Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- How to Choose Open Graph Tags That Maximize the Value of Your Like Buttons
- Inside Virtual Goods: Profiling the Social Gaming Middle Market 2011, Is Here
- Rfave Gives Local Recommendations Based on Strangers With Similar Facebook Likes
- 15 More Ad Providers Sign on to Facebook Terms, Total Reaches 77
| How to Choose Open Graph Tags That Maximize the Value of Your Like Buttons Posted: 29 Mar 2011 02:35 PM PDT
The following is an excerpt from the Facebook Marketing Bible, the comprehensive guide to marketing your company, app, brand, or website using Facebook. The full version of this article, available through a Facebook Marketing Bible subscription, includes a breakdown of the significance of every Open Graph tag option, strategies for adding Like buttons with feed publishing capabilities to news articles and other digital content that typically aren’t allowed to publish to the feed, and instructions for implementing, testing, and editing Open Graph tags. By adding Open Graph <meta> tags to the <HEAD> of your website, you can classify and describe the content you attach Like buttons to. This allows Facebook to present the right image, category, and other information about your site when Likes of your content appear in news feed stories and user profiles. The type of tags you choose also define the functionality of your Like buttons.
To generate Open Graph tags:
[For instructions on how to create a Like button, visit the Facebook Marketing Bible entry "The Like Button Style Guide: How to Pick the Design That's Right for Your Website.] Configuring Your Open Graph TagsThe Like button documentation page includes an Open Graph tag generator. First, you need to fill out the following entry fields with information about the web page you’ve installed the Like button on:
Open Graph TypesThe og:type tag determines whether the Like will appear in the interests section of the profiles of users who click the button and where within that section. It also determines whether you can publish future updates to users who click the button. There are two kinds of types: Likes With Types Representing Real World Objects Have Publishing Rights and Appear in the ProfileWhen a user clicks the Like button on any Open Graph page tagged with a type representing a real world object, the admin of that Like button may then publish news feed updates to that user in the future. This is an extraordinarily valuable capability that all publishers should take advantage of. For instructions and strategies for how to publish to the audiences of your Like buttons, visit the Facebook Marketing Bible entry “Publishing to Those Who Have Clicked a Like Button on Your Open Graph Website or Application“. Likes of real-life objects will appear in the area of the profile interests section that corresponds to the og:type tag category. There is a hierarchy of visibility of different og:types for real objects, as the interest categories that house certain types appear before others within a user’s profile. Some types are relegated to a very low visibility “Other Pages” category, including most brands, products, local businesses, restaurants, companies, and organizations. Therefore, Likes with types that fall into the Other Pages category are much less visible, and therefore less valuable.
Likes With Types Representing Digital Content Do Not Have Publishing Rights or Appear in the Profile There is one og:type tag that does not represent a real-life object — “Article”. Facebook requests that pieces of content such as news articles, blog posts, web video clips, photos and similar content be labeled with the og:type “Article”. Likes of content labeled “Article” generate an initial news feed story, but will not appear in the interests section of a user’s profile. These “Article Likes” also don’t permit the Like button’s owner to publish news feed stories to the user in the future. This is the second entry in a three-part series on how use the Like button. The first entry, “The Like Button Style Guide” explains how to choose the Like button implementation that will drive the most clicks and thereby generate the most referral traffic for your website. Access the full Open Graph tags guide for descriptions of the remaining tags, a method for attaining feed publishing privileges for Like buttons on news articles and blog posts, and details on editing and testing your tags as well as the other parts of our series on the Like button in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network's industry leading resource for marketing and advertising on Facebook.  | ||
| Inside Virtual Goods: Profiling the Social Gaming Middle Market 2011, Is Here Posted: 29 Mar 2011 11:00 AM PDT
Inside Network is proud to announce a new original research report by Justin Smith and Charles Hudson profiling social gaming developers outside the largest, most established companies, entitled Inside Virtual Goods: Profiling the Social Gaming Middle Market 2011. This report presents direct interview results from today's most influential small and mid-sized developers aside from larger players Zynga, Playfish, Playdom, CrowdStar, and Kabam.
