Inside Facebook

Facebook introduces platform changes today that will help it diversify beyond social gaming and add new user acquisition points for developers. Here are four key changes happening now:

1) Facebook is making a serious effort to diversify the platform beyond gaming and marketing by expanding the kinds of structured behavior users can share.

Facebook has long had a conflicted relationship with the fact that the most mature verticals on the platform have been social gaming and marketing. The platform has spawned companies like Zynga, which was founded just four years ago and went on to earn $279 million in revenue in the second quarter of this year.

But the platform has yet to produce a third-party business of similar size in another industry even though Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has repeated in multiple events that he believes that social networking will revolutionize every industry from the ground up.

Today, the company is expanding the range of structured actions users can take on the platform. Users can now “Watch,” “Listen,” “Cook,” or “Run,” among numerous other types of behavior. It adds more granularity to the “Like,” button, and will ideally fuel the growth of many types of apps beyond gaming. The company showed off a number of examples apps like “Social Cooking” and the Spotify integration, where users can catalogue what they’ve cooked or what music they’ve listened to.

The question is whether adding a social layer and stronger viral distribution on Facebook will help make these long-troubled industries like music and media more financially viable. Spotify chief executive Daniel Ek did say on-stage today at the developer conference that Facebook-integrated users were more likely to pay for the service, but didn’t specify by how much.

2) Graph Rank adds interests to the social graph, matching users with the types of news feed stories like music, cooking or movie-themed ones that are most likely to engage them.

Facebook is adding another layer of sophistication to the Open Graph today that will match news feed stories with users based on their interests. So users who are likely to click on music-themed stories, will probably see more music-related activity in their news feed. It appears to build on platform changes the company introduced within the last year that matched gaming activity with users who play games.

3) Facebook will make it easier for developers to get users to continuously share their activity on the network.

Since the company’s botched launch of Beacon four years ago, Facebook has struggled with how to boost sharing activity in a way that respects the privacy of users. As the company has matured and attracted more mainstream users, it’s had to learn how and when to push online social mores without damaging its brand too much.

Today, the company is doing a careful pendulum swing back toward more continuous sharing by letting users give third-party apps the ability to constantly stream their activity. Users maintain control because they can toggle on or off the ability of third-party apps to share their behavior. The news feed is also far more sophisticated now and can filter out activity that’s uninteresting so users don’t have to worry about bombarding their friends. But there is still potential for abuse.

4) Developers can focus on three user acquisition points on the platform: timeline, news feed and the ticker.   

With timeline and ticker, Facebook introduces two new user acquisition points for developers this week. One is the ticker, which shares activity on the network with more emphasis on how recently it was published. The second is the news feed which appears to be relatively unchanged from before in that developers need to get their users to share updates that can easily attract likes and comments for higher rank.

The third — the Timeline — is probably the most difficult to break into. A third-party app would have to produce a news feed story that attracts enough engagement that it might count as the best update from a given month or year of a user’s life.

Ticker: Low barriers to access, but likely a lower clickthrough rate. Ticker was introduced last week and shows a live feed of user activity from across the web. Facebook vice president Mike Schroepfer said during a press question-and-answer session at the developer conference today that the company will continually to tweak the ticker for more engaging activity. So there is some filtering for engagement, but less than what would be seen on the news feed.

News Feed: Similar to before. High barriers to access. An item would need to have high EdgeRank (e.g. a user would see an item if the update itself attracted many likes or comments or if it was from a friend they often interact with on Facebook).

Timeline: High barriers to access. Timeline is a new profile view that lets people see a visual history of a user’s life. To see something in Timeline, the news feed story would have to be the most engaging from a given month or year in a user’s life or they’d have to intentionally curate it into their Timeline.

Or a user could add an application to their timeline, akin to what “Boxes” used to do in letting users feature applications on their profile page until it was removed last year.

