| Payvment’s Shopping Mall App is a Competitor to Amazon on Facebook Posted: 24 Feb 2011 07:00 AM PST Payvment now aggregates items from the 1.2 million products in the 50,000 ecommerce storefront Faceboom Page tab apps it powers to create Shopping Mall. The Facebook app lets users search, browse, Like, and buy products and will help small merchants with few fans gain customers for free. By addressing the ecommerce store discovery problem on Facebook, Payvment will lure more merchants to its service and create a viable competitor to Amazon, Etsy, and other online marketplaces. 
Payvment’s core function is allowing merchants to set up an ecommerce store as a tab on their Facebook Page, allowing users to buy their products without leaving the site. The company secured $6 million in funding in December to hire more engineers and support staff. However, Payvment still hasn’t clearly defined a business model, insisting it will remain free for merchants and won’t markup prices for users. Instead, it plans to eventually charge merchants for increased visibility. 
When users visit Shopping Mall, the first products they’ll see are those that their friends Like. They’ll also see browsing panes for celebrity sellers, bestsellers, and recently viewed products. A ”Recommended for You” pane shows relevant products based on the Likes from a user’s profiles, such as their favorite movies or music. 
In the left sidebar, users can drill down through categories and sub-categories to browse specific types of products. Categories can be sorted by price, bestseller, and other filters. Each product page features Like and Share buttons, reviews, a unique URL, suggestions of similar products, and a link back to the seller’s Facebook Page so merchants can gain more fans and show off their entire product line. 
 Shopping Mall’s home page, and each category and sub-category also display a top 10 list of most Liked products. This will inspire merchants to offer discounts and organize marketing campaigns in order to secure enough Likes to reach the leaderboard for their category, or across all categories, netting them exposure to a wide audience.
The lists only count Likes from the past 30 days, so new merchants will have a chance to break into the top 10 lists, similar to Apple’s App Store charts. As lists are based on Likes instead of sales, merchants will be pushing their fans to create fruitful links from their profile walls to their products within Shopping Mall, also virally spreading Payvment’s app. Users can click on the “Friends Like” link at the top of the app to see lists of all the products each of their friends have Liked, which can make birthday and holiday shopping easy. There are a few shortcomings that Payvment will look to improve on in future updates. Right now, Shopping Mall is only available for Payvment’s US merchants, but it will soon integrate European stores as well. Users can currently only search for products, not merchants. Payvment doesn’t directly sell digital downloads, so artists and developers looking to sell media or games need to use Payvment’s API and deliver users an off-site download code via email. Otherwise, Shopping Mall works smoothly and delivers a full-featured, social shopping experience to a platform hosting hundreds of millions of potential customers. Now merchants with zero fans can immediately start making sales. Taylor asks “why would you launch a dot.com store? It costs so much to acquire customers. On Facebook, the audience is built in.”  |
| Syncapse Gets $25 Million in Funding from ABS Capital For Enterprise Social Marketing Posted: 24 Feb 2011 05:00 AM PST  Enterprise social media marketing platform and service provider Syncapse has closed a $25 million Series C funding round with ABS Capital. CEO Michael Scissons tells us the money will go towards accelerating development of its platform and expanding its global services group.
Syncapse is one of the biggest companies in the Page management, custom app development, and social measurement space, with over 150 employees, including over 40 in Europe. The Syncapse Platform, formerly SocialTalk, lets clients build and manage Facebook Pages, Facebook applications, YouTube channels, Twitter accounts, blogs, and handle conversation management, compliance, influence management, and measurement. In September, Syncapse purchased Facebook app developer Nudge. That team is now building app templates and custom apps for Syncapse’s clients. Scissons believes that the world’s largest corporations and brands want to work with a reputable company with global presence, opposed to the many smaller companies moving into the space. He explained it took his company a year to get situated in Europe, so he believes the high barrier to the enterprise industry will allow Syncapse to repel the multitude of new entrants.  Clients aren’t signing long term deals with companies like Syncapse because there’s still a lot of potential for disruption. However, Scissions thinks the funding will help it become more established, answer more client needs across channels, and emerge as a leader in social marketing regardless of whether its on Facebook or forthcoming services.
