Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook puts events in calendar view for easier browsing and planning, but improvements still needed
- Facebook and NBC partner for Olympics coverage and Timeline integration
- Facebook groups will soon show members who has seen each post and when
- Facebook updates developer SDK for iOS
- Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Mobile Gaming Audience Is Here
- Early tests show Android users respond better to mobile Facebook ads than iPhone users do
| Posted: 11 Jul 2012 04:09 PM PDT Facebook has redesigned its events dashboard to include new calendar and list views that help users see upcoming events and friends’ birthdays more efficiently than before. Previously, Facebook presented events in a single list that didn’t allow users to easily navigate to a particular day or month. It also had separate tabs for suggested events. Now all of the events a user has RSVP’d to, has been invited to and has been suggested are included on the same page, either in a calendar or a list. This is a much more logical and useful display that is long overdue, however, there are a few areas that could use improvement.
Other aspects of the update are more confusing. The menu in the top right corner seems to unnecessarily duplicate features, such as event invites and viewing a particular day. It is much simpler to click on a date from the calendar itself rather than clicking the “Today” button and then clicking an arrow several times to get to another day.
It is also rather difficult to view past events that are more than a month old. To do so, users must go to list view, hover over the small calendar to the left, click “view month” and then use the arrows on the calendar that appears on the next page. Another option is to go to calendar view, scroll up, then click on the previous month. These options are not likely to be intuitive for most users. However, we’ve discovered that users can manually navigate to the period they want to view by modifying the year and month in following URL: https://www.facebook.com/events/calendar/2012/July We’d also like to see Facebook add an option to filter events by location. There is no easy way to see which events are happening nearby versus those that a friend across the country might have invited you to. Some users calendars will be filled with events they can’t attend. And now that it is easier to see upcoming events and birthdays, it would be useful to have a feature where users could choose to receive a notification at a certain date or time. We wonder whether Facebook will bring the calendar view to its mobile site or if it might build a standalone events app similar to what it did with Messenger and Camera. Viewing upcoming and past events is relatively easy from the main Facebook app and mobile site, and users can also RSVP to events there, but they cannot create them very easily. A separate mobile calendar app could be beneficial, especially if Facebook is looking to make events less formal and more about making casual plans with friends. Readers can access the new events view here and compare it with the old view here. |
| Facebook and NBC partner for Olympics coverage and Timeline integration Posted: 11 Jul 2012 02:56 PM PDT
The companies will collaborate by directing viewers of the games to interact on Facebook as well as encouraging Facebook users to tune into the NBC broadcasts. There will be numerous uses, including a Facebook "Talk Meter," which will be occasionally shown on TV. The tool will inform viewers about stories, results, athletes and events that other fans of the Olympic Games are talking about on Facebook. During primetime, NBC will also promote a daily poll on Facebook specific to the Games. Although social media interaction with live television is more common practice with Twitter, Facebook, with an estimated 900 million users, is looking to tap into their own community. Nielsen studies have found that almost half of tablet and smartphone owners use their devices while watching television and this partnership seems to be a way for Facebook to enter the "second screen" space. NBC has also integrated Facebook with NBCOlympics.com, so visitors can automatically share articles they read as well as videos they watch. The website will provide live streaming video for every Olympic event this summer. With hundreds of hours of content available to visitors, Facebook integration will help increase reach by allowing friends to share content with others. USA Today saw a 20 percent viral lift for its Super Bowl Ad Meter application earlier this year by integrating Open Graph and publishing users' activity to Timeline. NBC’s website seems to have the necessary controls in place for users to understand how and when their activity is being shared, and an option to easily turn this feature off, as seen below. Users can learn more about the app and add it to their Timeline through the App Center.
The NBC Olympics page on Facebook will also share exclusive content that can only be seen if a user has Liked the page. Facebook will have a small team in London crunching data about their users interactions. NBC will then be able to use this data for stories. This announcement is in addition to Facebook's efforts with the Explore London 2012 page, which allows users to browse and follow pages about their favorite athletes and sports. Earlier this week, Facebook announced a partnership with CNN for its coverage of the 2012 U.S. presidential election. |
| Facebook groups will soon show members who has seen each post and when Posted: 11 Jul 2012 01:20 PM PDT Facebook groups will now show users which members have seen each post, the social network announced today. Below each post within a group will be a check mark followed by the number of people who have seen the post. Hovering over or clicking on that note will present a list of group members who saw the post and when. After all users in the group have seen the post, the post will say "seen by everyone." The feature is available on desktop and mobile versions of groups. Although it hasn’t gone live for us yet, Facebook says this will begin rolling out today.
