Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- New Facebook platform industry hires: GraphEffect, Nanigans, Shoutlet
- Facebook pages now show top related articles and videos based on users’ Open Graph activity
- Facebook now displays up to 10 ads on a single page
- Oracle buys Involver less than 2 months after Vitrue acquisition
- Facebook adds music sharing feature, total Spotify plays, top videos and more to artists’ pages
| New Facebook platform industry hires: GraphEffect, Nanigans, Shoutlet Posted: 10 Jul 2012 06:01 PM PDT If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com, and we'll get it into our next post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes either from the companies themselves or from company updates from LinkedIn. Looking for new opportunities? Check out the Inside Network Job Board, which shows the latest openings at leading companies in the industry. Here's this week's list of hires:
Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry. |
| Facebook pages now show top related articles and videos based on users’ Open Graph activity Posted: 10 Jul 2012 02:52 PM PDT Page owners and fans can now view the most popular videos and news articles about a topic by visiting the brand or public figure's Facebook page. In the "posts by others" view of Timeline, some pages have "news" and/or "video” modules that shows what users have been reading and watching in Open Graph-integrated apps like Socialcam, Washington Post Social Reader, ESPN, Hulu and others. It's unclear when Facebook added these modules to pages' Timelines, but with more media apps integrating Open Graph and more people using them, the data here is increasingly valuable. [Update 6/10/12 4:49 p.m. PT - Facebook engineer Alejandro Marcu, who works on pages, tells us these modules were added to pages on June. 15.] The following is an example from Lebron James’ page. Further down is an example from Starbucks’ page.
The top videos and top news modules are also useful for page owners to get a better sense of what other apps people are using to learn about their company. For example, Starbucks will see that many people are watching videos mentioning Starbucks on Socialcam, but none of these are official videos from the brand. Starbucks might want to consider how to get more of their own content on the video sharing site. Page owners might also use the modules to get insights about which video and news apps are popular among their target audience. If they see which apps people are using to watch videos or read about a competitor, they can consider ways to get their own brand content on those channels. If a page does not allow users to write on the Wall, it will not include any of these modules because there is no “posts by others” filter to view. As we wrote about earlier, music pages also have these two modules and an additional one that highlights the artists’ most popular songs. |
| Facebook now displays up to 10 ads on a single page Posted: 10 Jul 2012 12:00 PM PDT Facebook is testing a way to show users up to 10 display ads on a single page — up from the former maximum of seven per page. We’ve seen 10 ads appear on permalink pages for posts that have a large number of comments. Click-through rates might be lower for ads that have to compete with nine others at a time, though users are somewhat likely to see these ads as they scroll down to see more comments. In the past we’ve seen Facebook testing up to seven ads at a time, all below the fold on pages where users are less likely to scroll. Interestingly, 10 ads are more likely to appear next to a page post if a user navigates to the page after clicking an ad as opposed to getting there from News Feed, Timeline or a direct link. Facebook’s Help Center has not been updated to reflect the additional ad units some users are seeing. It still says up to six ads may show at one time on any given page, though we first saw the social network displaying seven ads at a time in January. The social network earns the majority of its revenue from advertising so optimizing the frequency and positioning of ads is important. Facebook seems to have enough inventory to increase the number of ads it shows on each page, but it must balance that with maintaining quality user experience and a level of performance that will keep advertisers coming back to the platform. Facebook brought in $872 million in advertising revenue in the first three months of 2012. That figure is a 37 percent increase compared to the same period in 2011, which Facebook attributes to an increase in the number of ads delivered. The social network says the increase in ads was driven primarily by user growth, not mentioning changes to how many ads it shows at a time. Overall, Facebook says the average price per ad for the first quarter of 2012 compared to the first quarter of 2011 stayed the same because even though the average price per ad in the United States and Canada went up, that was offset by an increased percentage of its worldwide ads being delivered in Asia and other countries where the average price per ad is lower. The average price per ad was also affected by a decline in the average price per ad in Europe in the first quarter of 2012 compared to the same period in 2011. Facebook suggested that this could be due to poor economic conditions in the region. The company will report its Q2 earnings on July 26.
