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Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook roundup: Blackberry update, patent suit, App Center, studies and more

Posted: 14 Sep 2012 04:00 PM PDT

New Facebook for Blackberry app available – RIM released a new version of Facebook for Blackberry this week, including improvement for event management, birthdays and navigation. The new app includes event information and RSVP functionality. Users can integrate birthdays into their phone’s calendar and receive reminders to write on friends’ walls. There are also updated icons on the navigation grid.

University of California sues Facebook and others for patent infringement - University of California patent licensee Eolas Technologies Inc and the Regents of the University of California filed lawsuits against Facebook, Wal-Mart and Disney on Wednesday over four interactive technology patents they believe the companies are infringing. Two of the patents cited in the lawsuits were declared invalid in February when they were used in a separate lawsuit against Amazon, Google Yahoo and others. Facebook claims the suit is without merit.

Facebook friends influence voter turnout, study finds – Facebook researchers and scientists at the University of California, San Diego found that people who saw messages on Facebook that their friends had voted were more likely to go to the polls than those who didn’t see a similar message. A study conducted they during the mid-term congressional election found that that 80 percent of those who voted were influenced to do so by someone they knew online.

Study suggests small websites benefit most from social sharing – Smaller news sites tend to see a greater percentage of their traffic come from sites like Facebook and Twitter, according to a study conducted by Northwestern professor Rich Gordon and Syndio Social CEO Zachary Johnson and paid for by The Chicago Community Trust. Small websites got more than half their referrals from social media, while the large sites got only about 19 percent from social.

Facebook promotes App Center above News Feed - Some Facebook users saw a large message about the new App Center above their News Feed this week. The social network launched App Center in June as a new means of game and app discovery. The App Center includes more visuals and an improved permissions authorization flow compared to the previous Apps and Games Dashboard. Facebook says 225 million users visit App Center each month, though that number is likely driven significantly by prompts and promotions like the one below.

Facebook platform industry hires: Identified, Kenshoo, ShopIgniter and Webtrends

Posted: 14 Sep 2012 12:30 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.

Identified

  • Zeryn Sarpangal, Vice President of Finance and Operations - former senior director of finance and operations at Achaogen
  • Lana Svieta, Senior Product Manager, Growth Hacker - former Hands-On Product Manager, Mobile Games and Marketing Platforms at iPlaythings
  • Kevin Tham, Software Engineer - former student at University of California, Berkeley

Kenshoo

  • Ted Krantz, Senior Vice President of Global Sales – former director of global accounts at PeopleSoft
  • Chris Abate, Senior Director of Strategic Accounts - former vice-president of business development at Extole
  • Leslie Karr, Director of Client Services - former manager onsite services at PTIGlobal
  • Marko Muellner, Senior Director of Marketing – former senior director of marketing at Webtrends
  • Toban Zolman, Director of Product Management - former director of consulting services at Image Solutions, Inc.

Webtrends

  • Martin Doettling, Chief Marketing Officer – former VP of product marketing at Coremetrics, an IBM company

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

This week’s updates to the Facebook Marketing Bible

Posted: 14 Sep 2012 12:00 PM PDT

Facebook’s increased focus on mobile advertising is something to take into consideration when planning for Facebook marketing. Mobile ads have more prominence and have so far shown to be more engaging than right column ads on desktop.

Looking to tackle the mobile audience? Learn more with the Facebook Marketing Bible: The Leading Resource for Marketing and Advertising on Facebook.

This week, we have included a new summary on mobile ads which provides a comprehensive overview of how businesses can buy ads specifically for mobile customers. We have also updated with information on the definition of “People Talking About This” and a case study about customer service tactics on Facebook.

About the Facebook Marketing Bible

The Facebook Marketing Bible has enabled thousands of brands, app developers, content publishers and businesses of all sizes to do more with Facebook, from the basics of creating a successful fan page, to the complexities of social plugin integration on an off-Facebook website.

The Facebook Marketing Bible includes hundreds of pages of strategies, comprehensive how-to guides and case studies analyzing today's most successful marketing and advertising campaigns on Facebook. Take a tour of the Facebook Marketing Bible.

