Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook platform industry hires: Nanigans, Nimble and Shoutlet
- Facebook tests new design for mobile app install ads
- Last Chance to Register for Social Media Marketing Boot Camp
- Facebook’s head of brand design shares strategies for social apps
| Facebook platform industry hires: Nanigans, Nimble and Shoutlet Posted: 16 Oct 2012 04:39 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.
Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry. |
| Facebook tests new design for mobile app install ads Posted: 16 Oct 2012 02:55 PM PDT Facebook appears to be testing a new design for its ad unit that developers use to promote their iOS and Android apps within Facebook’s mobile News Feed, according to a screenshot by ESPN’s SVP of Product Development Ryan Spoon. The latest iteration of the ad unit is larger and includes the “Install Now” call to action. Rather than using the app’s logo, the unit uses an app’s header image from App Center. The ad now also includes an app’s star rating.
Facebook introduced ads for mobile developers to drive traffic to a download page in the Apple App Store or Google Play in early August. The ads leverage the extensive targeting options of the Facebook platform, giving developers a way to reach a more specific audience than they could through other mobile ad networks. Another benefit is the placement directly within in News Feed. These mobile ads are only available to a limited number of beta partners for now, but mobile developers can sign up to be part of the beta here. The ads are sold on a cost per click basis through a bid model, similar to Facebook's other ads. Previously, this ad unit was part of a “Try these apps” module, sometimes among organic recommendations. The ad featured an icon to indicate that tapping the link would lead users to their device’s native app store, but it’s likely that few users recognized this meaning. With the new “Install Now” language, users might be less surprised when they’re sent outside of Facebook.
Top image from Ryan Spoon. |
| Last Chance to Register for Social Media Marketing Boot Camp Posted: 16 Oct 2012 02:14 PM PDT
Our all-star lineup of speakers includes Amy Porterfield, author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies and Brian Carter, author of LinkedIn for Business. You can peruse the full agenda on the event website. Register today for this great event and start building your social media audience and increasing conversions this fall. |
| Facebook’s head of brand design shares strategies for social apps Posted: 16 Oct 2012 08:48 AM PDT Facebook Global Head of Brand Design Paul Adams offered marketers at Pivot Conference in New York City recommendations for applying Facebook’s product development principles to their own apps and social campaigns on the platform. These include “Build many lightweight interactions” and “Design, build and ship in six weeks.”
Adams, who leads the creative solutions team at Facebook, says brands and agencies often mistakenly build apps that are too “heavy” and “immersive,” when they should be enabling people to take many lightweight interactions over time. He compares marketing to developing a relationship with a person. “People’s perceptions of other people aren’t immediate,” he says, noting that there isn’t typically a single event that leads two people to become best friends or fall in love. Similarly, marketers shouldn’t expect to change perceptions and have users take significant actions right away, he says. Apps and campaigns should be more conversational and allow back and forth interaction. As marketers try to do this, Adams says, they should try not to emphasize “getting people to share.” Instead, they should “focus on why people talk.” Sharing has both taken on and lost some meaning with Facebook. When marketers think about encouraging consumers to share, they lose sight of what sharing truly is and why people do it. Ultimately sharing is a means to an end for talking, Adams says, and people talk to build relationships, manage how others perceive them and to help others. Thinking about those motivations may help marketers create the type of content and experiences that people will want to share on Facebook. Along the same lines, Adams says it is important to design the News Feed stories of an app before designing the rest of an app. This tends to be the last step of the app design process, but Adams believes this should be reversed because News Feed is where the majority of people will discover an app. Adams notes that there are three places to reach users on Facebook: News Feed, a page and canvas. Marketers are often drawn to canvas because it is a large white space that can be fully customized. In reality, there are few times that a user will visit canvas before seeing something about an app in News Feed. Without compelling News Feed stories, an app is going to have difficulty growing organically. “You should design first for what people see first,” Adams says. “Reverse engineer to get the best story possible from your app.” As for examples of companies doing it right with Facebook apps, Adams frequently used the Lay’s Do Us a Flavor campaign as an example. Consumers were invited to come up with their own new flavor of potato chip and vote on other people’s ideas by using an “I’d eat that” button. Those actions were shared through Open Graph, creating engaging News Feed stories, he says. Adams also emphasized the importance of building quickly, getting a product out and iterating. He shared the following principles that Facebook operates by: “If you don’t ship, it doesn’t exist;” “Design, build, ship in six weeks; “After you ship it, change it.” He encouraged marketers to experiment more frequently rather than investing a lot of time and money into a single project, especially because human behavior can never be fully predicted. |
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