Over the past week and a half, Facebook has posted to the Developers Blog announcing several new tools, protocols and capabilities for developers. These include

• Better ways to submit bugs and track the API heath of the Platform,
• Changes to the DealSpot and Games Dashboard Featured Status incentives for developers who have integrated Facebook Credits
• A migration system where breaking changes are only pushed on the first day of the month
• Support for OAuth 2.0 with XMPP
• The deprecation of Auth 1.0 and the FB.Data call
• The ability to manage Events and upload high-resolution photos via the Graph API
• A more direct way for games to handle link clicks on the canvas page
• The option to detect and control flash object visibility in apps

New Platform Tools

High Level Changes

On October 14th, Facebook will open to all Facebook Credits developers several of the special incentive features that were initially used to encourage early adoption of Credits as a currency and payment method.

Developers will gain the ability to target specific demographics with DealSpot, a TrialPay-developed system that shows in-game icons leading to offers users can complete to earn Facebook Credits. DealSpot presents offers to users that might not have visited the offer wall, so developers looking to augment sales of virtual goods with another revenue stream should strongly consider activating the feature.

All developers will also gain access to broad category targeting, which lets them target Facebook Ads to users based on their interest in anything related to a selected topic. Facebook actually began testing this feature in April as an alternative to targeting specific keywords. The ability to target all social gamers rather than just fans or the Pages of certain games, Broad Category Interest targeting could help developers attain more new customers with less effort spent on ad targeting.

Facebook’s free marketing system known as Games Dashboard Featured Status and Social Placements will also become available to developers of games integrated with Credits. Games eligible for the promotions are “evaluated on a case by case basis, such as for game quality, genre and new functionality”. The system will be especially helpful to developers that are building great games but that don’t have big marketing budgets.

Recently, Facebook announced that developers would have a minimum of 90 days between the announcement of a breaking change and its implementation. To make adapting to these changes more predictable, Facebook now says it will only push breaking changes on the first day of any given month. This will reduce stress for developers, since they won’t have to worry that they may have missed an announcement about a breaking change that could suddenly take their app down.

For example, Facebook announced on September 16th that the FB.Data calls for waiting until specific queries were completed to perform an action will be deprecated. As such, the FB.Data calls will be deprecated on the first day of the month following the minimum 90 day period, January 1st, 2012.

Developers of XMPP Facebook Chat clients can now begin migrating to OAuth 2.0. They can use access tokens over SSL rather than sig and session_key parameters. As such, Facebook will deprecate Auth.promotesession on October 1st. The move to OAuth 2.0 will protect Chat clients from some types of data leaks.

A reminder, mandatory migration to OAuth 2.0 is coming on October 1st. Developers will need to have switched to the new JavaScript and PHP SDKs by then.

Specific Changes

Developers can now manage invite lists and check RSVP status for Events using the Graph API in addition to creating and deleting Events. This could help developers create powerful interfaces for professional event managers, or create an Events dashboard for users.

Facebook improved its Photos product last month, increasing the maximum photo size from 760 to 920 pixels. Photos uploaded through the Graph API can now have a maximum size of 920 pixels as well. However, photos returned through the API will still have a maximum size of 720 pixels, so there are no actual changes to what’s received from the API or FQL. The change will keep users from abandoning photo upload and editing apps when they want to upload high resolution photos.

By using FB.Canvas.SetUrlHandler, developers can now select to have clicks of links related to their apps from ticker stories, bookmarks, bookmark drop-down Requests and Request Notification stories be handled in-line in the apps. Previously, these clicks would needlessly redirect a user when they were already viewing the app the link led to.

For example, if an app employs FB.Canvas.SetUrlHandler, a user who clicks on a ‘your move’ Request or an achievement story while already viewing the app that published the Request or story wouldn’t be sent to the corresponding URL, but would be brought to the corresponding screen within the app. This should decrease load times and bounces from users clicking links on the Canvas page.

Flash applications using wmode=”window” rather than the recommended wmode=”opaque” can now pass a callback function to hideFlashCallback to FB.init to customize the visibility of flash elements when popups are shown. Previously, Flash objects could become hidden when popups were shown.

