Inside Facebook

RoomSync has been quietly building a business around helping college students find the right roommate, through a service that integrates Facebook profile data. Enabled by a growing number of universities for on-campus housing, it accesses very particular portions of a user’s profile information, then allows students to enter their own information into the app, and lets them browse and locate their own roommate matches.

Robert J. Castellucci, one of four co-founders of RoomSync, tells us the idea for the company started when he was tasked with roommate matching in a previous job. This type of work is always tedious, he said, largely because it’s done by third parties. What RoomSync does is allows students to determine their own types of preferences for roommates, throwing Facebook profile information into the mix, something the company currently does for 21 institutions across the United States.

Thus far the company has a total of 27,000 users, with many coming in just the last few months. RoomSync offers as a subscription to which institutions subscribe, which includes an initial setup fee and an annual fee, but is free to students, the users.

Castellucci adds that RoomSync has managed not only to match roommates, but to build community and help students make friends before they start school at some of the company’s participating institutions. One school’s reported roommate conflicts went down, as did the severity of the conflicts, and that diversity was unaffected between roommates by use of the app.

First, students receive an email from the institution with an access code. On Facebook, the app culls Likes, such as music and TV and books, and then places students into matching networks. Users can share their use of the app to the stream as a feed story, too. There are five default questions asked by the app and the institution may add up to five more for matching purposes; these questions include their smoking preference or to describe their ideal roommate, for example. There’s a box where they can fill in additional information (that’s moderated for inappropriate content), too.

Then users search the app via academic majors, residence halls where they would like to live, they can view suggested roommates (based on Likes) and then communicate with them over Facebook before selecting their roommates via the Request Roommate option. The recipient of this invitation must confirm, and all dual confirmations are sent to the university for final assignations; once these are made, the app closes for users.

[Courtesy Images]

Yesterday, Facebook launched its “Facebook for Business” resource center, which collects instructions and guides for using Pages, ads, Sponsored Stories, and Platform applications. It walks business owners, marketers, and advertisers through the purpose and functionality of Facebook’s core products in simple, straightforward language, and links to .PDFs where they can learn more.

With Google preparing to allow businesses onto Google+, this seems like an opportune time for Facebook to showcase the depth of its existing business offering and make it easier to start marketing to its 750 million users.

Previously, the resources found on Facebook for Business were scattered across several other official Pages and introduction sites, including Facebook Marketing Solutions, Guide to Facebook Ads, and Facebook Platform. Now businesses can find all this information in one place, and with a more intuitive flow for those unfamiliar with Facebook.

The section on Pages gives step-by-step instructions for creating a Page, executing a strategy, gaining fans, and using Page Insights. One new recommendation it includes is that Page admins should create a “conversation calendar” to organize what kind of posts their Page will publish each day of the week.

For ads, Facebook outlines how to create and target ads, manage a budget, and optimize performance by analyzing metrics. It links to a Facebook Ads Optimization Guide (.PDF), which recommends a strategy of testing ad variants for two to three days.

The Sponsored Stories section is the first dedicated site for learning about the social ad unit. It does a good job of clearly explaining a complex subject. Lack of understanding of how Sponsored Stories work has likely been a deterrent to adoption. These instructions, combined with recent reports of the high efficiency of the ad unit, should lead more advertisers to integrate Sponsored Stories into their mix.

Canvas Apps, Page tab apps social plugins, mobile single-sign on, and Facebook Credits are all addressed on in the Platform section. This part of Facebook for Business is the least fleshed out, often just directing users to the developer documentation, which may be too advanced for those new to the Platform.

Google+ has run into a few snags in its program for businesses. Many brands created personal profiles only to have them deleted. While it first said that official brand pages would be available within weeks of the launch of the new social network, Google has revised that time table to say businesses may have to wait months before they can set up a presence on Google+.

Facebook may be purposefully taking advantage of the the current discontent with its new competitor by launching Facebook for Business this week. It may be able to gain extra ground on Google if it can remind both existing Facebook-integrated businesses and those new to the site of all the marketing channels it already offers.

Facebook is using a “Quick Tips” right sidebar module to educate users on the extended permissions system and direct them to the App settings dashboard where they can manage the permissions they’ve granted to apps. With the title “Understand the Apps You Use”, the module may be designed to reduce the occurrence of users granting permissions to unscrupulous developers in the wake of a small data leak that gave access to unauthorized third-parties.

Last week, a threat was revealed that caused user data access authentication tokens to be transmitted in unsecure HTTP Referrer Headers. This could allow ad networks and other unauthorized partners of authorized developers to steal user data.

Facebook responded by accelerating its app security roadmap such that all apps would be required to use the secure transfer protocol OAuth 2.0 by September 1st, and attain an SSL certificate by October 1st. It also notified developers suspected of leaking data to improve security of their apps or risk suspension. This caused some confusion, as not all developers who received the email warning exhibited data leaks.

To round out this pursuit of  improved security, Facebook now looks to be expanding its user education efforts. The Quick Tips sidebar module appears occasionally to users while they surf the site, similar to established social modules such as People You May Know, as well as newer modules such as Previous Status Updates (formerly titled Memorable Stories) and Discover New Games.

The module reads “Apps on Facebook ask for permission to access your information before you use them. Take the time to understand them.” This addresses the issue that users have become conditioned to clicking through the app permissions without properly reading them or vetting the app.

Clicking within the module takes users to the Apps You Use section of the App, Games, and Websites Settings dashboard that Facebook launched in October to improve management of given permissions. There users can see which apps they’ve authorized, when an app last accessed their data, what permissions they’ve granted each app, and options to revoke permissions or remove apps. However, little user-facing outreach for the dashboard has been done to date, so some app users may not even realize they have these options.

While the dashboard explains its functionality, there’s little explanation about why careful assessment of an app’s reputation and requested permissions is important. Facebook’s recently launched cross-site scripting and clickjacking prevention security measures do a much better job of informing users how to take security into their own hands.

This Quick Tips module points users in the right direction, but Facebook novices that are most vulnerable to the few malicious developers on the Platform may need deeper instruction on why critical thinking about installing an app can protect them, their friends, and the Facebook community at large.