the facebook marketing bible

The Facebook Marketing Bible www.insidefacebook.com

©2009 Inside Facebook 1

The Facebook Marketing Bible

40+ Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook By Justin Smith [email protected] +1.650.468.5175 Editor, Inside Facebook www.insidefacebook.com Version 1.14 April 7, 2009 ©2009 Inside Facebook. Unauthorized duplication or redistribution is expressly prohibited. Inside Facebook is not affiliated with or endorsed by Facebook, Inc.



About the Author

Justin Smith founded Inside Facebook, the first blog

focused on tracking Facebook and the Facebook

Platform, in April 2006. In 2007, he authored the first

version of the Facebook Marketing Bible, the most

widely referenced book on Facebook marketing today.

The Facebook Marketing Bible has been used by

thousands of brands, agencies, businesses, universities,

and non-profit organizations to craft their Facebook

marketing strategy.

From 2007 to 2009, Justin served as Head of Product for Watercooler, a venture-

backed startup based in Mountain View, California, and one of the leading developers

of applications on Facebook and other major social platforms. Under Justin’s

leadership, Watercooler’s Facebook applications reached well over 30 million

Facebook users, and Watercooler established itself as the leading network of sports

and television entertainment applications by a large margin.

Prior to Inside Facebook, Justin was an early employee at Xfire, the largest social

utility for gamers, which was sold to Viacom for $102 million in 2006. Prior to Xfire,

Justin earned a degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford University,

where he was a Mayfield Fellow and a recipient of the Terman Award in Engineering.

Prior to Stanford, Justin co-founded the MyDesktop Network, an early internet media

company, in 1996. MyDesktop was later acquired by Jupitermedia/Internet.com in

1999.

Justin grew up in South Carolina and currently lives in Palo Alto.



Introduction

A large and growing portion of some of the

most valuable demographics are spending

more of their time and attention on

Facebook and less on other channels and

media. Not only are US college students and

teenagers fully engaged in Facebook, but adults, professionals, and people from

around the world now constitute a substantial portion of the Facebook user base as

well. Today, nearly 200 million people worldwide are active on Facebook each month,

with over 500,000 new people joining each day.

However, most marketers lack a

comprehensive understanding of

the vast array of explicit and

implicit marketing channels

Facebook offers – many of which

have changed with the “new”

Facebook designs - and most of

which are “viral.” My goal here is

to provide an introduction to what’s possible on Facebook to the spectrum of

marketers - from brand advertisers to volunteer grassroots evangelists. Tactics are

divided into three categories: tools for guerilla marketers, tools for advertisers, and

tools for application developers. Throughout and after each section, I’ve offered

recommendations for your Facebook campaign strategy.

Facebook offers many ways to get the word out and enable engagement with your

brand in more compelling ways than were ever before possible on the web. Here’s how

to get started.



Contents

I. Tools for Guerilla Marketers 1. Profile Page 2. Pages / Public Profiles

• “Facebook Pages 2.0” o The New Wall Tab - Making Pages More Dynamic and Viral o Status Updates - Now for Pages, Too o Application Boxes - Changing Places o Tab Management - Choosing a Landing Page o Conclusion - Facebook Learning from Twitter, Pages Getting Better

• The Future of Sharing on Facebook: A Hybrid Public/Private Model • Adding Custom Modules to Your Page • Strategy: Groups and Pages have some similarities. 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 • Pages and SEO • Ways Page Owners Can Restrict Content for Underage Users • How to Import Your Blog into Your Public Profile • Page Invitations • SMS Service for Pages • More Features Coming Soon

3. Groups • Strategy: What about spamming existing groups? • SEO

4. Events • Events API • Events SEO

5. Notes and Photos • The Viral Dynamics of Photo Tagging • Photos as a Facebook Marketing Channel: Opportunities and Limitations

6. Messages 7. Status Updates 8. Share / Posted Items 9. Mini Feed and News Feed 10. Feed Importing > Data: Latest US Facebook Age and Gender Demographics > Recommended Strategies for Guerilla Marketers II. Tools for Advertisers



11. Social Ads • How Specialty Brands are Driving Sales on Facebook

12. Engagement 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 • Polling Ads

2. Advertising in the New Facebook News Feed 3. Advertising on the Profile Page (and other pages)

13. Virtual Gifts • The future of Virtual Gifts on Facebook • Scheduled & Holiday Virtual Gifts

14. Performance Ads • Radius and Language Targeting

15. Localization Opportunities 16. Integrated Opportunities 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. Specialized Facebook Platform Advertising Service Providers > Recommended Strategies for Advertisers III. Tools for Application Developers

• Strategy: What is the Right Way to Market Through Facebook Applications? • Strategy: Where to Most New Application Users Come From?

20. Profile Box

• 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 • Policy Update: All Feed Story Calls to Action Must Now be 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 • Sending Application Invitations to Non-Facebook-Members

27. Chat Invitations 28. Facebook Notifications

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

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

30. Application Bookmarks 31. Application Directory 32. Status Updates & Donations

• Status Updates • Status Donations • Status API

33. Demographic Restrictions 34. Verification and Certification

• Great Apps Program • Application Verification

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

Translation Service 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 40. Custom Tags > Poll: Which viral channels do Facebook users hate most about apps? > Recommended Strategies for Application Developers IV. Tools for Webmasters 41. Facebook Connect

• Overview: Integrating Facebook Connect with Your Website • Related: Google Friend Connect • Examples: 40 Sites Live with Facebook Connect Today • Variety of Facebook Connect Plugins Now Available for Blogs and Wikis • Citysearch: Each Item Shared Through Facebook Connect Generates 30

Clicks 42. Comments Box Widget



43. Live Feed Widget 44. Facebook Share Conclusion Recommended Partners



I. Tools for Guerilla Marketers

For the aggressive marketer interested in reaching Facebook users without spending

much money, Facebook offers a bevy of viral channels to get the word out and

creatively reach your target audience. The best part about these tactics is their cost:

free. Everyone on Facebook can use these strategies to reach and engage thousands of

people inside Facebook .

Strategy: If you build it, will they come?

Marketers often wonder whether it makes sense to attempt to build their own

social network around their product, company, brand or service. Some hire

development shops to build a custom web site, others use white label products,

and still others use hosted services like Ning. The problem with this approach,

however, is that it’s extremely expensive to bring a significant enough number of

users onto your own service to make it worth the expense (which can often run in

the tens of thousands of dollars). In most cases, it makes much more sense to

craft your strategies targeting the social networks in which people already “live”

online—once someone builds their profile and friend list on a popular platform like

Facebook, it’s awfully hard to get them to move.

1. Profile Page

The starting point for your personal presence on Facebook is your profile page. Your

profile page is basically a landing page that you design in order to convert your friends

to engage with certain parts of your identity.



Not only is your profile the page that you have the most control over, it’s the place

where you can most deeply and authentically express your passion for the brand,

company, or product you want to promote. Your profile page is an opportunity to

craft a credible real-world

story around the reasons

your products or services

are so valuable. Take

advantage of Personal Info,

Work Info, Photos, and

applications to tell bits and

pieces of your narrative as

it relates to your brand. If

you’re not buying your own

stuff, why should anyone

else?

If you don’t want to

associate your personal

identity with the product or

service you’re trying to

promote, Facebook is not

for you. Inherent in the

current state of Facebook is a culture of transparency that devalues and ignores

inauthenticity. If you’re afraid to show the real people behind your campaign, that’s

okay–-but save your time and money and go somewhere beside Facebook.

Finally, most people don’t realize how many page views profile pages receive. One

of the most common habits of Facebook users is browsing the profile pages of friends

and stalking the profile pages of people they want to learn more about. By connecting

to hundreds of partners, customers, associates, and friends on Facebook, you’ll drive a

TON of traffic to your profile page. Take advantage of that huge opportunity.

2. Facebook Pages / Public Profiles



While creating a personal profile is the first step to getting started on Facebook,

Facebook has provided a second kind of public profile (previously called “Pages” until

March 2009) that are designed to be used by businesses, brands, and public figures to

establish a brand presents on Facebook and engage with large numbers of Facebook

users.

“Facebook Pages 2.0”

In the fall of 2008, Facebook launched a major site

redesign that primarily impacted the profile page,

home page, and application developers. With the

redesign, the Facebook profile page changed from a

“box-oriented” design to a “Wall and tabs” design to

make sharing more prominent and viral. In March 2009,

Facebook launched a similar redesign for Facebook

Pages, changing their name to “public profiles.”

With the Pages redesign, “public profiles” now look much more like Facebook profile

pages. Facebook has moved Pages to a “Wall and tabs” design:

• The Wall tab, containing all the latest updates and Wall posts, is now

front and center.

• Page owners can also choose to separate Facebook user comments

(“Wall posts”) from updates from the profile owner. If they choose to

do so, updates from the profile owner will appear in a Stream tab.

• Most static information now lives on an Info tab, and Photos now live on

a Photos tab.

• Most custom content and application boxes have been moved to a Boxes

tab, though some narrow boxes can remain on the Wall tab.

• Page admins can add custom application tabs to their Page if they so

choose.

• Perhaps most important, page admins can now share Status Updates

like regular Facebook users can on their own profile.



• Finally, all Page updates will now prominently appear in Facebook

users’ home page News Feed. This means users will see updates from

Pages they’re a fan of mixed in with updates from people they’re

friends with.

The New Wall Tab - Making Pages More Dynamic and Viral



Like the redesigned Facebook profile pages, Facebook Pages for business are now

focused on the “Wall.” This means that Notes, Photos, and other information shared

by businesses, celebrities, and musicians - along with content shared by Fans as well if

the Page admin desires - appears front and center. This design will make Pages feel

much more dynamic and active.

In addition, content posted on the new Wall will show up in Fans’ News Feeds more

often. Just like information shared by your Facebook friends shows up in your News

Feed, information shared by Pages you’re a fan of will now show up more. This means

posting updates to your Facebook Page is now a lot more viral, as more News Feed

distribution could drive significant traffic to your Page.

Finally, Page admins will be able to choose default settings for a) who can post to the

Page’s wall, and b) what the default view of Wall posts is. Admins can either allow

only other admins to post content to the wall (in which case it is then labeled the

“Stream”) OR allow Fans to post to the Wall too. However, even if Fans are allowed to

post, Page admins can still set the default view of the Wall to “Posts by Admin.”

As Facebook says, use the Wall to “update your Status, upload new photos or videos,

and post Notes or Links to interesting content. Be sure to highlight recent news and

information and remember that bringing your real voice to the content makes it

that much more engaging.“

Status Updates - Now for Pages, Too



In addition to being able to share photos, videos, and notes on Pages, Page admins

now have a powerful tool previously only on Facebook profile pages - Status Updates.

With Status Updates, Page admins can now post short blurbs that Fans might find

really interesting and engaging. Status Updates have the potential to become a very

powerful tool for brand managers.

For example, here are a few ways marketers could use Status Updates:

• Brands and small businesses – Share exclusive information about upcoming

products or promotions, and encourage fans to share information you post with

their friends. Respond to customer concerns and excitement directly and openly.

• Artists and musicians – Share exclusive information about upcoming events or

albums, or photos or videos from recent events. Encourage fans to show support

by commenting and sharing your content with their friends.

• Public figures and celebrities – Share your thoughts on causes you support, and

encourage your supporters to engage with the content you post.

• Communities and non-profits – Post Events and Causes to mobilize your

community, and share status updates and Notes on what’s happening with them.

Sound familiar? That’s because, on the whole, Facebook Pages are becoming a lot

more like Twitter in terms of the ways marketers can use them to reach and engage

people inside Facebook. More on that shortly.

Application Boxes - Changing Places



With the Pages redesign, application boxes, which previously appeared on the old Page

anywhere below the core info modules, can show up in one of two places: 1) narrow

boxes can show up in the left column of the Wall tab, much like they can on Facebook

profile pages, or 2) on the new “Boxes” tab. This means that there are now more

constraints on where custom content and application boxes can appear on Pages.

For those Page owners who have added custom content or application boxes to your

Pages, your boxes may not appear in the same arrangement on the Boxes tab as they

did before. You’ll need to check your Page’s admin settings when the redesign

launches to make sure your boxes are in the desired location.

Tab Management - Choosing a Landing Page



Now that Facebook Pages have multiple tabs, Page admins can choose which tab to

show non-Fans when they land on the Page.

Which tab should Page owners choose for non-Fans to land on? For most, the Wall or

Info tabs will likely be the best choice. However, Page admins who have developed

custom content might also want to choose the Boxes tab or a custom application tab

(application tabs can now be added to Pages, just like they can on Facebook profile

pages). The Boxes tab should look a lot like the old Facebook Pages for those who

added custom modules.

No matter which tab admins choose, both Fans and non-Fans can be driven to any

specific tab through ads. And Fans who arrive at the Page organically will always be

taken to the Wall tab.

The following applications are provided by Facebook for free for Page owners to add.

You can add them easily from your Page’s admin panel or the Facebook application

directory.

• Notes – Notes is like a blog feature on Facebook. You can share longer form

content (or import content from an external blog), and fans can comment on

your posts.



• Discussion Boards – Just as you would expect, you can use discussion boards to

build community and get feedback from fans.

• Photos – With Facebook Photos, you can upload an unlimited number of photo

albums to your public profile.

• Video – With Video, you can upload video files and record video messages right

from your public profile.

• Links – With Links, you can share your favorite content by posting it directly on

your Wall.

• Events – With Facebook Events, you can make events that people can RSVP to –

like upcoming special events, release dates, or promotions. Events are very

engaging and viral.

• Flash Player – This application lets you add a box to your public profile in which

you can upload your own Flash files.

• Static FBML – This application lets you add a box to your public profile in which

you can show custom HTML (usually images or other promotional material).

Choosing a Profile Picture

Finally, Page admins should make sure that a profile picture is selected for the Page.

Previously, Pages could have FBML, Flash, or iFrame boxes set as their profile picture,

but with the Pages redesign, all Pages will need a standard image.

Sending Targeted Updates

In addition to the general distribution Page owners get through Facebook’s News Feed,

Page owners can also send targeted “Updates” to fans that are delivered to users’

Updates Inbox. Marketers should take advantage of updates to let fans know about

special promotions, events, or news relevant to people who fit a certain demographic

profile or who live in certain geographic areas.



Conclusion - Facebook Learning from Twitter, Pages Getting Better

Twitter has proven that the “status update subscription + news feed” conversation

model works well for a variety of marketers - from large brands like Dell and Starbucks

to self promoters like bloggers, consultants, and real estate agents. Twitter is a simple

way for anyone to start participating with social media marketing by sharing updates

on company news, commenting on relevant conversations about their industry, and

communicating directly with both satisfied and unsatisfied customers.

