Mark Zuckerberg made a cameo appearance on "Saturday Night Live" with the host of the show Jesse Eisenberg, who played Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. The Social Network won four golden globes, and currently has eight oscar nominations. Check out the SNL excerpt below, and let us know what you think of the appearance [...]
Regulation of consumer privacy online needs to allow for future innovations. That's the gist of Facebook's formal response to the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Federal Trade Commissions's proposals to protecting consumer privacy online. read more>>
Tunisia and Egypt's uprisings continue to embolden people in other middle eastern nations to call for their own protests via social media. Syria became the latest to do so, as Facebook posts are organizing peaceful demonstrations for this Thursday and Friday. read more>>
Want to know what all the Facebook deals are that are in your area? Facebook is listing some of the deals in geographic regions via their deals overview page. read more>>
Gifting for Valentines Day, keeping track of when your favorite artists will be in town, and even software that offers you a chance to potentially score some excellent free prizes are all found on this week's explosive list. read more>>
While airlines continue to get more creative about fees, Facebook access during flights will be free on at least seven major carriers during February. read more>>
Approaching Facebook with a poor self image can exacerbate mental health problems, as a study produced by the University of Haifa found a correlation between use of the social network and eating disorders in females age 12 to 19. read more>>
While Facebook never ended up with a mascot to represent the company, Sean Parker, a co-founder of Facebook and Napster, wanted to have a hedgehog as the company mascot. read more>>
Facebook's average revenue from searches has dropped to $5 per thousand searches from $8 per thousand searches, according to estimations by members of Trefis. read more>>
The lobbying disclosure database revealed Facebook spent a total of $351,390 last year on lobbyists. Meanwhile, Apple spent $1.6 million, Yahoo spent $2.21 million and Google spent whopping $5.2 million in 2010. read more>>
Search ads have a longer shelf life than advertisements on Facebook, but the social media ad's lifespan can double or triple if the promotion refers to the viewer's friend(s) engagement with the brand. read more>>
Facebook may be preparing to launch a new version of its Social Commenting plugin. Judging by the version currently implemented on Facebook’s own blog, it may surface high quality comments or help users identify trolls and spammers by assigning users an aggregated credibility score. Since this score travels with users wherever the plugin is integrated, it should encourage more civil, thoughtful commenting.
The aggregated credibility score is shown as a percentage and a total number of comments in the hovercard that appears when a user is moused over in the Social Commenting plugin. Through extensive testing, we’ve determined that the percentage is calculated using the formula (total Likes – total instances marked as unhelpful or spam) / total Likes. For instance, a commenter who has had their comments Liked seven times and been marked as unhelpful once would have the equation (7 – 1) /7, which equates to 85%. Scores are rounded down and are higher than the equation specifies when there are less than five Likes.
Users and admins will be able to look at this credibility score and deduce whether a certain comment is from a reputable source. Trolls and spammers will accrue a low score or have a low number of total comments, indicating their comments aren’t worth replying to, and their links shouldn’t be clicked. High quality users will build a high score and large number of comments over time.
Authenticated Identity is Too Valuable to Risk
Websites often run into issues using their own commenting system or a third-party solution such as Disqus and Intense Debate because there are few deterrents to abusive behavior other than of a site-wide or widget-wide ban. Spammers, trolls, and those looking to dispense hate can easily create another account or move to another site without losing much.
But Facebook wields a much more powerful weapon: the ability to terminate a user’s account, severing all their friend connections. Most users will be too scared of such social ruin to abuse the Facebook Social Commenting plugin with their real account, whether professionally, as a joke, drunk, or in a fit of anger. Since the aggregated credibility score reduces the reach of using a fake account, users have to respectfully comment with their real profile to be part of the conversation.
Examples of the power of authenticated identity to promote serious discussion are already emerging. At the recent Online News Association meetup at Facebook headquarters, Andy Carvin, NPR’s Senior Strategist with their social media desk, said that the conversation on its Facebook Page is more civil than that occurring through the proprietary commenting system on its website.