Thanks to Dan Carter for the tip and the screenshot. |
| Oracle buys Involver less than 2 months after Vitrue acquisition Posted: 10 Jul 2012 10:29 AM PDT
The acquisition shows Oracle’s bullishness on social media marketing and sales. At the end of May, the company announced it would buy social management platform Vitrue. With Involver, Oracle gains a strong technology-focused team and platform, but it still lacks a social advertising component. Involver, which had raised a total of $11 million in venture capital, was an innovator with its Social Markup Language, a system that enables front-end developers to code apps more efficiently. In April, Involver expanded SML to include a visual tool that doesn’t require coding at all. Marketers can drag and drop widgets, like videos, photo galleries or contest forms, onto a canvas that can be used on Facebook tabs, websites and mobile landing pages. The company also offers app templates and a cross-platform publishing tool. Still, Involver is a somewhat surprising acquisition because Vitrue also offers a conversation and application management platform. Oracle may be too focused on tabs at a time when tab application views and usage are declining. Unlike Salesforce, which bought Buddy Media, Oracle has not bought a company with Ads API access. Involver recently made some efforts toward integrating with other ad platforms through its Engagement Optimization API. This allows Involver apps to pass optimization data to a customer's ad platform of choice, but increasingly marketers will have to run Facebook ads to promote their posts, not just their applications. Overall, the world of social marketing solutions is consolidating as many companies look to provide all-in-one solutions and the social players are being absorbed by larger technology companies. Salesforce announced last month that it would acquire social media marketing platform Buddy Media for $745 million in cash and stock. In January, Adobe bought Efficient Frontier for $400 million. Microsoft, SAP, IBM and others are likely looking to acquire social marketing platforms. Wildfire is a likely next target. The Oracle-Involver deal is expected to close later this summer. |
| Facebook adds music sharing feature, total Spotify plays, top videos and more to artists’ pages Posted: 10 Jul 2012 09:16 AM PDT
When users visit an artist's page, they can click "music" from the publisher and search for a song by that artist. A link to Spotify will appear and users can say something about the link before posting it publicly to the page. This seems aimed at helping fans express themselves to their favorite artists, as many users often post links to YouTube videos of an artist's songs to show their support. The new feature makes it easier for users to reference a particular song, while encouraging use of Spotify over YouTube. Ultimately, the feature could search across Vevo and other Facebook-connected services besides Spotify.
For now this option is available on pages that are linked with a Spotify artist and that allow fans to post on the page. For example, pages for Rihanna and Eminem do not allow fans to write on their Wall so there is no option to share music either. Some users have also seen the music feature above News Feed, allowing them to easily share songs with friends.
Another feature we recently noticed on artist pages is a module that includes the number of total Spotify plays for five of an artist's most popular songs. When users first visit an artist page, they will see which songs are popular among their friends, but when filtering Timeline by "posts by others," they will see total plays among all users.
In that same “posts by others” view are modules showing the top videos and top articles about an artist. This information is pulled from Open Graph-enabled apps like Vevo, Viddy, Yahoo and Washington Post Social Reader. These modules are interesting for people who visit the page, but they could also be useful for artists to understand which channels their fans — or potential fans — are most active on. [Update 6/10/12 2:50 p.m. PT - These video and news modules are also available on fan pages for brands, public figures and other entities on Facebook.] [Update 6/10/12 4:49 p.m. PT - Facebook engineer Alejandro Marcu, who works on pages, tells us these modules were added to pages on June. 15.]
Facebook pages are becoming increasingly rich destinations for artists to connect with fans and for users to discover new music. In April, Facebook added a listen button to artist pages, allowing users to get an instant sample of an artist's music. With Timeline, artists can tell their story dating back before Facebook, making these pages useful for sharing an artist’s discography and important biographical events. Facebook pages could be an even stronger hub for artists if they also included modules about popular shows or concerts featuring that artist. This module could pull information from Facebook events, Ticketmaster, StubHub and other ticketing services that integrate Open Graph. Users should be able to see which shows their friends had been to, as well as which events were most popular overall. |
Visitors to a page will be able to view these modules to find related content about a company, public figure or entity, such as a movie or TV show. They can also see which videos and stories are most popular among their friends, in addition to what's trending overall. These features help make Facebook pages a destination for users to learn about people and products through a social lens. In the future, pages could include even more information from Open Graph apps, for instance, how many users indicated that they bought an item, saw a movie, read a book and more.
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Some artists' Facebook pages now include an option for fans to search for and share Spotify links to their favorite songs, as well as a way for users to see which songs, videos and news stories related to an artist are trending on the social network.
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