Inside Facebook

More Info on Facebook’s Spartan – TechCrunch reported more information about BoltJS, a UI framework designed by Facebook and written in JavaScript that runs in the browser. Apparently it’s part of Facebook’s Project Spartan, which may not be fully revealed until f8.

Facebook Settles With Lamebook – Lamebook, a humor site publishing funny Facebook posts, and Facebook settled this week. The judge refused to move the suit to California, and thus, some speculate that Facebook settled to avoid jury sympathy for the Austin-based company.

Facebook Extends Comment Period – Facebook extended the comment period for its new privacy policy to 5 p.m. Pacific on September 7. Comments may be left at Facebook’s Site Governance Page.

Facebook Testing Comment Ordering? – AllFacebook reported that Facebook seems to be testing a way for Page admins to order comments based on social ranking, chronology or reverse chronology. [Image via AllFacebook]

Facebook Pays $40,000 in Bounty Program – Facebook’s Bug Bounty program has, thus far, paid out $40,000 to people around the world who have reported issues to the company. Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan wrote a blog about the program this week with more information.

Interesting Insights on Facebook Ads – SocialCode reported some interesting trends about Facebook ads, including: women are 11% more likely to click, older women are more likely to click through and men are slightly more likely to Like an ad.

HTML5 Mobile App Allows for Connect – Nitobi, creators of PhoneGap, launched a new plugin, PhoneGap Facebook Connect. Essentially it allows users to login to HTML and JavaScript apps with their Facebook login.

Social Networks and Patents – Business Week published an interesting story examining the lack of a “patent war” when it comes to social media companies like Facebook and Twitter. One reason the magazine speculated, is that Facebook (for example) only holds 12 patents, which is to say, there aren’t as many patents to fight over.

Facebook Developer Blog: Fluid Canvas – Facebook’s Developer blog posted this week about how to build an app on Facebook with Fluid Canvas, to expand the size of apps, depending on a user’s screen resolution.

Other Announcements:

Appbistro Announces PPI Ads for Page Apps – Appbistro announced that the company now installs apps for Page admins, thus the company has seen a 190% increase in installs, recently hitting 100,000 registered Page admins.

Vitrue Releases SaaS 3.0 – Vitrue released version 3.0 of its social media platform, which includes new localization features, analytics and metrics.

Hootsuite Deepens Facebook Integration – AllFacebook reports that HootSuite has deepened its Facebook integration, specifically adding events, photos, groups, and geo-tool updates.

15% of Posts are Likejacked – Norton’s analysis of 3.5 million video posts in August found that 15% were scams, or like jacking. Norton Safe Web for Facebook is an app that may guard against this type of attack.

Facebook has updated its Platform Polices, prohibiting apps from linking to or promote apps on competing social platforms, and from rewarding users with virtual currency, goods, or downloads through a third-party for taking an action. These policy changes, reported by TechCrunch, will prevent developers from directing traffic from their Facebook apps to off-site destinations, or from incentivizing user actions unless done with Facebook Credits or without the aid of third-parties.

The policy changes were not announced on the Facebook Developer Blog or anywhere else. Facebook may only enforce the ban on linking to competitors in more aggressive cases. Still, fear of enforcement may limit how developers can promote versions of their apps on other platforms such as Google+’s recently launched games platform, hampering growth for both developers and platform owners.

Banning Cross-Platform Promotion

Facebook already prohibited advertising for competing social platforms on its website. Now it’s Platform Policies states “I.11 – Apps on Facebook may not integrate, link to, promote, distribute, or redirect to any app on any other competing social platform.”

This policy update could be seen as an extension of that ban, meant to cover developers who are effectively advertising within the real estate of their own games. Alternatively, it could seen as an limiting developers from driving engagement on other platforms from users whose engagement they won on Facebook. Many Facebook developers currently use banners and pop-ups on their canvas apps, as well as Facebook wall posts to promote their presence across the web.