When asked whether Syncapse would consider adding Facebook Ads API services to its offering, as Experian and Vitrue recently have, he explained that he believes most corporations and brands want an agency to handle all their advertising, and so it won’t move in that direction at this time. With Facebook now allowing Pages to use iframe tab applications, 2011 could be a healthy year for funding and acquisitions in the Page management and social marketing industry as companies look to add iframe apps and other services to their offering. Scissons agrees, but thinks these companies will mostly focus on smaller brands and local businesses. Meanwhile, we see Syncapse and other larger platform and service providers like Buddy Media winning the cash-flush multinationals.  |
| Launch Conference 2011 Day One: Top Facebook Integrations Posted: 23 Feb 2011 05:36 PM PST Today and tomorrow, 40 companies are introducing new or revamped products at San Francisco’s Launch conference. Here, we’ll review the products with significant Facebook integrations, both good and bad, and how the companies fit into the Facebook development ecosystem. Two standouts were Jibe that turns a user’s Facebook friends into references that can move their job application to the top of the stack, and Chute that lets users quickly backup or share multiple photos from their mobile device. Jibe – Mobile Job Applications with Social References  Jibe is a job search and application platform that lets users append references of their Facebook and LinkedIn connections who are associated with the job to their resumes. For instance, users could attach links to profiles of friends who currently work at the employer or who work in the same space.
Employers pay Jibe to bring them high quality applicants, and users can pay for credits that allow them to apply to jobs more frequently instead of earning credits by sharing jobs or the site with friends. At Launch, Jibe announced the released of a mobile-optimized site that allows users to complete the entire search and application from their mobile device, as well as call contacts they’re including as references. Though the service has a deep Facebook integration, including registration, login, and the ability to pull information like education and work history, none of a user’s other Facebook data is shared with potential employers. Only links to the profiles of the selected references are included with the resume. 
Users in more prestigious industries may want to take more care with their job applications and as such wouldn’t want to use a mobile interface. However, there is a market for users who want to quickly apply to lots of jobs, but still leverage their social network. Jibe will be competing with services including BranchOut, Pursuit, and Work For Us that concentrate on using social to power job discovery, rather than to increase the liklihood that an application will be noticed. Disconnect – Web Browsing Privacy Protection  Disconnect is a Chrome, RockMelt and Safari browser extension the blocks websites from tracking your habits or using your personal information from Facebook, Google, and other services. Facebook’s social plugins, ads by OpenX, and other panels that require user data appear as opaque blue boxes unless a user hovers over them to see the publisher and clicks to reveal the content.
The product appeals to both less savvy users who are scared about data leaks they don’t understand, as well as very savvy users who know exactly what data they want kept private. Disconnect’s founder, former Google engineer Brian Kennish, says the company could make money by layering premium services over the free core product. 
Disconnect accomplishes its task elegantly, allowing users to easily tell what data the sites they visit are requesting, and opt in or out of providing that data. There are tools such as ReclaimPrivacy to help users protect their privacy within Facebook, but fewer that concentrate on how Facebook data is used by third-party websites. The challenge for Disconnect will be acquiring enough users who are willing to pay. Appconomy Group{in} – Cross-Social Platform Groups for Mobile  Appconomy’s Group{in} is a mobile app that aggregates content from Facebook Groups, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, phone, and SMS into a mobile app to reduce friction from switching between these mediums.
Users can read and publish updates from and to these mediums, private message group members, and receive notifications about new content. For businesses, Group{in} can also hook into CRM systems to bring customers into groups. 
CEO and co-founder Brian Magierski said the service will help people who have friends who aren’t on Facebook, but the conference’s judges explained that this is a rapidly shrinking demographic. It also lacks several features available on the networks it aggregates from. There’s a lot of competition in the groups space, and by not focusing squarely on one use case and doing that best there’ll be no core audience with which to gain traction. Chute – Mobile Photo Backup and Sharing  Chute is a mobile app that allows users to easily backup and share photos from their mobile device. It protects users from losing their media if their device is broken, lost, or stolen, and removes the friction associated with uploading mobile photos to one’s computer. Photos can be viewed on the Chute mobile app, website, or desktop app as well social sites and services including Facebook, Twitter, and Picasa.
