Inside Facebook

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 IPO in Late 2012? – The Financial Times reported this week that Facebook’s IPO is set for the end of next year, with a valuation of what would be at least $66 billion. But The New York Times said Facebook was on track to go public in the first half of next year. Facebook itself hasn’t made any official statements about

FTC Proposes New Privacy Regs – The Federal Trade Commission proposed rules this week that may affect how children under 13 use the Internet. Mobile web apps are now included in the rules, for example, and so may require parental consent for use.

Update on Case Sensitivity of Passwords – ZDnet wrote a piece this week in which Emil Protalinski found that Facebook passwords are not entirely case sensitive. Facebook responded noting that the site accepts three forms of your password: the original, the original with the first letter capitalized (to accommodate mobile devices) and the original password with cases reversed (to accommodate a caps lock being on).

Facebook’s FBAR – Facebook’s Engineering Team wrote a note this week detailing FBAR, or Facebook Automatic Remediation. These are scripts that detect errors or breakage in servers, automatically removing them from the system, determining the problem, alerting a technician to replace the drive, testing it and re-adding to Facebook’s infrastructure. It now manages more than 50% of Facebook’s infrastructure and is doing the work of about 200 system admins. [Image Via Facebook]

Skype, Facebook Integration 5.4 – Skype released its Mac updates recently that includes a Facebook integration that allows you to IM and connect with friends without leaving Facebook, also allowing you to read/update the feed, comment Like and more.

Custom URLs Available to Anyone – Facebook no longer requires users or Pages to need 25 friends to acquire a custom URL.

Fake Facebook Name Not a Felony – Forbes reported this week that, despite an initial concern that a fake Facebook name could be considered a felony under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, an amendment added eliminated this possibility.

App Allows Cross-Platform Posting – If This Then that allows users to cross-post to dozens of programs for content management purposes, such as instant messaging to your blog.

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.

UK Won’t Ban Facebook – Facebook, Twitter and Research In Motion met with United Kingdom officials Thursday regarding the social networks’ role in summer riots there. The government ended up not moving to restrict access to the social networks in emergencies such as riots.

Facebook Takes Third Spot for Video – Facebook becomes the third largest video site on the Internet, comScore reported. That is 51.5 million people who watched videos on the platform in July.

AT&T to Discontinue Facebook Phone – AT&T is reportedly set to drop its “Facebook phone” called the Status, according to TechCrunch.

Places More Popular Than Foursquare – London developer Golden Gekko reports its clients report much more Facebook check-ins than Foursquare in Europe. Magnus Jern reported that the ratio ranged from 5-10 to 1. However, the future of the service is unclear.

Facebook Hit 1 Trillion Pageviews - Facebook surpassed 1 trillion pageviews according to Google’s Ad Planner tool, although comScore says otherwise.

Facebook Mobile App to Offer Photo Filters - Facebook looks to be competing with Instagram’s classy mobile app by offering almost a dozen photo filters to its mobile own application — following Facebook’s attempt to buy the startup, according to The New York Times. News of the feature first leaked out in June.

Recapping Facebook’s Bug Bounty – Neal Poole did a basic rundown of Facebook’s Security Bug Bounty program, which included information about multi-line JavaScript URI, redirects preserving fragment portions of URLs, XSS filters and more.

Facebook Wraps Up Farm Bureau Dispute – Facebook and the Farm Bureau had a dispute over Facebook trademarking “FB,” but it seems like the lawsuit is set to be wrapped up.

Milyoni Chart for Credits – Milyoni created a nice chart and whitepaper that includes ways that Facebook Credits can, and cannot, be used.

Facebook to Open Second Campus - Facebook is set to open up an additional campus from its current Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters. The second campus pwill be southwest of the current location, to be constructed in 2013 to accommodate about 2,800 employees.

Ticketmaster Allows Users to Find Friends – Line Nation’s Ticketmaster service launched an app that allows users to see where their friends are sitting on seat maps and tag themselves.

BBC Does Facebook On-Demand Video – BBC has developed an on-demand Facebook application allowing users to rent episodes from the show “Top Gear” for 48 hours.

ShopIgniter, Involver Partner – The two companies are entered into a partnership to help online retail businesses with a management content system.

A brief post today by Facebook product manager Justin Shaffer describes a new version of Facebook’s photo viewer coming out now. In place of the black lightbox background window that it previously had you’ll see a much thinner white background. Meanwhile, images are getting considerably more space, going from 720 to 960 pixels., They’ll also load “twice as fast,” Shaffer writes.

