Facebook Wins Search-Related Patent for Visual Tags

Following a social-focused search patent it received last fall, Facebook has received another this week, titled: “Visual tags for search results generated from social network information.”

The new patent (7,890,501) was a continuation of the previous one (7,788,260). This means than rather than adding to the previous patent, it covers a different embodiment of what was already claimed.

Both patents have the following abstract:

Search results, including sponsored links and algorithmic search results, are generated in response to a query, and are marked based on frequency of clicks on the search results by members of social network who are within a predetermined degree of separation from the member who submitted the query. The markers are visual tags and comprise either a text string or an image.

Numbers 951 and 952 in the diagram below are present in both patents, and illustrate the visual tags that the new one covers.

The title of the former one was: “Ranking search results based on the frequency of clicks on the search results by members of a social network who are within a predetermined degree of separation.”

Microsoft Releases New Version of Bing Bar Toolbar With Facebook Integration

Today, Microsoft releases a new version of its Bing Bar downloadable browser tool bar that includes several Facebook capabilities. Bing Bar users can see when they have new notifications, messages, and friend requests, and view an activity feed and photos from friends without visiting Facebook.com.

Though the Facebook features and other functions including maps, mail, translation, and rewards are somewhat useful, the Bing Bar is only available to users of Internet Explorer 7 or later running Windows 7, Vista, or XP, limiting its potential for adoption.

Microsoft has been a long time partner of Facebook, powering its internal search, selling some ad inventory, and most recently integrating Instant Personalization into Bing Search. The Bing Bar’s Facebook integration was developed independently, though, using Facebook’s APIs.

The Bing team claims this is the fastest, most lightweight toolbar available. Its main purpose is to expose users to various functionalities of Bing. The Bing Bar can provide one click directions to a searched business, display local weather, and translate web pages. Since the toolbar collects clickstream data, installs will help Microsoft refine its products and search result ranking algorithm.

However, for the Bing Bar to gain traction, Microsoft will have to battle a stigma against toolbars. Spammy, malware-ridden toolbars have been prevalent on the internet for years, so most users associate them with slowed down browsing and security concerns. To incentivize use, the Bing Bar offers rewards points for following suggested searches of current events. Users can redeem these points for prizes.

Once Windows Intenet Explorer users have downloaded and installed the Bing Bar and given it Facebook authorization, they’ll see an orange star on the toolbar’s Facebook icon whenever they have pending notifications, messages, or friend requests.

When the icon is clicked, users can select between a number of tabs, including Photos, which shows thumbnails of photos uploaded by friends, and News Feed, which appears to predominantly display simple activity stories, not full stories. Users can also Like and comment on updates from friends.

The Bing Bar allows users to update their status, but doesn’t format links pasted into its composer. Instead it just publishes the URL. Since users will be browsing around the internet and discovering interesting websites, the inability to share them with friends in a compelling way is a significant deficiency. Users are better off going to Facebook.com where their pasted links are formatted into rich stories with thumbnail images and captions instead of using the Bing Bar.

With an existing negative perception of toolbars, limited accessibility, and the fact that some of its Facebook features work significantly worse than on Facebook’s website, Microsoft will have a difficult time finding a large audience for the Bing Bar, even if it has some useful features.

Facebook Page Redesign 2011: Marketing Strategies and Best Practices

Facebook Marketing Bible

The following is an excerpt from the Facebook Marketing Bible, the comprehensive guide to marketing your company, app, or brand using Facebook. The full version of this article, available through a Facebook Marketing Bible subscription, includes strategies for using every new and modified feature from the February 2011 Page redesign. It teaches marketers how take advantage of the Photostrip, mutual interests panel, and “Everyone” relevant posts wall filter. It also features strategies for using iframe Page tab applications, the new wall moderation tools, and the ability to post and comment around Facebook as your Page.

In February 2011, Facebook launched a major redesign and expansion of functionality of its Pages for businesses, brands, media, and public figures. The Page layout matches the December user profile redesign, and as of March 1st, 2011, all Pages use it.

Here we’ll walk through each of the changes, and outline strategies for how you can use the new features to convince new visitors to Like your Page, drive traffic to affiliated Pages, highlight or silence user opinions, moderate your Page’s wall to give a good impression of your brand and promote high quality conversation, draw traffic from other Pages by posting and commenting as your Page, and engage fans and visitors with iframe Page tab applications.