Much will depend on how Facebook interprets “social platform”. If this is taken to mean other web services offering a very similar developer platform within a social network, such as Google+, it would be more sensible, though a sign that Facebook believes these platforms have the potential to serious complete with it. If the term is interpreted to include vastly different mediums such as mobile or console app and game platforms, it could prohibit developers from offering users a more 360 degree experience, where they could play different parts of the same game or access different functionalities of an app while on their mobile device.

UPDATE: Facebook has clarified that the policy update does not apply to cross-promotion of mobile apps or off-platform apps available through a developer’s homepage. Read more on our sister site, Inside Social Games.

If cross-platform promotion is important to a developer, they may either have to leave Facebook, or silo their Facebook app or game experience while their presence on more open social platforms seamlessly integrate across mediums and platforms.

Fewer Incentive Options

Beginning July 1st when Facebook made Credits the mandatory exclusive payment method for Facebook games, it restricted how developers could reward users. Essentially, developers could only reward users with:

• Anything if through Facebook’s approved offer partners
• A developer’s own virtual goods or currency if a third-party isn’t involved
• Only a developer’s own virtual goods through a third-party if the offer didn’t require a user’s personally identifiable information

Facebook’s Page Reaches 50 Million Likes — The company has just reached 50 million Likes on its official Page, which is also unsurprisingly the most popular Page on the site.

Ceglia Facebook Ownership Facebook Looking Even Worse — Despite some turgid articles not too long ago about the possibility of upstate New York entrepreneur and scam artist Paul Ceglia winning his court case claiming that he owns half of Facebook, his big-name lawyers recently left. And now, Facebook says it has found “smoking gun” evidence that he fabricated documents purporting to show his ownership stake. It says it can’t reveal the evidence yet, though.

Facebook Expands in London - Facebook is renting a 36,000 square-foot building in London for its 70 employees that will focus on ad sales.

Unauthorized Pages in Users’ Feeds – Some users are reporting that they are seeing Facebook Pages appearing in their news feeds despite having never Liked them. Facebook has yet to confirm the issue. Thanks to Mike for the tip.

Foursquare Makes Pages Self-Serve - Foursquare’s organizational Pages are now self-serve and aimed at allowing brands to market themselves on the platform.

Facebook Becomes Back-to-School Hub – As happened last year, Facebook is set to become a big place for back to school shopping, giving users the chance to win free items, take advantage of limited time deals and receive discounts.

Spam King Sanford Wallace Indicted – Sanford Wallace, known as the Spam King, was indicted by a federal grand jury in San Jose this week for fraud on the Facebook platform. He faces 16 to 40 years in prison, plus fines.

Zuckerberg Named Silicon Valley’s “Worst Dressed” – GQ magazine named Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg worst dressed man in Silicon Valley despite some stiff competition. [Image Via David Terrar]

Facebook to Offer Digital Citizenship Grants – Facebook has pledged $200,000 in grant money for research “that improves understanding of the challenges and opportunities associated with how kids are growing up in a world of media and technology”, such as cyber bullying prevention.

Other Announcements: 

SocialVibe Focuses on Political Ads – SocialVibe announced this week that it would be offering services tailored specifically to political campaigns and action committees ahead of the 2012 election. The company specializes in digital advertising.

DealBurner Sends Group Deals When You Check In - DealBurner is a new service that sends users alerts when they check in to a location on Facebook Places or Foursquare about daily deals and pre-paid coupons offered at that business. The service aggregates deals from Groupon, LivingSocial, ScoutMob, and more.

Facebook today announced the official launch of Ads API, which allows developers to create tools and services that programmatically create, buy, and manage Facebook ad campaigns. The Ads API had been in limited private beta since late 2009, and has been used by brands via third-party providers to run and optimize multi-million dollar ad campaigns too complex to conducted through Facebook’s self-serve ad tool.

Developers can now apply to join the program, which may lead to the rise of many new Ads API tool and service providers. The influx might create new small acquisition targets for Page management companies, or commodify ads management, with an economy tier of tools and services emerging to serve smaller advertisers. Alternatively it might lead Page management companies to build ads products and services in-house, slowing the recent wave of consolidation between the two industries.