For sake of comparison, newly-launched Google+’s maximum photo size is 2048 pixels. Facebook’s size increase might be designed to reduce the gap between the two. The thinner border will keep more of the previously viewed page visible, reminding users to close the photo viewer and resume browsing rather than leave Facebook altogether.

By moving to from a black to a white background, opening photos from the mostly white news feed should be less jarring. This could reduce fatigue from rapidly dropping in and out of the photo viewer and keep users browsing the site for longer.

The photos product has been one of Facebook’s key draws since the early years. Today, in a new stat revealed in the blog post, the company says it’s getting 250 million uploads a day, or about one photo for every three users on Facebook. The upgrade will be rolled out over the next few week, and should make Facebook Photos even more of an attraction for sharing and viewing.

Facebook now allows developers to create and manage test users for their applications via the Developer app‘s graphical user interface. Previously, test users could only be created and controlled programattically through the Graph API, which may have made using them difficult for developers not fluent in the API or those looking to faithfully recreate the typical user experience. Some developers will gain access to the test user feature today, and the roll out will reach all developers by next week.

In other Platform news, Facebook recently added support for uploading photos to the graph API via a URL and attaching an existing photo from one of a user’s albums into a new post. It also released a new dark color theme option for its Facepile social plugin.

Facebook introduced the test user system so developers could test their apps without creating fake user profiles that violate Facebook’s terms of service, or polluting their own profiles with test posts. Test users can interact normally with apps and each other, but are invisible to and can’t interact with normal users. Note that test users are different than “testers”, which are humans that a developer has given the ability to test their app in sandbox mode, but not granted access to their app’s settings or Insights.

Now when developers visit the Roles section for one of their apps within the Developer app, they’ll see the option to add test users. Multiple test users can be created at once, and developers have the option to instantly authorize an app for them or opt to have them go through the permissions dialog later.

Once test users have been created, developers can switch to use Facebook as them, edit their names, view their access tokens, make them friends with each other, assign them to additional apps, or remove them from the currently viewed app. When switched to be logged in as a test user, developers can edit their profile to add content necessary to test an app.

The feature should make development on the Facebook Platform more accessible. By lowering the barrier to creating and testing apps, Facebook can court the long-tail of independent developers that have yet to grow accustomed to the social network’s proprietary APIs.

Platform Update

Previously, developers had to use a MIME-encoded form field to upload photos via the Graph API. Now developers can just point to an image’s URL to upload it, which will simplify the use of photos for developers using cloud hosting services such as Amazon S3 or “platforms that don’t have good support for multipart file uploads”. Those looking to populate an app with a large batch of photos will find it much easier thanks to this feature.

Developers can also now pull a user’s existing photos into new posts their apps publish on the user’s behalf. This relieves users from having the upload a new photo, increasing the likelihood they’ll go through with posting via the app. Images have been shown to increase news feed engagement, so this change could also help apps achieve more virality.

Lastly, Facebook has released a dark background version of the Facepile social plugin, which displays thumbnail profile pics of friends that have Liked a website or used an application. This will make the plugin a beter aesthetic fit for darker websites, and spread the Facepile’s implicit social recommendations further across the internet.

Today, internet marketing research company comScore released a white paper detailing which Facebook features receive the most usage and where users interact with branded content. The report shows that 27% of Facebook browsing is on the news feed and home page — 4% of all time spent online in the US.  21% of time was spent on profiles, 17% on Photos, 10% on applications, and 25% on the rest of the site. Most engagement with branded content happens on the news feed, not Pages, yet the average brand in the top 100 Facebook Pages reaches only 16% of their fans per week if they post five days a week.

These stats should illuminate that brands should put more effort into optimizing their news feed posts than developing apps for their Pages if they want to reach the most people. The report is based on a two million person opt-in panel of web internet users that agreed to be monitored, so the sample size is ample though it might skew towards savvier, less skittish users.

Most Time Spent on News Feed and Photos, Not Apps

Facebook’s Photos feature is often considered a core driver of time spent on Facebook. ComScore’s stats showing more usage of the news feed than Photos don’t necessarily disprove this, as time spent reading news feed stories and notifications generated by photo uploads and tags are counted towards the news feed’s time. Facebook has yet to develop other features as popular as the news feed or Photos.

Some might expect that applications and games would take up more than 10% of user time. In September 2010, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said over 200 million people, or roughly 40% of users were playing games on Facebook when the service had 500 million users, and that stat might still hold true. A few months prior, Playdom CEO cited undisclosed personal sources saying 40% of all time on Facebook was spent on games — a much higher percentage than comScore’s figures. These new stats should serve as a reality check that brands shouldn’t be too focused on building tab applications or marketing within social games.