“Everyone” Relevant Posts Wall Tab, and Wall Moderation

You can select between an “Everyone” and a Page posts only default tab for your Page’s wall in the Edit Page admin interface. All users who visit the Page’s wall will first see this default view of the wall, but can switch to the alternative view using a link at top right of the wall.

“Everyone” shows a mix of posts by users and the Page. Facebook surfaces the posts it thinks will be the most relevant to the viewer. Recent posts by friends, posts by other users in same language or country, and posts that have received a lot of Likes and comments will bubble to the top instead of appearing in reverse chronological order. Your Page’s own posts will appear in reverse chronological order intermixed with the user content. The Page posts only filter, which is displayed as the name of your Page, won’t display any user posts and will show your Page’s posts in reverse chronological order.

If you want total determination of the content that visitors first see when they visit your Page’s wall, or are focused on driving traffic to outbound links you post, select the Page posts only tab as the default. Since visitors won’t be distracted by posts by other users, they’ll be more likely to read your Pages updates and click your links.  Users will still be able to click the other tab to see posts by fans. If you want to completely silence fans, such as during a public relations crisis, you can deselect the Posting Ability options to prevent users from posting updates and links, photos, or videos to you wall. Users expect to have this ability, though, and may be angered if they’re denied the option.

Page that want to allow their fan community to have a prominent voice on their Page should use the Everyone tab as their default. This will allow users to express how they feel about your brand and ask questions. When visitors see organic, positive posts from other users, it raises the credibility of your brand and encourages visitors to Like your Page. If you select this option, you’ll need to have a community manager, customer service representative, or other employee monitor your wall and politely respond to questions. They can also Like user posts to thank fans for their support.

If brands want to control but not silence the voices of fans in the Everyone tab, whether it’s set as the default tab or not, they can use the moderation options in the Manage Permission tab of the Edit Page admin interface. The Profanity Blocklist can be set to “None”, “Medium”, or “Strong” to filter posts containing curse words into the Hidden Posts tab that only admins can see. Most Pages should set the filter to at least “medium”. However, brands that want to align with a rowdy, informal, 16-24 year old male demographic such as men’s magazines, motorcycle makers, extreme sports clothing lines, tattoo parlors and other edgy brands, as well as brands who want to make sure not to censor anyone should leave the Profanity Blocklist set to “None”.

The Moderation Blocklist allows admins to automatically send user posts with the selected keywords to the Hidden Posts tab. To control the sentiment of users so only positive posts are visible, block words such as such as “hate, sucks, bad, boring, stupid, useless, poor” and their synonyms. To prevent users from recommending your competitors on your wall, block words such as “competitor, worse” and the names of any of your competitors.

Admins can click the “Admin View” link beneath the wall tab in the navigation menu to reveal the Hidden Posts tab. They can then review any posts that Facebook automatically removed, or that were removed according to the Page’s moderation preferences. If an admin wants to return a user post to the Everyone tab, they can click the ‘x’ button beside it and select “Unhide post”. A good moderation strategy is to set your Profanity Blocklist to “Strong” and add a wide range of words to your Moderation Blocklist, but then diligently unhide posts that are actually acceptable.

To moderate posts that haven’t been moved to the Hidden Posts tab, click the Most Recent tab in the Admin View. This will show a reverse chronological view of all user posts, making it easy to scan through and hide any objectionable posts. Since the Everyone tab in the user view isn’t reverse chronological, moderating from that list will cause you to miss some less relevant posts and read the same relevant posts on every pass.

Access strategies for the rest of the new features in the Page redesign, and learn more marketing best practices at the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s complete guide to marketing and advertising on Facebook.

Facebook Career Postings: Singapore, Dublin, Finance and Japan

Asia seemed to be a big theme this week as we looked at Facebook’s Career Page postings. The company opened an office in Hong Kong recently, and at least one job was posted for that office, but several openings in Singapore were also posted. Facebook also has been posting jobs for its Dublin, Ireland and London, United Kingdom offices.

Most of the jobs posted this week were not high-level, but there were a few interesting ones. Facebook is seeking a Manager of Datacenter Facilities Operations for its Prineville, Oregon facility. This person will be responsible for the physical facility of the data center.

Then, as mentioned, there were two Ad Operations Associate positions for Japanese speakers in Singapore; similarly, two DSO Account Manager positions in Singapore in Japanese. Finally, there was a DSO Account Manager in Japanese in Hong Kong job posted this week.

Facebook  has had a tough time cracking the Japanese market, so perhaps these jobs are related to a push for users in that country.