Before the start of the Ads API program, the bulk uploader system for the manual self-serve tool was the most efficient way to run ads on Facebook. This restricted large scale ad purchase, A/B testing and dynamic bid optimization, making it difficult for advertisers to obtain optimal performance and see the potential of Facebook ads.

Until now, only a few dozens developers had been admitted into the Ads API beta program, making those with access attractive for partnerships and acquisitions. With big advertisers increasingly moving spend to Facebook and few providers but few companies, those few with access had the potential to make a lot money.

Some offered full-service managed spend where the provider would collect the margin it could make after arranging a cost per click or cost per action with advertisers. Others developed licensable tools for advertisers and agencies and charged a percentage of total spend. The lucrative business led to the quick rise of companies such as TBG Digital, Spruce Media, and AdParlor, as well as Facebook ad divisions of search advertising providers like Efficient Frontier.

This morning, Facebook reached out to us saying “Today, Facebook’s Ads API is out of beta and available for developers”. Those with plans to build an Ads API tool or service can now apply for the program. The application process requires developers to explain what they plan to build, what resources they’re dedicating to the build, and to have run more than 10 million Facebook ad impressions. It says those planning to “build value for users and marketers” are most likely to be accepted, and those that apply can expect a response within two weeks.

This increase in access to the Ads API will undoubtedly impact that third-party Facebook tool and service provider landscape. Experian recently bought Ads API developer Techlightenment, and Vitrue partnered with TBG Digital, but these types of companies might now be more inclined to develop their own ads products. Before, most ad tool or service providers required a minimum spend on the advertiser’s part, but free basic tools might bring efficient ads management to local and small businesses.

In the end, the one standing to gain the most is Facebook, which is now billing the Ads, Pages, and Insights API as the combined Facebook Marketing API program. More competition among third-party providers should reduce their fees, drawing the long-tail of advertisers in, with improved ad performance inspiring greater spend. It will also allow big Page management companies with large lists of existing brands to integrate the Ads API, leading big brands to easily pair its Facebook Page and application campaigns with ads.

Facebook Set for Another Oregon Datacenter – Facebook announced this week that it would build another data center on its Prineville, Oregon campus. Construction is set to begin in October.

Facebook to Expand in Seattle – Facebook is currently looking for more office space in Seattle, according to GeekWire. The company wants as much as 40,000 square feet more that might accommodate about 200 more people (the office is currently at about 40).

Privacy Glitch Makes Videos Public – TechCrunch reported that this week Facebook’s video privacy settings stopped working, allowing users to see listings, names, thumbnails, descriptions and tagged users in others’ videos. The company reported it had addressed the issue.

Alleged Facebook Owner Ceglia’s Case gets Complicated – Paul Ceglia is the man who claims to own half of Facebook. His lawsuit against Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg is playing out in New York, and he recently lost a fourth law firm in his case. Edelson McGuire just withdrew from the case, according to AllThingsD, as did DLA Pipe, Lippes Mathias, Wexler Friedman and Connors & Vilardo earlier this year.

Also, a Scathing Profile of Paul Ceglia – The Buffalo News wrote a scathing and very unflattering profile of would-be Facebook co-owner Paul Ceglia. Acquaintances and classmates basically call him a con artist, shyster, joke, grifter, lowlife and more. [Image Via Facebook]

User Ads Generated by Ad Companies – John Battelle wrote an interesting post this week detailing how he found out a company (AppSumo) that wasn’t Facebook was using his likeness in an ad, and that this apparently violated Facebook’s terms of service, promoting the social network to look into the issue.

Topps Buys Facebook Gift Card Provider – AllThingsD reported this week that Topps, the trading card company, purchased GMG Entertainment, the company which makes Facebook Credits gift cards. The terms of the purchase were not released.