Facebook quietly launched a Like button browser extension for Chrome a couple months ago, TechCrunch has discovered today. The extension appears as a button to the right of the search and address box in the Chrome interface, and as an option in the right-click menu. As one might expect, it lets you like any web page, share content and your commentary back to Facebook, and see the number of other Facebook users who have liked a post.

Interestingly, it appears to have been released around when Google+ launched in late June, possibly in reaction to hints that Google had their own +1 button extension coming. Google did — but the product only just launched this week.

Maybe Facebook is planning a big push of the plugin at f8 or something? But the lack of promotion that the company has given the plugin suggests that it was a side project or test done by an individual or small team of engineers. As of now, the extension has 555 users.

It seems to work well enough from a user perspective, but could use a bit more polish. For example, if you Like one page, then use hotkey commands to go to other open tabs, the popout description of the Like will remain overlaying the browser.

The overall aim of this sort of feature is to get more users sharing more information through Facebook, and so make its site more valuable to developers and advertisers. It could also give Facebook additional data about its users.

As TechCrunch notes, some users have been concerned about these types of extensions sharing browsing activity and other sensitive information back to the parent company. If you use Facebook’s extension while you’re logged in to Facebook, the company says it will see the URL, your IP address, and when you visited the site. Both companies disclose what data their extensions access in their Chrome Web Store extension descriptions, so users should decide if they’re willing to share browsing activity in exchange for using the product. If it makes leery users feel any better, Facebook and Google both have a wide range of other ways to track users online identities and behaviors, as do countless other web companies.

Facebook has experimented with various types of persistent web interfaces over the years, notably browser toolbars and a navigation toolbar tested for a while in 2008 that appeared above any page that users had clicked to from inside the site. Some web companies, like StumbleUpon, have successfully used persistent browser add-ons to drive usage. Facebook has more often emphasized other ways of making its services effective beyond its home site, like Connect and Graph API-based products such as the Like button. Perhaps its ongoing interest in browser technology and development will result in more features like this extension.

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]

Amongst a flurry of announcements about changes to games on its platform, Facebook recently updated the Developers Blog regarding the addition of a new Insights analytics tab for Facebook Credits. The latest Platform Update also included announcements about how app-to-user request notifications will now show the notification’s message; new capabilities for the Graph API, activity and recommendation plugins, and the Graph API Explorer; as well as clarifications of two Facebook Platform Policies.

Developers of Facebook apps that use Facebook Credits will now or soon see a Credits tab in their Insights dashboard. Credits Insights graphs the information developers receive in their daily Credits reports, name spend, chargebacks, and refunds. Developers can select date ranges for these graphs, compare time periods, and export data in XLS or CSV format.

Credits Insights, accessible to those with the Administrator role on a given app, will help developers determine how effectively their apps and games are monetizing. The Insights graphs are more efficient for determining the impact of design changes or market forces on monetization than the more momentary Credits reports. With time, Facebook may add more data to Credits Insights that could help developers better understand who is spending within their apps, and what is convincing them to make purchases.

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Facebook quietly changed some important Platform Policies recently, banning promotion of apps on some types of competing social platforms and restricting how developers can reward their users. In the Platform Update, it announced two smaller deletions from its policy document:

FPP IV.4: You must provide users with an easily identifiable “skip” option whenever you present users with an option to use a Facebook social channel.

Apps no longer have to include a skip option because apps must always obtain user consent before posting on their behalf.

FPP IV.5: You must not provide users with the option to publish more than one Stream story at a time.

This deletion permits apps to let users publish to the walls of multiple friends simultaneously. Group communication, group buying, multi-player gaming, and other types of apps will now be able to let users choose multiple recipients for a wall post rather than put users through several redundant share steps.

The policy was likely put in place initially to reduce the potential for wall post spam. However, Facebook has been refining its app quality ranking system such that apps that publish posts that are frequently hidden or marked as spam will receive fewer impressions of their news feed content and risk suspension. Facebook apparently sees these repercussions as adequate to discourage spam.