Posts added this week on Facebook’s Careers Page:

  • Ad Operations Associate, Japanese (Singapore)
  • Ad Operations Associate, Japanese (Singapore)
  • DSO Account Manager, Japanese (Hong Kong)
  • DSO Account Manager, Japanese (Singapore)
  • DSO Account Manager, Japanese (Singapore)
  • Planning Manager
  • Intellectual Property Paralegal
  • Controller – Facebook Payments
  • Finance Project Lead, Business Applications
  • Business Analyst, Finance Procure to Pay
  • IT Product Manager
  • Manager, Datacenter Facilities Operations (OR)
  • HR Co-ordinator – Contract (Dublin)
  • Data Analyst (Dublin)
  • Legal Support Analyst, User Operations (Austin)
  • Account Manager – Polish (Dublin)
  • Analyst, Online Sales Operations – Polish (Dublin)
  • Sales Operations Manager EMEA
  • Account Manager – Team Lead (London)
  • DSO Account Manager (Atlanta)
  • Account Manager – Team Lead (London)

Jobs posted by Facebook on LinkedIn:

  • Agency Team Lead, Online Sales Operations
  • Finance Operations Project Manager – FB Payments and FB Credits
  • Analyst, Business Operations (Commerce Analytics)
  • Site Reliability Operations Manager
  • Controller – Facebook Payments
  • Policy Enforcement Specialist, Online Sales Operations (Austin)
  • Recruiting Sourcer – Contract (Austin)
  • Recruiting Coordinator – Contract (Austin)
  • Technical Program Manager, Mobile Operators
  • Financial Analyst – Technical Operations and Engineering

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Facebook Hires and Departures: Ad Leader, Real Estate, Transactions, Marketing and More

It would seem Facebook has secured some important talent this week, as several of the posts on the company’s Careers Page job listings have been removed. Those include: Real Estate Counsel; Head of Direct Sales Operations, South and Latin America (São Paulo); Global Head of Agency Relations (Palo Alto or New York) and Senior Commercial Transactions Counsel.

Most prominently, however, Facebook recruited Microsoft global advertising head Carolyn Everson to be its new vice president of sales, All Things D reported earlier this week.

There’s more from the company’s Careers Page, as well as LinkedIn.

New hires per LinkedIn:

  • Kate O’Neill – Product Marketing Manager, comes from working as a consultant at The Bridgespan Group.
  • Séadna Dervan – Online Sales Analyst in Dublin, Ireland.
  • Nidhi Manchikanti – Recruiting Coordinator in Hyderabad, India.
  • Aryan Mishra – Game Tester at Facebook, previously worked for Sprint.

Recent departures, per LinkedIn:

  • Alec Stillman – previously a User Operations Analyst.
  • Ryan Jordan –  worked in Product Management Recruitment.
  • Gurrinder Kharbanda – worked in Software Engineer/Marketing Analytics.

Prior listings now removed from the Facebook Careers Page:

  • Real Estate Counsel
  • Head of Direct Sales Operations, South and Latin America (São Paulo)
  • Global Head of Agency Relations (Palo Alto or New York)
  • Intrusion Analyst (contract)
  • Senior Commercial Transactions Counsel
  • Accounting and Revenue Operations Manager
  • Business Analyst, HR and Recruiting
  • Manager, Data Center Operations (NC)
  • Brand Management Specialist- Contract
  • SEO Analyst
  • Analyst, Internet Marketing
  • Recruiting Coordinator – Contract
  • Measurement Solutions Analyst – Contract (London)
  • Quantitative Business Analyst (Dublin)
  • Analyst, User Operations – French (Dublin)
  • Account Manager – Dutch (Dublin)
  • Analyst, Online Sales Operations – Dutch (Dublin)
  • Inside Sales Associate, Russian (Dublin)
  • Associate, Ad Operations (Singapore)
  • Analyst, Ad Operations (New York)
  • Account Executive (Dallas)

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Bug Stops Some International Iframe Facebook App Users From Making Purchases With Credits

Users of Facebook applications that use iFrames are experiencing a bug, in some countries, that prevents the iframe from resizing properly, cutting off the app horizontally mid-page and preventing users from spending Facebook Credits.

Currently, we know the bug is impacting users in UK, Germany, Russia, France, Israel, Ukraine, Romania, Latvia, Belarus and Romania. The bug has significant negative implications for applications monetizing through Facebook Credits.

Bugs are a natural side effect of operating such a big platform, and Facebook recently renewed its commitment to fixing them as fast as possible as part of its Operation: Developer Love. Most bugs only have a small impact, and only affect a minority of users or developers. However, major changes to Facebook over the last week, including the redesign of Pages and the added ability for Pages to use iframe tab applications, have been accompanied by a few serious issues.