While Facebook Pages have been successful for many marketers so far, many Page

owners have been looking for more ways to engage more Facebook users and keep

them coming back to their Page. Many marketers we’ve spoken with have been asking

for help figuring out how to solve these core viral growth and user retention problems.

The good news: the new Facebook Pages should help you do just that. While the Pages

redesign does move custom HTML content and application boxes to a secondary tab - a

not insignificant change for brand owners who have invested in building those modules

- the new emphasis on conversation and dynamic updates, combined with greater

News Feed integration, should make Facebook Pages a much more powerful overall

tool for brand managers, artists, celebrities, and small business owners. Increased

distribution in the News Feed should provide great incentive to Page owners to update

their Pages regularly and drive more traffic to their Pages through ads.

Ultimately, Facebook’s goal in making business Pages more powerful is to increase the

ROI businesses get when promoting Pages through Facebook Ads. While “business



pages” in other social networks often have a very spammy feel, the updated Pages

design still preserves the authenticity of Fan endorsement. The new Facebook Pages

have the potential to become much more lively and engaging touch points for reaching

your customers in a very authentic, powerful, and extremely targeted way.

The Future of Sharing on Facebook: A Hybrid Public/Private Model

After Facebook’s press event announcing public profiles and the real-time home

page “stream,” I briefly chatted with Mark Zuckerberg about the future of sharing

on Facebook. Essentially, Mark said things are headed toward a hybrid model in

which some information shared by users can be private and some information

shared by users can be public, depending on users’ preferences.

This direction means users will need to think in new ways about sharing on

Facebook. Historically, sharing on Facebook has been managed through Facebook’s

robust privacy settings, with most of the default settings being set relatively

strictly (usually limiting access to most information to others in your school or

regional networks). Now, Facebook users will also have the option to easily share

some information much more openly - even completely publicly for the whole

world (and search engines) to see if they so choose.

While Zuckerberg said Facebook is still working on the user interface that would

make such sharing settings robust and easy to use, these changes are going to have

significant implications for the nature of sharing on Facebook.

Whereas to date sharing on Facebook has been largely symmetrical (or bi-

directional between two people), now it could become increasingly asymmetrical

(you’re following U2’s updates, but U2 is not following yours, and so on). This

means that the characteristics of the average piece of information showing up in

the stream is going to change: whereas to date Facebook users have seen private

updates from their real friends (at least in the confirmed bi-directional

relationship sense) in the stream, now users might see a mix of private friend



updates, public friend updates, and public fan updates.

For example:

• Private friend update: “Jenny just posted photos from her trip to

grandma’s house this weekend: [1] [2] [3]“

• Public friend update: “Jonathan New blog post: My Favorite New

iPhone Apps”

• Public fan updates: “Bobby Jindal just added a new video”

What implications will this have for the culture of sharing on Facebook? While

Facebook is certainly a unique case, Twitter is probably the closest analogy as an

asymmetrical communication platform - though MySpace is certainly relevant in

many ways too. Will Facebook become more like Twitter in terms of why

information is sometimes or often shared? It will be interesting to see how

Facebook users adapt their information sharing habits given the new more open

ways that information will flow across Facebook.

Adding Custom Modules to Your Page

In March of 2008, Facebook launched an upgrade to Pages making it easy to add

custom Flash or HTML (FBML) to your Facebook Page. In order to add Flash and FBML

capabilities to your Page, install the “Flash Player” or “Static FBML” apps. Adding the

Flash Player will allow you to upload your own Flash files to your page, while adding

the Static FBML app will allow you to enter your own HTML. This will allow Pages to

provide much more customized experiences.

In addition, Facebook added a Legal Drinking Age setting to Pages. If you operate a

page related to alcohol products or bars, you can now meet legal drinking age

requirements by editing your settings to only allow your page to be fully accessible by

those over the legal drinking age where they live.



Finally, Facebook added the Photos and Videos modules to Pages so that Page owners

can allow fans to upload photos and videos.

Pages are a good option for small or local businesses that want to establish a presence

on Facebook. Like groups, they’re another free and easy way to do viral marketing.

Pages will become an increasingly important marketing vehicle on Facebook over time

- especially as the volume of fan-endorsed Social Ads continues to grow.

Strategy: Pages and Groups have some similarities. Which makes more

sense?

The answer to this question depends on the goals of your campaign. If your

campaign depends heavily on regular communication with large numbers of

people, Pages are definitely your best option. Facebook is going to continue to

build out Pages functionality for brand owners. In addition, you can view

demographic information on who your fans are. Facebook enables Page owners to

view and export breakdowns by age and gender in Excel format.

By contrast, if your goal is to maximize the number of people that come in contact

with your brand, but communicating with them over time is less important, the

viral invitation feature of Groups allows them to potentially grow much faster.

You’ll just need to be creative in giving your group members a reason to invite

their friends.

Strategy: I’ve just created a Page. How do I promote it?

Once you’ve created a page, there are a few things that you can do to grow your

“fan base” within Facebook:



1) Share/Post your page on your Facebook profile. This will convert more

friends and profile visitors to visit the Page.

2) Create Events within your page. When fans RSVP, their friends will see the

news in their News Feeds.

3) Post messages in related Groups. Use Facebook’s search function to post

messages in related groups about the existence of your page. If you don’t

feel comfortable “spamming” these groups with unsolicited Wall posts, try

messaging the group admins and officers to ask their permission to promote

your page within their group. They may even be willing to promote your

page for you.

4) Email the Page URL to your mailing lists and invite contacts to become

Facebook “Fans” of your page.

5) Buy Social Ads to promote your page. Facebook is hoping to promote Pages

more by integrating Page traffic stats into its Social Ads advertising service.

Also, remember that whenever someone becomes a fan of your Page, that news

appears in their Mini Feed and their friends’ News Feeds.

Group to Page Migration

In the Spring of 2008, Facebook began offering a Group > Page conversion tool.

Essentially, if you’re the owner of a Facebook Group and want to convert the members

of that group into “Fans” of your Facebook Page instead, you can fill out a request and

Facebook will perform the migration for you automatically if your request meets its

criteria. According to Facebook:

If you have a group that fits into one of the categories offered for Pages and

you are the official representative of that artist, business, or brand, we can

help you convert your group into a Page. Please fill out your request by

providing us with the URL to your current group and the URL to the Page you



have created that you would like your group members and group content

transferred to.

Brand owners that originally created groups that have grown too large to manage

effectively should consider migrating their groups to pages.

Facebook Issues Guidelines for Promoting Pages Outside Facebook

While Facebook uses Social Ads and the News Feed to help brands promote Pages

within Facebook, the task of promoting Pages outside Facebook is largely left to

the brand owner. In order to help marketers clearly promote Pages without causing

Facebook brand confusion, Facebook has released the following Pages marketing

guidelines:

1) Use or reference to the Facebook brand should not imply partnership,

endorsement or sponsorship unless approved by Facebook Brand Marketing.

* Example Do: “Find us on Facebook to discover more about…”

* Example Don’t: Don’t: “Company X partners with Facebook in social

advertising campaign”

2) Do not use icons, visuals, logos, etc. taken from the Facebook site. Instead,

use the Facebook Page Badge or Facebook Page Screenshots.

3) A registered trademark symbol ® must be included in all print / online

displays of logo or wordmark that reference the Facebook brand.

4) When advertisers request use of Facebook brand features, they may or may

not require a Trademark License Agreement from the Facebook Legal team.

In other words, Facebook is trying to prevent marketers from incorrectly implying

special partnership or affiliation with Facebook to strengthen their own brand. For



more information and details on Facebook’s Page marketing do’s and don’ts, check

out the Pages Promotional Guidelines page.

Official vs Unofficial Pages

Because Facebook allows anyone to create a Facebook Page, the situation often arises

that several “unofficial” versions of a company’s or brand’s Page exist alongside the

official version. Facebook makes it easy for you to migrate fans of your brand’s

unofficial Pages over to your official Page – all you have to do is ask.

However, brand owners should message all fans of the unofficial Page, letting them

know the transition that is about to take place. In particular, getting your unofficial

fan Page “stolen” could leave a bad taste in an otherwise very positive evangelist’s

mouth.

Pages and SEO

In a move to increase the amount of Page Rank and traffic Google gives to Facebook

Pages, Facebook launched a new feature in November 2008 that essentially added

hundreds of millions of new internal links to Facebook’s brand Pages in users’ public

search listings.

Public search listings are Facebook’s way of exposing user information to Google.

Facebook has added Pages that users are a fan of to users’ default public search

listings.



This means that if a user is a fan of The Gap, U2, or Barack Obama, that information is

now listed in that user’s public search listing. In addition, each of those items listed

point back to Facebook Pages - such as The Gap’s Facebook Page, U2’s Facebook Page,

and Barack Obama’s Facebook Page. The net result? Hundreds of millions of more

internal links to Facebook Pages just appeared.

Ways Page Owners Can Restrict Content for Underage Users

In September 2008, Facebook changed its policy and opened its gates more broadly to

beer, wine, and liquor companies. What can those companies who must restrict access

to certain content do when building Facebook Pages? Here are 3 tactics recommended

by Facebook:

1. Use Settings to Restrict Access to Your Page: Facebook allows you to restrict

access to your Page to users who say they are over 13, 17, 18, 19, 21, or the

“legal drinking age where they live.” To change this setting, go to its edit page

and change the “Settings” at the bottom.

2. Use FBML Tags to Restrict Certain Content within Your Page: You can use FBML to

restrict certain content on your Page according to the viewing user’s declared

country and age. For example, if you have rights to certain content in North

America but not other locations, you can show different things to folks outside

that region



3. Target Your Messages to Certain Demographics: When sending a message to fans

of your Page, you can restrict who receives your messages by declared age,

geography, and gender. To change this setting, select the “Target this update”

box when sending a message.

These are great tools that all marketers in relevant industries should use. Marketers

interested in learning more about the ins and outs of marketing on Facebook using

Pages should also check out our Facebook Marketing Bible for more detailed

information on the capabilities of Facebook Pages and Facebook applications.

How to Import Your Blog into Your Public Profile

1. In the “Applications” menu in the bottom left corner of your Facebook page, choose

either “Ads and Pages” or “Page Manager” (it may or may not be in your bookmarks -

you may have to find it in the Applications menu).

2. Choose the “Pages” menu item at the top, and then click “Edit Page” next to the

page you want to import your blog into. You should then arrive at the main

administrative console of your Facebook page.



3. About half-way down the page, you will see the “Notes” box. Click on the pencil

symbol in the upper right corner of the Notes box, and choose “Application Settings.”

(If the Notes application isn’t present in your Page Manager, add it by going to the

Notes application here, clicking Add to Page, and choosing your Page.)

4. You will then be brought to the “Import an External Blog” page. Paste in the URL of

your blog. You must check the box that reaffirms you have the right to be publishing

that content. Click “Start Importing.”



5. Now, you will see a preview of your posts that Facebook imported from your

company blog.

6. To make it permanent, you must scroll to the bottom of the page, where you’ll find

a button to “Confirm Import.” The automatic feed will not be complete until you

confirm it.



Conclusion

If you’re pressed on time, or you blog frequently, then setting up an automatic blog

feed to your Facebook page might make the most sense. But we believe the Notes

application limits user engagement with your company page for a couple reasons:

1. When Facebook users click on a post that was imported automatically, they are

not brought to the blog post at your company website. Instead, they will be

directed to where the post resides in the Notes application inside Facebook.

2. While there is a link that directs users to the “original post,” it’s not prominently

shown, making it difficult to redirect Facebook users to your own site (where,

ideally, they can interact with your products more deeply).

As a result, you may find it more beneficial to post manually via a status message or

the “Links” application. It will take a little extra effort on your part, but we think it

could yield better results.

Page Invitations

While content sharing on Facebook is increasingly becoming oriented around the

stream, Facebook recently created a new way for users to share Pages with friends.

The new “Suggest to Friends” link directly underneath the profile picture now allows

users to send Page invitations to their friends.

Now, page administrators can encourage users to share pages with friends via

invitations, just like Facebook applications have been able to do for a long time. And



while applications are rate limited to usually around 10-20 invitations per user per

day, Facebook is not placing any limitations on Page invitations, apparently because

Facebook wants more users to become fans of more Pages ASAP.

Here’s how it looks when inviting users to Inside Facebook’s page:

When users receive the invitation, they can convert and become a fan in just one

click.



However, unlike status updates or shared content, which appear in the streams on

users’ home pages, page suggestions are discoverable only on the invitations and

requests page. While the invitation will remain there until acted upon, Page owners

should encourage fans to actively share content from the Page in their streams as

well.

SMS Service for Pages

In April 2009, Facebook launched (in beta) a new way for people to become fans of

Facebook Pages: SMS text messaging.

Now, celebrities, business, and brands will be able to get more Facebook fans at

events and conferences and through TV and radio campaigns by asking fans to text

“fan [your ID here]” to Facebook. For example, you can now become a fan of Inside

Facebook by texting “fan insidefacebook” to FBOOK (32665).

Text messaging is a fantastic way for Facebook to expand the tools marketers can use

to drive new fans to their Facebook Pages (now also called “public profiles” - we

know, it’s confusing). Now, Facebook marketers can get the benefits of viral growth

through Facebook’s feed system when users become fans through events and

campaigns across many other types of media. This is going to be a big deal for

marketers who’ve been looking for ways to accelerate their Pages’ growth.

“Imagine the scenarios- you can ask 10 people in a Board room to take their phone out

and become Fans, or 100 people at a rally to become political supporters, or 30,000



people at a concert or ballpark to become fans via mobile device,” wrote Dave Kerpen

at theKbuzz, who discovered the new feature earlier today.

It’s theoretically possible that Facebook could also add an SMS blast capability in the

future to let Page administrators contact fans via SMS as well - though obviously that

would be a long way from where the new service is today.

Currently, the SMS service is open only to select Facebook Pages. A Facebook

spokesperson did not have a timeline on the potential rollout plan for the SMS service

for all Pages/public profiles.

More Features Coming Soon

In an effort to give brand owners more ways to engage with users via Facebook Pages,

Facebook is preparing to launch a new Contest/Sweepstakes application that could be

available to some clients as soon as summer.

The Contest app will only be available to marketers within Facebook Pages. In order to

participate in a contest or sweepstakes, users would first have to become “Fans” of

the page, and then opt-in to the promotion. In addition, in order for Facebook to avoid

contest risk, any contests run on Facebook Pages will first need to be contracted and

approved by Facebook’s legal team at least 3 weeks before the contest starts.

As Facebook seeks to increase revenue from Social Ads, expect to see more marketing

features and functionality developed for Facebook Pages. Facebook wants to give

brands as many reasons as possible to want to drive traffic to their Pages, and contests

are a key step forward in expanding Pages functionality.

In an interesting sign of the times, major US mobile phone carrier Verizon is moving its

Verizon Community social network from the Verizon website over to the Verizon page

on Facebook. Verizon Community, which let users write blogs, post photos, and discuss

in forums, will close. Clearly, Verizon decided that trying to run its own branded social

network wasn’t worth the effort.



3. Facebook Groups

Groups are oldest and simplest way to build community around your brand or

company on Facebook. By starting a group, you create a central place for customers,

partners, and friends to participate in conversations around your brand. Facebook

groups come with boards for posting discussion topics, photos, videos, and links right

out of the box. You can also easily send news and updates to your group members as

often as you like - messages arrive in their Facebook Inbox. And the best part about

Groups is you can create as many as you like for free.



Groups are one of the simplest ways to do viral marketing on Facebook. Once members

have joined your group, they can easily invite their friends to join the group via a

built-in Invite feature. If your members are excited about your group, it can grow

really quickly. (The group 1,000,000 Strong for Stephen Colbert grew from zero to one

million members in 9 days!) Additionally, your group name will usually appear on your

members’ personal profile pages until they leave the group. Many people view groups

as “Bumper Stickers” for their profile page in this regard. Because profile pages are

highly trafficked, these links can generate a lot of clicks to your group page.



Of course, groups do have their problems. First and foremost, Facebook removes

your ability to blast messages to your group once it surpasses a certain size. Until

June 2008, group owners experienced this restriction at 1200 members. However, as

of June 2008, Facebook increased the limit on group size for message blasting to

5,000. The increase makes Facebook a more usable tool for those managing large user

groups. However, for those with large groups, converting your group to a Facebook

Page is the right move (see below).

Second, if your group becomes popular, it can become a target for spammers. If you

want to keep your group clean, be prepared to spend time deleting spam wall posts

and reporting users that spam your group to Facebook. This can take a lot of time.

Finally, while Groups do offer a reasonably robust feature set with no setup, you’re

not able to extend their functionality with Facebook applications. In order to use

those, you’ll need to get a Facebook Page.

Strategy: What about spamming existing Groups?

Many marketers choose to post links in existing Facebook Groups to their own

Facebook Group or website. While this tactic may work on a small scale,

Facebook’s automated systems will shut down accounts that post links in many

groups. A better approach would be to approach existing Group owners and ask to

set up a reciprocal link exchange between your groups, just as you would on the

open web.

SEO

In September 2008, Facebook made Groups and Pages more accessible to search

engines than they were before by publishing an index of them in a new search-engine-

friendly page called the Facebook Directory, as well as making user discussion on

Groups and Pages visible to search engines as well. This means marketers should

expect Facebook Groups and Pages to get more traffic (as well as more public

visibility) than they did before.



4. Facebook Events

Facebook Events is a free application developed by Facebook that anyone can use to

promote marketing events, sponsored parties, or even product launches, transactions,

or company milestones.

When you create an event, it gets a fully-featured page, much like a group, that

includes a wall, discussion, photos, videos, and links. You can invite all of your

friends to the event; friends you invite will receive a special notification

requesting their RSVP. You can also add administrators to the event, who can also

invite all of their friends.

Facebook Events makes it easy to get the word out to hundreds of people, manage

your guest list, and build community around your upcoming event.



Events API

In an effort to allow applications to more tightly integrate with the Facebook Events system,

Facebook launched new APIs that allow applications to create and manage Facebook Events

from within the application in August 2008. Application users can RSVP to events, which will

result in News Feed stories being published and give the user an opportunity to invite friends.

Events SEO

With the launch of the Facebook redesign, Facebook made many public Facebook events that

were never before indexable by search engines now publicly visible and searchable. This means

more search traffic is likely to hit Facebook Events pages in the coming months and years.



5. Facebook Notes and Photos

Notes and Photos are two Facebook applications that allow you to share blog posts and

pictures with your friends. You can use these features to post content about your

brand, but be careful to always do it authentically - don’t be spammy. If your photo

albums are all company logos, for example, you’ll lose a lot of credibility.

One feature that often goes overlooked within Facebook Notes and Photos is

“tagging.” When you publish a note or post a photo, Facebook allows you to “tag” that

note or photo with the names of your friends who are “included” in it. When you

“tag” a friend in your photo or note, he/she gets a special notification. However,

you don’t have to use “tagging” only to tag people that are actually “included” in the

note or photo–you can also use it to selectively choose certain people whose attention

you want to bring to the content you’ve created. When they view your note or photo,

they’ll see the other people you tagged in it - so make sure it’s a group of people

they’d be complimented to be included in.



The Viral Dynamics of Photo Tagging

Photos are extremely popular inside Facebook: Facebook gives both significant

visibility on the profile page and significant distribution in the News Feed to photo-

related stories. The reason Facebook is the most popular photo sharing site on the web

is not because its features are the best, but because its Photos application is very

tightly integrated with the social graph.

Tagging is the primary means by which photos are made social: when a user uploads a

photo, they can “tag” their friends who appear in the photo. Notifications are sent to

tagged friends letting them know that a new tagged photo of them exists on Facebook,

and feed stories are published on both the tagger’s and taggee’s profiles.



Users who receive a notification that they have just been tagged usually investigate

the photo. If they don’t want to be associated with the picture, they “detag”

themselves from it. Similarly, users who see a feed story about their friends being

tagged in photos often check out the photo.

Bottom line: Photo-related notifications and feed stories both get a lot of impressions

and have a high conversion rate inside Facebook.

Photos as a Facebook Marketing Channel: Opportunities and Limitations

Tagging Facebook Photos (and Notes as well) can be used to drive traffic. However,

legitimate marketers using these tactics should be aware of a couple important

limitations:

1. If you abuse the implied social contract with your Facebook friends by

spamming them with photo tags, you’re sure to quickly develop a low

conversion rate and lose friends. And if you tag spam too much, Facebook’s

automated spam detection systems will simply shut down your account.

2. Unlike Notes, which can include direct links to destination URLs (inside or

outside Facebook), Photos can’t. While you can caption the photo or label the

photo album with a few words or a URL you’re trying to push, driving traffic to

a Photo page through tagging is not likely to produce a lot of traffic to a

destination page.



Rather, photo tagging can be used as a way to send specific messages to targeted

people - a special kind of social capital transaction not entirely unlike sending a virtual

gift or writing on a wall. It can be effectively used to occasionally notify select people

whose attention you want to bring to content you’ve created.

Finally, some Facebook applications are making use of photo tagging as well.

TouchGraph is a friend network visualization app that outputs photo albums and

(somewhat overzealously) tags photos with your friends’ names. KnockedUp is a more

interesting example created by an experimental marketing group at Microsoft.

6. Facebook Messages

The rise of Facebook Messages as a popular alternative to email has confused many

“old” people. Nevertheless, Messages can be a powerful vehicle for targeted

marketing on Facebook.

Messages are like email, except a lot less fully featured - Facebook offers no way

to search, sort, filter, categorize, or star messages. While Facebook’s default

privacy settings prevent you from seeing the full profile page of most Facebook users,

Facebook allows you to send messages to users you have no connection with.

However, Facebook has invested heavily in message spam prevention. If you use your

Facebook account to message users you have no connection with in high volume,

Facebook’s automated systems will shut down your account. While they do offer a

direct line to a hard to find sales lead or potential job candidate, it is not smart to try

to spam people using Facebook messages.



7. Status Updates

Status updates are a way to share real-time updates with your friends. It’s kind of like

a blog entry, except in 140 characters for less. Here are some examples:

• Justin is pulling for the Cardinals in the Super Bowl!

• Justin just enjoyed a nice dinner at Joanie’s.

• Justin just went for a run – new Nikes are great.

When you post a status update on Facebook, it appears both on your own wall and on

the top of your friends’ News Feeds. Here’s how a status update appears on your own

profile:



And here’s how a status update appears on your friends’ News Feeds:

Status updates are a great way to share authentic endorsements for your brand.

However, don’t be too spammy – your friends will devalue your status updates if

they’re too full of forced or fake endorsements.

The most successful status updates are honest, enthusiastic, and authentic – just like

if you were talking to your friends in person.

8. Facebook Share / Posted Items

Facebook Share is a Facebook application that lets you promote any Group, Event,

Photo, Link, or Application you come across by a) giving it real estate in your “Posted

Items” list on your profile page, or b) sending it directly to your friends’ Inbox.



By posting it on your profile page, you can direct some clicks to the shared item.

However, while this is an effective promotional tactic, it’s not as targeted as

sending it directly to friends’ Inboxes. Those messages are more likely to convert

into valuable clicks.

In an effort to increase the amount of commenting on and resharing of posted links, in

December 2008 Facebook added a new navigation bar that users see when they click

on shared links from friends.

The navigation bar adds a “Comment” button which, when clicked, opens a popup and

allows the user to post comments back to Facebook (and view previous comments on

the posted item) without leaving the page. A second “Share” button works similarly.



9. Mini Feed and News Feed

While all the channels I’ve described above are useful for grassroots marketing on

Facebook, the wind that blows your marketing seeds is Facebook’s News Feed.

While you’re not able to publish directly to the feeds (unless you’re willing to pay or

build an application), Facebook’s Mini Feed and News Feed archive your users’

engagement with your brand and syndicate it to their friends, networks, and beyond,

amplifying the reach of your campaign by orders of magnitude.



When Facebook users join your group, RSVP to your event, become fans of your page,

share your photos, or further engage with your brand in any of these channels,

Facebook automatically adds a feed item to their Mini Feed. That feed item exists for

all to see, and is often in a prominent location on Facebook profile pages. Facebook’s

News Feed, which occupies most of the Facebook login landing page, then

amalgamates each user’s friends’ Mini Feeds into one unified stream of “recent news”.

It’s possible that one Mini Feed item generated by a Facebook user could be seen in

hundreds of their friends’ News Feeds.

The News Feed has revolutionized the way information is shared between friends on

Facebook. This can mean great things for your campaign and your brand. In fact, a

new marketing field I’ve called “News Feed Optimization” is emerging – for more

information, see the “Tools for Application Developers” section below.

10. Feed Importing



In May 2008, Facebook launched a feature specifically designed to make it easier to

share content from around the web, called Feed Importing. Users just enter their

credentials for their accounts at supported partner sites and your content will appear

in your Mini Feed (and your friends’ News Feeds). According to Facebook’s Harry

Wang, “These stories will look just like any other Mini-Feed stories, and will hopefully

increase your ability to share information with the people you care about.” This will

certainly make Facebook a more powerful way to share content from your existing

website - currently, users have to actively “Post” items to their profiles or for certain

friends.

In addition, Facebook also enabled general importing of any RSS feed into the

Facebook Mini Feed. While Facebook users have previously been able to import their

blog RSS into Notes for a long time, the new Feed Importer makes it easy to syndicate

multiple feeds directly to your Mini Feed. Encourage your website users to import

feeds for your service into their Facebook Mini Feed could be an extremely valuable

way to get exposure inside Facebook.

Data: Latest US Facebook Age and Gender

Demographics



For marketers interested in reaching US users, here’s the latest check of Facebook’s

current (user-reported) age and gender demographics. As of February 1, 2009:

• There 33 million Facebook users in the United States

• 55% of US Facebook users are female, and female users outnumber male users in

every age bracket

• 52% are between the ages of 18-25, but the younger and older groups are growing



Recommended Strategies for Guerilla Marketers

Marketing on Facebook is really all about the News Feed. Getting prominence in

Facebook users’ News Feeds allows your brand to spread more rapidly and powerfully

than has ever before been possible on the social web.

The simplest way to get started on Facebook and get News Feed distribution is:

1) Start a profile page. (You have probably already done this.)

2) Build your network. Import all your email contacts and add all of your friends

as appropriate.



3) Start a Group. (If you’re marketing a brand, skip Groups and create a Page.)

Be sure to make your Group/Page available to all of Facebook, not just your

school, regional, or work network.

4) Invite all your Facebook friends that it would be appropriate to invite to join

your Group/Page.

5) Ask all your Group/Page members to invite the 10 friends that they think

would be most interested in the Group/Page.

6) Create regular events within the Group/Page, and encourage members/fans

to post content (like notes, photos, and videos) regularly.

7) Message your Group/Page members regularly.

Every time a Facebook member joins a Group/Page, posts to it, or RSVPs to your events,

their friends will come into contact with your brand via the Mini and News Feed.

Thousands of Facebook users could touch your brand within a matter of days. (Of course,

you’ll need to mix in a healthy amount of link posting to keep everyone engaged.)

If you want to add more robust application functionality or advertise your group, you

should start off with (or switch to) Pages, since Facebook has indicated that it will add

increasing support to Pages for brand owners going forward.



II. Tools for Advertisers

For marketers with a budget, Facebook offers both integrated and self-serve solutions

to reach broader slices of the Facebook audience. Depending on your budget, you can

get started as an advertiser on Facebook with as little as a few dollars for a short-run

flyer or as much as several hundred thousand dollars for a customized “sponsored

group” destination inside Facebook.

11. Social Ads

Social Ads replaced Facebook Flyers in November 2007 at the

same time Facebook launched Pages. With Social Ads,

Facebook offers advertisers the option to pay on a CPC or

CPM basis, whichever they prefer. Social Ads offers very

powerful targeting capabilities: when you create your ad,

you have the option to limit who sees your ad by age, sex,

location, keywords, education level, workplaces, political

views, and relationship status. Social Ads are the best way to drive traffic to your

Facebook Page.

Social Ads is completely self-serve and provides real time feedback on the size of your

target audience and the suggested bid range to achieve impressions. While Facebook

doesn’t guarantee your budget will be reached, I can’t imagine they’re anywhere

close to filling their inventory.



Social Ads also offers placements in the News Feed, and these units get much

better click through. You can also target Social Ads to friends of users who have

recently engaged with your brand via your Facebook Page. These units convert at a

much better rate. When the Facebook redesign launched in August 2008, Facebook

created a new ad unit on the Facebook home page as well.

How Specialty Brands are Driving Sales on Facebook

While many small to medium sized etailers drive a large portion of their sales

through search marketing, many are beginning to experiment with different

marketing channels inside Facebook to reach new customers. Inside Facebook sat

down with Dave Eisenberg, VP of Marketing at Bonobos, a rapidly growing designer

and retailer of high-quality hand-made pants for men. Below, Dave shares advice

on reaching the right target demographic inside Facebook, his perspective on how

the Facebook advertising market has changed over recent months, and the

opportunities and challenges Bonobos sees ahead.

Could you give us a little background on your experience with Bonobos on

Facebook?

We were one of the earliest folks to invest in the Social Ads platform. I quickly

became very excited because the clicks that we were able to get from our

targeted demographic were less expensive than those we acquired from people

searching for men’s pants in particular.

Some of the early experiments we ran were against schools where we thought our

products might be popular. We also had a particular pant that was done in the

Chicago Cubs blue colors, and we were able to run ads against people in Chicago

who had a Cubs interest. It was really easy to do targeted advertisements and

track the clicks. From there I was able to use Google Analytics to track what was



converting, and it was great to see what I could pay for a new customer.

We were one of Facebook’s top small business advertisers last fall. Since then, so

many more people have jumped onto Facebook’s advertising platform that the

costs have gone up, and the ROI decreased somewhat in December. We’re just not

as unique any more.

Why did you want to be one of the earlier adopters of Social Ads?

In a way that is very different from SEM, Facebook offers a chance to do passive

display using the information that Facebook users are sharing to help your

targeting. For example, last year we named one pant after Obama and another

after McCain, and we could target ads for each of them to people who supported

one candidate or the other. This was a really cheap way to get people to show up

on the site and check us out for the first time.

In addition, our ad was a breath of fresh air for people who were dissatisfied with

the quality of the ads generally. We have spent the bulk of our efforts targeting

men between the ages of 25 and 45.

How do you measure the ROI on your Facebook campaigns?

Any new business is interested in how many visitors it has. However, what moves

the bottom line is a person who tries out our product, enjoys it, and comes back.

There’s nothing as important as new customer acquisition for us.

That being said, visitors are important and word of mouth conversations that help

people hear about us are also important. There are a lot of influential people on

Facebook, and our ads have done better as more people over 30 have signed up for

Facebook.

How would you suggest Facebook needs to improve its advertising solutions?



For one thing, in some cases national advertisers are starting to price out local

advertisers. Clicks that started in the $0.10 range are now above $1.00, so

Facebook will need to address the impression limitations that will arise. They

almost need to subsidize the local advertisers.

However, in the bigger picture, Facebook needs to undertake figuring out who is

willing to use Facebook for shopping and who isn’t. People who are should receive

better ads, they should see more ads, and they should be more expensive to reach.

Many of our clients say that we’re one of the only ads they’ve ever clicked on. We

want to play against the relevant folks.

It’s part of a broader question about how internet advertising is going to evolve on

a performance basis. I’d love to pay for acquired customers. Facebook could figure

out more ways to promote our page. If it costs the same amount to promote my

Facebook Page and my website, I’m going to choose my site because I can track

what users are doing there. Facebook has worked for us for quite a long time, but

now it needs to find the next new thing.

If Facebook were able to more deeply measure user engagement after the

click, that could make for a more efficient pricing system.

Yes, you almost need a way to track user satisfaction or a mechanism for users to

provide more guidance on what kinds of ads they would like to see. For example,

my friends who are gay have said that they have seen racier ads on Facebook.

Hearing that has made me more conscious about what I put in my profile. It’s

almost like you want people to opt in to certain kinds of advertising.

There may also be some interesting opportunities with Facebook Connect

coming up.

Facebook Connect is going in a great direction. All of the things that it enables are



very powerful. Anything they did that would do more to let me show that I want

to integrate shopping with social media would help. For example, integrating on

landing pages. In a lot of ways we want the benefits of Beacon, but in a way that

users understand. Deeper integration with sites where users want to engage with

the ads would be great for everyone involved.

12. Engagement Ads

Facebook’s sales team gave a picture of their vision for the future of Facebook ad

units in August of 2008. They said Facebook is focusing on 3 different types of

“engagement” ads to build its business going forward:

1) Comment style ads – ads that users can leave comments on, which spread

to their friends’ News Feed

2) Virtual gifts style ads – brands can create items that users can spread by

sending to each other

3) Fan style ads – users can express their affinity for a product or service,

which brands can then tie ads onto

Here’s a summary of the ad units available to advertisers on Facebook:

1) Home Page

Advertising on the home page is now available to

advertisers in the new “Sponsor” module on the right

side of the News Feed. As of September 2008,

Facebook offered both standard and video ads in this unit.



Facebook Home Page Ad Unit: Social Videos

The home page social video ad unit is particularly interesting. Its behavior:

1. Clicking on the ad image opens a video player in-line

2. Comments on the video are visible to your entire friend list.

The comments around the ad dramatically increase engagement with the unit, as

the highly visible comments provide an opportunity for users to simultaneously

draw attention to the ad by drawing attention to themselves. While this could

backfire if comments degrading the advertiser are abundant (I saw a few “LAME!”

comments about Tropic Thunder today), the ad comments powerfully take

advantage of Facebook’s social dynamics to draw attention to an ad in a way that

is impossible without the social graph. When is the last time you heard 9 friends

talk about an online ad in the same day?

Ad comments are an interesting step forward in the evolution of “Social Ads.”

While this kind of ad may not work as well outside of a few advertiser verticals, I

expect that early advertisers will be pleased with its performance.

Facebook Home Page Ad Unit: Sponsored Virtual Gifts

As of September 2008, a new “sponsored gifts” unit is now available on the

redesigned Facebook home page. The sponsored gifts ad unit follows Facebook’s

new social video ad unit as one of the three new types of “engagement ads”

advertisers can use to reach Facebook users more powerfully within the redesigned

Facebook.

Here’s how it works: Sponsored gifts are simply virtual gifts that users can send to

each other. Facebook has created a virtual gifts store that offers some gifts for



sale at $1 and offers some gifts for free (recent estimates put Facebook’s virtual

gifts business at over $30 million/year). Gifts can normally be sent either publicly

or privately, depending on the preference of the sender.

With sponsored gifts, gifts can be sent directly from the home page (see above)

and are always delivered publicly on friends’ Wall feeds (see below). Facebook

then gives a lot of News Feed juice to help gifts spread further to the friends of

those who get them. For many types of brands, like consumer products and

entertainment, sponsored gifts could be an excellent and simple way to engage

users in a social and meaningful way.



Many Facebook Platform application developers also offer advertising products

much like sponsored gifts. If you’re interested in finding applications that may be

able to provide deeper experiences, feel free to let me know your verticals of

interest.

Facebook Home Page Ad Unit: Events

The Event Ad is integrated with Facebook Events and includes an “RSVP” call to

action. When RSVP is clicked, full event details are displayed, including the

number of Facebook users and friends attending. Friends’ responses are visible

beneath the ad after they have RSVP’d.

Facebook Home Page Ad Unit: Pages

The Page Ad is designed to drive fans of Facebook Pages, and allows users to

become fans of a Page in line. When users become fans, it’s listed beneath the ad

for friends to see.



Facebook Home Page Ad Unit: Polls

The Polls Ad allows advertisers to reach large numbers of Facebook users. People

who respond can see how others voted - and how each of their friends voted - in

the poll.

2) News Feed

Currently, ads in the News Feed itself are only available to advertisers who purchase a

minimum buy of around $50,000 USD. Facebook has no word yet on exactly when News

Feed ads will be available to more advertisers.

The News Feed as is a place where “fan style” ads can amplify the spread of brands

when users express their affinity for a product or service.



3) Profile Page (and other pages)

Ads on the Facebook profile page is on the right side of the

page. In the new design, there are a few different options for

advertisers:

* Two Facebook Ads running together

* One Facebook Ad running above a banner ad

* Only one Facebook ad showing

These ads can appear on profile pages, groups, and on the right

side of application canvas pages (but not on Facebook’s

business Pages).

4) Facebook Virtual Gifts

Facebook has been pushing its virtual gifts prominently on the home page over the last

year. Why? Because it’s becoming a nice secondary revenue stream for the company,

doing somewhere around $3 million/month in sales as of August 2008.

Brands can create virtual gifts that Facebook users can send to their friends and

spread the brand. Branded virtual gifts are usually large buys and are often supported

with home page promotion.



Papa John’s Connecting with 200,000 Fans on Facebook

More brands are engaging with Facebook’s 150 million users through Facebook

advertising solutions and the Facebook Platform, patterns of best practices are

emerging for brands in different verticals. Inside Facebook sat down with Bob Ford,

Papa John’s Director of Online Marketing, about the ways the pizza restaurant

chain is reaching customers on Facebook.

Why did Papa John’s decide to get involved on Facebook?

We’ve obviously been tracking social networks for a number of years now, but

we’ve been looking for opportunity that is right for our brand, and Facebook’s

engagement ads made sense to me and to Papa John’s. Facebook has actually

initially reached out to us three years ago, but this is the first one we felt like we

were ready to try.

Before we built our Facebook Page, there were other Papa John’s Facebook Pages

out there. They had a limited number of fans, but when you looked and saw

something that was put up by someone who was literally just a fan, it became

intriguing to us. So we dedicated the time to put together our Facebook Page,

working closely with Facebook to design it in a way that the audience is looking

for.

Who was your campaign targeted at and how did it work?

Facebook is very different today in terms of who their audience is even compared

to just a couple years ago. We were really looking for a way to feature some of our

new features like mobile ordering, and the 15-24 audience is a great fit for that.

We did two projects with Facebook. First, in November of last year, we did our

engagement ad where we drove people to become a fan of our Facebook Page.

Fans were notified on three different dates via an Update from the Papa John’s



Page, and were then directed to the Papa John’s site to receive their promotional

code for the pizza.

We added 125,000 fans within a day, that number has grown to over 200,000

today. We’re very pleased with how many fans we’ve gained, and we’re

examining ways we can promote it more. We look at our Facebook page almost as

an extension of our website, and we have more campaigns coming up soon in the

next 6 moths.

We also gave away some virtual pizzas. Using Facebook Gifts, we gave away as

many virtual pizzas as we could. We funded and gave away a couple hundred

thousand pizzas. You may think, “What’s the value in a virtual pizza?” We looked

at it almost like we do our widgets - they’re a constant reminder that sits on

someone’s profile page.

The person sent their friend a gift that was a Papa John’s ad that the friend was

happy to get. It’s not often that you find an advertising vehicle that people are

happy to get. From the feedback we’ve seen it seemed to be very well received.

How did the ROI on these campaigns compare to your expectations?

We set out targets for both promotions, and they came back dead on. In fact, we

got a much better ROI than we expected from the number of impressions we ended

up receiving from our virtual gifts - Facebook did a great job projecting that.

In terms of the number of fans we added to the Papa John’s, it is probably double

what we projected. What we were truly hoping for was to sign up 100,000 fans. I

would have been okay if we had signed up 50,000. The fact that we’re at 200,000

is fantastic.

Why do you think your Page has been successful?



Facebook has been really good about providing guidance on what their users

expect to see on Pages, and how to keep them active. What we need to do is make

sure that we keep that page fresh so that people keep coming back, and so that

when we send an update people will see it and find it valuable.

Thanks Bob. Do you have any final thoughts for other brand marketers out

there?

Industry by indusry we have to be willing to put ourselves out there, knowing that

not everything we do will be perfect. We know we will take some hits from our

customers, but we as a brand need to embrace that. We need to monitor it and

react to it. We have worked to resolve issues with people who have had any issues

- for example, I have sent personal messages to people that have had issues, and

the responses I’ve gotten have been fantastic. Even if someone makes a negative

post the first time, they often go back and make unbelievably positive comments.

13. Virtual Gifts

For as long as gifts have been available for

purchase in the Facebook Gift Shop, users

have been able to send virtual gifts to

their friends for $1 each. However,

Facebook makes a select number of

sponsored gifts available to users to send

to each other for free.

When a user sends a virtual gift to their friend, it appears on their Facebook profile.

This is one of the only ways sponsors can get profile Wall presence – Facebook

otherwise prohibits advertising in the profile feed.



The Future of Virtual Gifts on Facebook

The people at Facebook think about Facebook as a market for the exchange of social

capital. In that sense, nearly every interaction on the site is either a “gift” or

exchange of some kind. Facebook’s decision to implement variable pricing on explicit

“virtual gifts” in October 2008 makes them a more flexible currency for trade in the

social capital markets.

This should allow more users to give and receive more value on Facebook over time.

This means more users will be more engaged with Facebook over time, which is a good

thing for the greater ecosystem in the long run. (That is, assuming variable “worth” of

virtual goods can be differentiated by Facebook users. That will probably take some

time, but Facebook will certainly try hard to “educate” the marketplace in a variety

of ways by designing subtle signals into the gift delivery experience.)

As for Facebook itself, as virtual gifting on Facebook matures, flexible pricing will

allow the company to capture a greater portion of the market’s demand at more

efficient prices, which should lead to significant revenue increases. Facebook’s direct

gift sales efforts could even reach 9 figures on the top line in 2009 (ok, perhaps that’s

a bit aggressive). The bottom line? Both users and advertisers should expect to see

more robust ways to spend their money on Facebook Gifts in the coming months.

Scheduled & Holiday Virtual Gifts



In February 2009, Facebook launched a new feature allowing users to schedule gifts

for delivery on Valentine’s Day, marking the first time Facebook has built in support

for holiday-themed virtual gifts to this degree.

With the new feature, Facebook gifts will appear “wrapped” on friends’ Walls until

Valentine’s Day. On February 14, the gifts will be revealed to their recipients.

According to Facebook, “This way, you will know if someone special—or someone

unexpected—is planning a Valentine’s Day surprise. You’ll get the delight of receiving

a gift twice, and you’ll also have a chance to reciprocate.” These holiday-themed

sponsored gifts should be attractive options for major brand marketers.

14. Performance Ads

For those advertisers simply wanting to drive traffic to a website or page, Facebook’s

self-serve performance advertising system is the simplest alternative available.

Advertisers can simply place orders for people who match certain demographic or

targeting requirements, and are only charged for performance.

The minimum daily budget is only $1.00 USD, and the minimum bid per click is only

$0.01 USD, so it’s easy to get started, test, and compare Facebook Ads to other

channels. See the campaign creation interface below:



From Keyword Targeting to People Targeting: Talking Performance

Advertising with Facebook’s Tim Kendall

In order to gain a deeper understanding of how Facebook sees its performance

advertising business, we sat down with Tim Kendall, Facebook’s Director of

Monetization and performance advertising head. Below, Tim shares his thoughts

with us on Facebook’s positioning of performance ads in the marketplace, how

performance advertisers are succeeding using Facebook’s solutions, and what

messages about Facebook’s performance advertising opportunity are resonating

with agencies today.