With its simple cross-publishing feature; quick login for Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Yahoo! users via OpenID; aggregated credibility scoring; and the repercussions Facebook can levy against abusive commenters; any website that accepts comments should strongly consider implementing the new Facebook Social Commenting plugin when it’s released.
Facebook’s new introduction site for Deals, its location-based promotions service, helps users discover nearby Deals and teaches business owners how to offer them. The locator displays a list and Bing map of local promotions, while the instructional videos and downloadable Deals Guide for Businesses .pdf explain best practices for creating Deals campaigns.
By facilitating the business on-boarding process, and allowing users to purposefully search for promotions, the site should help Deals become a more popular way for businesses to incentivize foot traffic.
Facebook originally launched Deals with a handful of brands in November, but it was only available in the U.S. for iPhone and touch.facebook.com users. Though a powerful way for businesses to court customers, a lack of understanding amongst both business and users led relatively few to implement or use it.
In the months since, Facebook has rolled out its location service Places to Europe, Japan, Canada, and Australia, added access for Android devices, and today launched Deals in Europe. Now that it has expanded the potential user base and gotten feedback from businesses who’ve tried it, Facebook is prepared for a more aggressive push.
Deals Locator
Facebook.com/deals starts with a quick overview video and a Facepile of friends who’ve claimed Deals. Below, visitors see Your Local Deals — a dynamic Bing map displaying nearby Deals based on a user’s IP address. Mousing over a Places icon reveals a hovercard with the business’ address, and links to directions and the current Deal on the location’s Places page.
To the right is a list the actual promotions offered, along with their associated Likes and comments. Users can use a search bar to view Deals in other cities, refreshing the map and list.
Previously, there was no aggregated list of Deals, making discovery cumbersome. Users could only see if any of the closest businesses offered Deals. This meant they’d often miss Deals that were in their city, some within a mile of them. The Deals locator will help those specifically hunting for promotions to find and claim them, exposing their network to the Deals feature as a whole. This exposure could snowball into widespread awareness, which would inspire more businesses to offer Deals.
Educating User and Business Owners
Under the How to Claim Deals tab, users can find a more detailed introduction to determining which businesses offer Deals and how to redeem them. The video tells users to look for yellow stickers on storefronts, which Facebook has mailed out to some businesses running Deals. Images walk users through the Deal redemption flow and illustrate the four types of Deals they’ll encounter: Individual, Friend, Loyalty, and Charity.
Users will also find links to the Help Center FAQ about Deals as well as a panel citing the devices and countries with access. Currently, this list is outdated, as it doesn’t mention Android devices.
The For Business Owners tab includes a “How Deals Work” video describing the value of incentivizing check-ins, and a “Creating a Deal” video tutorial for admins. The site also links to a downloadable .pdf ”Deals Guide for Businesses” hosted by Box.net. The .pdf and videos outline the three core benefits of using Deals:
Acquire customers
Spread the word
Build customer loyalty
The guide also includes a detailed breakdown of the differences between the four Deal types, the creation flow, and best practices. Some of the tips include:
Offering at least a 10% to 50% discount
Providing clear and succinct Deal summaries and redemption instruction copy
Monitoring campaign progress to avoid Deal fatigue and opportunism
Training employees to redeem Deals
Ensuring sufficient supply of offered gifts and staff to administer them
Setting up policies for handing issues with customers
Working with Facebook’s account managers to set up Deals across hundreds of locations if necessary
Buying Facebook ads to promote Deals
By providing these best practices, Facebook can reduce the likelihood that businesses will have an unsuccessful or stressful experience with Deals. The last point is the real motive behind the otherwise free feature. As with the recently launched Sponsored Stories ad unit, businesses can pay Facebook to increase the distribution of their Deals. If Facebook can demonstrate that Deals are simple to create and generate a solid return on investment, businesses will be eager to buy ads for them.
Facebook calls Deals “A new way to connect with customers”. While other location services like Foursquare have local promotions, Deals has greater potential because it’s self-serve and free for admins, and incentivizes users to expose or even bring their friends to a business. The educational and discovery resources on Facebook.com/deals will help the feature approach the tipping point to rapid growth.