The app height bug has received 70 votes of importance from developers, making it the highest priority canvas applications bug. Facebook has “ASSIGNED” this bug that was submitted on Monday. Facebook has also “REOPENED” the Credits bug, which has a relatively high six votes of importance.

Until Facebook fixes this bug, applications may lose potential revenue since certain users can’t buy virtual goods. One of the limitations of a unified virtual currency system on the Platform is that if Credits experiences downtime, developers don’t have the option to temporarily switch to another payment method.

As Facebook incentivizes developers to adopt Credits with beta access to new features in the lead up to the July 1st, 2011 mandatory switch to Credits, it also needs to make sure its payment system is as stable as possible.

Update: Facebook has told us “we’re aware of an issue that is affecting a limited number of Credits users and we’re taking steps to resolve it as quickly as possible.”

Facebook Enables New App-generated Requests, Updates Bookmark Count Functionality [Updated]

Facebook has made a series of significant changes to its viral channels over the past several years. Since launching with almost no restrictions on developer use of notifications, requests, and the news feed, Facebook has systematically changed the way viral channels work to try to find the right balance between providing powerful distribution options for developers and protecting the user experience.

Today, Facebook launched some updates to requests that it’s calling “Requests 2.0″ that introduces app-generated requests and simplifies the process of managing the home page bookmark counters that alert users to outstanding requests.

App-generated Requests

Facebook first added app-to-user notifications for developers in August 2008, but then removed them in February 2010 after the signal to noise ratio of the notifications channel had become too low to justify the spammy experience for users. Since then, the primary channel for app to user communication has been email.

Now, Facebook is allowing developers to send user communication through the requests channel, encouraging developers to “Use these requests to update the bookmark count to encourage a user to re-engage in the app (e.g., your friend finished her move in a game and it’s now your turn).” We’re still clarifying how Facebook will govern volume here, but this represents a significant opportunity for developers. We’ll have more on this soon. Facebook CTO Bret Taylor told us last yearthat Facebook was planning on reintegrating some of the previous viral channel functionality that had been disabled earlier last year, and this looks like an example of one of those changes.

Update: After more testing, it appears as though app-generated requests do not actually appear the same way as user-generated requests for users. While app-generated requests to increment counters, they do not appear on the “Game Requests” list, nor do they generate a request notification. This means app-generated requests represent less of a new opportunity for developers than we originally thought.

Automatic Bookmark Count Syncing

When enabled via the Developers application, Facebook automatically syncs the bookmark count with the number of pending requests. These requests now expire 14 days after being received by a user. This streamlined requests process will likely encourage applications to send more requests, increasing game re-engagement  but also pestering some users with what they might consider spam.

Requests began being displayed as bookmark counters and were removed from the home page’s right sidebar requests panel in September 2010. Facebook soon reinstated the requests in the right sidebar to help developers for effectively re-engage users.

In December, Facebook began showing requests in a third place on the home page: the notifications channel. Some heavy gamers complain that these notifications drown out more social notifications about photo tags and wall posts, but Facebook is still showing requests in this channel. In January, it increased or eliminated the limit on the number of requests a user could send from an application per day.

Previously, developers had to use the incrementCount and decrementCount APIs to manually adjust the number shown in the counter besides their app’s bookmark on a user’s home page. Facebook has now unified these APIs so developers merely send requests, and the count is synced automatically.

To enable this option, developers can go to the the Advanced tab of the Developers application, and change the “Upgrade to Requests 2.0″ setting in the Migrations section. This will cause bookmark counts to sync when they send user-generated requests that users explicitly approve using the Requests Dialog, or app-generated requests via the Graph API to users who have granted the proper permissions.

When users with pending requests visit an app, Facebook encourages developers to “highlight the request the user wants to act upon and delete requests when the user acts upon them”. This makes the reason of the request clear and keeps users from perceiving requests as a spammy way to get them to revisit an app. To prevent bookmark counts from accumulating, Facebook clears each request’s counter after 14 days. Developers can find JavaScript and PHP code examples on the updated Requests documentation page.

Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: Bulbstorm, Badgeville, W3i, & More

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 Bulbstorm, Badgeville, W3i, Casual Collective, Meteor Games, and NaturalMotion.

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.