App to user Request notifications that appear in the Apps and Games Dashboards now include the message originally included with the Request, making them a more effective method for developers to communicate with their users and ping them with calls to action. Before, these notifications didn’t include the message. The change could increase the conversion rate on app-to-user Requests. The counters for pending Requests will also appear in the new Games Ticker.

Developers using Facebook’s Activity or Recommendations plugins now have the option to prevent old or outdated content from appearing in the plugins. The  max_age field lets developers set the number of days within which a URL must have been created to be eligible for display within the plugin.

For example, ’0′ would make all stories show up regardless of URL creation date similar to how the plugin worked before, whereas ’14′ would require the URL to have been created in the last two weeks. The option will make the plugins more useful to developers of sites focused on breaking news or other real-time content.

The Graph API Explorer now permits developers to quickly generate access tokens for one of the apps they admin. This will make it easier to test APIs that require users to grant permissions to an app.

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Rather than using the legacy REST API, developers can now determine if a user Likes a Page using the Graph API call:

https://graph.facebook.com/me/likes/PAGE_ID
&access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN

This could help apps determine if a user is eligible to see fan-only content protected by a Like-gate.

Facebook today announced it would be migrating the now publicly available Ads API from the legacy REST API to the Graph API by January 2012, and that programmatic access to new features will only be available via the Graph API. Developers of Ads API tools and services that allow for efficient management of massive Facebook ad campaigns should look to migrate as soon as possible to retain access to forthcoming improvements.

Facebook has also released the source code for the Ads Power Editor, its internally developed Ads API tool, to provide a development example..

The Ads API was officially launched to the public at the beginning of August after nearly two years of private beta testing with a limited set of partners. It joined the Pages and Insights APIs to form the Facebook Marketing APIs.

The Ads API permits developers to devise apps that manage Facebook ads programmatically, permitting simultaneous creation of thousands of ad variants, dynamic bid optimization, and deep analytics. These functionalities are crucial to running large scale ad campaigns for brands and game developers at the lowest possible cost.

The Ads API spawned a whole industry of licensable tool and managed spend service providers. We’ve reviewed the offerings of many of these companies, including those catering specifically to certain verticals such as TBG Digital for brands, AdParlor for game developers, Spruce Media for direct response advertisers, and Efficient Frontier for those also running search advertising.

The migration announcement should set the development teams of these companies into high gear so they can provide their customers with the latest improvement to the Ads API, such as new Sponsored Stories ad unit types, analytics data fields, and targeting options. With single clients sometimes representing millions in ad spend, no Ads API provider would want to lose their edge to competitors that have migrated from the legacy REST API to the Graph API before the January deadline.

Developers who’ve been approved to access the Ads API and have migrated to the Graph API will need users to authorize their ads apps with ads_management permission. The developers may then begin making Graph API calls on their behalf. The new Ads on the Graph API documentation provides for details on migrating and Ads API use.

By looking at the Ads Power Editor source code, developers can learn how to build basic functionality for creating campaigns, buying ads, managing bids, and reporting performance. By moving to the modern, widely used Graph API and providing example code, development of Ads API tools should become easier. This could lead to creation of more niche Ads API tools and services for specific industries.

The last Platform Update to the Facebook Developer Blog announced a mandatory migration to a new spec of OAuth 2.0. It only requires a small code change, but all developers must implement it by November 5th. Facebook also noted that a slightly updated version of the PHP SDK will be released tomorrow, August 9th. This week, Facebook also provided a walk through of how developers can allow users to upload videos to their profiles through an application.

Facebook is currently migrating to OAuth 2.0, a secure authorization protocol that allows applications to keep User IDs and access tokens private when transmitted. All developers must migrate their apps to OAuth 2.0 by October 1st.

Facebook jointly publishes the OAuth spec with Yahoo! and Microsoft. A change to this spec necessitates a changes to Facebook’s auth APIs will also change, which in turn requires a minor change to API calls.

As of November 5th, 2011, auth API calls that previously used included “code_and_token” will instead need to use “code%20token“. All other elements of auth API calls remain identical.

