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Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook spent $715M on Instagram, $87M on other acquisitions this year

Posted: 24 Oct 2012 04:06 PM PDT

Facebook spent $87 million so far this year on business acquisitions not including its Instagram purchase, the company revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission today.

Facebook spent $521 million on Instagram — $300 million of which was in cash, the rest in vested shares of Class B common stock. Facebook additionally issued 11 million unvested shares to employee stockholders of Instagram, with a value of about $194 million to be recognized as they vest over three years. This makes the total price of the mobile photo sharing app $715 million, shy of the $1 billion original price, which decreased with Facebook’s stock value.

Facebook reported $87 million in other business acquisitions from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30. Apart from Instagram, this year Facebook has bought Tagtile, Glancee, Karma, Face.com and Threadsy.

Tagtile was a mobile-based customer loyalty management startup that offered payments hardware and software for merchants. Glancee was an ambient mobile location app that alerts users when people with similar interests are nearby. Karma was a mobile gifting and commerce service, which was turned into Facebook Gifts. Face.com was a facial recognition technology company. Threadsy offered a Klout-like service called Swaylo to connect brands and influencers, and help users understand their own influence on Facebook.

Facebook also made a number of acqu-hires this year, picking up employees from Momentus Media, Lightbox, Bolt Peters, Pieceable Software, Spool, Acrylic and Carsabi.

The company only spent $24 million on acquisitions at the end of Q2, indicating that the most recent acquisitions to close added up to $63 million. Facebook did not include details about the price of each deal or when they closed.

Romney, Obama and others in this week’s top PTAT gainers for political pages

Posted: 24 Oct 2012 03:15 PM PDT

Mitt Romney is this week’s top gaining political page when it comes to the People Talking About This metric. With the upcoming presidential election, Romney and the Republican Party’s campaign team has displayed their social media prowess with an agressive social marketing effort. With 728,938 in weekly PTAT growth, Romney’s numbers easily dwarf those of President Obama with only 278,789 new engagements.

The top 10 political pages saw PTAT growth between 34,293 and 728,938 engagements. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks page growth across Facebook.

# Name People Talking About Daily Growth Weekly Growth 
1   Mitt Romney 3,283,749 0 +728,938
2   Barack Obama 2,884,682 -49,735 +278,789
3   I HATE JULIA GILLARD 229,819 +28,081 +229,376
4   Veterans for Obama 153,504 +122,329 +126,476
5   ดร. ธีระชน มโนมัยพิบูลย์ 306,599 +19,358 +78,008
6   Eres mas Falso que las Pr… 81,589 +10,714 +77,357
7   African Americans for Obama 131,928 0 +67,144
8   Greg Abbott 55,328 0 +53,991
9   I Hate Nawaz Shareef (The… 84,084 -1,451 +39,039
10   Latinos for Obama 76,167 +1,334 +34,293

 

In last few weeks, Romney’s campaign has looked to social media as a solid way to amass supporters. We have actually covered how they are using it to their advantage especially in comparison with the incumbent president. Much of Romney’s posts receive well over 100,000 Likes, yet page Likes have not grown nearly as rapidly. As you can tell by the graph below, the page has drawn solid engagement through the week, which are usually the result of Promoted Posts and Page Post Ads. We’ve also seen the page running Sponsored Stories and Sponsored Results.

Although President Obama is behind in PTAT for his central page, three other pages in the top 10 are related to his campaign. Something that also should be noted is that First Lady Michelle Obama actually has gained more PTAT than both presidential candidates, but is under the category Public Figures rather than politicians. It’s worth noting that all of the First Lady’s recent page posts are dedicated to her husband’s reelection campaign.

As for the president’s central page, it boasts over 31 million Likes, which makes it a much larger audience to Romney’s 10 million. The PTAT of the page has actually decreased the last few days so it will be interesting to see how they look to improve this with the election less than two weeks away.

Visit PageData to see more about the top talked about pages among politicians, public figures as well as other categories.

