Inside Facebook

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Facebook roundup: code, IPO, Super Bowl, WashPo

Sara Inés Calderón — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:00:21 +0000

Facebook to release C++ library – ZDNet reported that Facebook may open source one of its C++ libraries, the code is used heavily on the platform’s back-end systems.

Facebook, Calif. teacher pension fund at odds – Because of Facebook’s corporate governance rules, a large investor — the California State Teachers’ Retirement System — is worried it may not have a say in how the company is being run even when it goes public. Facebook has put up a series of defenses against proxy battles and unwanted takeover attempts that concerns CalSTRS.

Doritos takes top spot in Super Bowl Ad Meter – The Doritos “Sling Baby” commercial was declared the winner of the first-ever USA Today Facebook Super Bowl Ad Meter. USA Today and Facebook partnered to create an Open Graph application for users to view and rate Super Bowl commercials before, during and after the game.

Washington Post Social Reader goes mobile - The Washington Post launched native mobile applications for its popular Social Reader app for Facebook this week. The social reader is now available as an app for iPhone, iPod touch, Android and Kindle Fire.

Facebook IPO filing includes $100M discrepancy

Kim-Mai Cutler — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:00:39 +0000

There is a $100 million discrepancy between what Facebook earned in payments revenue and what it paid out to developers, according to revenue figures in its IPO filing last week.

In the filing it says, “In 2011, our Platform developers received more than $1.4 billion from transactions enabled by our Payments infrastructure.”

But based on the company’s $557 million in payments revenue last year and its 30 percent share of transactions on the platform, Facebook should have paid out $1.3 billion at most. There is at least a $100 million discrepancy here. A company spokesperson declined to comment.

There are a number of possibilities:

Facebook may have comped free Credits for some developers.
There may have been initial problems with fraud in the early months of Credits, which the company may have also comped for developers.
Certain developers may have gotten a more favorable revenue share.
Facebook started doing promotions on Credits with 80 percent discounts last November.

Read the full analysis of this issue on our sister site, Inside Social Games.

Facebook tests ‘Add to Map’ prompt on place pages

Brittany Darwell — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:56:41 +0000

Some users are seeing an “Add to Map” button in the top corner of Facebook pages associated with an address.

The feature encourages users to make a post that will show on their map and Timeline. Users can set indicate that they visited a place in the past and tag friends they were with. With features and prompts like this, Facebook can get users to fill in their Timelines and provide more information that can later be used to make recommendations or target ads. This is also in line with Facebook’s strategy of making location a core part of its product, not a separate check-in feature as it initially debuted.

Many businesses will benefit as more people share where they’ve been. Having users see that a friend or several friends have been to a place can be very valuable. With time, Facebook is likely to play a larger role in providing social recommendations for people to discover new places and decide where to go.

See the following screenshots for a look at how “Add to Map” works. When users click the Add to Map button, a publisher window pops up. Users can write a post, set the date, tag friends and select who can see the post.

“Add to Map” changes to “Mapped” and users can click to see the post on their map.

The post shows up on the map as other location posts do.

And the action is mentioned in the recent activity section of the user’s Timeline.

Santorum soars this week on Inside Facebook’s Election Tracker

Brittany Darwell — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:39:22 +0000

Rick Santorum gained close to 9,000 new Facebook fans in a single day after winning the Republican presidential primaries in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado on Tuesday. For the first time since we began monitoring candidate’s pages with the Inside Facebook Election Tracker, Santorum has earned more new Likes than any other candidate.

Santorum’s Facebook page has been incredibly active in recent days, making up to 17 posts per day, many of which are shared hundreds of times.

Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich’s pages make four or fewer posts per day. Though Romney’s page has the most total Likes (more than 1.4 million), he is seeing the lowest engagement. Some of his posts have zero shares. The current ratio between Romney’s “Talking About This” number and total Likes is 0.08 compared to Santorum’s 0.42.

The Maine caucus is Saturday. We will see if Santorum’s Facebook momentum translates to a win there in our Election Tracker round-up next week.

Blogging Inside Social Apps: Social Game Marketing and Performance Advertising on Facebook

Brittany Darwell — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:09:06 +0000

Analytics and Open Graph were big topics of discussion during the “Social Game Marketing and Performance Advertising on Facebook” panel at the Inside Social Apps Conference in San Francisco on Thursday.

Ifeelgoods Co-founder and VP of Business Development Suchit Dash, AdParlor CEO and Co-founder Hussein Fazal, Kontagent CEO and Co-Founder Jeff Tseng and TBG Digital CEO Simon Mansell joined moderator AJ Glasser for the talk.