In other OAuth news, tomorrow Facebook will release v3.1 of its PHP SDK. The OAuth 2.0-ready versions of the PHP and JavaScript SDKs were initially slated for a July 1st launch. However the PHP SDK was finished early and released in late May, while technical difficulties delayed the JS SDK until late July.

During the delay of the JS SDK, there were apparently some improvements made upon what was released in the v3 of the PHP SDK. The new v3.1 PHP SDK update to be released tomorrow will “leverage the recent changes to the JavaScript SDK”. Developers can download the update on GitHub.

Facebook has been publishing a series of how-to guides that explain how developers can add advanced functionality to and optimize performance of their apps and websites. Previously, Facebook published a how-to for optimizing social plugin performance. The guides consolidate clear instructions so developers don’t have to dig through forums or use trial and error to achieve the functionality they desire.

The How-To: Use the Graph API to Upload a Video (iOS) guide explains that by allowing users to upload video through an app, that app can gain new users since a link to it is included alongside video content. The guide covers how to:

1. Start a new project
2. Add a sample video to your project
3. Set up the Facebook class
4. Set up permissions and the authentication handler
5. Setup up the video upload Graph API call
6. Handle the results
7. Add single sign-on (SSO) support
8. Test the app
9. Set video privacy

Facebook announced several important changes this week that impact developers of apps and social plugin-integrated websites. The latest Platform update described how developers can track app feed stories using ref parameters, and listed many new metrics that have been added to the Insights table for apps and websites. A special Developers Blog post explained how social plugins can be optimized to reduce webpage load times and Insights errors.

On October 22nd, developers will gain the ability to request permission to read and manage user notifications. Developers can now alo exclude certain User IDs from seeing dialogs or limit the number of Requests they can send, and apps can be deauthorized or have their permissions revoked via the Graph API.

New Ref Parameter and Insights Metrics

Developers can now add a ref parameter to feed dialogs, allowing them to track the performance of different dialogs in Insights. Ref parameters can added using the JavaScript SDK, PHP, or the Graph API. A “story types” drop-down will then appear in news feed section, allowing developers to see all story types or just those with a certain ref parameter. This will improve A/B testing of feed dialogs, helping developers determine what dialog design causes causes users to publish the most feed stories.

Facebook has also added the following new metrics to Insights:

Websites

• domain_feed_clicks - The number of clicks sent to your site from stories in News Feed, Page Walls, or Profile Walls
• domain_feed_views – The number of times people viewed stories that link to your site in News Feed, Page Walls, or Profile Walls
• domain_stories - The number of times people posted a link to your site through an action on a social plugin or through a status message or Wall post
• domain_widget_like_views - The number of times people viewed Like buttons on your site
• domain_widget_likes - The number of times people clicked the Like button on your site
• domain_widget_like_feed_views - The number of times people viewed stories generated from Like button clicks on your site
• domain_widget_like_feed_clicks - The number of clicks sent to your site from stories in News Feed, Page Walls, or Profile Walls

Apps

• application_api_errors_rate - Average number of errors per API request from your app
• application_api_time_average - Average time for API requests from your app, in milliseconds
• application_canvas_time_average - Average HTTP response time on your Canvas page, in milliseconds
• application_canvas_errors - HTTP request errors on your Canvas page
• application_canvas_errors_rate - Average number of errors per canvas request of your app

In the latest Platform Updates to the Facebook Developer Blog, the company announced the ability to manage Pages, change their wall settings, and install tab applications via the Graph API. This should make it easier for developers who manage multiple Pages.

Facebook added a referral attribute to the Send button for tracking which Send Button and what type of Send button story led a user to click back to a developer’s site. Developers can now use the Graph API Explorer with test accounts, and the set of payment methods displayed when users buy Facebook Credits is now optimized by country. In the previous Platform Update, Facebook announced  that developers can now name their test users, and can use the App ID where they previously used their API key.

