Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook platform industry hires: Conversocial, FreshBuzz, Nanigans, Shoutlet, TBG Digital and Wildfire
- Viralheat launches free conversation management and publishing tool to serve small businesses and agencies
- Facebook brings activity log to mobile devices so users can delete stories and check privacy settings
- Extole creates new marketing apps that promote word of mouth using Open Graph
- Autodesk acquires No. 1 Facebook app Socialcam for $60M
- This week’s headlines from across Inside Network
| Posted: 17 Jul 2012 07:41 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. |
| Posted: 17 Jul 2012 07:11 PM PDT
The tool is among the most comprehensive free offerings for cross-platform posting, conversation management and analytics. Viralheat co-founder and CEO Raj Kadam tells us his goal was to make a full-featured product available for small businesses and agencies to access the data they need to be successful with social media. More and more, social marketing platforms are converging. Marketers do not want to have to switch between multiple tools or deal with paying for different services. Although each start-up has its specialty, most are finding that they need to build all-in-one solutions for marketers to be interested. Viralheat began as a social media monitoring and analytics platform, similar to Radian6, Omniture or Scout Labs. Those platforms got acquired by larger companies — Salesforce, Adobe and Lithium, respectively. Now as those services focus on serving large enterprise, Viralheat has made an aggressive move for the SMB market by giving away a publishing tool and basic monitoring and analytics. The free product is complete enough to lure some customers away from other affordable platforms like Hootsuite and Sprout Social. Free users can add up to seven accounts for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. They can track mentions and analytics, as well as create and schedule an unlimited number of posts. The tool seems to offer deeper analytics than Hootsuite provides in its free plan, though this matters more in relation to Twitter than Facebook because Facebook offers its own free insights about pages. When Viralheat users need to add more accounts, track more mentions or begin competitive analysis, they can move to a paid plan beginning at $49 per month. Kadam says Viralheat is looking to add support for Pinterest in the near future.
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| Posted: 17 Jul 2012 03:41 PM PDT
Activity log was a key new feature that came with the introduction of Timeline, but was not translated to mobile until recently. Facebook did not tell us when it made the change or how widely it is available, but we expect it to eventually be available for all users because it is an important tool for users to manage their activity while they are away from a computer. With more mobile apps integrating Open Graph and publishing stories to News Feed and Timeline, it is increasingly necessary for users to be able to control what gets posted on their behalf. So far we’ve seen the activity log in Facebook’s mobile site and iOS app, but we did not have the option in the Android app, however, some users get access to features at different times.
From the mobile activity log, users can see the privacy setting associated with each action they took on the social network or with a Facebook-connected app. On desktop, users can change their privacy settings from activity log, but this does not seem to be the case with the mobile version. Instead, Facebook simply gives users the option to delete a story completely by clicking the circle next to the story. This seems to be a way to balance offering necessary control while maintaining a more lightweight experience on mobile devices.
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| Extole creates new marketing apps that promote word of mouth using Open Graph Posted: 17 Jul 2012 12:16 PM PDT
Extole has enabled Open Graph sharing for its "Social Referrers" and "Social Promotions" apps to amplify the word of mouth associated with consumers taking action in branded apps. For example, when users collect a coupon or enter a sweepstakes, that activity is posted to Timeline, Ticker and News Feed. This is useful With Extole's new "Social Expressions" product, companies can create their own custom Open Graph actions to be used on their website or other properties. Online wine marketplace TastingRoom.com uses Social Expressions to allow visitors to share that they claimed a coupon from the site. Other actions retailers or brands might want to turn into Open Graph actions include “recommend,” “add to wishlist,” “try,” “want” or “buy.” Of course, companies can do this without Extole’s platform, but for those that are less experienced with Facebook app development, working with a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer like Extole can be beneficial. The company has also expanded its analytics tools to include a dashboard to help measure earned media from their marketing apps. Among other metrics, Extole customers will be able to track advocates, shares, clicks and conversions.
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| Autodesk acquires No. 1 Facebook app Socialcam for $60M Posted: 17 Jul 2012 11:40 AM PDT Autodesk announced today that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire mobile video sharing app Socialcam for approximately $60 million. The transaction is expected to close by Oct. 31 this year and is subject to customary closing conditions.
Currently the largest Facebook-connected app with 54,700,000 monthly active users according to AppData, Socialcam allows users to create, edit and share videos. By integrating Open Graph, the app shares users’ activity to News Feed when they watch videos or take other actions within the mobile app, website or Facebook canvas app. This led to the app’s rapid rise to the No. 1 spot in May. The mobile app also ranks No. 38 on AppData’s Top Free Apps on iOS and No. 5 on Top Free Apps Photography Genre in the U.S. The app saw a sharp rise in traffic in mid-April due to its viral sharing mechanics and requirement that users authorize it in order to watch a video, though some critics pointed out traffic was also being drawn in with popular YouTube videos marketed as user-generated content in a Socialcam wrapper. Recently the app has seen a decline in monthly active users, though it’s unclear to what degree this is because the app is not retaining existing users or because of Facebook changing its algorithms or design of News Feed.
Autodesk is known for its design software such as Maya, SketchBook and Pixlr, which makes it an odd buyer for an app like Socialcam. The acquisition follows Facebook’s pending acquisition of Instagram for $1 Billion in early April and a heightened interest in startups and apps that allow users to create and share video and images on mobile devices. TechCrunch also reported in late April that Socialcam raised a round of seed funding from several well known investors such as Ashton Kutcher, Tim Draper and Yuri Milner. |
| This week’s headlines from across Inside Network Posted: 16 Jul 2012 08:13 AM PDT A roundup of all the news Inside Network brought you between July 9 and 14.
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Social media measurement platform 
Facebook recently added an activity log feature to some mobile devices, allowing users to see all their recent activity, verify their privacy settings and delete individual stories.
The activity log is accessible from a user’s mobile Timeline. Beneath the cover photo is a row of tabs, including “About,” “Photos” and “Friends.” Swiping to the left across these tabs reveals more tabs, including one labeled “Activity Log.” The feature is also presented when users visit “Timeline Review” after a friend tags them in a photo or checks them into a location.
Social marketing platform 
Inside Mobile Apps
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