IF: Thanks for your time Tim. Looking at your overall strategy, how does

performance advertising fit into what you’re doing today?

TK: We like to think about it this way. If you think about the classic marketing

funnel that’s very big at the top and very small at the bottom - where at the top

you’re planting the notion of a brand in the consumer’s head, and at the bottom

you’re delivering to a consumer who explicitly wants something, such as paid

search - what’s happening at the bottom of that funnel is what we call demand

fulfillment. The guy at the top of the funnel may not even be thinking about

photography if he’s on Yahoo Sports and sees a Canon banner ad. We believe that

we play in the funnel above that threshold.

We don’t have people that come to the site to buy a digital camera, but we have a

lot of users on the site who spend a lot of time on the site, and we think there’s a

big opportunity for brand marketers to get broad reach and tell their story to those

customers at the very top of the funnel. We can show an ad to people who have

expressed an interest in photography. The next step down the funnel is where we

see our performance marketing solution - toward the middle/bottom part of

funnel. We think there is a huge opportunity in latent demand right above the

bottom part of the funnel.

What would you say are your core differentiators in that area?

Three reasons: 1) We have amazing reach, and we’re growing by a lot every day.

The people who have the widest reach win the brand game. 2) We have a lot of

information about you the user, because you’ve declared it to us so you can share

it with your friends. We can look at your profile fields to determine your interests,

and we can look at your status updates and know what your interests are today. 3)

We know who you know. This is where we’re just starting to come out with a

couple sets of offerings. The Social Ad offering takes into account the notion of

who you’re friends with.



We think about both brand and performance together (but we have many

marketers who come to us for one or the other). We think marketers increasingly

want an end to end solution where you can first help them build their brand with

large numbers of consumers, and then convert them into buyers. In terms of

internal priorities, we view performance as equal to brand.

In the performance area, our core differentiators are: 1) We have a lot of

information about users, so we can provide powerful targeting to advertisers so

that they can efficiently allocate spend, and 2) We have market based pricing - it’s

an auction, so advertisers don’t overpay. Also, “who users know” (Facebook’s

Social Ads product) is something that some performance advertisers are leveraging,

but it hasn’t become central yet.

How much lift do you see in click through rates when advertisers employ Social

Ads?

On a click through rate basis, we see over 100% improvement when an impression

is a Social Ad. For example, a local restaurant could do a happy hour ad and

connect it to an event, so that when you RSVP, your friends get Social Ads. People

come to Facebook to learn about their friends, so if you can make the advertising

about their friends, it’s more effective. In addition, it may get seen by their

friends in their News Feed as pure organic content - Facebook has decided that

something like this is often relevant enough to not display like an ad.

What kinds of advertisers are you most aggressively targeting right now?

Wherever we have greater density of information about users, we tend to be able

to provide more relevant ads. Entertainment is a category that works well because

those are the types of niche interests that users are willing to share on their

profile. Categories that match up well with music, movies, books, hobbies tend to

do well. We can also target users based on what pages they’re affiliated with,

which broadens the number of users we can target. We are actually seeing success



in every major category.

However, success tends to be more determined by the degree to which the

advertiser understands how the system works and how targeting works differently

than in other systems. It’s a people targeting system, not a keyword targeting

system. On Google, I would select things like a specific camera brand or name to

target. On Facebook, it would be more like interest or hobby keywords.

Paid search had the same challenge in the beginning. We do have a lot of SEM

agencies that are working with us and are seeing success, but we are still early on.

There will be the constant process of educating agencies, the local market, and

the international markets - where the objectives of advertisers are different.

So what are your current priorities for improving the performance ad platform

in 2009?

I can talk in general terms. Generally, we’re trying to make it easier for

advertisers to order ads and allocate their spend and get higher ROI. But we spend

just as much time thinking about how we can make ads more relevant for the user.

There will be more features and functionality that help with both of those. We

want to figure out in a very transparent and privacy compliant way how to make

ads more relevant.

Given current and possible future innovations in Facebook’s targeting technology,

how are you addressing privacy concerns?

Using the graph is something we want to do more in 2009, while respecting privacy

as well. When your friends click on an ad, we view it as a reasonable inference

that that would be valuable and fair to share with your friends. We’ve done pretty

well with privacy on this because we stick to what the user provides to us.

In many ways we view Social Ads as less surreptitious than many types of

behavioral targeting technologies. We also already provide “thumbs up/thumbs



down” ad feedback so that users can tune what they see.

Finally - when you talk about latent demand and demand generation with

agencies, what do you find most effective in helping them appreciate the

opportunity?

Yes, again we think that there’s a tremendous opportunity in the latent demand

realm where there’s a lot of open space on the internet to create value. No one

has really figured out how to effectively generate demand and effectively measure

that.

How do you make that sound compelling to agencies? At the end of the day, an

agency’s job is to find more customers for its clients. Going back to the camera

example, there are so many cameras that are sold in a month. A fair amount of

those are done through search. However, there are also a lot of people every

month for whom it doesn’t occur to them to buy a camera off the bat, but they

may buy a camera if you put the right ad in front of them at the right time.

We tell agencies they may have great SEM programs going on, but there’s a whole

other set of customers that they can gain access to that would be accretive to

their current channels. If you’re a 49ers fan, there’s a chance you’ll actively

search for tickets, and there’s another chance you won’t. Because we know you’re

a fan, we can put 49ers tickets ads on your profile. Had you not seen that ad, you

might be in that set of people that never would have done a search or would have

sought that product in an active way.

How Search Marketers are Reaching Local Customers on Facebook



As Facebook’s audience continues to grow, more marketing agencies that have

traditionally focused on search are beginning to experiment with Facebook. Inside

Facebook spoke with Devin Davis, the Director of Marketing at G5 Search

Marketing, a search agency that focuses primarily on the local market in the US.

Below, Devin compares his experience on Facebook to SEM and shares examples of

campaign tactics that have performed well on Facebook.

Could you give a quick summary of the type of clients G5 works with and the

types of campaigns you run?

G5 has been working with Facebook on traditional Facebook ads (which, I realize,

is a fairly fluid term) for quite some time now. We have clients in the self storage

industry, the medical industry and the salon industry who have all seen fantastic

results from their campaigns. Being able to target a specific audience has been key

to this success.

How does the ROI your clients see on Facebook compare to search?

The CPC has been virtually the same across all the verticals. The total amount

spent has varied depending on the campaign, of course. We have some clients in

very rural areas so we have typically seen less total spend there when compared to

areas with higher population density. Our cost per conversion has also been similar

across verticals.

We have typically seen a CPC of $1.25 or less. This has led to a $10.25 cost per

lead. We have also been able to nail down a 10% conversion rate from visits

originating from Facebook Ads, which is quite high. We attribute this to the

granularity that Facebook provides us in targeting the users we’re reaching.

How do the results you’ve seen on Facebook compare across your storage,

medical, and salon industry campaigns?



So far we have seen the best results in the storage industry. The ability to target

students at particular universities was a huge win for us since a huge percentage of

customers who use self storage facilities are students storing their stuff during

breaks.

The salon industry saw the next best results because we could target women in

areas around the salons. The medical industry saw the lowest return of the three

because of their specific practice. In fact, we started the medical campaign with

the intention of using it as much as a branding tool as anything else. In that regard,

it has been quite successful.

What targeting and timing strategies have worked well for you so far?

Within the Facebook Ads realm, both targeting and timing have been key. An

example: we have a self storage client who has facilities in numerous college

towns (such as Berkeley and Flagstaff). Toward the end of the school year last

year, we ran a campaign for them that focused on students of specific schools.

This took advantage of both timing and targeting. As a direct result of that

campaign, that client added more college students to their facilities than ever

before.

What do you think Facebook could do to improve its performance advertising

offering?

It would be great to have the ability to handle multiple clients under one login.

Right now, we are using the same login for multiple clients and just separating

them out into different campaigns. If we could have a “My Client List” that allows

us to have one login and multiple clients, that would be extremely beneficial.

Also, the reporting piece is a bit lacking. So far you can only download campaign

or ad data in very specific time frames. We would like to see more freedom to

choose specific date ranges. Also, we would like the ability to pull reports further



back in time than three months. This does not allow enough time to really run

sufficient tests.

More advanced targeting regarding locations where the user is and the ability to

target a radius around a city would also be very helpful. We have clients that are

in more remote areas of the country and their city does not show up in the City

field for targeting. Right now we would have to target an entire state to reach our

users. If we had a radius targeting, we then might be able to get a more highly

targeted campaign without going after an entire state. This would, obviously, also

be markedly more cost effective which, for us, is always the ultimate goal.

Radius and Language Targeting

Facebook recently released two new targeting features for its performance advertising

platform: radius targeting and language targeting.

The new radius targeting feature will make it easier for local advertisers to reach

people living in the greater vicinity of target markets. For example, an advertiser

wanting to reach people over 18 in San Francisco previously could target Facebook

users only in San Francisco proper - about 300,000 people. Now, advertisers can target

people within 10, 20, or 50 miles of San Francisco, expanding the possible reach of the

campaign 300% to nearly 1.2 million people. This should be a great help to local and

regional advertisers interested in using Facebook’s performance solutions.



In addition, advertisers are also now able to target their ads by language. This means

advertisers only wanting to reach the Spanish speaking population in the United States

on Facebook (about 1.1 million people), they can now do so directly through

Facebook’s ad campaign management tools.

The new features should make Facebook’s performance ads and enhanced Social Ads

more powerful tools for marketers.



15. Localization Opportunities

While most of Facebook’s users speak English, a growing number speak many of the

world’s languages. Starting in the spring of 2008, Facebook launched versions of the

site in Spanish, French, and German, allowing users to experience Facebook

completely in their local language. There are ongoing translation projects in on in

Français, Deutsch, Español, Català, Čeština, Dansk, Euskara, Galego, Italiano, 한국어,

Magyar, Norsk, 日本語, Nederlands, Polski, Português do Brasil, Română, Русский,

Slovenščina, Suomi, Svenska, ��, Türkçe, 中文(简体, 中文(繁體, and many other

languages.

Advertisers can now consider localized versions of your campaigns targeted to

Facebook users in specific countries. To learn more about Facebook’s international

growth – and get detailed historical country and regional data – see Inside Facebook’s

Facebook Global Monitor at http://www.insidefacebook.com/facebook-global-market-

monitor/.

16. Integrated Opportunities

If you represent a large account, Facebook has partnered with Microsoft to serve

advertisers with higher campaign budgets (above around $50,000). Just contact

Facebook, and a sales rep will work with you to explore more integrated advertising

opportunities than are available via the Performance Ads or Social Ads services.

17. Facebook Platform Ad Networks

When Facebook launched the Facebook Platform in May 2007, they also made a

promise to allow application developers to monetize their applications however they

like and keep 100% of the revenue. This market green-field led to the birth of a new



niche of ad networks dedicated to serving the inventory created by Facebook Platform

applications.

These networks offer an important way to reach the Facebook audience when engaged

in a particular application vertical. Inventory is sold on a CPM, CPC, CPA, and CPI (cost

per installation of YOUR application) basis.

List of Leading Facebook Platform Ad Networks

Leading firms include:

• Social Media (www.socialmedia.com)

• Offerpal Media (www.offerpalmedia.com)

• Super Rewards (www.srpoints.com)

• AdParlor (http://www.adparlor.com)

• Buddy Media (www.buddymedia.com)

• RockYou (www.rockyou.com)

• AdKnowledge/Cubics (www.cubics.com)

• AOL’s Platform-A (www.platform-a.com)

• Videoegg (www.videoegg.com)

• And many more…

What eCPMs do apps charge? Data from Facebook application developers

Every ad network is different (and so is every app). Some can fill different types of

creative, and others can fill different user segments. For example, VideoEgg has a

unique high performing unit, but can only fill a small amount of inventory, while

Lookery has an open offer promising guaranteed rates for all European traffic.



While different ad networks make different claims regarding what kind of price

and performance they’ll be able to deliver, the best solution for all marketers is to

give several of them a try and stick with the ones that work best for you.

As a reference point, here’s info from current Facebook app developers on what

they’re making on a CPM/eCPM basis from ad networks serving the Facebook

Platform:

• tspree15 is making $0.60 CPM with Social Media

• cbovis is making $1.50 CPM with VideoEgg, but they can’t cover all his

inventory (the rest runs on RockYou)

• sweetsteve is making $0.27 CPM with Cubics, down from $0.43

• ejono is seeing a $0.40 CPM with Cubics

• cory is making a $4.78 eCPM with Social Media (much higher than the rest!)

• mzeitler is making a $0.50 CPM each with AdSense, FB Exchange, Social

Media, and RockYou (and by combining 2 units on a page is making $1.00

CPM)

• saintseiya is making $0.125 CPM with Lookery ($0.25 with 2 ads above the

fold)

• markdoub is seeing $0.10 CPM with Cubics, down from $0.43

• ersingencturk is seeing $0.04 CPM with AdSense

18. Facebook Platform Application Sponsorships

Advertisers looking for more integrated opportunities inside Facebook applications can

consider approaching application developers and negotiating a sponsorship directly.

For example, beverage companies have sponsored “drink-sharing” applications, while

contact lens companies have sponsored “winking” applications. By browsing the



Facebook Application directory, you may be able to find applications fitting with

your campaign.

In addition, several firms have begun serving agencies and advertisers by helping

them connect with users on the Facebook Platform. These firms can connect brands

with application developers or create and manage custom applications for brands.

List of Leading Facebook Platform Sponsorship Resellers/Rep Firms

Firms Inside Facebook recommends include:

• Buddy Media (www.buddymedia.com)

• Federated Media (www.federatedmedia.net)

• Context Optional (www.contextoptional.com)

• Appssavvy (www.appssavvy.com)

Strategy: Why sponsor applications when I can sponsor Facebook itself?

While developers face many of the same monetization challenges as social

networks at the end of the day, developers have two big advantages over the

social networks that can actually enable them to deliver more value to marketers

than the social networks themselves (albeit in less volume):

1. App usage is a better signal for intent than profile data.

While users who indicate an interest on their profile may not have significant

purchase intent at any given time, users actively engaged in applications around

that same interest are more likely to conduct a relevant transaction. Of course,

that application needs to serve a need in high value verticals like travel, media,

finance, or shopping.