The panelists addressed the issue of game developers focusing on cost per install rather than more long term return on investment. Tseng, of analytics provider Kontagent, said it’s more important to optimize lifetime value over acquisition cost. Mansell, of Facebook ad agency TGB Digital, said many developers aren’t tracking ROI by segment, which makes it more difficult to optimize campaigns properly. Fazal, of AdParlor, said his company stresses analytics.

“We don’t like to work with a client unless they have analytics in place,” he said. “They don’t understand the value that we create because they’re not looking at the right numbers.”

Fazal and Mansell said it is too early to know what to make of Facebook’s beta test allowing advertisers to target by Open Graph activity. For example, an ad can be directed to people who read a book or watched a show.

“Our clients are quite excited to target around the play action,” Mansell said, but he noted that the API documentation on the issue is unclear. “I have a 121-person advertising company and it’s confusing for me. I’m hoping Facebook will make that more simple.”

Mansell and Fazal agreed that Open Graph does not yet have enough scale to understand how it might be an improvement over targeting by interest.

“First actions need to pick up,” Fazal said. “Developers need to create more actions.”

Fazal said Facebook should also give third-party ad providers access to pages and apps so they can better track how ads perform. He’s also frustrated with Facebook policy that prevents his company AdParlor from working with Tseng’s analytics company Kontagent to get data about user activity in apps.

“Facebook needs to leverage us [third-party partners] as much as possible,” Fazal said. “They’re understaffed for the amount of business that they’re doing.”

Mansell said he wants to see Facebook support the Open Graph verb “play” they way it has with “read,” “watch” and “listen.”

“That [playing games] is what a lot of people are going to Facebook to do,” Mansell said. “For Facebook to get users used to different verbs would be good.”

Tabs, Heineken, Yahoo, games, more on this week’s top 20 emerging Facebook apps by MAU

Sara Inés Calderón — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:32:30 +0000

A number of Tab Builder page applications saw tremendous growth this week and dominated our list of emerging Facebook apps by monthly active users. Heineken, Yahoo, a sweepstakes app and games also made the list. The apps grew from between 240,000 and 880,000 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook. We define emerging applications as those that ended with between 100,000 and 1 million MAU in the past week.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Tab Builder: Document	950,000	+880,000	+ 1,257%
2.	Tab Builder: Basic White	740,000	+670,000	+ 957%
3.	Tab Builder: Badge	670,000	+610,000	+ 1,017%
4.	Yahoo! Pages	700,000	+560,000	+ 400%
5.	Tab Builder: Basic Blue (4)	540,000	+530,000	+ 5,300%
6.	Tab Builder: Basic Blue (3)	500,000	+480,000	+ 2,400%
7.	Draw My Thing	970,000	+400,000	+ 70%
8.	Heineken The Date	860,000	+380,000	+ 79%
9.	Static HTML… [Tenth Tab]	1,000,000	+360,000	+ 56%
10.	Static HTML… [Eleventh Tab]	1,000,000	+350,000	+ 54%
11.	Jewels of the Amazon	470,000	+330,000	+ 236%
12.	Monopoly Millionaires	820,000	+310,000	+ 61%
13.	Tab Builder: Basic Blue (2)	310,000	+300,000	+ 3,000%
14.	Static IFRAME Tab	630,000	+280,000	+ 80%
15.	Sweepstakes	790,000	+280,000	+ 55%
16.	My Family	290,000	+260,000	+ 867%
17.	Hoop De Loop Saga	490,000	+250,000	+ 104%
18.	Hosted iFrame w/ Social Icon	880,000	+250,000	+ 40%
19.	Static IFRAME Tab	840,000	+250,000	+ 42%
20.	Lucky Cruise	550,000	+240,000	+ 77%

A half dozen Tab Builder apps for pages from Hike Social Apps made our list this week. Other static HTML and iFrame apps have been growing quickly as page owners look to customize their presence on Facebook. Sweepstakes by Woobox is another page utility on our list.

Yahoo! Pages, which allows users to Like Yahoo-related pages, saw sharp growth this week after a slow build over the past month. Heineken The Date is an app that allows users to customize a serenade for friends on Facebook and to the stream. Although it has been around for a few months, it grew by 380,000 MAU this week.

Games on the list included: Draw My Thing, Jewels of the Amazon, Monopoly Millionaires, My Family, Hoop De Loop Saga and Lucky Cruise.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned next week for our look at the top weekly gainers by monthly active users on Monday, the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

Blogging Inside Social Apps: The Future of Mobile App Discovery on Facebook

Brittany Darwell — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:14:24 +0000

We’re at the San Francisco Design center, blogging Inside Network’s third annual Inside Social Apps conference. Founder of Inside Network Justin Smith sat down with Facebook Director of Software Engineering Cory Ondrejka for a fireside chat called “The Future of Mobile App Discovery on Facebook.”

Ondrejka emphasized the value of building HTML5 apps that users can access from any device and how integrating Open Graph will allow users to share their activity without interrupting gameplay.

Ondrejka revealed that half of Facebook’s mobile traffic comes through the mobile website and the other half comes from native applications. He said that the company spent much of 2011 improving its mobile touch site and integrating web technology in its native applications. For example, the iOS and Android apps now pull News Feed stories directly from m.facebook.com so Facebook’s engineers can push design and backend changes without a software update.

“The trend of wanting the web to work really well is something that’s happening,” Ondrejka said. “It’s incumbent on us to write good code, show good examples and make it easy to integrate.”

Although Ondrejka encouraged HTML5 development for cross-platform access, he acknowledged that some apps will require advanced capabilities that are only possible as native experiences. Still, Facebook’s distribution channels function the same for web and native apps.

“The important thing about our platform at this point is that we want all of these to integrate with Open Graph,” he said.

Because the company filed for an initial public offering last week, Ondrejka was unable to discuss possible plans for advertising apps within Facebook’s mobile experiences. He instead focused on the organic channels that are available to mobile developers: Open Graph activity in News Feed and Timeline, app bookmarks and requests.

Facebook apps can now publish continuously to Timeline and Ticker, which Ondrejka said will improve the gameplay experience. The strategy seems to be increase engagement by making games more enjoyable and organic discovery will follow.

“What Open Graph allows you to do is share in this non-interruptive way without saying ‘Hey, player, stop playing to issue a request’ I hope it opens up game design as broad as on other devices,” he said.

Ondrejka cited Pinterest and Washington Post Social Reader as good examples of how mobile apps can utilize Open Graph for discovery.

Greeting cards, Zynga, Washington Post, birthdays, more on this week’s top 15 growing Facebook apps by DAU

Sara Inés Calderón — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:36:28 +0000

Greeting card applications and a number of games dominated our list of apps growing by daily active users this week. Washington Post’s Social Reader, an iPad app, birthdays and tab applications made the list. The titles below grew between 178,000 and 560,000 DAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Greeting Cards	1,000,000	+560,000	+ 127%
2.	Social Wars (Men vs Women)	780,000	+500,000	+ 179%
3.	Washington Post Social Reader	1,200,000	+500,000	+ 71%
4.	Greetings	1,200,000	+430,000	+ 56%
5.	Cards	830,000	+330,000	+ 66%
6.	Fruit Ninja Frenzy	460,000	+320,000	+ 229%
7.	MyPad for iPad	2,800,000	+300,000	+ 12%
8.	Static HTML… [Sixth Tab]	290,000	+230,000	+ 383%
9.	UNO™	260,000	+210,000	+ 420%
10.	Bubble Witch Saga	4,700,000	+200,000	+ 9%
11.	MyCalendar – Birthdays	2,100,000	+200,000	+ 11%
12.	Scramble with Friends	1,600,000	+200,000	+ 14%
13.	Texas HoldEm Poker	6,800,000	+200,000	+ 3%
14.	المزرعة السعيدة	2,200,000	+200,000	+ 10%
15.	Tab Builder: Basic Blue (5)	180,000	+178,000	+ 8,900%

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday.

Inside Facebook

This week’s headlines from across Inside Network

Inside Mobile Apps

Inside Social Games

Inside Facebook

New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: Atari, GREE, Lolgames, more

Stealth Mobile Startup

Facebook roundup: code, IPO, Super Bowl, WashPo

Facebook IPO filing includes $100M discrepancy

Facebook tests ‘Add to Map’ prompt on place pages

Santorum soars this week on Inside Facebook’s Election Tracker

Blogging Inside Social Apps: Social Game Marketing and Performance Advertising on Facebook

Tabs, Heineken, Yahoo, games, more on this week’s top 20 emerging Facebook apps by MAU

Blogging Inside Social Apps: The Future of Mobile App Discovery on Facebook

Greeting cards, Zynga, Washington Post, birthdays, more on this week’s top 15 growing Facebook apps by DAU