This is similar to what Facebook now does in its mobile Messenger app to let users know their message has been received, but when applied to larger groups, some users might be uncomfortable with this because they feel it reveals too much about their activity on the site. Overall, the feature is useful for groups of people who are collaborating on a project, scheduling plans or sharing other important updates. Facebook provides the example of a soccer team using groups and the new "seen" feature to make sure everyone knows about what time practice starts. TechCrunch’s Josh Constine says Facebook wouldn’t discuss whether it was considering adding the feature to posts users make outside of groups. He notes that implementing this in News Feed or Timeline might be going too far and make people feel self-conscious about what they browse on the social network. For now it seems Facebook will limit this to groups and private messages. Perhaps in the future, group admins could have control over whether posts display information about who has seen them. Facebook didn’t provide details about what it means for a post to be “seen,” and whether it involves a user visiting the group page or having the story load in News Feed. The Help Center tells users to ”keep in mind that if people see a group post or message, it doesn’t always mean they had the chance to read it carefully.” |
| Facebook updates developer SDK for iOS Posted: 11 Jul 2012 12:30 PM PDT
Facebook says this is the biggest iOS SDK update the company has ever done. Facebook SDK 3.0 for iOS gives developers a new FBSession to manage, store and refresh user tokens with default behaviors they can override. Previously, managing user sessions and tokens could be difficult. The company says it has improved latency for Facebook API calls by enabling batching for SDK requests. This and additional API support could encourage developers to integrate Open Graph and create apps that publish actions to users' Timelines. Today's update also includes a number of pre-built user interface components to allow developers to begin from a template rather than building each from scratch. Facebook says this will make it easier to build common features like displaying a user's profile photo, finding nearby places to check in, and selecting friends to invite to an app. The friend-picker tool will even allow developers to filter friends by device and app auth status, so that users don’t send invites to friends who don’t use iOS devices or who have already added the app. The company also sought to reduce the amount of time developers spend on memory management. Facebook says it has improved the experience for handling sessions and calls to asynchronous APIs, as well as making the transition more seamless between the Facebook SDK and Apple's iOS environment. The social network created a new section of its developer site focused on iOS development. Developers can go there to download the SDK and read technical guides and other resources about how to use Facebook to build, distribute and promote their apps. |
| Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Mobile Gaming Audience Is Here Posted: 11 Jul 2012 12:00 PM PDT
That's why we're excited to announce the release of Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Mobile Gaming Audience – US. The report presents an in-depth view of player behavior, motivations and spending patterns in the mobile games market. The report delves into patterns by age, gender and operating system (iOS or Android), allowing gaming companies to formulate successful strategies for their key audiences. Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Mobile Gaming Audience – US focuses on the following areas:
Table of Contents:
If you're interested in obtaining a copy of this report, please contact Kieran Barr, our VP of Sales, or get more information here. |
| Early tests show Android users respond better to mobile Facebook ads than iPhone users do Posted: 11 Jul 2012 11:35 AM PDT
Facebook ad optimization company TBG Digital has shared with us findings from a recent campaign for a leading U.S. retailer. Clickthrough rate on Android devices was about 55 percent higher than it was on iPhones. Conversion rate, or the percentage of users who click an ad and then also Like the page, was 12 percent higher on Android. Cost per fan was 1.51 times more on iPhone than Android.
These results are in line with what Optimal, another Facebook ad services company, found in its recent mobile campaigns. According to Forbes, Optimal saw between 10 and 55 percent higher clickthrough rates on Android versus iPhone. Conversion rates were between 28 and 109 percent higher among Android users. Cost per fan was about 52 percent more on iPhone than Android. Optimal also says Android users took additional actions, such as viewing profile photos, Liking posts and commenting, more often than iPhone users did.
It’s unclear to what degree these differences are related to the mobile devices themselves or the people who use them. But since these groups seem to respond differently to ads in the feed, advertisers will be able to better optimize their campaigns if they run ads separately to Android and iPhone users, rather than targeting all devices together. Overall, advertisers are finding mobile Sponsored Stories to be more effective than those on desktop. New ad units tend to have higher CTRs and lower CPCs when they first launch since there is some novelty for users and little competition driving up bid prices. Advertisers who begin mobile campaigns now are likely to see their dollars go a lot further than they would on desktop. Besides using mobile Sponsored Stories for page-Like campaigns, the new placement could be especially valuable for retail offers and mobile app promotion. For now, mobile-only Sponsored Stories are available through the Ads API and Power Editor, not the self-serve dashboard. We’ve also heard Facebook is working on real-time location-based mobile ads, but the company has not confirmed this. |
Facebook engineer Bob Baldwin wrote in 
Facebook and NBC today 
Facebook today 
Initial tests of Facebook's new mobile-only ad offering show Android users are more likely to click and take action on a brand's page than iPhone users, leading to lower costs per fan.| You are subscribed to email updates from Inside Facebook To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |