Inside Facebook

As Inside Facebook reported last month, Facebook is in the process of migrating away from regional networks on the site (they were only ever used by 50% of users anyway, and created some unintended privacy confusion). As a result, network affiliations are being migrated to the Info tab on user profiles as users’ current locations.

For developers, Facebook says that these changes will eventually be reflected in their API. If your application currently makes use of regional networks, you have until September 30, 2009, to make the official change to use the current_location field instead of network affiliations.

This process isn’t without its quirks, however. As pointed out on the Developer’s Forums, the new user-defined city field could be less useful than regional networks as it will likely actually create more segmentation. Any attempt to group like cities together would be at the expense of the application developer.

A couple of months ago, Facebook released the Open Stream API, a new set of Facebook Platform APIs that enable developers to access and publish to the Facebook stream from anywhere. Since then, we’ve seen a number of interesting desktop client integrations, like the recent updates from Seesmic and TweetDeck.

However, a simple new website built on Facebook Connect, Flutteerr, illustrates ways developers could build websites that integrate the stream as well. Developed by Facebook employee Naitik Shah using the standard APIs in his personal time, Flutteerr currently only contains the Facebook stream (and resembles Twitter quite a bit), but it could be enhanced with a variety of features to make publishing to or reading your Facebook stream more powerful.

On Flutteerr, users can filter the News Feed the same way they can inside Facebook, including by Friend List, Network, Page, and particular applications. Status updates, comments, and likes are automatically posted to Facebook. However, you can’t share links, photos, etc. in the media-rich way that the Facebook.com Publisher allows you to.

Since the site is a personal project, it’s unclear what will happen with it going forward (though the name is reminiscent of this parody video from Slate called Flutter: The New Twitter). Nevertheless, the site does go to show what’s possible with the API.

Since the Facebook Platform launched two years ago, Facebook has taken a relatively open approach to third parties interested in building advertising networks on the Platform. One of the companies that has been active on Facebook ever since the Platform launched is Washington, DC-based SocialCash, which has now entirely focused its efforts on Facebook. We recently spoke with SocialCash CEO Rob Jewell about the current state of the market, the recent Facebook policy enforcement actions that were taken against other Facebook Platform ad networks, and SocialCash’s plans going forward.

Inside Facebook: SocialCash got its start on Facebook building both an advertising network and an offer network, but now you’re focused just on your ad network. Why?

Rob Jewell: When we looked at the macro picture of all social networking inventory and all the available social information, we just saw a bigger opportunity over existing ad networks to use the social information across all inventory. We had to choose - it’s a massive opportunity, but it takes a lot of focus.

What products are working best for you right now?

Our main product is the headliners unit, which can be integrated in any Facebook app. From a technical perspective, it’s built more like a developer tool than an ad. We’re leveraging CPA advertiser relationships that we’ve had for a long time to create innovative ads, using dynamic social information to increase performance.

What are some good examples where you’ve seen performance increases?

Zoosk is a good example - it’s the biggest dating app on Facebook. We can do things like, “Tired of being a bridesmaid?” in ads, and show the person all their friends who are married, and that creates a pretty relevant and eganging ad that gets them thinking they should add Zoosk. We can also choose the best same-sex friends and put them in the ad. It really brings it home that it’s relevant and higher engagement.

We can also do stuff with education - for example, we can show you any of your friends that have jobs listed, show you what they are doing, and ask you if you want to advance in your career. We do this with the University of Phoenix. We can also see what students’ concentrations are, so for example if you recently changed your degree, we can show you what your friends are studying. It creates that sense of engagement around, “Why am I going down the path of being a lawyer?” As we get the targeting down, we can do more things like pulling in your favorite movies, and giving you the opportunity to stream now with Netflix. Some of these are in production now.

How many publishers are in your network?

We’ve got about 100 active ones across a variety of types of applications - gaming, gifting, quizzes, dating. Some of the largest are LivingSocial, FamilyLink, and Zwigglers.

How do things split out internationally?

70% of our impressions and 50% of our revenues are international. A lot of the efforts in the space now are focused on agencies and brands, but typically those dollars trickle in on a massive amount of inventory, and our efforts are to take the rest of that inventory and maximize it. We have infrastructure in all countries.

Is most banner advertising inventory CPA at this point?

I think CPA is majority of the banner advertising on the platform, but I think overall it’s probably less than the total virtual currency market. There’s still a lot of innovation happening, and things change significantly every month, especially due to regulations Facebook could put in as well.

How have Facebook’s recent suspensions of SocialReach and SocialHour affected you?

It really clears the path for innovation and for new advertisers. We’ve always been inside Facebook’s terms, and they’re really just enforcing the terms that have been around for a while.

We wanted to align the company with Facebook from the start. It’s no surprise that they enforced what they set out to do at some point. We think it will be good both for us and the platform in the long run, by keeping the playing field equal.

Do you think Facebook has successfully enforced Platform policies?

Yes, they have done a good job. However, it can’t be a one time thing - it has to be consistent to make sure everyone is playing by the rules. They have to be committed to doing that.

I don’t want to speak for them, but I think they also see the opportunity to increase the innovation that goes into the space by doing that. They’re very clear that a good user experience is their top priority.

Did you learn anything from your recent conversations with Facebook regarding the policy enforcements?

That they meant what they said. It’s as simple as that. Some people tried to call their bluff and others actually reacted to it and made the changes that they wanted to make.

Facebook has also started testing its in-house ad network this year. What have they told you about it?

I think that Facebook will always want to have third parties innovating social advertising on Facebook. They’ve told me that they encourage third parties to help innovate on the platform. It would be a massive shift from their overall philosophy if they were to say you have to use our ad network. It would put too much burden and risk on them to deliver what developers need and would stifle innovation, and it doesn’t seem like they’d want to do that.

What’s coming up next for SocialCash?

More diverse ads, higher CPMs, improved relevancy, more and deeper social content, more ad unit sizes. We feel like we’re still pretty early on in the process.

Thanks Rob. Any final thoughts?

I think it’s interesting that there haven’t been any of the larger ad networks like Advertising.com, Specific Media, or Right Media making a play inside Facebook. It’s obviously a large opportunity, I think it makes sense that they aren’t doing it because it’s a totally unique kind of creative and set of data you’re working with.

As the inventory grows and the open movement gets bigger and bigger and Facebook Connect takes off, I would think there’s going to be a big play there at some point for one of the bigger ad networks. But even Google hasn’t cracked the code on how to monetize social network traffic - it’s a paradigm shift for almost any ad network, and that puts us and any other ad network working on this at an advantage. Besides, they’ve got hugely successful business already, and they can probably barely keep up with growth on the rest of the internet.

Purchase this report The Facebook Marketing Bible - Current Edition Buy PDF: $49 USD OR Buy PDF + 1 Year of Free Monthly Updates: $149 USD

The newly revised, expanded, and hot-off-the-press Facebook Marketing Bible: 40+ Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook - July 2009 Edition is now available!

The Facebook Marketing Bible has been purchased by thousands of agencies, marketers, social application developers, entrepreneurs, and educators, and is the leading resource on Facebook marketing today. It is also available in French, Spanish, and Italian. (A special edition for agencies and big brands is also available.)

The densely-packed Facebook Marketing Bible contains four detailed sections: Tools for Guerilla Marketers, Tools for Advertisers, Tools for Application Developers, and Tools for Webmasters. Each part outlines the best available channels and strategies for reaching your audience inside Facebook. Please see the full table of contents below.

In addition, Inside Facebook is happy to announce that through July 31st all customers who purchase the Facebook Marketing Bible will also receive a free $25 Facebook Ads advertising credit, courtesy of Facebook (see terms).

The July 2009 edition includes updates on the following topics:

• The latest updates on Facebook Pages (public profiles), including the vanity URL landrush and rule changes for generic Facebook Pages. We’ve broken down all the new elements piece by piece and offered detailed and specific advice for marketers hoping to reach more users inside Facebook than ever before - including details on why marketers should choose Facebook Pages over Facebook Groups, new updates to Facebook’s new Insights dashboard, and new rules for administrators of generic Facebook Pages. See the table of contents below for more details.
• The latest details on Facebook’s new “Pay with Facebook” virtual currency payment program for application developers. Find out the latest on what Facebook’s new payment program means for the future of virtual currency payments on Facebook (and Facebook revenues) - including Facebook’s latest international currency efforts.
• The latest details on Facebook’s new “Open Stream” API and what it means for marketers, publishers, and developers. With the new Open Stream API, Facebook has released the power of the Facebook stream to live anywhere developers can put it - including publisher websites, desktop applications, and mobile phones. Find out exactly what you can do with the new Open Stream, and what it means for the future of the Facebook Platform.
• The latest tools for webmasters to drive more traffic to their site and build more social context through Facebook Connect and Facebook Share. With Facebook Connect and Facebook Share, publishers have new opportunities for both enriching their sites with deeply social features and leveraging Facebook’s powerful feed system for driving traffic to their site. Get new details on metrics early Facebook Connect partners are seeing, and learn how to optimize your Facebook Share integration.
• New tools for advertisers to target their Facebook Ads better than ever before. With enhanced Facebook  targeting tools, advertisers now have the ability to reach their target audiences in much more powerful ways. Learn how to use these new tools to get the most out of your performance marketing dollars. Plus, check out ways Facebook is experimenting with virtual currency gifting and branded virtual gifts.
• Plus, more updates on Facebook’s “Live Stream” widget for live events on your website or Facebook Page, recent rule changes for Facebook Platform ad networks, and more.

Purchase this report The Facebook Marketing Bible - Current Edition Buy PDF: $49 USD OR Buy PDF + 1 Year of Free Monthly Updates: $149 USD

For those interested in learning more, click the purchase link above. The price is $49, or $149 with 12 months of free updates emailed directly to your inbox. As always, please make suggestions if you’d like to see more attention paid to any topic!

Table of Contents

Introduction

I. Tools for Guerilla Marketers

1. Profile Page

2. Pages / Public Profiles

• “Facebook Pages 2.0″
  • The New Wall Tab - Making Pages More Dynamic and Viral
  • Status Updates - Now for Pages, Too
  • Application Boxes - Changing Places
  • Tab Management - Choosing a Landing Page
  • Conclusion - Facebook Learning from Twitter, Pages Getting Better
• The Future of Sharing on Facebook: A Hybrid Public/Private Model
• Branded Virtual Gifts on Facebook Pages Opening New Doors for Viral Advertising
  
• Adding Custom Modules to Your Page
• Strategy: 4 Reasons Why Marketers Should Choose Facebook Pages Over Facebook Groups
• Strategy: I’ve just created a Page. How do I promote it?
• Group to Page Migration
• Guidelines for Promoting Pages Outside Facebook
• Official vs Unofficial Pages
• Pages and SEO
• Vanity URLs for Facebook Pages
• Which Celebrities are the Most Engaging on Facebook?
  
• Ways Page Owners Can Restrict Content for Underage Users
• How to Import Your Blog into Your Public Profile
• Page Invitations
• SMS Subscription Service for Pages
• Updating Facebook Page Status Via Text
• Getting Page Status Updates Via Text
  
• More Features Coming Soon
• Interesting Conversion Rate Metrics from Adobe Students Facebook Campaign
• Marketers Actively Bidding for Generic Facebook Pages
• Facebook Upgrades “Insights” Metrics Dashboard for Page Managers
• Facebook Disabling Stream Publishing for Generic Pages

3. Groups

• Strategy: What about spamming existing groups?
• SEO
  

4. Events

• Events API
• Events SEO
  

5. Notes and Photos

• Events API
• Events SEO
  

6. Messages

7. Status Updates

• Public Timeline Search

8. Share / Posted Items

9. Mini Feed and News Feed

10. Feed Importing

> Data: Latest US Facebook Age and Gender Demographics

> Recommended Strategies for Guerilla Marketers

II. Tools for Advertisers

11. Social Ads

• How Specialty Brands are Driving Sales on Facebook
  

12. Engagement Ads

• Summary of ad units available to Facebook advertisers
  1. Sponsorship Units on the New Facebook Home Page
     • Social Video Ads
     • Sponsored Virtual Gifts
     • Events Ads
     • Pages Ads
     • Polling Ads