Brands Must Focus on the News Feed

ComScore’s data supports a similar conclusion as findings by Facebook Page analytics tool provider PageLever, which showed that the average Facebook Page receives an average of just 7.49 news feed post impressions and only 3.19 unique Page views per day per 100 fans. Essentially, each post a Page publishes only reaches a small fraction of its total fans via the news feed, and an even smaller portion of its fans visit the Page itself.

Pages that want to increase the percentage of their fans which they reach with news feed posts should make sure to post every day. A study of the top 100 Pages showed that for each additional day per week that a Page posts, it reaches 2.5% more of its fan base. Those that post every day can reach as much of 22% of their fan base each week.

A study of three popular brands on Facebook, Starbucks, Bing, and Southwest Airlines, showed that they saw 40 to 151 times more impressions in the news feed than on their Pages. While this study only had three data points, marketers should take note of the disproportionate amount of exposure that occurs in the news feed. This is partly because re-shares of news feed posts by a Page’s fans help drive news feed exposure.

ComScore’s white paper also stresses that a great deal of potential for exposure lies in the friends of a brand’s current fans. If Pages can post content compelling enough that fans are willing to re-share it, they can reach a huge new audience. This is because Facebook has said for years that the average user has 130 friends, though we’ve heard that could be closer to 170 now. ComScore’s report shows that the total count of the friends of fans of Facebook’s most popular Pages is on average 31 to 84 times higher than the fan counts of those Pages.

In conclusion, users are spending the most time on the news feed, and thats where engagement with brands happens. Brands should post every day and aim to attain high levels of Likes, comments, and re-shares to increase the visibility of their posts and maximize exposure to both fans and their friends

For Page posting strategy tips that can help you leverage your existing fan base and gain new Likes, visit the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s complete guide to marketing and advertising through Facebook.

When Facebook shows users news feed stories about events their friends have RSVP’d to, it now also shows photos uploaded to the event’s wall. These photos should make event stories more eye-catching and increase earned RSVPs. Event admins should therefore add wall photos to their events to gain news feed visibility.

The Events feature hasn’t received many major changes over the years, to contrast with other Facebook products that seem to be in constant flux. Here are the minor changes that have been implemented since 2009:

• August 2009 – Facebook makes it easier to invite the same set of friends to multiple events by adding friend list and characteristic filters to the event inviter.
• May 2010 – Facebook begins showing upcoming events and allows users to manage RSVPs from the home page. It also adds an event creator to the home page to facilitate spontaneous and last minute even creation.
• July 2010 – Facebook redesigns event pages to look more similar to business Pages.
• December 2010 –  Facebook introduces a special news feed story about people becoming friends after attending the same event.
• March 2011 – Users gain the ability to check in to events, rather than just Places.

Now, if users RSVP to a Facebook event that has had photos uploaded to it’s wall, these photos will be displayed in the news feed story about the RSVP. A user’s friends can then click to view these photos in-line. Unfortunately, these stories don’t appear to pull in photos accompanying check-ins by friends. The inclusion of check-in photos in the feed story could help users find out what an event in progress looks like in real-time.

Because the RSVP stories about events with wall photos appear much bigger in the news feed, we recommend that all event promoters upload additional photos to the walls of their events to take advantage of this opportunity for more news feed exposure. This will help them attain more RSVPs, and remind those have RSVP’d to attend.

[Thanks to Eti Suruzon for the tip]

Brands on our post this week used livestreaming, social commerce and photo contests to attract users and customers during the slow summer months. We’ve excerpted two of the campaigns below. You can see the full week’s coverage in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of dozens of other featured campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

Toys “R” Us Christmas in July Contest

Goal: Engagement, Product Purchase, Brand Loyalty, Network Exposure, Page Growth

Core Mechanic: The Like-gated contest asks users to submit a photo or video of their best Christmas moment on the Page to compete to win a store gift card.

Method: By submitting a photo or video about their best Christmas moment, users enter the contest to receive Toys “R” Us gift cards. Submissions are then are voted on by their peers. Since the photos are of compelling moments, users are likely to direct their friends to view them on the Toys “R” Us Page, increasing virality. This should offset the higher barrier to participation that comes with photo submission contests.

Impact: As Toys “R” Us is a well-established brand, this contest looks to increase sales in the slow summer months and secure Likes that will help the retail chain’s marketing efforts in the high traffic pre-holiday months. The Page now has over 1.5 million Likes. The contest, which runs until July 24, has just under 60 entries only a few days after launching. More virality can be expected when voting begins, which will also happen on the Facebook platform.