For example, it’s hard to know with much precision when users who list “skiing” as

an interest on their profile page are most likely to purchase a lift ticket just based

on profile data. While this is great for basic targeting, it’s nowhere near the level

of intent signaled by a Google search. However, users actively engaged in an

application used to research current ski conditions and find friends going skiing this

weekend are much more likely to have monetizable intent. Whereas profile data is

often write-once-live-forever, application usage is a better indication of activated

interest in a given vertical.

2. Apps offer better opportunities for brand alignment and integration.

While Facebook offers Pages and Social Ads for brand owners interested in building

a presence in Facebook’s social environment, applications can go much deeper and

offer experiences much more directly aligned with the values of the brand. With

Facebook Pages, brands can only achieve fairly generic levels of user interaction.

On the Page itself, users can post messages, upload photos and videos, and sign up

to receive future updates. When users become a “Fan” of your brand, their friends

will see a message that says, “Justin became a fan of Colgate Toothpaste.”

All of these things are great, but they leave a lot of value to brands on the table.

With apps, brands can create more directly aligned and integrated brand

experiences - both within the application itself AND in the “viral” messages that

users send to their friends.

For example, Federated Media recently did a BMW “What Drives You?” campaign

with application developer Graffiti in which users created over 6,000 entries and

shared their creations with their friends. Which is a more valuable brand

experience to BMW - looking at a Page with a logo and messaging, or drawing the

car of your dreams? Which is a better feed item to be seen by millions of friends -

“Justin became a fan of BMW” or “Justin challenges you to show What Drives You

in the Graffiti Car Contest”? You decide.



19. Specialized Facebook Platform Advertising

Service Providers

In addition to the Facebook Platform ad networks and representation firms, new kinds

of services are emerging to serve advertisers in more specialized ways on the

Facebook Platform. While this list will build over time, Inside Facebook recommends

the following two.

1. Wildfire – Contest Platform for Facebook (www.wildfireapp.com)

Wildfire’s Promotion Builder services provides a turnkey solution for companies to

create and distribute their own branded interactive promotions (e.g. sweepstakes,

user-generated contests, coupons and giveaways), and to simultaneously publish them

on their website, Facebook, and throughout the social web. If you’re interested in

running a contest, giveaway, or sweepstakes promotion on Facebook, the Wildfire app

is the most powerful tool available on the Facebook Platform.

2. AdNectar – Sponsored Virtual Gifts Network for Facebook Applications

(www.adnectar.com)

Virtual gifts are increasingly popular ways for advertisers to enable users to share their

brand with friends on social networks. New virtual gifts ad network AdNectar is one of

the leading companies specializing in this service. If you’re interested in reaching

users across the Facebook Platform with branded/sponsored virtual gifts, a partner

like AdNectar can integrate your branded virtual gifts with the most fitting Facebook

Platform applications.

Recommended Strategies for Advertisers



For most advertisers, the place to get started is to build a fully-featured Facebook

Page, and drive traffic to it through Social Ads. Facebook ads that send traffic to

other websites historically have performed quite poorly, while ads that direct

traffic to Facebook Pages (or even Groups) perform well. Facebook users becoming

fans of your page is a valuable conversion, because you’ll be able to communicate

with them directly as long as they’re fans of your page. You can use those

communications to encourage further engagement with your brand.

For companies that have developed Facebook applications, advertising with

Facebook Application Ad Networks (like SocialMedia, RockYou, and Lookery) on a

CPI basis can be a powerful way to drive installations of your apps at reasonable

cost levels. You’ll just need to define the value of an application conversion (which

heavily depends on the nature of the app you’ve built) compared to a Page-fan

conversion in order to determine which channel is more cost effective.

Brand managers should seriously consider campaigns with firms that represent

Facebook Platform applications. Facebook apps are able to offer the best of both

worlds: deeply aligned and integrated brand experiences that get naturally shared

with thousands of friends through Facebook’s “viral” communication channels.



III. Tools for Application Developers

For marketers who can harness technical resources, the Facebook Platform offers

the most powerful way to create engaging connections with your target audience

on Facebook. Thousands of third-party applications have already been built on the

Platform APIs–many of which have allowed for new kinds of deep brand experiences,

and many of which turned out to be transient ad delivery vehicles that failed to take

user experience into account. While I can’t tell you how to dream up a good app for

your business here, I will explain the channels that your applications must absolutely

take advantage of in order to achieve maximum success.

Strategy: What is the Right Way to Market Through Facebook

Applications?

In a December 2008 Adweek column, Digital Editor Brian Morrissey fired a shot

across the bow of branded Facebook applications as a viable Facebook marketing

tactic.

Calling sponsored apps “the newest brand graveyard,” Morrissey pointed out that

several applications built for big brands like Nike, Ford, Microsoft, and Fedex that

have not gained lasting traction. Says Morrissey:

Brands, in general, have found Facebook unforgiving terrain for marketing.

It’s well known, for instance, that banner ads perform poorly on the site.

(A recent IDC report called advertising on social networks “stillborn.”) But

the Facebook Platform, launched 18 months ago — which lets developers

create social applications for users — was thought to offer the perfect

opportunity to move beyond banners to provide “branded utility.” So far,

however, Facebook apps from brands like Coca-Cola, Champion, Ford and

Microsoft are as popular as desolate Second Life islands…



Application experts pointed to several other reasons so many top brands

have fallen short. In some cases, they said, brand apps are too

complicated. Some provide little worthwhile interactivity and are overly

branded. And despite Murphy’s admonition, most exist as one-off

experiments, tied to a launch-and-forget campaign approach versus one

created with the mind-set of a developer, which leaves room for tinkering.

What’s more, many companies build applications on the cheap, frequently

relying on “viral” distribution rather than buying media. One overriding

criticism: They’re often little more than ads.

Morrissey’s disappointment with the ongoing metrics enjoyed by branded Facebook

applications makes sense, and sheds light a much deeper problem: designing a

good Facebook application that will engage users over time is really hard.

The Challenges of Application Design

At the end of the day, branded Facebook applications are a hybrid between an ad

unit and a consumer product. Designers of branded Facebook applications must be

experienced in the ways of product development on the Facebook Platform, or the

engagement graph is going to shark fin pretty quickly.

For many brand advertisers, getting a lot of engagement during the focus period of

the campaign that then decreases quickly afterward is still a satisfactory result.

For example, many contests and event promotions fall into this category.

However, for many other advertisers, sustainable engagement may be quite

valuable. If the application dynamic generates sustained gift giving over a longer

period of time, campaign ROI can often be several times higher.

Unfortunately, there’s no simple formula for building a winning Facebook

application. But for those interested in learning advanced Facebook application



marketing tactics, check out the Facebook Marketing Bible. It goes into detail on

all the vital ways applications can grow virally and engage users on the Facebook

Platform, and is a valuable resource that can be clearly applied to your specific

marketing context.

There are also several firms which specialize in branded application campaigns,

including Votigo, AdParlor, Buddy Media, and Context Optional. This blog often

features examples of their work as reference cases for the advertiser community.

An Alternative: Branded Integrations With Existing Facebook Applications

Designing your own branded Facebook application isn’t the only way to engage a

broad audience on the Facebook Platform. Many large application developers offer

advertisers interesting avenues for brand integration with parts of their product.

Brands interested in reaching a large audience in a vertical where good

applications exist, but who don’t want to design, build, and drive traffic to their

own Facebook application, may be interested in working with the application

developer directly or through a rep firm.

For example, brands interested in reaching a large movie viewing audience can

work with Flixster, those interested in music can work with iLike, and those

interested in reaching a large sports or television viewing audience can work with

Watercooler (note: I work with Watercooler). For example, Target recently ran an

integration with the trivia feature in Watercooler’s TVLoop applications, combined

with a rich media awareness campaign, promoting the launch of the “Sex and the

City” DVD.

Brands can also work with rep firms that work with Facebook app developers, like

Federated Media or Appssavvy. These firms help match brands with developers who

offer applications which could be a good fit for the campaign’s goals.



Conclusion

While branded Facebook applications are not easy to create, they can be vehicles

for delivering engagement well above and beyond what most advertisers see in

traditional display campaigns.

Advertisers interested in building the deepest connections with Facebook users

should look to the opportunities Facebook applications afford - whether it be by

creating their own application or working with an existing application developer,

the rich social and viral opportunities found in well designed Facebook applications

are hard to match elsewhere.

Strategy: Where do most new application users come from?

The answer to this question depends largely on your application. Usually, it’s a

combination of the key viral channels Facebook makes available to application

developers: invitations, feed items, notifications, and the profile box.

Sadly, Facebook provides no comprehensive marketing dashboard for you. You’ll

need to build your own system to track each time an invitation, feed item, or

notification is sent out, whether or not it is clicked, and whether or not that click

turns into a converted installation and engaged user.

However, Facebook does provide some partial stats on application virality. Inside

your application settings page, Facebook provides information on the number

referrers to your app install page through the following channels:

• Product Directory - how many users found your app in the application

directory



• Profile Box Add Link - the standard link Facebook places in the top right of

your profile box (note: this link has been removed in the Facebook redesign)

• Add Application News Feed Story – the Facebook generated News Feed item

(“Justin Smith installed the Video application”)

• Mini Feed Story

• Facebook Search

• From within your App - how many users clicked content within your profile

box or another canvas page that led them to install your app (unfortunately,

since all these links are part of your application, you’ll need to track them

yourself).



20. Profile Box

Surprisingly, the most common way new users find

many applications is through application profile boxes

on their friends’ profile pages. The challenge of profile

box design is making it both compelling for an existing

user to keep it on his/her profile, and appealing enough

to a new user to click on and install the application. If

your profile box doesn’t provide the profile owner

sufficient value to merit its presence on the profile

page, your user will hide your profile box, or worse,

uninstall your application. Simultaneously, if your profile

box is too spammy, your user will get rid of it instantly.

In the spring of 2008, Facebook announced a major redesign that deprioritized profile

boxes overall. Now, application profile boxes have largely been moved to the “Boxes”

tab. On the Boxes tab, users are able to add, remove, and organize their profile

boxes.

In addition, the Feed and Info tabs will have a left-hand column that contains “main

profile” boxes that are height limited (to about 250 pixels) but otherwise are very

similar to regular profile boxes. Users are able to move their profile boxes between

the Boxes tab and the “main profile” area fairly easily.



5 Things Developers May Not Know About the Facebook Redesign

With the Facebook profile redesign launch late last year, developers quickly

scrambled to update their apps to adapt to the new profile integration points.



However, the Platform Changes page on the Developer Wiki explains some changes

that haven’t been talked about much yet (though some were mentioned briefly

tonight at the Palo Alto Developer Garage). Here’s a quick summary:

1. Users can no longer add app profile boxes during installation. Since the

beginning of the Platform, users have had the option (defaulted on) to add an app

profile box when adding an app. While this has significantly helped application

growth, it has also led to significant profile clutter. After the redesign, users will

be able to “add a profile box to the main profile by clicking an Add New Profile

Section button which the application can insert into their canvas pages via the

fb:add-section-button FBML tag.” The installation process will consist only of

authorization to let apps know who users are, but will no longer lead to automatic

profile integration.

2. Left side navigation links are moving. Until now, up to 7 applications

(including Facebook’s own) have been directly accessible from the left nav. With

the redesign, “Users can directly bookmark applications they are using.” All

applications will be accessible from the “Applications” menu in the Facebook

footer. “Bookmarked” applications will appear next to the Applications button.

3. Profile action links are gone. According to Facebook, “There are no profile

action links for third party applications. Instead, users interact with their friends

using applications in the Publisher box.”

4. Feed stories are turned on by default. According to Facebook, “By default,

applications can send Feed stories to Users. Users can choose to opt out of having

applications send Feed stories.” Currently, users have the choice to opt out of

receiving feed stories during app installation. With the simplified app

“authorization” process, this checkbox will also be removed.

5. Application emails are turned off by default. Facebook has announced that

because app emails have been so spammy, user emails will be turned off by



default when users add apps. Previously, this option was presented to users on the

app installation page, checked on by default. While many Facebook app developers

have been sending spammy emails, turning email off by default for all app

developers seems like a severe policy change.

What do all these changes mean for the future of the Platform? Certainly, these

changes will present challenges for apps. What’s good for users and good for

Facebook is usually good for developers - hopefully, the profile redesign will

ultimately be just that.

Profile Integration: Tour of Facebook App Settings

When Facebook launched its redesigned profile page in August 2008, it also turned

on a new way for users to edit their Application Settings while using the app. Now

that the idea of “installing” applications has shifted to “authorizing” applications

by default and integrating apps into your profile in different ways later, these new

settings show how users will be able to change application permissions.

There are now new options at the top of the “Applications” drop-down menu.

These appear when you’re within the canvas page of an application:

1. Feed Settings



If you choose to “Edit [application name] settings,” the following dialog box

appears:

The default tab is Feed/Wall settings, and these are likely to be the most

frequently changed. Users often react negatively to undesirable stories being

published in their Feed, so this level of control will allow them to give their

favorite applications full rights while limiting those they feel are abusing the

privilege. (This is also an interesting change from the existing process whereby the

user is expected to make Mini Feed permission decisions before they know what

the application does.)

2. Profile Settings

The Profile tab settings show if the application appears on the Boxes tab and the

application tab (if it’s been added). If either hasn’t been added, then you can add

them from this tab directly:



3. Bookmark Settings

Here is how applications are removed from the bookmarks list once they’ve been

added:

4. Additional Permissions

The last tab gives users more granular control over whether applications can

access their data any time or just when they’re using the application. This won’t

be ideal for some applications, but it puts control in the hands of the users. This is

also where users can edit their email setting.



Conclusion

All-in-all, moving application settings within the application itself rather than

being hidden in other settings screens makes sense. It also fits the new model of

“logging in” - users aren’t asked to make choices up front based on limited

knowledge, but instead can refine and tune their application settings as they use

it. These changes could also raise the level of user/application trust in the system

overall, as users now have more transparency on an app-by-app basis.

21. Application Tabs

Another major integration point for developers is app tabs. These are built like “semi-

canvas” pages, meaning Facebook will be proxying the images but hitting the apps for

the tab’s content. Like profile boxes, app tabs can’t be built with iframes or using

auto-play Flash, but developers will be able to build fully interactive FBML pages.



