Inside Facebook

How much are Facebook Page fans worth? To Sears, 10,000 of them are apparently worth $5 each.

Sears this weekend launched a promotion featuring LL Cool J in which it is offering $5 gift cards by mail to the “first 10,000 Facebook users to become fans of the Sears Facebook page between 11/8/08 - 11/30/08 and sign up to receive Sears email offers.”

So far, 8,591 have signed up, so users still have time to claim their Lincoln.

Below: see how users are talking on the Sears wall.

Facebook has just released final policy updates, originally announced in August, that for the first time allow any developer to include content or ads that promote alcohol in their Facebook applications as long as they make use of certain FBML tags designed by Facebook to prevent access to alcohol related ads and content by anyone under 21.

Developers interested in serving alcohol ads (pardon the pun) are required to use Facebook’s Demographic Restrictions feature, which is basically Facebook’s approach to age verification through the use of FBML tags to restrict content to of-age users. The feature has been under beta testing for months on the Facebook Platform, as some apps promoting alcohol have existed for a while.

In addition, starting January 6, 2009, Facebook will require that “all content related to alcoholic beverages — including unbranded, generic drink images — be available only under Demographic Restriction.” This means that “send a drink” functionality will now become something developers need to be a little more careful about.

Finally, Facebook also announced that it has added a new feature allowing developers to rely on Facebook’s stored age limits for different types of restricted content in different countries. This will keep developers from having to look up the legal drinking age in Belgium, Belize, and Botswana, but instead just tell Facebook that it’s an “alcohol” ad and let Facebook do the rest.

One important note, however, is that Demographic Restrictions are only supported in FBML - xFBML is not yet supported.

Purchase this report The Facebook Marketing Bible - November 2008 Edition Buy PDF: $39 USD OR Buy PDF + 3 Months of Free Updates: $49 USD

The newly revised, expanded, and hot-off-the-press Facebook Marketing Bible: 39+ Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook - November 2008 Edition is now available!

The Facebook Marketing Bible has been purchased by hundreds of agencies, marketers, social application developers, entrepreneurs, and educators, and is the leading resource on Facebook marketing today.

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

The November 2008 edition includes updates on the following topics:

• Details on the latest Facebook advertising opportunities, placements, and ad formats. With the Facebook redesign, Facebook launched new advertising units on the home page, which can be filled with a variety of ad units that are deeply integrated into Facebook features like events, pages, and virtual gifts. Find out how you can make the most of your Facebook ad dollars with details on every ad unit available inside Facebook.
• Updates on Facebook’s virtual gifts store. Last week, Facebook signaled updates to the way it’s thinking about virtual gifts and the role they play in the future of Facebook. Get all the latest details here.
• The latest aggressive marketing practices in Facebook’s viral channels being used by application developers. Affiliate marketers spamming application users with links to landing pages are sure to be shut down, but app developers adding new “action links” are likely to see more engagement.
• Fully updated for the Facebook redesign. With the Facebook redesign now fully complete, new opportunities are available for marketers who want to optimize their campaigns for the latest Facebook updates. Get the absolute latest and most detailed analysis of all the recent changes.
• Plus, updates on Facebook Connect, Beacon, and more.

For those interested in learning more, click the purchase link above. The price is $39, or $49 with three months of free updates emailed directly to your inbox. As always, please make suggestions if you’d like to see more attention paid to any topic!

