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Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Farmville 2, Instagram, Zuma Blitz, Subway Surfers and more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by MAU

Posted: 08 Oct 2012 05:25 PM PDT

Zynga’s FarmVille 2 once again takes the No. 1 spot on our list of top growing Facebook apps by monthly active users this week, adding 15 million new players.

Titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 300,000 and 15.5 million MAU, based on our AppData tracking service.

Top Gainers This Week

Name MAU Gain Gain %
1.  FarmVille 2 33,500,000 +15,500,000  + 86%
2.  21 questions 9,000,000 +2,200,000  + 32%
3.  Birthdays 19,100,000 +1,800,000  + 10%
4.  schoolFeed 24,300,000 +1,700,000  + 8%
5.  Between You and Me 4,300,000 +1,100,000  + 34%
6.  Instagram 33,600,000 +1,100,000  + 3%
7.  Truth Game 4,200,000 +800,000  + 24%
8.  War Commander 6,400,000 +600,000  + 10%
9.  My Friend Secrets 2,400,000 +500,000  + 26%
10.  Get Revealed 2,200,000 +500,000  + 29%
11.  Bubble Epic 3,100,000 +400,000  + 15%
12.  Lost Jewels 3,000,000 +400,000  + 15%
13.  Truths About You 3,000,000 +400,000  + 15%
14.  Zuma Blitz 2,100,000 +400,000  + 24%
15.  MiCalendario – Cumpleaños 10,600,000 +400,000  + 4%
16.  4shared 4,600,000 +300,000  + 7%
17.  Subway Surfers 2,100,000 +300,000  + 17%
18.  60photos 5,600,000 +300,000  + 6%
19.  Diggle 400,000 +300,000  + 300%
20.  MeetMe 3,200,000 +300,000  + 10%

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 tests ‘Collections’ posts with Want and Collect buttons for retailers

Posted: 08 Oct 2012 01:46 PM PDT

Facebook has begun testing a new feature called “Collections,” which allows retailers to post product photos with “Want” or “Collect” buttons, as well as links to buy from their sites.

TechCrunch reports that seven retailers are testing the feature: Michael Kors, Pottery Barn, Wayfair, Victoria's Secret, Neiman Marcus, Smith Optics and Fab.com.

The feature uses large images that users can hover over and click either “Want,” “Collect” or “Like.” TechCrunch says Facebook is testing variations of the feature to determine which button users respond to best. Each button saves items to a section of users’ Timelines, either called “Products” or “Wishlist.” Facebook is testing whether these collections should be visible to friends only or friends of friends.

When users browse a collection, there are links directing users to buy the items from the retailer’s website. It is possible there will be a way to distinguish already purchased items from a user’s products list. Collection posts also include native Facebook features such as Like, share, and comment.

TechCrunch reports that collection posts only show up for a page’s fans, though we have been able to view some collections on pages that we have not Liked. See examples from Michael Kors, Pottery Barn and Wayfair, but note that the links may not work for non-fans.

With the company recently announcing the new Gifts product, this is another way Facebook could eventually expand its business model through purchases of physical goods. Currently, though, Facebook is not taking a percentage of purchases made after clicking on collections links. TechCrunch says it is not charging retailers to use the feature, but it is still in beta. We may see the social network take a similar approach to what it has done with Offers, which started with select partners and then rolled out more widely for free, but now require page owners to buy ads to promote the offer.

This new feature is familiar in design to competitor Pinterest, though this is not the first time Facebook has updated it’s design to look more like pinboards. The functionality is also similar to a version of Facebook Questions we saw being tested in August. Collections are limited offerings compared to Pinterest at this testing stage, but they fulfill a similar consumer desire to browse, discover and share products they are interested in. On Pinterest, however, users can add their own content and save items they find all over the web. It’s unclear whether Facebook will create an option for individual users to create their own collections or if the vision is for this to be a pages-only feature. Pinterest also has the option for users to browse items by category, which could be useful if Facebook allows more pages to begin posting collections.

Although some users are now seeing a “Want” button, the feature announced today seems to be different from the Want plugin we saw Facebook testing in the past. That product seemed to be for publishers to implement on their own websites, not on their Facebook pages. Ultimately these might be combined in some way so that users can have a single wishlist for items they discover on Facebook, the web and in apps.

The state of Android vs iOS usage among Facebook users

Posted: 08 Oct 2012 11:49 AM PDT

About 20.1 percent of Facebook users connect to the service on an Android device compared to 18.9 percent of users who connect with an iOS device, according to data from Optimal, Inc.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview with NBC's Matt Lauer last week that Facebook had more users on Android than iOS. We asked social media advertising and analytics platform provider Optimal for the details.

Optimal's data shows about 189.8 million users active on Android devices — accessing Facebook through the native app or the mobile web. About 178.3 million are active on iOS. That's among 944.2 million monthly active users addressable with the Facebook Ads API, not the full billion announced last week.

Below are the top 20 territories with the highest share of Android usage. The “Index” figure in the chart shows relative prevalence of each OS versus the population, so it compares global Android penetration to Android penetration in that country — and does the same for iOS.

Android has the highest share in South Korea, where it is used by 52.6 percent of the population versus 20.3 percent using iOS. Singapore and Australia have the highest iOS penetration, both with 48.8 percent of the population using Apple's mobile OS.

The U.S. has the highest collective penetration of Android and iOS smartphones and tablets, with 83.5 percent of the Facebook population using these devices each month. The country is among the 38 percent of territories with more iOS than Android usage. In the U.S., 44.1 percent of users are on iOS versus 39.4 on Android.

The countries with the next largest population of Facebook users, Brazil and India, both use Android more than iOS, but these devices make up a smaller percentage of overall use as feature phones still dominate these markets. In Brazil, for example, Android has 11.8 percent share and iOS has 6.4 percent share.

U.K. Facebook users are split 28.2 percent on iOS and 16.2 percent on Android.

Facebook does not share an exact breakdown of how many users access the social network via native apps compared to the mobile web, but Zuckerberg says overall more people use the mobile web than native iOS and Android apps combined. The company has recently been working to improve its native offerings. The iOS app was updated at the end of August, focusing on speed by replacing some HTML5 with native functionality. Engadget reports today that a new native Facebook for Android app is in the final stages of testing, according to an anonymous source. Zuckerberg previously said that this was in the works, but did not offer a time frame for when it would be available.

Early tests from Optimal and other advertising companies showed that clickthrough and conversion rates were higher on Android than iPhone, though costs per click and per fan were higher. Optimal says Android users took additional actions, such as viewing profile photos, Liking posts and commenting, more often than iPhone users did.

tirsdag den 9. oktober 2012 at 07.42