Chute also provides an API so other applications can integrate content uploaded to Chute. Monetization possibilities include charging users for storage space. 
As content creation and sharing applications like Instagram proliferate, users need a better way to protect the photos they’re taking. Many users end up with hundreds of photos on their mobile devices because they’re not backed up, slowing down their devices. Chute allows users to save and remove these photos in order to get to “photo-zero”, similar to the concept of inbox-zero or having no unorganized emails. For Facebook users, the ability to drag to select multiple photos and share them with friends is a big improvement over Facebook’s native apps that only allow users to share one photo at a time. With clear value for users and the fact that it complements the rapidly growing mobile content creation app space, Chute has a lot of potential.  |
| Facebook Announces More Ways to Publish to Users Who Click Like Buttons Posted: 23 Feb 2011 01:03 PM PST Millions of websites and social games have implemented Facebook’s Like button social plugin, yet relatively few are taking advantage of the capability to publish news feed stories to users that click those buttons. In an effort to increase awareness of this option, Facebook posted to the Developers Blog explaining three ways admins can publish to their Like buttons, including through the new “Use Facebook as Page” feature. 
The blog post, and our own conversations with Open Graph page owners, indicate that many web publishers, brands, and game developers don’t know that when users click their Open Graph Like buttons, they’re not only creating a link back to the content on their wall, but are also subscribing to future news feed updates. This option, launched at last year’s f8, allows admins to engage a subset of their audience with highly relevant updates (although users have far less control over managing this incoming information). For instance, retailer Urban Outfitters has Like buttons on every product in their website’s ecommerce store. It sells a wide variety of products, from clothing to bikes. If the Urban Outfitters Facebook Page posted an updated about a new line of bikes it was carrying, only a small part of their audience would find it interesting, while a large portion of their audiences would find the update irrelevant or even spammy, leading them to click the Unlike button. 
Instead, Urban Outfitters could publish the update about bikes to only those users who’ve clicked Like buttons on their bikes. By sending product-specific updates to those who Like that type of product, Urban Outfitters can send higher relevancy updates more frequently but to less people, increasing click through rates and driving more traffic to their website without spamming all 600,000 fans of the Facebook Page. Previously, admins could publish to their Like buttons programmatically through the Graph API by following the Open Graph page documentation, or by clicking the “Admin Page” link that admins see next to the Like buttons on their site or game.  Now, admins can also publish to their Like buttons through the “Use Facebook as Page” option released as part of the 2011 Page redesign. By clicking the Account drop-down menu in the top right corner of the Facebook window and selecting “Use Facebook as Page”, or by visiting the Page Manager, admins can select to use Facebook as one of their Like buttons. They can then post updates through the Publisher just as they would with a traditional Facebook Page.
News feed stories published through any of these means will display the name of the Like button or application it’s connected to in the “via…” section between the timestamp and the story’s own Like button. As more admins realize they have this option, users will begin to see more stories in their news feeds from Like buttons they’ve clicked. However, users currently have no central way of managing their Open Graph Likes. In contrast to the Facebook Pages they’ve Liked that can be managed through the profile editor, users can only Unlike Open Graph pages by visiting the original site hosting the button or by removing the update from their news feed and choosing the “Unlike” option. Facebook needs to make sure user management tools evolve alongside publishing options, or users won’t have an easy way to preempt news feed spam. Once an Open Graph Like manager is in place, the option to publish to Like buttons will help users see high-quality niche content about specific pieces of content they care about from across the web. To access our in-depth guide to Like button publishing including strategies for ecommerce stores, news sites, and applications as well as tips to keep your Pages and Like buttons from being Unliked, check out the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network's comprehensive manual to marketing through Facebook.  |
| Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: Digital Chocolate, Come2Play, & More Posted: 23 Feb 2011 12:13 PM PST The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities in the Facebook Platform and social gaming ecosystem. Here are this week's highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at Digital Chocolate, Come2Play, Arkadium, and Daglow Entertainment. 