Table of Contents

Introduction

I. Tools for Guerilla Marketers

1. Profile Page

2. Groups

• Strategy: What about spamming existing groups?
• SEO
  

3. Pages

• Strategy: Groups and Pages are very similar. Which makes more sense?
• Strategy: I’ve just created a Page. How do I promote it?
• Group to Page Migration
• Guidelines for Promoting Pages Outside Facebook
• Official vs Unofficial Pages
• Ways Page Owners Can Restrict Content for Underage Users
  
• More Features Coming Soon

4. Events

• Events API
• Events SEO
  

5. Notes and Photos

6. Messages

7. Marketplace

8. Share / Posted Items

9. Mini Feed and News Feed

10. Feed Importing

> Data: Tracking Facebook’s International Growth by Country

> Data: Latest US Facebook Age and Gender Demographics

> Recommended Strategies for Guerilla Marketers

II. Tools for Advertisers

11. Social Ads

• Summary of ad units available to Facebook advertisers
  1. Sponsorship Units on the New Facebook Home Page
     • Social Video Ads
     • Sponsored Virtual Gifts
     • Events Ads
     • Pages Ads
       
  2. Advertising in the New Facebook News Feed
  3. Advertising on the Profile Page (and other pages)
     

12. Virtual Gifts

• The Future of Virtual Gifts on Facebook

13. Localization Opportunities

14. Integrated Opportunities

15. Beacon

16. Polls

17. Facebook Platform Ad Networks

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

18. Facebook Platform Application Sponsorships

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

19. Sponsored Facebook Groups

> Recommended Strategies for Advertisers

III. Tools for Application Developers

20. Profile Box

• Strategy: Where do most new application users come from?
• 5 Things Developers May Not Know About the Facebook Redesign
• Profile Integration: Tour of New Facebook App Settings

21. Application Tabs

22. Application Info Sections

23. Designing Feed Stories

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

24. Feeds 2.0

• Feed Forms
• Feed Clustering
• Action Links
  

25. Feed Publisher

• Publishing in the Feed with Feed Comments

26. Requests / Invitations

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

27. Facebook Notifications

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

28. Email Notifications

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

29. Application Bookmarks

30. Application Directory

31. Status Update Source

32. Demographic Restrictions

33. Verification and Certification

• Great Apps Program
• Application Verification

34. Translations

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

35. Facebook Connect

• Overview: Integrating Facebook Connect with Your Website
• Related: Google Friend Connect

Purchase this report The Facebook Marketing Bible - November 2008 Edition Buy PDF: $39 USD OR Buy PDF + 3 Months of Free Updates: $49 USD

36. Analytics Tools

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

37. Search Engine Optimization

38. Mobile

• Facebook for iPhone and Connect for iPhone

39. Customer Service

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

> Recommended Strategies for Application Developers

Conclusion

Check out the latest news & insights this week from Inside Social Games:

• Turf - Another Hot Social Game Not On a Social Network - While many social games live on social networks, some don’t. And turf is actually building physical social interaction in areas where it’s most popular.
• On Election Day, Challenge Games’ Nobility Invades Facebook - Just released last week, Nobility (by social gaming experts Challenge Games) is one of the best strategy games we’ve seen yet.
• AvaPeeps: FlirtNation is a New Kind of Dating App - The fruit of many months of labor at Digital Chocolate, AvaPeeps: FlirtNation represents a new direction for the company.
• Space Domination - A “Fanboy” Dream - Take the standard Facebook model, apply a space theme, and you get Space Domination. That’s not to say that approach isn’t a good business.
• Mogul - Business made Easy - Mogul is a new tycoon game that looks plain but has potential…
• Kickmania - Ass Kicking Included - Simple fun. Popular on Facebook.

Facebook has devoted a lot of energy to becoming an important part of the political ecosystem in America. It has conducted experiments with media partners like ABC, operated a voter registration drive which signed up 50,000 people, and promoted politicians’ fan pages and virtual gifts throughout election season.

As Facebook has demonstrated its potential to make a difference in the way political influence spreads at the grassroots level to large numbers of people, candidates from the local level to the highest levels have taken notice and spent significant time investing in their Facebook presence and communicating with their Facebook supporters.

The Obama campaign, however, also spent time with the Facebook sales team. A new report from ClickZ analyzing the Obama campaign’s Federal Election Commission filing shows that Obama spent a total of $467,000 on Facebook - $370,000 in September alone. ClickZ says the McCain campaign did not break out individual online ad spending in its FEC reports.