Vodafone Releases Facebook Phone – Vodafone’s 555 Blue is a “Facebook phone” designed to be popular in emerging markets like India. The phone allows users to logon to Facebook when the phone is turned on, and open an account if they don’t already have one. [Image Via Vodafone]

LivingSocial Shutters Visual Bookshelf – AllFacebook reported this week that, after four years, LivingSocial is closing its Visual Bookshelf app and encouraging users to export their accounts to GoodReads.

Other Announcements:

Migrate Facebook to Google+ – Lifehacker reported this week on how to migrate your Facebook profile data to Google+.

North Social Releases Facebook Faux Pas – North Social released a series of 11 “fan Page fail” videos this week featuring the hapless Jonny Like who demonstrates what not to do to grow your Page’s community.

Trulia, Real Estate Social Search – Trulia.com is a social recommendation service using Facebook to leverage word-of-mouth when it comes to buying and selling real estate.

Shoutlet Releases 4.0 Analytics – Shoutlet released the 4.0 version of its platform this week with better analytics and the ability to take these and transform them into graphics.

Israeli social game monetization platform and Facebook approved offer partner SupersonicAds today announced that is has raised a $4.2 million first institutional round of funding led by Greylock Israel. The money will go towards building a sales team so it can solicit more European and Middle Eastern game developers and advertisers using its BrandConnect product. This  allows brands to place video ads in games and reward users with virtual goods or virtual currency such as Facebook Credits.

In related news, major social game developer Crowdstar has partnered with social video ad network Jun Group to allow its gamers to earn rewards for watching commercials. The SupersonicAds funding and Crowdstar deal should both help expand incentivized view video ads to more Facebook games, and accelerate the shift of ad dollars away from television and towards social games, particularly those on the Facebook Platform.

Supersonic Ads came out of stealth in April 2009 to provide offer walls for european games. It later added video ads to its offer walls, but with time discovered that serving opportunities to complete video offers during gameplay caused more users to partake so it launched BrandConnect.

The product places a widget within a social game that displays signage such as “Earn Free Credits”, and when clicked opens the video offer. It has been used by Kellogg’s, Intel, and Disney, and boasts stats including over 50% (and up to 80%) of people exposed to a campaign view the entire video, 20% then Like the Page of the brand advertised, and 40% later visit the brand’s website.

In May of this year, Facebook announced that it would deepen its partnership with TrialPay to serve video offers from the Facebook sidebar and within games, and that SupersonicAds and several other video ad networks would contribute inventory. Then in June, SupersonicAds became Facebook approved offer partner, meaning it could reward users with Facebook Credits for completing “hard offers”  – direct response offers that require a user’s personal information such as making purchases or signing up for subscriptions.

These partnerships make SupersonicAds one of the only companies allowed to serve both hard offers and soft offers (those that don’t require user personal information such as video offers) on the Facebook Platform. Now to fill this inventory SupersonicAds needs a bigger sales force, so it secured this round of funding.

Meanwhile, Crowdstar’s partnership with Jun Group will bring video offers to popular games such as It Girl and Happy Aquarium. However, since the Jun Group is not an approved offer partner, it can’t distribute Facebook Credits to users that completing any type of offer. Crowdstar will be able to distribute its own earned currency or virtual goods to users that watch Jun Group video ads, though.

With television watchers increasingly using digital video recorders that let them skip commercials, advertisers need to consider where else they can place their compelling, high-production video ads. Along with video streaming services such as Hulu, which recently implemented Facebook Connect, social games are becoming lucrative real-estate. By solving a gamer’s needs by providing virtual currency or goods for watching ads run through services such as SupersonicAds and Jun Group, brands can not only make users watch the entirety of their ads, but instill a positive impression on them as well.

Companies in the Facebook advertising and marketing ecosystem added a few people to product teams, but it was generally an uneventful week. If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com, and we’ll get it into next week’s post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes directly from company updates from LinkedIn.

Looking for new opportunities? Check out the Inside Network Job Board, which shows the latest openings at leading companies in the industry.

Here’s the list of hires:

BLiNQ

• John Tawadros, President & COO - previously was the COO for iProspect.