  2. Advertising in the New Facebook News Feed
  3. Advertising on the Profile Page (and other pages)
     

13. Virtual Gifts

• The Future of Virtual Gifts on Facebook
• Scheduled & Holiday Virtual Gifts
• Facebook Testing Virtual Currency Gifting Program with Branded Virtual Gifts
  

14. Performance Ads

• Radius and Language Targeting
• Multiple Currency Support

15. Localization Opportunities

16. Integrated Opportunities

17. Facebook Platform Ad Networks

• List of Leading Facebook Platform Ad Networks
• What eCPMs do apps charge? Data from Facebook application developers
• Facebook Bans Platform Ad Networks for Deceptive Ads

18. Facebook Platform Application Sponsorships

• List of Leading Facebook Platform Sponsorship Resellers/Rep Firms
• Strategy: Why sponsor applications when I can sponsor Facebook itself?

19. Specialized Facebook Platform Advertising Service Providers

> Recommended Strategies for Advertisers

III. Tools for Application Developers

• Strategy: What is the Right Way to Market Through Facebook Applications?
• Strategy: Where do most new application users come from?

20. Profile Box

• 5 Things Developers May Not Know About the Facebook Redesign
• Profile Integration: Tour of New Facebook App Settings

21. Application Tabs

22. Application Info Sections

23. Designing Feed Stories

• Strategy: Designing High Performance Feed Items
• News Feed Optimization: Strategies and Techniques

24. Feeds 2.0

• Feed Forms
• Feed Clustering
• Action Links
• Policy Update: All Feed Story Calls to Action Must Now be Action Links
  

25. Feed Publisher

• Publishing in the Feed with Feed Comments

26. Requests / Invitations

• Policy Updates: Requiring Invites to Access Hidden Features, Offering Incentives for Invites, Ads on Profile Page Prohibited
• Strategy: Facebook’s Evolving Approach to Platform Governance
• Sending Application Invitations to Non-Facebook-Members

27. Chat Invitations

28. Facebook Notifications

• Chat Integration: Facebook Wants More Synchronous Notifications
• Policy Update: Bulk Pre-Selection Prohibited
• Facebook Turns On Instant Notifcation Popup Alerts
  
• Spammy Affiliate Marketers Sure to be Shut Down
  

29. Email Notifications

• Updates: Email’s Status as Core Application Marketing Channel in Doubt

30. Application Bookmarks

31. Application Directory & About Pages

• The Publisher Comes to Application About Pages
  

32. Status Updates & Donations

33. Demographic Restrictions

34. Verification and Certification

• Great Apps Program
• Application Verification

35. Translations

• Data: Stats on Facebook Apps Built for International Markets
• Tutorial: Translating Your Applications Using Facebook’s Crowd-sourced Translation Service

Purchase this report The Facebook Marketing Bible - Current Edition Buy PDF: $49 USD OR Buy PDF + 1 Year of Free Monthly Updates: $149 USD

36. Analytics Tools

• List of Leading Third-Party Facebook Platform Analytics Providers
• New Metrics for Developers with Facebook Profile Redesign

37. Search Engine Optimization

38. Mobile

• Facebook for iPhone and Connect for iPhone

39. Customer Service

40. Custom Tags

41. Open Stream

• What Does Facebook’s “Open Stream” Mean for Marketers?
  

42. Pay with Facebook

> Poll: Which viral channels do Facebook users hate most about apps?

> Recommended Strategies for Application Developers

IV. Tools for Webmasters

43. Facebook Connect

• Overview: Integrating Facebook Connect with Your Website
• Related: Google Friend Connect
• Examples: 40 Sites Live with Facebook Connect Today
• Variety of Facebook Connect Plugins Now Available for Blogs and Wikis
• Citysearch: Each Item Shared Through Facebook Connect Generates 30 Clicks
  

44. Comments Box Widget

45. Live Feed Widget

46. Facebook Share

Conclusion

Recommended Partners

Check out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Social Games - tracking all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms.

Monday, June 22

• Zynga Sues Playdom Over Mobsters Ads
• Bringing Wholesome Social Games to Facebook and MySpace: Q&A With WonderHill CEO James Currier
• iPhone OS 3.0 Brings New Legal Terms on Microtransactions, Age Rating for Apps

Tuesday, June 23

• Expert Metrics for Social Games by Siqi Chen and David King - Slides from #SGS09
• Live Notes from #SGS09 - Building Social Games at Scale
• Slides from Presentation at Social Gaming Summit

Wednesday, June 24

• iPhone App Ad Manager AdWhirl Closes $1 Million Seed Round
• Pincus: iPhone Not Easy to Monetize, Needs Better Facebook Connect Support
• Virtual Currency Monetization Comes to Twitter with 140 Mafia and Super Rewards

Thursday, June 25

• Hive7 Partners with Susan G. Komen in New Facebook Game Zen Garden
• Are You Making Your Social Games Wide or Deep?

Friday, June 26

• Ex-Facebooker Net Jacobsson Joins OpenFeint Advisory Board

Facebook friendship has historically been a very mutual relationship: when you become “friends” with another user, you gain access to their profile and their updates show up in your stream (and vice versa) by default. Last year, however, Facebook created more granular privacy controls and friend lists allowing users to limit how much information is shared with particular friends. And now, Facebook is testing a new feature allowing users to choose whether or not they want to show updates from friends in their stream at all inside friend requests.

In addition to giving users the option to add a friend without subscribing to their updates, Facebook is also giving users the option to subscribe to friends’ updates via SMS. When you subscribe to a friend via SMS, their status updates are sent to your phone by text message. Subscribing to friends’ SMS updates is less common (as it is today on Twitter). However, SMS updates are useful for friends you may want to follow closely or in real time - and they’re also very engaging for Facebook.

Ultimately, this test shows Facebook is testing out the impact of allowing more granular subscription options on friend request and friend list user behavior patterns. We expect Facebook to increasingly test options like this that effectively make Facebook relationships more asymmetric than mutual - which will impact the way Platform application and Page content spread throughout the system.

During the 2009 Presidential inauguration, Facebook and CNN made the “Live Stream” widget famous amongst television executives wanting to find ways to make live events more engaging and viral inside Facebook. During the speech, over 2 million status updates were sent, and CNN and Facebook have since been appearing at conferences together talking about how successful the integration was for both parties.

Since then, Facebook has done a variety of similar partnerships from the NBA All Star Game to the Oscars. Now, Facebook is opening up the Live Stream widget, built on Facebook Connect, to any publisher or developer who wants to use it around live events. Facebook says the widget can support millions of simultaneous viewers updating in real time, and is encouraging publishers to use the Live Stream “next to live streaming videos of concerts, speeches, sporting events, webcasts, TV shows, presentations, or webinars. Or run the Live Stream Box in multi-player games, or with any other experience where many people are visiting a website at the same time.”

In addition, Facebook has partnered with real time video streaming service UStream, its recommended vendor for integrating Live Stream who has managed many of the integrations thus far. The UStream solution for Facebook Pages, which was used for the recent Jonas Brothers Facebook broadcast, allows brands and artists to integrate live streaming video on their Facebook page with the Live Stream widget in a tab. More details are available here.

Facebook’s Live Stream widget is critical to its partnerships with major broadcast and cable TV networks. We expect to see more integrations like the CNN and TNT examples coming later this year. For best practices on integrating the Live Stream widget with your online broadcast or seminar, check out our industry leading Facebook Marketing Bible. A special edition for big brands is also available.