Inside Virtual Goods: Profiling the Social Gaming Middle Market 2011 is available for the first time today. What are top mid-sized developers' expectations for the social gaming space in 2011? How will existing players fare as Facebook shifts the social gaming landscape through the rollout of Facebook Credits and continued changes to the platform? Inside Virtual Goods: Profiling the Social Gaming Middle Market 2011 shares insights directly from the front lines on social game monetization, development, and customer acquisition and growth. About the Report Inside Virtual Goods: Profiling the Social Gaming Middle Market 2011 shares insights from over two-dozen developers into key questions facing social gaming in 2011. As with previous editions of Inside Virtual Goods, researchers Justin Smith and Charles Hudson have conducted several months of original research comprising interviews with developers and entrepreneurs in social gaming. This edition of Inside Virtual Goods will present exclusive interview results from the developers themselves, preceded by original profiles of all companies included in the survey. Social gaming is among today's most competitive areas in technology; specific responses have been anonymized to encourage authentic, critical response. What We Cover
See the full table of contents below: Table of Contents New Insights on the Competitive Landscape In 2010, social games began to show what kind of value can be created on top of social networks. 2011 will be an even more important year. The social gaming market is evolving rapidly against a backdrop of shifting challenges, and still-emerging opportunities — social gaming will be this year's industry to watch. If you're involved, or are considering jumping in, Inside Virtual Goods will be one of your most important tools. One year of original data and exclusive in-depth reports delivered on a quarterly basis is $2,495 and contains:
About the Authors Justin Smith Founder, Inside Network Justin Smith is the founder of Inside Network, the first company dedicated to providing news and market research to the Facebook platform and social gaming ecosystem. Justin leads Inside Network's Inside Virtual Goods and AppData research and data services, and serves as co-editor of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games. Prior to Inside Network, he was formerly Head of Product at Watercooler, one of the leading application and game developers on the Facebook Platform. Prior to Watercooler, Justin was an early employee at Xfire, the largest social utility for gamers, which was sold to Viacom in 2006. Justin holds a degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford University. Former VP Business Development, Serious Business Charles Hudson is the former VP of Business Development for Serious Business, a leading social games developer on the Facebook platform. Prior to Serious Business, he was formerly the Sr. Director for Business Development at Gaia Interactive, a leading online hangout for teens. Prior to Gaia, Charles worked in New Business Development at Google and focused on new partnership opportunities for early-stage products in the advertising, mobile, and e-commerce markets. Prior to joining Google, he was a Product Manager for IronPort Systems, a leading provider of anti-spam hardware appliances that was acquired by Cisco Systems for $830 million in 2007. Charles holds an MBA and BA from Stanford University. Get The Annual Membership Get Annual Membership (Includes Report + 3 Additional Quarterly Issues): $2,495
OR Buy Single Report: $995
The one year subscription includes three quarterly updates on key developments in the space. Or, you can download just this report. Index of companies profiled: 50 Cubes, 6waves, A Bit Lucky, Casual Collective, Cie Games, Digital Chocolate, Five Minutes, Funzio, Gaia Online, GameHouse, GSN, Happy Elements, iWin/Backstage, Lionside, Lolapps, Metrogames, MindJolt, OMGPOP, PopCap, RockYou, Social Point, TheBroth, Ubisoft, Wooga, ZipZapPlay  | ||
| Rfave Gives Local Recommendations Based on Strangers With Similar Facebook Likes Posted: 29 Mar 2011 10:23 AM PDT
Unlike Yelp, which shows people what is generally popular, or what their friends prefer, RFave’s creators Erin and Trey Bean wanted to recommend services that are popular amongst people with similar Likes and interests. Your friends might not have the same preferences as you, but Rfave can give recommendations from people who align with user on choices such as Macs or PCs, beer or wine, or hamburgers versus veggie burgers. To date, Facebook Connect has been used more for displaying the Likes and actions of one friend to another, rather than creating more holistic recommendations engines. Rfave could be especially useful to those with a rich profile of interests but few friends, or those who’s interests differ sharply from their friends. Rfave allows you to quickly and easily make your own recommendations in dozens of categories. Adding a category is relatively simple and the site uses Google to find businesses near you. The service is available in cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, San Antonio, Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., London, and many more. Rfave is intuitive, but perhaps because the site is still in beta and hasn’t built up a large user base, it's not particularly practical. In places like Los Angles, where there are simply more people, there were more recommendations available, but in a city like San Antonio with many less millions of people, almost none of the categories contained recommendations. Adding your own recommendations to your profile ends up increasing the number of suggestions significantly, as even the Los Angeles entries were pretty bare. Yelp, TripAdvisor and other similar recommendation services could do well to create similar Facebook-enabled recommendations, as the gist of Rfave makes a lot of sense. People want to be able to choose services not strictly based on geography, ratings, or friends, but by a socially-enabled mix of them. The company has a Facebook app Page, but could probably do more to promote itself utilizing a Page. This would allow Rfave to build its community and fill out their inventory of recommendations.  | ||
| 15 More Ad Providers Sign on to Facebook Terms, Total Reaches 77 Posted: 29 Mar 2011 08:49 AM PDT For the past month, Facebook has been enforcing its rule that developers only use advertising services provided by those companies that have agreed to abide by its ad provider terms. Meanwhile, more ad companies have been signing on to the terms — 15 of them since the beginning of March, by our count, to total 77. The list of new companies is below; the official list is here. Google is still missing, of course. Facebook’s terms prevent ad companies from doing things like repurposing Facebook user data for their own targeting technologies. Because Google collects and uses data about users for targeting purposes, services like its AdSense ad network for web sites could be impaired if it complied with the terms. Meanwhile, other ad providers who have long been active on the web, like Adperio, are now on the list. So are some long-time offer providers, including DoubleDing, and a mix of startups. Here are the 15 additions that we’ve tracked over the course of the month. Let us know in comments if you have any changes or additions.
Note that while the above companies have agreed to the terms, Facebook also says it holds developers responsible for what ad providers do within their applications. For more details, see our chronological coverage of the list since it emerged last December.  |
Here we’ll teach you the difference between the various Open Graph tag options, and help you pick the tags that will allow you to derive the maximum lifetime value from the users who click your Like buttons.
Charles Hudson
Rfave is a Facebook Connect-integrated website that aims to use your Facebook profile to match you with potential restaurants, dentists, mechanics and other services in your local area.
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