Some of the world’s largest media companies and game publishers have made major acquisitions of social game developers in the last 18 months. At the same time, we have seen even more consolidation in the space through several acquisitions of small-to-midsize developers. Now in 2011, what do the shifting landscapes in the media and games industries mean for M&A activity, and potential acquisition targets, in the year ahead? Additionally, how important will factors like game design and creative content be when some players are able to leverage a significant marketing advantage?
The following panel discussion took place at Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 last week, and featured leaders from Zynga, Facebook, Playdom, and ThinkEquity.
Facebook spent $130,000 on lobbying legislators and federal agencies in the fourth quarter of last year, according to disclosures. That’s three times as much as it did during the same time a year earlier, when it spent $38,117.
The company’s new priorities this quarter included speaking at a hearing on potential “do not track” legislation, which would allow consumers to opt-out of tracking and behaviorally-targeted advertising. Because Facebook’s ads are all targeted based on what users explicitly share or “like,” any “do not track” legislation would probably not have a large impact on the company’s ad revenues.
Facebook also lobbied House representatives and U.S. Senators on how foreign governments restrict Internet access — a sensitive issue after the Egyptian government clamped down on mobile phone and Internet communications during nationwide protests last weekend.
The company’s director of public policy, Tim Sparapani, and Adam Conner, Facebook’s earliest full-time employee in Washington D.C., also reached out to the White House and the Federal Bureau of Investigation on federal policy around cyber security and data retention.
As Facebook’s reach grows, it increasingly has to deal with requests from law enforcement officials for private user data. Momentum is building to revise a 24-year-old law, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, that governs whether warrants are required to access information shared through e-mail, social networking and mobile phones.
Facebook has rolled out its location-based promotions service Deals to the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Users of the Facebook for iPhone and Androids apps and the mobile site can access special discounts and charity donations in exchange for a check-in in via Facebook Places that spreads a brand’s name in their stream.
Some are criticizing the low value of the initial U.K. promotions, but launch partner brands including Mazda, Starbucks and 02 are merely being conservative while they determine the return Deals can generate.
The international expansion of Deals is following a similar path as Places, which it’s built upon. The U.K. was the second country outside the U.S. to gain Places access, followed shortly by France and Italy. Facebook has so far skipped launching Deals in Canada, Japan, and Australia, which were other countries which received Places relatively early. These could be among the next countries to get Deals.
Facebook has been releasing Places and Deals in nations with a high penetration of smart phones. Having a large user base with mobile devices that can easily access the features is important to achieving a critical mass necessary to successful launch. Like many Facebook features, Places and Deals work best when friends are using them too, so Facebook needs to time the launches with when a country’s users are prepared to adopt them.
Deals has gotten off to a relatively slow start, without many businesses offering on-going promotions. Instead they’ve been offering Deals in limited quantities that are often quickly exhausted. As Places and Deals expands to more devices and countries, brands will likely expand their promotional offerings to more persuasively and consistently incentivize the cheap, high-quality exposure check-ins produce.
The Facebook Marketing Bible has enabled thousands of marketers, social application developers, publishers, and entrepreneurs to navigate and get the most out of the increasingly sophisticated marketing opportunities on Facebook.
The web edition of the Facebook Marketing Bible is comprised of detailed resource pages, comprehensive how-to guides, and case studies analyzing today’s most successful marketing and advertising campaigns on Facebook.
In addition, Inside Network is pleased to announce that through February 28th all customers who purchase the Facebook Marketing Bible will also receive a free $25 Facebook Ads advertising credit, courtesy of Facebook (see terms).
Now that Facebook has crossed the 500 million active user mark, there’s never been a better time to reach your target audience through marketing on Facebook.
The February 2011 edition includes updates on the following topics:
New frontiers in brand and performance marketing on Facebook, including opportunities within social games.
The best Facebook Pages strategies and designs and how any business can adapt them for higher fan counts, and more engaged users.
Facebook’s profile redesign and what it means for advertisers and Page administrators.
The latest featured Facebook’s campaigns that show you how other brands are testing Facebook’s evolving marketing opportunities.
Offline promotion for your Facebook Page, Place or campaign through the company's recently launched Like Button stickers and QR codes.