While these numbers are small in light of both Obama’s overall spend on the campaign and Facebook’s estimated $300 million in 2008 revenues, it’s quite likely that Facebook outpaces much other online ad spend in terms of measurable engagement for political marketing campaigns, and likely ranks pretty decently when compared to other political marketing tactics like robo-calling, which is apparently completely ineffective but still sells for $20 CPM.

If Facebook continues to educate the market, it could see bigger pieces of the political spend in upcoming election cycles.

At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down with John Battelle who pressed him on a number of questions. While there were no major revelations in today’s interview, here are a few interesting notes from Zuckerberg from the session:

• Facebook is now at 120 million users (up from 100 million in August). International growth has been the primary growth goal this year.
• Facebook is opening up new international sales offices, including one in France.
• Microsoft was a big part of Facebook’s revenues early on, but it’s a “smaller percentage than other pieces” now.
• The valuation of the Microsoft investment was “favorable” for Facebook, but “On a day-to-day basis, we do not have a discussion where we need to do something to value the company at $15 billion,” Zuckerberg said. Microsoft was more interested in the partnership.
• Facebook is still hiring top engineering and sales people, and is at over 700 people.
• It’s still early in the formation of social network platforms - too early to tell what form they will take.

Photo credit: Brian Solis, www.briansolis.com, bub.blicio.us.

As a sign that ad network consolidation is beginning, ad network Adknowledge announced today that it has acquired the ad network portion of Lookery, its second ad network acquisition in the last year. Lookery’s ad network will be folded into Adknowledge’s Cubics social ad network, which itself was acquired last December. No terms of the deal were released.

Cubics and Lookery say that nothing will change for app developers using Lookery’s ad network. The only things that will change for now are where the reports come from. The Lookery Guaranteed CPM program will continue for all participants.

Lookery, which started out as a Facebook ad network, has since branched out and is now focused on its audience data business. The company was founded by Scott Rafer, formerly of MyBlogLog, and David Cancel, formerly of Compete.com and has now grown a team of 9 based in its San Francisco offices.

As we noted yesterday, Election Day was a really big day for the spread of political information and influence through the social graph on Facebook. This afternoon, Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg released final stats on election-related activity on the site, and they’re quite impressive:

• 5.4 million people shared that they’d voted with friends on Facebook
• 2.4 million people joined Facebook’s Election Day event
• 1.5 million people mentioned Obama, McCain, Palin, Biden or Election on their Facebook wall
• 15 million people of voting age in the US logged in on election day

Virtual Gifts and the Day After

It was also a big event for virtual gifts on Facebook, as Facebook announced that over 2 million election-related virtual gifts were sent. And, in a very nicely executed campaign, the New York Times sponsored a “limited edition commemorative newspaper” gift bearing the headline, “Obama Wins” that was featured to users all day (and is still available). No official stats are available on how many times it was sent, but it’s quite possible that it’s higher than any other Facebook sponsored virtual gift campaign so far.

NY Times virtual gift home page promotion:

Public NY Times gift on wall:

Conclusion

At the end of the day, there is a lot to be learned by political marketers about the power of the social graph to create massive influence and collective action. There is also a lot to be learned by web app developers about the types of tools that can enable that kind of wide scale effective communication.

2008 will surely go down in history as the first election cycle in which Facebook and social networking services in general had a major impact in national American politics.

New Inside Facebook Top Jobs for November 6:

• Software Engineer - Server Side (Watercooler / Mountain View, CA)

For developers interested in integrating Facebook Connect support for their web, iPhone, or desktop apps, Facebook has announced that the signup process is now open. Interested developers can head over to the submission page and request that Facebook activate your Facebook Connect-enabled service.

However, this doesn’t mean that all requests will be approved - that is still coming at some point in the future. (Some have speculated that that will happen by November 30, but a full November launch looks unlikely at this point.) Facebook says, “As we continue to see developers produce great user experiences, we intend to open this process more widely so that you can build and launch without an approval process.”