As the Page management industry grows and developers begin to administrate numerous Pages for clients or their own apps, Facebook has sought to improve the tools for managing Pages as a team , and for single admins to efficiently manage one or many Pages without using the graphical user interface.

To further this effort, Facebook now allows Page admins to retrieve Page access tokens through the Graph API using the call:

https://graph.facebook.com/PAGE_ID
  ?fields=access_token&access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN

This token can then be used to make changes to the Page. Wall settings such as whether users are allowed to post can be pulled using the /settings connections. These settings can be changed via an HTTP POST to PAGE_ID/settings. For instance, an admin could quickly close the walls of all of their Pages in the event of a public relations crisis or their app breaking.

Developers can also “read, install and manage app tabs for a Page via the /tabs connection.” This allows them to check which tabs are currently installed and  add new ones. For example, a developer could simultaneously install a promotional app across all the local branch Pages of a single business for a coordinated marketing push. Details for managing Pages via the Graph API can be found in the Page object documentation.

Facebook launched the Send button in April to facilitate sharing of content around the web with specific friends rather one’s entire network through the Like button. In May it added Send button metrics to Domain Insights, as well as the Graph API and FQL Insights table.

Now, a referral parameter can be included in implementations of the Send button so developers can be sure which Send button is generating emails, Group posts, and Facebook messages that are leading to referral clicks. Developers can also see which of these three Send types led to the click. The following is an example of an added referral parameter that can be embedded along with a Send button:

<html><body>
<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script>
<fb:send href="YOUR_SITE_URL"></fb:send>
</body></html>

Clicks to your website will generate a referrer URL containing the ref value and parameter, for example:

http://www.yoursite.com/home?fb_ref=top_left&fb_source=message

This data will help developers optimize the placement and style of their Send buttons, and choose on which web pages to include the social plugin. It will also help developers determine what Send button message type is being used most often. For instance, if they see that their content is frequently being sent to Facebook Groups, they might include messaging on their site encouraging users to share with their Groups.

A few weeks ago, Facebook launched the Graph API Explorer to allow new developers to get acquainted with the API, and experienced developers to test their apps. Now developers can log in to the console as a test account. The permits them to test installing apps, posting content, and taking other actions that generate news feed stories without worrying about clogging the news feeds of friends with tests. Facebook said it received a high volume of requests for this capability.

When developers create their test accounts, they can now name them to more easily keep track of them and to produce tests that look more authentic than tests using unnatural names. The name of a test account will in part determine what email address it is assigned.

Facebook has also changed how payment options for Facebook Credits are displayed. Now, methods will be ordered depending on which is most commonly used in a user’s country. This way, if a mobile payments are more prevalent than credit cards payments, the mobile payment option will appear higher in the list. This should increase the likelihood that users will complete Credits purchase transactions, thereby increasing the number of users with Credits balances and the amount of Credits they have. This should make it easier for apps to turn users into paying customers.

Last, Facebook is phasing out usage of the API key in app settings to remove redundancy in the developer app. Developers can now use their App ID wherever they previously used their API key. This means there’ll be one less code that developers will need to keep accessible.

Documents detailing an upcoming change to Facebook Pages and Places have been found by our German sister site, AllFacebook.de . We’ve now confirmed with Facebook that this week it will launch a limited private test of tools permitting a new parent-child management structure for Places that will allow corporations to administrate all the Places pages of the local instances of their business. On corporate parent Pages, an in-house “Locations” app will automatically display nearby branches and allow users to search for local branches by zip code, and child Places will feature a link back to their corporate Page.

Giants from foodservice, retail, insurance and other industries are already setting up Places for each of their branches to facilitiate local marketing and encourage checkins using the clumsier old system. Facebook’s new parent-child structure will make this process simpler and more systematized, which could lead more corporations to buy Facebook ads for their local branches.

Facebook tells us “We’re testing new ways for businesses with more than one location to develop a localized presence on Facebook. The tools launching this week…make it easier for businesses to begin to localize their voice at scale.”