The only place users are able to add tabs is on the profile itself, using the “+” button

to the right of their default tabs, and up to 6 tabs will appear (the rest will be

accessible via a “More” dropdown). Facebook provides a drop-down list of users’

applications, sorted by those they use most. Facebook’s intention for app tabs is that

they’ll meet the personal expression needs of those users for whom profile boxes are

not enough. However, the page is also a place visitors will be able to initiate

interactions, like starting a game. Developers can’t create different views for the

profile owner vs. profile visitor - similar limitations to the current app box FBML rules

to prevent profile page spam.

22. Application Info Sections



The profile Info tab is very structured, much like the Info sections on the current

Facebook profile page, containing key-value pairs on which information exists in

comma separated text or thumbnail lists.

Users can add content to the Info tab from within application canvas pages (in FBML).

After users see a popup confirmation, the content is added automatically. Each

application gets its own section on the Info tab that look much like the different Info

sections currently in Facebook’s current profile.

23. Designing Feed Stories

The Feed is a powerful part of the Facebook Platform API that allows developers to

publish news about a user’s engagement with their applications. Like the profile box,

your feed items must be compelling to the profile owner while not being spammy, AND

attract your user’s friends to click on the feed item and explore the app. If you mess

up in either direction, users will hide your feed item, and thanks to a recent new

feature from Facebook, uninstall it in-line.

As I mentioned earlier, the Facebook News Feed offers immense value by syndicating

your feed items to thousands of users’ home pages inside Facebook.

Strategy: Designing High Performance Feed Items

1. The most important thing you can do as a Facebook application marketer is

to publish engaging, authentic Feed items.

Whenever a user performs an action within your application, consider whether

hearing about that action would be valuable to that user’s friends. If so, publish a

Feed item about that event.



For example, the Moods application invokes a Feed item when a user changes their

mood. The feed item simply contains this contextually appropriate “news” about

my friend Holly–she has updated her mood within the Moods application (I’m glad

to hear she’s feeling happy).

Likewise, the Books application publishes a Feed item when a user indicates that

they have started or finished reading a book. This is also news that I find

appropriate and interesting about my friend–I might even casually follow up with

Jonathan about this “news”.

In January 2008, Facebook banned using the word “message” anywhere in your

feed item copy in order to prevent user confusion regarding whether or not

applications had access to the Facebook Inbox. While it may create a short term

performance boost, your feed items should not be so aggressive that it creates

confusion with Facebook itself – Facebook is likely to ban more words in the future

that could cause this same issue.

2. Be sure you optimize your Feed items for all of the Feed item elements

made available to you by Facebook: title, body, and images.

The Facebook Developers Feed Item documentation describes the requirements

and limitations of each Feed item element as the following:



• The title is required, and is limited to 60 displayed characters (excluding

tags).

o The a tag is allowed, and there can be zero or one instance in the

title.

o One fb:userlink tag is allowed, and the uid parameter must be

populated with the user id on whose behalf the action is being

published. If there is no such fb:userlink tag found, then one is

automatically prepended to the title.

o The fb:name tag is allowed, and there may be multiple instances of

this tag.

o No other tags are allowed.

• The body is optional, is limited to 200 displayed characters (excluding tags),

and can include the tags fb:userlink, fb:name, a, b, and i.

• Up to 4 images can be displayed, which will be shrunk to fit within 75×75,

cached, and formatted by Facebook. Images can either be a URL, or a

facebook PID. If it is a URL, you must own the image and grant Facebook the

permission to cache it. Each image must have a link associated with it, which

must start with http://

As you notice above, both Moods and Feeds use short titles to get your attention

and longer, more descriptive bodies. Moods also includes an image, which is very

attention grabbing.

Be careful, however, to resist the temptation to always max out the images you

include with every feed item just because they’re “essentially free ad space”. This

could make your Feed items seem spammy and adversely affect your Feed item

conversion rate.

3. Include inviting, provocative calls to action that lead the reader to install the

application directly.



Ultimately, the value of the News Feed the application developer is that it’s

powerful, free marketing. The News Feed can be used to convert your users’

friends to do things you want them to do - like install your application. You need to

make this conversion process as quick and easy as possible.

For example, you’ll notice that the Moods application asks the reader, “How are

you feeling?” immediately after the Feed item body. Clicking this link leads to the

Moods application installation page. As a result, the Moods application has

experienced significant growth despite not doing any active marketing.

The Books application prompts the reader to click on the title of the book my

friend just finished reading. However, clicking this link does not lead me to install

the application, but rather through an affiliate link to Amazon, where the Books

developer will earn a commission on anything I purchase.

Testing, tracking, and optimizing your feed items is definitely a worthwhile

investment for any application developer. You should instrument your feed items as

early as possible.

News Feed Optimization: Strategies and Techniques



In January 2008, Facebook made a change to the way these “templated” feed

items are distributed to users without the app: if the feed items link to application

pages that require the user to install the app in order to be viewed, Facebook will

lower that feed item’s rank. Apparently, Facebook wants application developers

to give new users more of a “taste” of applications before requiring them to install

the app. Whether this translates into a deeper philosophical shift remains to be

seen, but it could be interpreted as a sign that Facebook wants more applications

(or at least application elements) available to users without requiring installation.

In February 2008, Facebook made another change to the way feed items work to

prevent an often-spammy practice: “passive” feed items. Passive feed items were

those that were published without your explicit action – for example, “Justin was

invited to play Poker” instead of “Justin has been playing poker.” This became a

problem when aggressive developers spammed users’ Mini Feeds even when they

weren’t using the app. It is now deprecated.

Testing, tracking, and optimizing your feed items is definitely a worthwhile

investment for any application developer. You should instrument your feed items as

early as possible.

24. Feeds 2.0

The focal point of the profile redesign is the Wall tab. For profile owners and friends,

it will be the default tab you see. For profile visitors who aren’t friends, the Info tab

will be shown by default (Facebook says this is because it’s more likely you’ll want to

learn basic information about non-friends, like where they live or go to college, before

you want to learn detailed info about their recent activity).

With the new Feed, there are now 2 different feed sizes:



• One-Line Stories. App developers can use the API to publish one-line feed

stories to users’ profile pages.

• Short Stories. Short stories are slightly larger feed stories and have access

limited FBML. Users can embed images and (soon) Flash.

Unlike one-line stories, app developers are not able to automatically publish short and

full stories via the Facebook API. Instead, users explicitly publish them. Developers

can use feed forms to create multiple versions of feed stories that the user can choose

from for publication. When developers want to publish a short feed story, users will be



given a popup preview of the story, the choice of size (one line, short, full), and the

button to approve it.

Feed Forms

In addition to being able to publish stories for app users themselves, developers will

also have the power to let users publish stories into their friends’ feeds (for example,

giving a gift) using what Facebook calls “feed forms.” Once the sender approves the

feed story, it will automatically appear in their friends’ feed. However, recipients will

be able to change or remove the story later on.

Since removing passive feed publishing, developers have been unable to publish feed

stories for users not using the app. With feed forms, users are again able to share app

content with their friends not using the app (currently or at all).

And with the March 2009 redesign, application feed stories published through Feed

Forms are now guaranteed to be displayed on their friends’ home page. If users share

it, their friends will see it. That’s a big deal for developers trying to maximize the

exposure of their feed stories in the News Feed. (One line updates will most likely not

get syndicated to the News Feed.)

In other words, there is now a greater incentive for developers to provide compelling

ways for users to share application information through Feed Forms on their Walls.

Action Links

In October 2008, Facebook launched an update to the way Feed stories work that

could allow app developers to get more engagement from the Feed.

“Action Links” are a new addition to Feed templates that allow developers to include

an array of actions profile viewers can take in response to a feed item. For example,

this feed item can be enhanced by adding “Listen,” “Buy,” and “Review” action links.

Action links will always appear after a default “Comment” action link.



Action links are a nice minor enhancement to give developers more hooks into

applications from the profile page, now that boxes have largely disappeared from the

redesigned profile. For specs on how to add action links to your feed template

bundles, check out the Developer Wiki.

Policy Update: All Feed Story Calls to Action Must Now be Action Links

Facebook announced new policies in April 2009 that affect the way application

developers can design feed stories. Of the changes announced, the one that should

have the most immediate impact on developers is the new requirement that all

calls to action in feed stories must now be formatted into Action Links. This means

that developers who had put calls to action in the images or body of the feed

stories need to update their design.

The idea behind the new policy is Facebook’s motivation to protect the integrity of

the feed by preventing aggressive application developers from putting “too

spammy” content in their feed stories. Action links (which appear next to

Facebook’s default action links, “Comment” and “Like”) are more structured than

the body of feed stories.

In addition, Facebook says that, “Applications cannot include a call to action in a

Feed story unless the call to action directly pertains to acting on or viewing

content described in the story, or offers the opportunity to perform the same

action described in the story.”



25. Feed Publisher

The new publisher flow (a significant upgrade from Wall attachments) allows users to

share content from apps both on their own and friends’ profiles. It’s the main place

Facebook wants profile viewers and owners to interact, and this is the change that’s

likely to have the most impact on users.

At the top of everyone’s feed is a way for you to create content on their feed or yours.

For example, you may want to add a photo or video, write a note, send a gift or song,

draw graffiti, or share links. The interaction is similar to the way wall attachments

currently work. (Facebook thinks of its Wall as just another application that integrates

into the Feed’s publisher flow.) When you create content, it looks like a feed story

and go directly into the feed.

When you want to attach content to a feed, you are shown Facebook’s default apps

(like photos and notes), as well as apps that users have recently used to create

content on their feed or otherwise used pretty recently. (In addition, when visiting

others’ profiles, users are prompted to use apps that others have recently used to

create content on their profile.)

Developers are able to design the publisher interface that users will use to share

content from their apps. For example, users may want to be able to search for songs.

And in addition to the “attach-post” flow, developers have the opportunity to create a

multi-step wizard interaction (though like profile boxes, they can’t be iframes, but

can be FBML or on-click Flash). Finally, developers will have the option to display a

text comment field (or the app can provide that themselves).

Developers have option to specify different publisher flows for your own vs others’

profile if they want. For example, adding a video would be pretty similar, but it would

be odd to send a gift to yourself.



Finally, developers are also able to allow users to send feed items to their own Wall

and friends’ Walls through the use of feed forms inside the canvas page. This allows

for new and interesting kinds of feed publishing and interaction.

Publishing in the Feed with Feed Comments

In June 2008, Facebook turned on in-line commenting in friends’ feeds. Why are

feed comments interesting? The feed is a perfect place for semi-personal, semi-

public conversation, exactly the type of communication that fuels important

dynamics within social networks. Updates on friends’ status, application

engagement, and new friend connections are compelling contexts for in-feed

conversations. The update makes the profile page more like a “room” where

conversation occurs, instead of just a classified listing. Facebook, however, will

not be turning on comments in the News Feed yet, though it is considering turning

on comments there as well.

26. Requests / Invitations

One of the most powerful viral channels available to

Facebook Platform application developers is request

(invitations). The requests API allows users of your

application to invite many friends per day to install your

app (the exact limit depends on how much users rate your

invitations as spammy). When maximized, invitations can lead to very quick growth.

However, encouraging your users to invite their friends to install your application is

not as easy as you think. The scenario must be compelling enough for your users to

send invitations on your behalf, and the invitation itself must be compelling

enough for the recipient to convert. These examples show two different invitation

requests, each of which is compelling for different users.



Facebook Reigns in Invitation Flood

In February 2008, Facebook made three changes to invitations that affect developers:

1) “Clear all invitations” button. For users with dozens of unwanted invitations,

it became difficult to clear them all. Thus, Facebook added a “clear all”

button that removes all unanswered invitations.

2) No more infinite invitation loops. Some developers were employing a very

aggressive practice of requiring users to invite friends before being able to

access promised functionality. Facebook cracked down on this practice – which

created a very poor user experience – by punishing developers who did it by

turning off their ability to send invitations until that behavior was stopped.



3) Variable invitation limits. Until February 2008, applications were limited to

sending 20 invitations per day, no matter what. In March, Facebook imposed

variable limits that depend on how much users accept your invitations and

rate your application as spammy. Most apps are seeing allocation limits of 8-

12 per day – a significant decrease. In May 2008, Facebook made these limits

even more sensitive to user feedback, making it harder for spammy app

developers to keep growing and rewarding developers with good user feedback

ratings with more opportunity for growth. To see what your current limit is, go

the Developer Insights page for your app.

All in all, while these changes are apparently negative for the developer community,

they will protect the Facebook Platform user experience in the long run, and are

ultimately good for developers building quality applications.

Facebook also added the ability for users to select Friend Lists in the multi-friend-

selector box. This could be an interesting new way for your app users to choose

request recipients. (i.e. Business related applications might spread more quickly if

many users have work-related friend lists and this change allows batch selection.)

Friend Lists were made more prominent in the Facebook user experience with the

launch of Friend List-based privacy controls in March 2008.

Policy Updates: Requiring Invites to Access Hidden Features, Offering

Incentives for Invites, Ads on Profile Page Prohibited

In May 2008, perhaps in response to a recent similar MySpace policy update,

Facebook announced an update to its Platform guidelines prohibiting applications

from requiring users to send messages in order to gain access application features.

While Facebook has officially not allowed forced invites for a long time, this

update makes the rule more broadly applicable. The new policy says,

[Applications cannot] Require that users invite, notify, or otherwise communicate

with one or more friends to gain access to any feature, information, or portion of



the application, unless (a) it would be logically impossible to deliver that content

without the user’s friend(s) also using the application, and (b) the fact of this

requirement, and the reason(s) for it, are explicitly and prominently explained

inside the application before the first element of the flow path users would

reasonably expect to lead to that content.

In July 2008, Facebook announced further updates to Platform policies:

• Applications are no longer allowed to “create artificial or inappropriate

incentives to use Facebook features (including, for example, sending

requests and adding profile boxes)”

• Developers “should not intrude on the user’s experience by prompting for a

permission [to integrate into a user's profile] if doing so isn’t appropriate in

the natural flow of events”

• Developer ads are not allowed to appear “on the newly launched features

that deeply integrate into profiles (tabs, Publisher, and application info

sections),” just as they’re not allowed to appear on the profile box today

• Notifications and feed items “should be timely, accurate, informative,

valuable, non-deceptive, and anticipated by the sender. They can contain

calls to action, which are sometimes great ways to stimulate engagement

and sharing of information. But to do that, they must be on-topic, oriented

towards the user’s interest, and non-spammy.”

Application developers have been asking for more detail on the Platform Policy in

the Developers Forum, and the Facebook Platform team has offered valuable

clarifications in responses there. Specifically:

• Facebook says that incentivized invites fall within this policy, but actions

within an application do not: “Incentivizing sending a notification is

prohibited, but incentivizing an app action (like SuperPoking) is not banned

(even if that action typically leads to a subsequent notification). On the

other hand, if an app provides bonus points for inviting friends, or just for



sending notifications, that would be a violation.”