Deal United

• Kai Boyd, Head of Marketing and Product Management – formerly Head of Online Sales and Marketing at Telefonica O2.

Votigo

• Nisha Toor, Project Manager.
• Zack Zucker, Project Manager - previously a Manager, Client Services/Project Manager at Turbo Social Media.

Wildfire

• Maxine Litre, Strategy and Special Projects Intern – formerly worked as an Assistant Project Coordinator at Stanford Office of Residential Education.

Syncapse

• David Capilla, Web Designer – formerly a Software Engineer of PHO at unit9.

Efficient Frontier

• Justin Zollars, Ruby on Rails App Genius – formerly a Laboratory Coordinator at The College of Marin.
• Christian Byza, Account Manager – previously was an Associate Account Manager at Efficient Frontier.
• Gregory Furmanek, Software Engineer – formerly the owner of Elegant Software.
• Laurie Edwards, Senior Account Executive – previously the Managing Director at Meltwater Group.

Companies continued hiring interns, as well as web designers and account management staff this week.

Looking for new opportunities? Check out the Inside Network Job Board, which shows the latest openings at leading companies in the industry.

Here’s this week’s list of hires:

Work4 Labs

• Baptiste Jésu, Web Designer – formerly did similar work as a freelancer.

Nanigans

• Adam Mustafa, Software Development Intern – formerly an intern at Microsoft.

Wildfire

• Justine Thomas, Recruiting Intern – formerly a Activities Coordinator at Stanford University Education Program for Gifted Youth.

Efficient Frontier

• Aliki Askitopoulou, Associate Account Manager – previously an Account Manager at DDB Worldwide Communications Group Inc.
• Ali Khan, Media Delivery Trafficker – formerly worked in technical support at Microsoft.
• Leah Hunt, Senior Account Director – previously worked as a Senior Account Director at Catalyst Online/GroupM Search.

Facebook Reaches 750M Users – TechCrunch reported this week that Facebook has reached 750 million monthly active users according to a “source close to the company.” The data we recorded in Inside Facebook Gold as of June 1st showed 687 million worldwide. Facebook’s last official update was 500 million, last July.

Facebook Display Ads Pass $2B – A new report from eMarketer claims that this year Facebook will be the top online display advertiser with $2.19 billion in revenue, representing 81% growth over last year.

Skype Deepens Facebook Integration – Skype reported new Facebook features this week, including instant messaging, integrated contacts and the ability to Like or comment on statuses.

Facebook’s IPO Rumors Spur Real Estate Inflation – In light of rumors of a Facebook IPO next year, Silicon Valley home prices are surging, prompting some residents who begin to sell off their homes.

Report: 1 Like is Worth 20 Pageviews – A new report from Hitwise found that 1 Facebook fan, or Like, is equal to 20 visits to a retailer website during the course of the year when it comes to ROI.

Announcements

Techlightenment Launches Social Attribution System —This week Techlightenment launched its Social Attribution System, which anonymizes user data, tracking their actions, and then identifies the viral nature of those actions.

ShortStack Launches Free Tab App for Small Biz – Reno, Nevada-based ShortStack launched a tab design app this week free of charge for small businesses with 2,000 Likes or less to run contests, sweepstakes, create landing tabs with videos or photos, and other features.

In a keynote address at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Facebook’s vice president of global ad sales, Carolyn Everson, announced that the company is forming a 12-member client council made up of advertisers and marketers to help it better address industry needs.

AdAge reported that Facebook hopes to give companies an opportunity to have a say when it comes to new ad offerings, citing as an example the most recent comments ad module. Two of the 12 members include Nick Brien, CEO of McCann Worldgroup and Wendy Clark of Coca-Cola; Everson said the council’s members would be finalized in the next two weeks.

The council will likely meet four times a year, Everson said in her speech, noting that the meetings will be confidential. And the first meeting is likely to be held at the Association of National Advertisers conference this October, where Facebook will likely take its first steps towards finding out how the platform can better serve its paying customers.

[Image via LinkedIn]