The way Facebook’s location-based service originally worked made it difficult for corporations that needed to set up multiple Places, whether in the dozens or the thousands. Places, separate from Pages, had to be set up or claimed and then clumsily merged with Pages. Facebook has since streamlined this process, giving checkin functionality to any Page that lists a street address.

A corporation’s Page and all its local branch Places still couldn’t be connected on the backend of Facebook’s admin system, though. This meant that if a corporation wanted to push a branding or slogan change to all its Pages, or manage regulatory compliance, a single corporate representative had to be individually granted admin privileges to every Place.  Even then, changes had to be pushed one Page at a time.

Third-party Page management products such as Hearsay Social launched to specifically handle the corporate-local problem. This seemed like a lucrative business as corporations such as State Farm and 24 Hour Fitness were spending a lot on Facebook marketing, and the solution seemed more complicated than something Facebook would design a native product for. However, close relationships that Facebook has forged with corporations through its inside ad sales teams have now led it to address the corporate-local Page management issue.

Parent-Child Admin System and Pages API Changes

Facebook will offer a parent-child Page set up tool to a limited set of businesses that have a corporate-local structure.  Once the connections between parent and child Pages are arranged, parent Pages will include a Locations tab in their Edit Page admin interface navigation menu.

The Locations admin interface will display a list of all children Places, including the store ID, address, Like count, and checkin count of each. This will make it simple for a corporation to monitor the performance of its child Places. Admins will be able to search for a specific child Place by store ID, and make the Locations Page tab application visible to users or hide it.

When using Facebook as the parent Page, admins will have full admin control over the children Places, meaning they can go in and edit a Place page’s info, post or moderate content, change settings, and install tab applications. This means corporations will be able to swiftly address threats to their branding by deleting the posts of local branch admins or fans, as well as coordinate marketing campaigns such as the installation of a new sweepstakes app. Child Place admins won’t be able to remove admin privileges from parent admins.

It appears that Facebook will also support the parent-child structure in the Pages API. Settings, apps, and content moderation will be able to be controlled programmatically, enabling corporations to push changes to many Pages at once. For example, McDonalds could use the parent-child Page API to install an application and publish an update promoting it on all of its local Places simultaneously. Corporations will also be able to use a Checkin Deals API to offer rewards to users for visiting any of their local branches in person.

The corporate-local Pages API could encourage more developers to build apps designed for tighter integration between different levels of a company. For instance, developers could build contest apps that include local run-offs on child Places leading to worldwide finals that are held on a parent Page.

With time, Facebook may build more corporate-local moderation and publishing features into the graphic user interface so corporations can easily change the wall settings, ban certain words, or post content across all their Pages without the use of any code. This could commodify some third-party Page management services, forcing companies offering these services to look for other ways to provide value to their clients.

Locations In-House Page Tab Application

Facebook users visiting a parent Page will see a Locations tab app in the Page’s navigation menu. Parent pages will display a store locator that automatically shows a store nearby the user and can be used to search for branches by zip code. A map and list will show users nearby branches of a business along with thumbnail pictures of friends who’ve checked in there, and allow them to visit the corresponding children Places. These features will help users discover the local branches of their favorite corporations. This will in turn help drive foot traffic, and engagement with location-based Checkin Deals.

Children Places will display a link to their parent Page just below their name, allowing corporations to gain Likes from supporters of their local branches. Checkin counts from child Pages will be summed on the Parent page to give a more accurate impression of the global popularity of the business.

Overall, the parent-child structure and Locations app seem like a strong start to accommodating businesses and organizations with a corporate-local structure. These include some of the world’s biggest brands who are also the world’s biggest spending advertisers. If Facebook can get more corporations with local branches onto the Platform and using the parent-child Page system, it could lead to the launch of a huge number of new, well-funded local Places that it could offer its advertising services to.

Update 7/12/11 10:15am PST: Facebook has confirmed with us that the parent-child Page management set up tool will launch in limited private test this week.

Strategies for using Facebook Places to market your business can found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s complete guide to marketing and advertising through Facebook.