Daglow Entertainment Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.  |
| CityVille, Badoo, Birthdays and Horoscopes on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Apps by DAU Posted: 23 Feb 2011 08:04 AM PST  Birthdays and horoscopes were popular on our list of Top 20 Growing Facebook Applications by daily active users this week, information we gather from AppData, our tracking service covering traffic for apps on Facebook. In addition there were several Connect apps that appeared on the list, apps in Turkish, games and an app to show you the activity on your Page were also on the list. Note that Facebook has been experiencing reporting delays since the 20th so this data is only a partial look at what’s been happening in the past week.
Top Gainers This Week | Name | DAU | Gain | Gain,% | | 1. |  CityVille | 20,731,163 | +593,817 | +3% | | 2. |  Badoo | 2,935,517 | +377,217 | +15% | | 3. |  Birthday Calendar | 432,024 | +367,168 | +566% | | 4. |  The Fortune Teller | 1,008,448 | +348,027 | +53% | | 5. |  Windows Live Messenger | 13,864,879 | +291,448 | +2% | | 6. |  Daily Horoscope | 338,233 | +251,400 | +290% | | 7. |  Samsung Mobile | 1,740,558 | +149,584 | +9% | | 8. |  Car Town | 1,192,643 | +144,507 | +14% | | 9. |  HTC Sense | 4,572,071 | +137,166 | +3% | | 10. |  Monster Galaxy | 528,769 | +123,602 | +31% | | 11. |  Birthday reminder | 130,045 | +122,433 | +1,608% | | 12. |  Yahoo! | 6,393,107 | +113,116 | +2% | | 13. |  Ravenwood Fair | 1,159,160 | +95,216 | +9% | | 14. |  Birthday Cards | 476,861 | +88,352 | +23% | | 15. |  Gamers Unite! | 319,942 | +83,002 | +35% | | 16. |  Gourmet Ranch | 175,621 | +80,075 | +84% | | 17. |  Bubble Shooter | 81,754 | +75,921 | +1,302% | | 18. |  Who Loves You More | 125,787 | +74,955 | +147% | | 19. |  HootSuite | 104,536 | +69,411 | +198% | | 20. |  Komşu Çiftlik | 554,460 | +64,803 | +13% | Zynga's CityVille topped the list after it grew by 593,800 DAU this week, representing 3% of its 20.7 million total. Dating app Badoo was second after seeing 377,200 DAU, pushing the app's total to just under 3 million. Third on the list was American Greetings' Birthday Calendar, which saw 367,200 DAU this week; the app provides greeting cards for users to send to friends for birthdays and other holidays. Another app, Birthday Reminder, grew by 122,400 DAU; the app allows users to automatically post birthday greetings with a message and video to the Walls of their Facebook friends. Finally, RockYou's Birthday Cards grew by 88,400 DAU; the app allows users to create a custom birthday or other card for their friends. 
A few horoscope apps were on the list. The Fortune Teller, available in English or Turkish or German, grew by 348,000 DAU. Then there was Daily Horoscope which saw 251,400 DAU this week, with growth almost exclusive to Turkey. Who Loves You More is an app that shows users the Top Ten friends who interact with your profile, which grew by about 75,000 DAU. Games in English, French and Turkish made up the rest of the list.  |
Just a friendly reminder: Inside Network is coming to Berlin tonight for a happy hour at Backfabrik, the headquarters of the European game developer Wooga.
Developer can look forward to no longer having to explain to new team members where their developer requests are, and being able to instead concentrate on designing and testing their apps.
Microsoft has been rapidly expanding its Facebook integrations this last week, launching a new version of the 
Facebook looks like it’s busy hiring people both in the U.S. and in its Dublin, Ireland office, according to the listings we saw added and removed from the 
Facebook made a big hire this week 