Facebook tests star ratings for places

Posted: 24 Oct 2012 01:34 PM PDT

Facebook appears to be testing star ratings for places, similar to the system it uses for apps.

Some users are seeing a “rate these places” module in the sidebar with the option to give one to five stars to places they’ve been to or Liked. This feature could help Facebook better organize places in search or a new recommendation engine, as it has done with App Center.

Facebook takes a unique approach to ratings to avoid manipulation. App ratings use random sampling rather than appearing on a static page that anyone can visit. This way, it is much more difficult to game the system and ratings are more reflective of how people feel about an app. Facebook seems to have done the same with places, but we’re waiting to hear back for confirmation.

The social network has a little-known location search feature that could rival Yelp or Google for business searches if the company decided to put resources toward developing it. Star ratings could be the start to an overhaul of the product, which would benefit from a mobile component.

Last month, a Bloomberg Businessweek article hinted that Facebook had a new review feature in the works:

During a meeting in a conference room near his desk, [VP of Engineering Mike] Schroepfer leads a group of engineers in a half-hour debate over the design of a restaurant review feature. Should it have a five-star rating option, a Like button, or both? Should there be animation? Does it feel natural? At the end of the meeting, Schroepfer and one other guy remain at odds over the Like vs. Stars question.

From what we’ve seen, pages still have Like buttons and the modules have stars, but it’s possible Facebook is testing different variations.

On place pages themselves, users can already leave “recommendations” in a module on the timeline. Facebook also tested a “favorite places” module in the sidebar last year. These units would show users two places they had checked into and ask “which place do you like better?” Users could click a "see your favorites" link in the module to see a ranked list of all the places they voted for, but this hasn’t been available for a year or so.

Thanks to Ryan Plant for the tip and the screenshot.

Facebook rolls out messages update with new layout, photo sharing, emoticons, keyboard shortcuts and more

Posted: 24 Oct 2012 10:06 AM PDT

Facebook continues to roll out its redesigned messages product it announced in August, including a two-paned layout, improved photo uploads and keyboard shortcuts among other changes. We’ve had a number of readers let us know that they’re now seeing the update.

The desktop design is now more like traditional email, which is interesting because Facebook has made a number of changes to its mobile Messenger to make that product feel more lightweight like text messaging or chat. Because Facebook has a unified inbox system, all messages to and from mobile devices, the desktop web, email, chat and text appear in the same thread. We’ve wondered if this would cause any disconnect in the type of communications between people on different devices — more formal messages from someone on desktop being viewed in the mobile chat bubble format, and vice versa. That said, it makes sense to give users the best experience for whichever form factor they’re accessing messages from.

Even though the two-paned layout and keyboard shortcuts are reminiscent of email, Facebook added a few elements from mobile and chat, including read receipts and emoticons. Previously, users could only see if another user read their message if they were on a mobile device. Emoticons would appear if users knew how to make them with a keyboard, but now the message composer includes a menu of smileyfaces and icons, just as is available from the traditional chat window.

Facebook also improved the photo sharing process, allowing users to quickly upload multiple photos from their computer or select images from their Facebook albums. With the old design, users had to manually upload each photo file and did not have an option to find photos they had already shared on Facebook. The new process is more streamlined, similar to the mobile flow.

Another change is the option to send messages to users you are not friends with. Previously, from the new message dialog, users could type a friends name or an email address. Now, the typeahead in the “to” field populates with friends and “other people you know,” including friends of friends.

Facebook also calls out the option to search messages. Users can search by a sender's name or keyword at any point. In the previous layout, users could only search for names and keywords from the main inbox. When they opened a message, they could then search within that conversation.

Facebook did not offer a timeline for when all users would have the new messages, and there is no way to opt in to early access since the product is still being tested. Some readers experienced bugs such as not being able to send photos from the new uploader and not being able to immediately send a second message after sending one.

More information about the new messages is available from Help Center.

Top image from Facebook. All others from Ryan Plant. Thanks also to Khai Nguyen and Interactive Swim for the tips.

torsdag den 25. oktober 2012 at 07.30