The app now has some support for Facebook Questions and events. Page owners can see answers to questions and guest lists for events created on their pages, but they cannot create events or post Questions from the app. Additionally, the update adds insights for check-ins and links to pages’ photo albums, which were not included in the first iteration of the app.

Facebook Messenger for iOS and Android also received some significant updates, giving users the ability to share bigger photos, delete individual messages from conversations, and switch between multiple conversations with in-app notifications. Users can now include friends of friends in conversations and see who’s available when starting a new conversation. The most obvious cosmetic change to the Facebook Messenger is its new logo. Improvements under the hood make for faster app loading, navigating and sending, as well as more reliable push notifications, according to the app’s release notes.

Pages Manager for iOS can be downloaded here. It is not yet available for other devices. Messenger for iOS can be downloaded here and for Android here.

Petflow, Walmart, Converse and more on this week’s top 10 gainers in retail and consumer merchandise pages

Posted: 26 Jun 2012 05:20 PM PDT

Petflow leads the list of weekly gainers for the People Talking About This metric among retail and consumer merchandise pages.

The top 10 pages gaining People Talking About This saw increases between about 30,000 and almost 250,000 engagements. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks page growth across Facebook.

# Name People Talking About Daily Growth Weekly Growth 
1   Petflow 505,125 +22,232 +246,155
2   Walmart 634,840 +21,233 +214,256
3   Converse 429,563 -23,773 +124,054
4   Nike Women 136,871 +47,733 +119,021
5   Kohl’s 224,033 -3,228 +98,427
6   D.Kollect 50,136 +4,295 +43,533
7   Forever 21 135,845 +4,660 +38,997
8   Zaggora HotPants 57,648 -1,310 +34,622
9   Lifestyle International 122,742 +16,679 +31,787
10   Lidl 68,370 +10,387 +30,331

Pet food delivery service Petflow has seen rapid growth for the week through its new emphasis of consistant updates. The company has been publishing new posts almost hourly. With posts revolving around pictures of pets, the company has succeeded in engaging a responsive group of pet lovers. They have also used pictures with large text as well as strong calls to action to help drive shares and likes. The post below, for example, had more than 1,200 shares after only an hour.

Nike Women has seen a sharp daily increase in PTAT (People Talking About This) due to a significant increase in likes, likely the result of an ad campaign. There has not been a significant increase of page posts, so Nike Women could be running Sponsored Stories prompting targeted users to like the page. The graph below shows how rapidly the page’s PTAT has been growing. As it can be seen here, the increase is heavily dependent on more Likes — shown in blue — which in turn affects PTAT, shown in green.

Visit PageData to see more about the top talked about pages among retail and consumer merchandise, as well as other categories.

Facebook removes Find Friends Nearby feature, but is another location-based product on the way?

Posted: 26 Jun 2012 01:05 PM PDT

Facebook has removed its little-known location-based feature called Find Friends Nearby.

A day after the feature had been revealed by TechCrunch, Facebook removed it from its mobile site and apps. Facebook tells us it never formally released the product and it was something that a few engineers were testing after developing it during a Hackathon.

“With all tests, some get released as full products, others don’t,” a Facebook spokesperson says. “Nothing more to say on this for now — we’ll communicate to everyone where there is something to say.”

Find Friends Nearby allowed users to visit a mobile site or section within the iOS or Android app, and see a list of other users nearby who have also opened the page. Facebook engineer Ryan Patterson says in a comment on TechCrunch that he imagines the ideal use case for the product being a situation where someone has just met a group of new people they want to stay in contact with, for instance, at a party or conference.

“Facebook search might be effective, or sharing your vanity addresses or business cards, but this tool provides a really easy way to exchange contact information with multiple people with minimal friction,” he wrote.

Friendthem is a third-party application for iOS and Android that does something similar. On Monday, Friendthem contacted the press saying that the company was talking to lawyers about filing a lawsuit against Facebook. We have not heard an update on whether they have taken legal action or had any discussions with Facebook. A Facebook spokesperson did not comment on whether the removal of Find Friends Nearby had anything to do with Friendthem.

In May, Facebook acquired Glancee, a location-based app that helps users find and connect with people nearby based on whether they have mutual friends or interests. Facebook has an existing feature in place to let users know when one of their friends is nearby, but the feature only seems to count explicit check-ins, not location tags, which are being used more frequently. We’ve suggested that Glancee could be used to help improve this feature, which is more about finding existing friends, not meeting new people.

Possibly unrelated to Find Friends Nearby, we’ve seen a number of posts from Facebook employees that include new phrasing when location is shared. The body of these posts say that a user is or was “here,” and the location is included as a tag at the bottom of the story. Posts from non-Facebook employees do not include the “here” terminology. Readers can see the differences below between a Facebook employee’s post and the stories that generated through traditional check-ins or location tagging. Note that the Facebook employee’s profile photo is smaller because the story appeared within an interest list, and the traditional stories include the “tag friends” option because users only have permission to do this on their own posts.

Facebook Manager of Mobile Analytics Alex Bain and other Facebook employees with this new story type said they could not comment. A Facebook spokesperson told us in early June that this was a bug. However, we continue to see location stories with the word “here” among Facebook employees and not other users. Often when users discover a bug, it suggests that Facebook is making changes to that aspect of the site.

The social network is also rumored to be working on real-time location-based ad targeting for its mobile platform.

Top image from TechCrunch

Timeline still optional for Facebook users more than 6 months after global launch

Posted: 26 Jun 2012 09:28 AM PDT

More than six months after Timeline launched for users around the world, Facebook still hasn't made the new profile mandatory.

Timeline, like most Facebook changes, has a large group of critics. But unlike most Facebook changes, this one has been opt-in. The social network has been patient about not forcing users into the redesign, even if it means there are some inconsistencies across the site. Facebook has not set a public deadline for when it will implement Timeline across the site.

Developers — and users who claimed to be developers — could switch their profiles during a beta period between September and December last year. On Dec. 15, 2011, Facebook made Timeline available to any user who wanted it. Although the new profile was opt-in, company spokespeople said Timeline would be mandatory for all users within a few weeks. Previously, Facebook had given users five weeks to convert to a new profile design, but it hasn’t done the same for Timeline.

An informal poll of 17 users found that an average of 62 percent of a user's friends had upgraded. That percentage was calculated by taking the number of friends that have signed up for Timeline, according to this page, and dividing it by a user's total friend count. This is slightly skewed since Facebook recently changed friend counts to include users who have deactivated their accounts, but in general, it's clear there is a significant portion of users who haven't switched, despite Facebook's efforts over the past six months.

In December, Facebook began showing prompts on the profiles of users who switched to the new look. Facebook provided early access to celebrities including Britney Spears, and it continues to promote the pages of public figures who use Timeline. In order to use new Open Graph applications, such as social readers and music streaming services, users must upgrade their profiles. The social network has also tried running stories in News Feed about users changing their cover photos or adding places to their map, features that are only available with Timeline. This has been a much slower and deliberate rollout than Timeline for pages, which Facebook made mandatory for all page owners within one month.

Offering an extended opt-in period and promoting discovery through friends seems to have worked well for the first 50 to 80 percent of users, but it's unclear how Facebook will transition the final group of holdouts.

onsdag den 27. juni 2012 at 07.51