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Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

The Ville, SimCity Social, SongPop, Instagram and more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by MAU

Posted: 30 Jul 2012 04:22 PM PDT

Zynga’s The Ville once again comes in at the No. 1 spot on our list of top growing Facebook apps by monthly active users this week, adding more than 16 million new players.

Titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 350,000 and 16.4 million MAU, based on our AppData tracking service.

Top Gainers This Week

Name MAU Gain Gain %
1.  The Ville 32,500,000 +16,400,000  + 102%
2.  SimCity Social 10,700,000 +3,600,000  + 51%
3.  Dragon City 7,500,000 +1,500,000  + 29%
4.  SongPop 11,400,000 +1,100,000  + 12%
5.  HTML Page Tab #8 2,900,000 +900,000  + 45%
6.  Instagram 24,800,000 +900,000  + 4%
7.  Ruby Blast 1,700,000 +870,000  + 105%
8.  Zynga Slingo 12,900,000 +700,000  + 6%
9.  Zoosk 12,400,000 +700,000  + 6%
10.  Static Iframe Tab 17,600,000 +500,000  + 3%
11.  The Sims Social 16,300,000 +500,000  + 3%
12.  Horóscopo Diário 3,400,000 +500,000  + 17%
13.  Diamond Dash 18,000,000 +500,000  + 3%
14.  The Fan Machine 1,200,000 +410,000  + 52%
15.  HTML Page Tab #10 2,900,000 +400,000  + 16%
16.  CSR Racing 2,000,000 +400,000  + 33%
17.  Static HTML Iframe Tab 4,600,000 +400,000  + 10%
18.  Spotify 25,700,000 +400,000  + 2%
19.  Texas HoldEm Poker 35,500,000 +400,000  + 1%
20.  Super Texas Holdem Poker 410,000 +350,000  + 583%

 

In addition to The Ville at No. 1, Zynga had Ruby Blast at No. 7, Zynga Slingo at No. 8 and Texas HoldEm Poker at No. 19.

EA’s SimCity Social came in second place again this week, though canvas game Dragon City replaced cross-platform name-that-tune game SongPop at No. 3.

A few custom tab applications from Woobox made the list. The developer is once again seeing growth after a period of decline when Facebook first removed the default landing option for pages.

Open Graph integrations from Instagram, Zoosk and Spotify also made the top 20 this week.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Thursday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

Facebook to remove a Like button feature many marketers and publishers didn’t know they had

Posted: 30 Jul 2012 03:23 PM PDT

Facebook is changing the way Like buttons work on third-party sites, removing the ability for admins to send updates to users who Liked their Open Graph objects.

When Facebook introduced the Open Graph Protocol in 2010, developers gained the ability register their websites and individual pages of their sites as unique objects in the Facebook ecosystem. If a Facebook user visited a site and Liked an item, site owners then had the ability to publish information to that user's stream. In addition, site owners got an administration interface and analytics tools, just like those of any Facebook Page owner. This was useful for sending targeted updates, but few marketers or publishers ever seemed to take advantage of the feature. Perhaps because they didn’t know it existed.

Now, instead of having an admin panel with the option to publish posts to anyone who clicked a Like button on their website, admins will have to create actual Facebook pages, associate their Like buttons with these pages, and make posts directly through the pages. For admins of existing Open Graph objects, this migration could lead them to lose some of their audience.

Facebook recommends these people create a separate Facebook page to represent their site or product, and through an update from their existing Open Graph object, prompt users to Like the new Facebook page. After the Like button admin page is fully deprecated on Nov. 7, Like button admins will communicate with fans exclusively through the new Facebook page. Because users won't be automatically transferred to the new page, some connections will be lost.

Marketers and publishers never quite used Open Graph objects the way Facebook initially envisioned. When the company announced the Open Graph at f8 in 2010, it provided the example of a user Liking an NFL athlete on ESPN.com, and then ESPN later sending users an update on which team drafted the player. Former CTO Bret Taylor gave us another example in an interview that year:

"The basic idea was that if you were Green Day the band, it's really inefficient for you to have GreenDay.com, and a Green Day account on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. Your internet identity is GreenDay.com. Through the Open Graph Protocol, that is the thing that users connect to and can add to their profile, and that's the object sending users updates."

Things haven't quite turned out that way. Marketers and publishers became more focused on acquiring Likes for their main Facebook pages. And perhaps in part because the admin panel wasn't very clear, many Like button creators didn't even realize they could send updates to people who clicked the button.

Social media platform company Vitrue built a system for creating Open Graph objects and publishing to users who Liked them. McDonald's was one of the brands that used this for segmenting its audience. Instead of publishing one update to the millions of fans of its main page, it could send a specific update to people who indicated that they Like the McRib and a different one to people who Like the Egg McMuffin. However, it's unclear whether the company is still using the feature. Vitrue, which was recently acquired by Oracle, did not comment on how the upcoming Facebook change would affect its platform or customers that use it.

Developers that have created Open Graph objects for their sites can learn more about the “Like Button Migration” and how to maintain connections with people who have Liked their objects here.

Facebook creates new collage layout for photos section of Timeline

Posted: 30 Jul 2012 10:53 AM PDT

Facebook today announced changes to the photos section of Timeline that makes photos larger and easier to interact with.

Users can also highlight particular photos, similar to how they do on Timeline, to make them stand out among other images. Facebook tells us these changes will apply to personal profiles as well as fan pages, as it rolls out over the next few weeks.

Now when users click Photos at the top of a personal profile or fan page, they will see larger photos that fill up the page. A menu at the top makes it easy to switch between photos of a user, photos a person has shared and albums they’ve created.

A More Beautiful View of Photos

On their own pages, users can click the star button to highlight photos and make them four times bigger. This option makes the photos page more dynamic and collage-like. Users and pages will likely appreciate the additional control they’ll have in showcasing their images and telling their stories. Google+ users will find the design familiar.

On Facebook, hovering over images brings up the title, buttons to Like and comment, and the number of people who have engaged with the photo already. Previously, users did not get any additional information about a photo until they clicked on it. This change could encourage users to interact with more photos as they browse.

A More Beautiful View of Photos

This is the what the previous layout looked like for photos:

tirsdag den 31. juli 2012 at 07.15