With Compliance Deadline Looming, List of Approved Facebook Platform Ad Providers Reaches 43

Three more companies have been added to Facebook’s list of approved platform ad providers over the last couple of weeks, including virtual goods monetization company Live Gamer, performance marketer MediaWhiz and ad network IndieClick.

The list, introduced in mid-December, shows companies that have signed on to Facebook’s Platform Terms for Advertising Providers — a document it introduced more than a year ago, to restrict third parties from doing things like scraping and using Facebook data for their own purposes. The point of the list is to further clarify to developers who they are allowed to work with.

Last week, Facebook also updated its general platform policies to include a clear mention of the list, and stated that developers will only be able to use listed developers as of February 28th (for more, see our analysis of all recent platform policy changes). Although the list has included the same language since mid-December, this winter appears to have been a bit of a grace period.

The number of listed developers has steadily risen from 14 when we started counting to 43 today, and Google is still conspicuously absent. That might not be as big of a deal as the name-brand suggests, at least for developers today; although it has experimented with ads on Facebook apps for years, Google has never been especially aggressive in pushing its business on the platform, and it has not been a main choice for most developers. Given that Google collects data from around the web to help it target ads, we’re guessing that it doesn’t want to sign on to Facebook’s terms any time soon.

So, anyway, here’s a bit more about the three latest companies to be listed. Live Gamer has been active for years providing virtual goods storefronts, analytics software, payments, as well as offers from other companies that users can take to receive goods (which appears to be why it’s listed here). MediaWhiz is an online performance marketing agency that uses email, display ad networks, text-link ads and other typical performance methods to reach users. IndieClick is a banner ad network that works with advertisers to reach, as the name suggests, readers on a variety of hipstery web sites.

Chinese, FrontierVille, Social Statistics and Connect on This Week’s Fastest Growing Facebook Apps by DAU

There were six apps on our list of fastest growing Facebook apps by daily active users this week that are in Chinese. We gather this information from our AppData service, which shows that, in addition to the Chinese apps, there were several games and Connect apps on the list this week, too.

Top Gainers This Week

Name DAU Gain Gain,%
1. Social Statistics 1,165,998 +1,109,975 +1,981%
2. Windows Live Messenger 13,515,085 +335,665 +3%
3. FrontierVille 5,734,936 +322,579 +6%
4. ibibo.com 286,084 +250,515 +704%
5. Diner Dash 213,565 +201,712 +1,702%
6. 德州撲克(中文版) 611,938 +188,796 +45%
7. 開心水族箱 1,220,579 +154,296 +14%
8. HTC Sense 4,394,997 +136,356 +3%
9. Phrases 1,678,939 +134,559 +9%
10. 小小戰爭 761,483 +126,242 +20%
11. 開心農場 1,122,001 +118,950 +12%
12. @Hearts 579,221 +98,873 +21%
13. Matrak Sorular 128,529 +95,868 +294%
14. Ravenwood Fair 1,054,787 +92,948 +10%
15. FarmVille 中文版 470,632 +92,152 +24%
16. Prosperous New Year To All My Friends :) 217,492 +88,674 +69%
17. Grooveshark 157,526 +88,002 +127%
18. Resort World 510,136 +86,595 +20%
19. 2011星座運勢 103,999 +82,816 +391%
20. Persian’s Daily Clip 137,461 +82,719 +151%

Most of the Chinese apps were games, although there was also a horoscope app. There was 德州撲克(中文版), the Chinese version of Texas Hold’em, which grew by about 188,800 DAUs, 開心水族箱 (Happy Aquarium) with 154,300 users, 小小戰爭 (Little War) with 126,200, 開心農場 (Happy Farm) with 119,000 along with the Chinese version of Farmville, which only added 92,200 and 2011星座運勢 the horoscope app for 2011 added 82,800 DAUs.

Social Statistics, an app that counts the top 10 people who are your “fans” on your profile and then publishes this to your stream, spiked in usage in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day. The app grew by over 1.1 million DAUs. Other notable apps were Zynga’s FronterVille with 322,600 new DAUs, Dinner Dash with 201,700, Turkish Matrak Sorular (Funny Qs) which grew by 95,900 and Ravenwood Fair with about 93,000 new DAUs.

Phrases continues to grow, despite not being available to U.S. users, with an increase of 134,600 DAUs this week. Two holiday-related apps were on the list. The @Hearts app, which allows users to send hearts to friends on Facebook saw 98,900 DAUs and the Prosperous New Year To All My Friends app grew by 88,700 DAUs.

There were also a few Connect apps, Grooveshark with 88,000 new users and ibibo.com with 250,500.

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