Recent Additions to the Facebook Marketing Bible

The Facebook Market Bible is now on Twitter! Follow us @FBMarketBible and feel free to contact us with any questions or topic suggestions.

China’s Renren social network copies Facebook Timeline

Posted: 14 Sep 2012 11:18 AM PDT

Chinese social network Renren is rolling out a new profile that clearly copies the design and features of Facebook Timeline.

Since launching in 2005, Renren has always maintained a close look and feel to Facebook, from News Feed to profiles to mobile. The company also followed Facebook’s path from being only for students to available for everyone, as well as opening its platform to third-party developers. With Timeline, it seems that the similarities are more than surface level. Facebook UI engineer Stefan Parker, who worked on Timeline, said in a public comment on his profile, “It’s done exactly the same, floats, capsule balancing, everything. Even runs into scrolling perf issues when you load enough in and scroll while it balances.”

Facebook is currently blocked in China, and last week Facebook's North Asia Director Jayne Leung told conference attendees in Hong Kong that the social network has no plans to expand into the country. In the meantime, Renren is continuing to grow, though its engagement numbers are not as strong as Facebook’s. Renren reported 45 million monthly active users in Q2, which is only 27 percent of its 162 million total activated users.

Renren’s timeline design began rolling out last month, though it is still in beta and not available to all users. As seen in photos from a promotional page about the new product, the social network has copied Facebook features such as cover photo and life events. Renren also created a Pinterest clone this year.

Interestingly, another Chinese social network L99.com was recently reported to be considering a suit against Facebook for infringing on its own timeline design apparently launched in 2008. L99.com CEO Xiong Wanli claims to have video evidence that Mark Zuckerberg attended a lecture he gave at Stanford where he unveiled the timeline layout.

Farmville 2, Chase Community Giving, Ustream and more on this week’s top 20 emerging Facebook apps by MAU

Posted: 14 Sep 2012 09:56 AM PDT

Zynga’s FarmVille 2 topped our list of emerging applications by monthly active users this week after launching on Sept. 5.

We define emerging applications as those that ended with between 100,000 and 1 million MAU in the past week. This week’s top apps grew from between 100,000 and 788,000 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

Name MAU Gain Gain %
1.  FarmVille 2 790,000 +788,000   + 39,400%
2.  Chase Community Giving 600,000 +560,000   + 1,400%
3.  Mis buenos amigos 590,000 +410,000   + 228%
4.  Simple HTML for Pages 570,000 +400,000   + 235%
5.  Bubble Epic 500,000 +320,000   + 178%
6.  Love Percentage [Daily] 930,000 +320,000   + 60%
7.  Mis Fotos 490,000 +260,000   + 113%
8.  Threads of Mystery 740,000 +210,000   + 40%
9.  Best Match 500,000 +190,000   + 56%
10.  Bubble Pirate Quest 710,000 +170,000   + 31%
11.  Oroscopo del Giorno v2.0 590,000 +140,000   + 31%
12.  Ustream Live 340,000 +130,000   + 55%
13.  Luck Daily 560,000 +130,000   + 30%
14.  Daily Horoscope 770,000 +130,000   + 20%
15.  Saif Almarifa 840,000 +120,000   + 20%
16.  Mis Fotos+ 290,000 +110,000   + 61%
17.  Together 450,000 +110,000   + 32%
18.  Lost Legacies 960,000 +110,000   + 13%
19.  WelcomeTab 380,000 +100,000   + 36%
20.  FunSara 580,000 +100,000   + 21%

 

At No. 2 was Chase Community Giving, a promotional app for the bank, which is giving $5 million to local charities across the country based on fan votes.

Horoscope, photo and quiz apps are also on the rise this week, as we also saw in our top gainers by daily active users on Thursday. A few games and custom landing tab apps made up most of the rest of the list besides No. 12 Ustream Live.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned next week for our look at the top weekly gainers by monthly active users on Monday.

lørdag den 15. september 2012 at 07.39