Yesterday, Facebook added a new API call and FQL table to query mutual friend relationships between two users. The concept has been around for years on Facebook, but now applications have access to this same information without having to perform expensive queries on their databases.

As with most data accessed using the API or FQL tables, this information is still held to the Platform’s policy on data usage: in most cases, data may not be stored for more than 24 hours.

Technical Details

Since this API is new, a function doesn’t exist in the official Facebook PHP client yet. If you’d like to take advantage of this API call right away, you can add this code into your facebookapi_php5_restlib.php file. This function requires a session key to work. If you do not have a session key for the users you’re making a comparison on, see below. Included in the code is an example of how to utilize the new call.

One point of interest: the new API call requires an input of two user ID’s to make the comparison. The second parameter, “source_uid”, must be set to the user ID matching the current session key. The first parameter, “target_uid”, can be any user ID even if the “target_uid” is not current friends with the “source_uid” - making this API call powerful.

The API call requires a session key to function correctly (you will receive an error otherwise). However, Facebook is also offereing this data in FQL format under the new standard_friend_info table. According to Facebook, you should only use the FQL table if you do not have access to the session key - otherwise, use the API call as outlined above.

Facebook doesn’t let users skin their profile pages, but a browser plugin for Internet Explorer and Firefox called PageRage Super Profile by Yontoo Technology allows users to create the appearance of doing just that. In fact, the app is currently the fastest growing application in the 100,000 to 1 million monthly active users (MAU) category, according to AppData, with nearly 1 million monthly active users and a gain of 200,000 MAU in the last week.

With PageRage, you can customize your Facebook profile with a full profile layout. Your friends who are also users of the app can then see this layout when they are viewing your profile. So far Facebook has kept the profile page layout the same for everyone - simple white and blue - but users are showing interest in customizing their profiles like they are able to on other sites (MySpace, Twitter, etc.)

In the past 90 days, the app has experienced a decline in users, until about mid-May when user growth began to rise.

Accompanying PageRage Super Profile in the Top 5 fastest growing apps this week are My Best Girls! at #2, SpeedDate at #3, People I Love! at #4, and Which Car suits your Personality? at #5, which have made weekly gains ranging from over 100,000 to almost 200,000 MAU, representing MAU growth between 20 and 30 percent.

SpeedDate appears on the leaderboard many times, at #3, #9 to #10, #14 to #16, #18, and #20. SpeedDate has apparently been aggressively buying out apps and completing reskinning them with its own app again - which got the app into trouble with Facebook last summer.

In the Top 20, you’ll also find that games by popular developers Zynga and RockYou! are doing well such as Special Forces and Speed Racing. Those simple quiz apps are still growing too.

As one might expect, compared to the 1 million to 10 million MAU category, the 100,000 to 1 million MAU category features a lot more individual developers who are making their way to the top of the leaderboard. As the virtual goods economy and payments space takes off continues to grow, individual developers are still building substantial businesses without incredibly large audiences.

Yesterday, Facebook announced that they had updated the power of FQL (Facebook Query Lanugage) with respect to batching FQL API calls together. Developers already familiar with SQL languages will certainly appreciate this update, as the new query syntax is akin to the logic used in these other languages. Essentially, Facebook is now allowing developers to batch FQL calls together, and reference columns in earlier queries to mimic standard SQL “INNER JOIN” functionality.

Facebook has already provided examples of where this might be useful. The overarching theme of these examples are:

1. Build an initial query to get user IDs in a certain scenario
2. Utilize these user IDs to get information about those users

These two steps are required in almost every significant FQL application, and traditionally required two separate API calls to get the necessary user information. Now, however, Facebook is allowing developers to combine these steps (and as many more as you can think of) into a single API call. This significantly speeds up API calls, even more so than the existing best-practice of using batch.run. The new best practice is to utilize the fql.multiquery API call.

This is the first time that we’ve seen one API method gain more power than another. Traditionally, FQL offered the same amount of power and flexibility as simply using regular API calls such as stream.get and user.getinfo. Now that developers can combine FQL queries into one API transaction, developers would be wise to utilize FQL in their more complex API interactions.