Finally, the company is pairing the contest with special “Christmas in July” discounts on merchandise.

Craftsman American Treasures Photo Contest

Goal: Network Exposure, Page Growth, Product Purchase, Brand Loyalty

Core Mechanic: A photo contest in which users submit photos related to Craftsman merchandise.

Method: The Like-gated contest asks users to submit photos of vintage Craftsman tools, or related items like lawn/garden equipment and historic items in order to win a $100 Craftsman gift card or the chance to have your antique evaluated by a famous antiquer. The submission automatically signs users up for the Craftsman email list and generates a feed story upon entry.

Impact: The Page currently has 426,100 Likes, not bad for a tool company, and there have been 276 entries. For the amount of money the company invested in this gift card giveaway, the return should be well worth it.

How are top brands in the industry designing their Facebook marketing campaigns? See the Facebook Marketing Bible for detailed breakdowns of dozens of Featured Campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

There were a few Page consolidations, tech companies, TV shows, a movie, a football star and a ton of music Pages on our list of the top 20 growing Facebook Pages by Likes this week. The Pages on our list grew from between 469,800 and 2.8 million Likes, we measure the growth of Pages with our PageData tool.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	Likes	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Official Grease Movie	4,049,861	+2,872,658	+244%
2.	Justin Bieber	31,639,272	+1,840,435	+6%
3.	Frank Sinatra	1,379,928	+1,147,692	+494%
4.	Katy Perry	29,795,798	+1,018,609	+4%
5.	Facebook	46,455,060	+772,406	+2%
6.	Rihanna	38,576,532	+750,215	+2%
7.	Shakira	34,897,651	+712,587	+2%
8.	YouTube	39,774,667	+695,896	+2%
9.	Eminem	41,410,217	+686,422	+2%
10.	Lady Gaga	38,917,740	+631,667	+2%
11.	The Simpsons	30,579,998	+605,242	+2%
12.	AKON	26,213,931	+546,574	+2%
13.	South Park	30,478,951	+534,409	+2%
14.	Lil Wayne	27,609,379	+517,717	+2%
15.	Cristiano Ronaldo	29,450,247	+513,317	+2%
16.	Harry Potter	26,962,686	+505,338	+2%
17.	Family Guy	33,739,954	+494,361	+1%
18.	Linkin Park	30,993,148	+479,600	+2%
19.	Beyoncé	24,494,086	+476,663	+2%
20.	Avril Lavigne	22,537,542	+469,770	+2%

Topping the list was the Official Grease Movie Page, with 2.8 million new Likes, totaling more than 4 million. Then there was the Frank Sinatra Page with 1.1 million new Likes, growing the Page to 1.3. million. Each of these Pages grew by the millions of Likes in the span of two days, suggesting consolidations of unofficial Pages.

Also on the list were a few tech companies, Facebook with 772,400 new Likes to grow to 46,5 million and YouTube with 695,900 new Likes to grow the Page to 39.7 million. Then there were media Pages. “The Simpsons” grew by 605,200 Likes to each 30.5 million. “South Park” grew by 534,400 Likes to reach 30.4 million by promoting Like-gated content and “Family Guy” grew by 494,400 to reach 33.7 Likes by publishing photos and videos related to the show. “Harry Potter” grew by 505,300 Likes to come in just under 27 million Likes after releasing more trailers and media information as the countdown to the final film continues.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s Page grew by 513,300 Likes to reach 29.4 million. The rest of the Pages are music.

Justin Bieber’s Page grew by 1.8 million Likes by promoting his new video and single, as well as asking fans to vote for him in an MTV contest. Katy Perry’s Page added over 1 million Likes by providing new photos and video updates. Rihanna’s Page grew by 750,200 Likes with Twitter updates, tour photos and updates. Shakira’s Page added 712,600 Likes after updating from her tour with videos. Eminem’s Page grew by 686,400 Likes.

Lady Gaga’s Page grew by 631,700 Likes with a combination of promoting her new album and marriage equality, and also asking fans to vote for her on MTV’s contest. AKON’s Page grew by 546,600 Likes to reach 26.2 million, Lil Wayne’s page grew by 517,700 Likes to 27.6 million and Linkin Park grew by 479,600 Likes to almost 31 million after promoting their song on a summer blockbuster soundtrack. Beyoncé continued to promote her upcoming album, adding 476,700 Likes to reach 24.5 million and Avril Lavigne added 469,800 Likes to reach 22.5 million after updating and asking for support on that MTV nomination.