Facebook Places and Deals, the company’s evolving location-based feature that presents new marketing opportunities for businesses both on and offline.
Facebook Groups, a new way for users to connect and collaborate with others who share their interests and affiliations, and new ideas for marketing with Groups on Facebook.
Facebook Questions, and how these new user-facing feature can offer a new ‘no-cost’ marketing channel for brands, advertisers, and developers.
Facebook's Open Graph and Social Plugins, the features and code that brings "instant personalization" to your website off Facebook.
Facebook's latest advertising guidelines updates and what they mean for advertisers throughout the ecosystem.
Audience growth and engagement, including best practices for holding on to fans, keeping marketing channels open, and re-engaging your audience on Facebook.
Plus, comprehensive walk-throughs of Facebook’s tools for advertisers, web content publishers, and Page administrators.
Learn more about the February 2011 edition of the Facebook Marketing Bible at FacebookMarketingBible.com.
Table of Contents excerpted from the full February 2011 Edition
Building Your Brand through Facebook Pages
Facebook Pages and Public Profiles
The Profile Page – A Walk-Through
Designing Your Facebook Page
The Wall Tab for Making Pages Dynamic and Viral
How to Choose a Landing 'Tab' for your Facebook Page
Adding Custom Modules to Your Page
Communicating Through Your Facebook Page
The Basics of Status Updates for Pages
Demographic Targeting for Status Updates
Updating Facebook Page Status Via Text
Receive Page Status Updates Via Text
How to Avoid Having Your Page, Open Graph Object, or Application Unliked, Removed, Muted, or Blacklisted
More Ways to Promote Your Facebook Page
How Brands Can Advertise within Social Games
The Basics of Status Updates for Pages
Increase Engagement and Insight through Status Tagging
How to Grow Your Page's Audience through Page Invitations
SMS Subscription Service for Pages
Branded Virtual Gifts on Facebook Pages for Viral Advertising
Advanced Strategies for Facebook Pages
The Best Facebook Page Strategies and the Pages That Use Them
Strategy: How to Promote Your Page in 6 Steps
Marketing Strategy: 4 Reasons Why Marketers Should Invest in Pages Before Groups
10 Key SEO Strategies Every Facebook Page Owner Should Know
8 Best Practices for Retailers on Facebook
Marketers Actively Bidding for Generic Facebook Pages
More Ways to Market on Facebook: Questions, Places, Open Graph, and Deals
How to Create a Deal with Facebook Deals
The Places We’ll Go: How marketers can use Facebook’s new location features
Facebook Questions – A Walk-Through
How Marketers Can Get The Most Out Of Facebook Questions
Implementation Options: Like Button
Facebook CTO Bret Taylor Discusses the Open Graph
Quick Note on Groups and SEO
Facebook Ads for Brand Marketers
Facebook Ads: Read Before You Get Started
Facebook Ads – A Walk-Through
The Facebook Ads Manager
Facebook Self-Serve Ad Types: Page Ads
Facebook Self-Serve Ad Types: Event Ads
Tools and How-Tos for Marketers
Facebook "Insights" Metrics Dashboard for Page Managers
Using Third Party Tools to Manage Your Facebook Page
How Page Owners Can Restrict Content for Underage Users
How to Export Your Facebook Page Updates to Twitter
Ads Targeting on Facebook
10 Powerful Targeting Methods Facebook Ads Every Performance Advertiser Should Know
Friends of Connections Targeting
Facebook Ads: Language Targeting
4 Connection Targeting Tests Every Advertiser Should Run
From Keyword Targeting to People Targeting: Understanding Performance Advertising with Facebook's Tim Kendall
Time Scheduling
Policies, Privacy, and Guidelines to Watch
Promotional/Sweepstakes Policies for Facebook Pages
The Future of Sharing on Facebook: A Hybrid Public/Private Model
Facebook’s Guidelines for Promoting Pages Outside Facebook
At least going by growth in number of monthly active users over the past week, Facebook’s application ecosystem is looking more diverse than it has at some points in the past.
At the top of the fastest-growing apps this week we have Badoo, a dating site that recently ported itself into Facebook as a canvas application and added in a quiz (that other developers have been claiming violates Facebook’s platform policies). Beyond any debatable viral aspects to its growth, we suspect some Facebook users are genuinely drawn to the mixture of often revealing dating profiles in the app that appear to be brought in directly from Badoo’s home site.
The app, for whatever reasons, grew by an eye-popping 9.59 million monthly actives in the past week to become the fourth-largest on the platform, with 32.2 million MAU.
Next up we have Social Statistics, one of several statistics, quizzing, gifting and other self-expression apps that appear today. It grew by more than 75% to reach 3.36 million MAU. These types of apps are typically simple, and might rise and fall quickly based on how Facebook feels about their adherence to platform policies — you need to keep looking down the list to find surprising app appearances.
BandPage by RootMusic is one. It’s an app that offers customization features for musicians’ Pages, that has been doing quite well for months. Another music Page customizer app is also on the list: My Band, from ReverbNation. Today they have 16.1 million and 5.32 million MAU respectively. As MySpace’s traffic continues to fall, and as Facebook’s continues to rise, these companies and others are figuring out how to provide high-quality Page experiences for music fans — and doing pretty well by the looks of things.
Beyond the usual mix of of gaming titles, which we’ll be looking at over on Inside Social Games this morning, and the booming Facebook for Android, which we’ll be covering on Inside Mobile Apps, there’s another type of platform app showing up today as well.
Connect integrations, whether Microsoft’s long-surging Windows Live Messenger social version of IM, or Yahoo!‘s newer homepage feature, or Yelp‘s steadily popular way of finding and sharing with reviewer/Facebook friends show how Facebook is succeeding in spreading horizontally across other types of communication mediums on the web.
There were interesting tactics in the Facebook campaigns we looked at this week. Dentyne is combining a television ad campaign with its Facebook Page to try to engage fans over a period of a few months, New Belgium Brewing and Outside Magazine are trying to use a love for dogs to gain network exposure and Bud Light is using the promise of its anticipated Super Bowl ads to get people to flock to its Page.
Core Mechanic: The Pop N'Play game which allows users to play a game that revolves around Dentyne gum once a day from Jan. 13 through March 31 to have a chance of winning a Samsung phone with Sprint service (for three months), gift cards and Dentyne merchandise. The game and campaigns maintain strong and consistent branding throughout.
Method: Dentyne's Safe Breath Alliance campaign is part of a television-Facebook campaign featuring celebrity Marlon Wayans. Part of the campaign is a game, Pop N'Play, that revolves around a virtual pack of Dentyne gum. In order to play the game users must enter their name, address, phone number and email to register, then they choose a piece of gum in a virtual Dentyne pack, and if they choose a winning piece, may win a prize. This is an interesting tactic because it allows for continued engagement during the two months the game runs.
Impact: The Page has 141,400 Likes so far and is growing rapidly.
New Belgium Brewing and Outside Magazine's Mighty Arrow
Core Mechanic: An app located on the Mighty Arrow tab of both New Belgium Brewing's and Outside Magazine's Pages asking users to upload photos of their dogs and share them to their stream.
Method: To promote the release of New Belgium Brewing's spring seasonal beer, Mighty Arrow Pale Ale, the company partnered with Outside Magazine with the launch of the Mighty Arrow Facebook app. The Friend2Friend -powered app is the landing tab for both Pages and is being promoted on the Wall. Users click on the app, install it and upload a photo of their dog, adding a caption, publishing it to their stream and inviting friends if they choose, for the chance to win dog-related prizes like Frisbees, dog collars and subscriptions to Outside Magazine. Additionally, for every participant the companies will donate $1 (up to $10,000) to the Humane Society of the U.S. So, the app is a philanthropic effort to attract dog/nature lovers who like beer.
Impact: So far more than 3,140 users have used the app, according to the count on the app itself. Outside Magazine's Likes went up about 1,000 since Mighty Arrow's debut on January 28.
To see the rest of campaigns, check the Cases section of Inside Facebook's Facebook Marketing Bible.
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