• The Facebook Platform team also issued this further explanation: “As noted

in the blog post, the new policies prevent applications from creating

artificial or inappropriate incentives to use Facebook features (including, for

example, sending requests and adding profile boxes). Generally, awarding

money, or bonus points that can be used to do things in the application or

elsewhere, for sending invitations or for the acceptance of invitations, falls

under the intended scope of what is prohibited by the policies.”

This new policy isn’t necessarily bad news for developers as some may expect.

Facebook is continuing its efforts to improve the quality of messages that

applications generate within Facebook communication channels, which should

improve the conversion rates of app messages throughout the Platform as a whole.

Clearly Facebook is taking a more aggressive stance to curb application spam by

cutting down on unwanted profile integration and use of Facebook communication

channels. The challenge, of course, is going to be enforcing these inherently

subjective policies to the vast variety of Facebook application behaviors and

designs in a consistent way.

Strategy: Facebook’s Evolving Approach to Platform Governance

In June 2008, Slide’s Top Friends application disappeared from the Facebook

Platform for over a week as a result of an apparent Developer Terms of Service

violation. This suspension was the most severe punitive action imposed by the

Facebook Platform team that the development community has seen yet, and is at

least in some sense emblematic of Facebook’s evolving approach to Platform

governance and regulation.

Throughout most of this year, Facebook has taken fairly a fairly algorithmic



approach to regulating the Platform economy. By limiting developers’ access to

communication channels based on user feedback, Facebook has been able to

squeeze much distribution arbitrage out of the system, and align developer and

user interests much more than it had before. (Before allocation limits, for

example, it was cheaper to make a quiz application than buy inventory.)

However, there are always some types of user experience issues, like privacy

concerns, that cannot be managed with automated systems. As such, Facebook has

demonstrated that they’re willing to enforce some policies publicly. Public case by

case policy enforcement is a necessary approach for more mature economies.

Earlier in the year, Facebook responded to abuse by outlawing the tool being

abused (for example, in the case of forced invites). This would be akin to

outlawing something like assault rifles that almost everyone agrees are harmful to

society. However, in more complex cases, outlawing the tool at hand is not

necessarily what’s best for the system. For example, removing APIs that access

profile data from the Platform altogether because of one application’s privacy

concerns would hurt the overall Platform economy significantly: many developers

and users would be negatively impacted. This would be somewhat like outlawing

kitchen knives because they were once used in a crime. Instead of removing knives

from society, the better solution would be to hire a district attorney and set up a

court system and bill of rights: news of verdicts and sentences would deter many

future cases. Of course, that’s a very expensive proposition, and sufficient

accountability must be enforced for stakeholders to have faith in the system.

While the government analogy breaks down in many senses (policy makers aren’t

exactly elected officials in this case!), ultimately most of the “assault weapons”

have already been removed from the Platform economy, and we’re beginning to

see more cases of “kitchen knives.” Kitchen knife cases are more expensive to

police and enforce, but even the libertarian-laden Silicon Valley would agree that

policy enforcement is necessary for any mature Platform to be healthy.



Will Facebook choose to publicly comment on future cases, like Facebook’s

Director of Platform Product Marketing Ben Ling did in the Facebook blog? I’m not

sure that they always will, but I think it would help everybody to know as much as

possible about what’s kosher and what’s not.

Facebook’s approach to platform governance is becoming decreasingly dependent

on algorithms and increasingly based on policy-enforcement. If you’re looking for a

career in (platform) law enforcement, I know at least one social network that’s

hiring!

Sending Application Invitations to Non-Facebook-Members

In an effort to simultaneously increase the growth of Facebook and applications,

Facebook’s growth team in December 2008 announced the launch of an update to the

“multi-friend selector” to allow app users to invite friends not already using Facebook

to the application as well. The feature allows Facebook users to type in email

addresses to send app invites to anyone. (However, it doesn’t provide in line access to

contact list importing from popular email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail.)



Here’s how the user experience works:

When users type in addresses, a “special email” is sent which invites the recipient

both to Facebook (where they will become friends with the sender) and to the

application. When clicking on the email, the recipient is sent to an “Express

Registration” page. After they join, the app from which the Facebook invite was sent

will be bookmarked and present on the home page app menu.

At the end of the day, this update should help Facebook leverage applications to

expand more deeply into demographic niches it has not yet reached. With over 50,000

applications on the Facebook Platform, that number could add up over the coming

months and years.

27. Chat Invitations



In March 2009, Facebook released a new chat invite API that allows developers to let

users send application invitations to their friends via Facebook Chat.

Here’s how it works:

1. After embedding the fb:chat-invite FBML element, users will see a list of their

Facebook friends that are online and available to chat. (Like with Facebook’s

multi-friend selector, developers can choose which friends should or shouldn’t

appear in this list.)

2. Users select a friend to send a Facebook chat invite to.

3. The recipient receives the invite through a Facebook chat message that pops up

on their screen.

This is a new viral channel that should convert very well for developers due to:



1. The prominence of invite delivery. Unlike regular application invites, which go

into the general requests inbox, chat invites pop up on the recipient’s screen

instantly.

2. The social pressure to respond to chat messages in real time. If your friend wants

to talk to you and knows you’re online, it’s awkward to ignore them. The same

dynamic will apply to application chat invites.

The new API should both make for new kinds of interactions in applications and lead to

application growth. Now, users can invite their friends to play live games or

participate in a discussion much more easily than before. For example, check out Pet

Society’s “Live Gifts” in the screenshot above.

If you use iframes, Facebook says you can wrap this tag in some FBJS. Facebook also

says there will be an XFBML version available soon.



28. Facebook Notifications



Notifications get less press than feed items and invitations because they’re not as

effective at spreading your app. Because Facebook mysteriously assigns your apps a

spamminess rating based on the number of notifications your apps send out, many

developers choose to use notifications sparingly to prevent having their notification

channel shut down by Facebook. However, notifications have been proven to be an

effective tool for retaining existing users of your app.

Like the new dynamic invitation limits Facebook instituted for invitations, notification

limits are now dynamic, depending on user response. If your notifications are too

spammy, Facebook will decrease the limit on how many you can send.

Chat Integration: Facebook Wants More Synchronous Notifications

With the full launch of Facebook Chat in April 2008, Facebook users were introduced

to a new interface for receiving notifications. While notifications used to be presented

in a kind of restricted “inbox,” now notifications are accessible via a red flag in the

chat bar which pops open a notification “bubble.”

Shining more light on Facebook’s thinking behind this change, Facebook said,

“Whether it’s to announce the giving of a gift, the challenging to a game, or the

joining of a cause, your applications’ notifications will make a more instant impact.

We encourage you to think about new ways to integrate with Facebook when you send

notifications.”

Facebook’s intent with Chat, and Notifications going forward, is to encourage a more

synchronous communication experience for users. Why? Facebook’s average session

length is likely very short (lots of “Log in - Check News Feed - Check messages -

Leave” types of paths in their server logs), and synchronous communication sessions

(i.e. games) are much longer than asynchronous ones. Facebook needs apps to help

make sessions longer.



Policy Update: Bulk Pre-Selection Prohibited

In June 2008, Facebook updated its platform policy guidelines to prohibit

developers from making it easy for users to accidentally send app notifications to

hundreds or thousands of friends with one click.

While Facebook has taken product steps to solve this problem with the multi-friend

selector for invitations and notifications, it is now adopting more general policy

positions for all viral channels with which it can enforce punitive actions against

overly-spammy applications.

The updated guidelines are listed in the Developer Wiki. They are summarized by

these overarching principles:

• Users must not be surprised by the outcome of an action they take.

• To ensure users only take actions they intend, an application must avoid one-

click triggers of actions that apply to multiple people, except in special

circumstances.

• To ensure users only take actions they intend, multiple recipients must be

selected by the user, rather than pre-selected by the application.

Application-to-User Notifications

With the release of Facebook’s redesign, Facebook has expanded the notifications API

to include a new type of “announcement” notification, now being referred to as

“application-to-user” notifications. These new notifications can effectively be used as

general announcements and updates to users. Previously, the best solution for

publishing this type of notification has been through the use of automated CRON

scripts set to run daily.



There are no set “best practices” for application-to-user notifications yet, as

Facebook is still making tweaks to their allocation limits for these new notifications.

However, the current limit (7 notifications per user, per week is the maximum and

default) seems to discourage any type of “real-time” application notifications and

places more of an emphasis on general daily updates. For example, sending a

notification to a user to alert them of new application features. They are not limited

to application updates, though, and can be utilized in more creative manners, so long

as you stay within allocation limits.

Application-to-user notifications can only be sent to current application users. Also

note that they may be sent to any application user whether or not that user has an

active application session-key.

Finally, when a user receives an application-to-user notification, it does not have any

text pre-pended to the front of it. It simply displays your application icon next to the

notification text. This is in contrast to user-to-user notifications which pre-pend the

name of the user who performed the action to the notification.

Spammy Affiliate Marketers Sure to be Shut Down

Affiliate marketers will try to find inventory any way they can, but those trying to

find leads through Facebook applications are not likely to find much long term

success.

While Facebook has allowed developers to monetize their application canvas pages

however they like, the company has been very protective of the profile page and

viral communication channels. Many application developers have successfully sold

“sponsored gifts,” but placing ads that link directly to affiliate landing pages in

notifications or wall messages has never been treated as a generally acceptable

practice.



However, that’s not stopping some people from trying. The myTV video sharing

app is still sending out an announcement linking to this sponsored links page for

plasma TV’s on BizRate (see below).

Ultimately, Facebook has invested significant time and human resources to create

a low-spam environment - a massive challenge for a service operating at this scale

- and has too much at stake. Facebook’s combination of automated and manual

detection systems are likely to prevent this kind of affiliate marketing from ever

becoming very widespread.

29. Email Notifications

Email notifications are just like Facebook Notifications, except they are delivered

directly to your users’ email address INSTEAD of to their Facebook Notifications inbox.

While originally scheduled to be deprecated by Facebook, Facebook recently enabled

a new API method for email notifications that allows developers to send users up to 5

email notifications per day.

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

In March 2008, Facebook turned on new application email allocation limits as part

of the Platform team’s continuing efforts to build a comprehensive Application



Reputation System that controls access to Facebook’s viral marketing channels

according to user feedback. The new email allocations limit the number of emails

that applications are allowed to send per user per day. Like request and

notification limits, applications are assigned a bucket rating. For email limits,

buckets are assigned based on user disable rates.

In addition, Facebook added a new app “allocation” that changes the location of

the disable link within emails. For applications with low disable rates, the disable

links will appear at the bottom of emails; for apps with high disable rates, the

disable links will remain at the top.

This was a good move for the Platform, since only a few developers were abusing

the email disable link location, and putting the disable link at the top leads to

many users inadvertently disabling their application emails - a bad experience for

all.

However, as of June 2008, Facebook has announced that because app emails

have been so spammy, user emails will be turned off by default when users add

apps. Previously, this option was presented to users on the app installation page,

checked on by default. This will have a big impact on the ability of developers of

new applications to use email as a core marketing channel.

In November 2008, Facebook added several new features for developers to employ in

their application emails. Here’s a summary:

1. Many new formatting tags are available for the first time. For a complete list of

which HTML tags developers can use in their emails, see the Developer Wiki

page.

2. Demographic restrictions are now available in email through FBML

3. Personalization is now available in subject lines through FBML (”Justin, your

latest updates…”)



4. Internationalization tags are also available through FBML for those who have

translated their apps

5. Daily email limits are gone for users who explicitly granted email permission to

your application. The allocation limits still apply to all users who added the app

before the redesign.

While there are still some restrictions in place, these new features will certainly allow

developers to send richer, more engaging application emails, which should benefit

everyone in the ecosystem.

30. Application Bookmarks

As part of the site redesign, Facebook released a new Applications menu. While the

direct links in the shortcut bar and the menu itself have received much acclaim from

developers anxious to improve application accessibility in the new design, the “Add

bookmark” icon could prove to have the greatest material impact on developers.

Bookmarking an application is a relatively new behavior for users on Facebook, as

previously the application sidebar was populated by links that were added during the

initial installation process. Before the introduction of the application menu, some

developers (and users alike) complained that the bookmarking process was too

unclear. Now, the “add bookmark” icon is readily available to users, thus those

complaints should largely disappear.

Gone from the prior Applications menu is the “Recently used” section, which used to

sit above a user’s bookmarked applications. Now, the Applications menu exclusively

features bookmarked applications. This change is subtle, but the impact could be

substantial. For example, if a user were to “allow” a new application, she would need

to bookmark it during her first session or possibly have no easy means of rediscovery in

the future (other than recall). In most cases, that user is effectively lost as a potential

repeat visitor if she didn’t click “add bookmark” during her first visit.



31. Application Directory

Although hard to find, a surprising number of application installations come directly

from the Application Directory. When submitting your application for inclusion in the

directory, be sure to create compelling art and copy for the listing, as well as your

application’s About page. Doing this up front will create a meaningful difference in

the number of users that add your application from the directory in the long run!



In the spring of 2008, Facebook started recommending “Apps You May Like” in the

Application Directory. This list is likely generated by looking at which apps your friends

are engaging with in combination with which apps are more broadly popular with

people like you. While this may decrease the importance of the App Directory as a

source of new users for some apps, it should make discovery better for most users.

32. Status Updates and Donations

1. Status Updates

In September 2008, Facebook began showing the application used to update users’

Facebook status when they do so through Facebook Platform applications. While the

application used to update Facebook status is not linked from the News Feed, it is

displayed on the top of the profile page in small text.

Services which integrate with Facebook via the Platform like Twitter, Ping.fm, and the

Facebook Toolbar for Firefox take advantage of Facebook’s status update API to

enable users to publish to Facebook from outside the site.

2. Status Donations

The status update functionality can be extended by any Facebook application, which

could be a great way to get traffic to your application. “Status donations” are a

valuable feature of the Facebook Platform in which users can authenticate your

application to publish status updates on their behalf. It’s important to pick a status

update that your users will actually want to be published on their behalf. Here’s a

good example:



3. Status API

In February 2009, Facebook announced the release of several new Facebook Platform

APIs, all of which enable application developers to access and share more real-time

information about their users and their friends.

The most powerful new API Facebook released is status.get, which allows app

developers to access the current and most recent status updates for the active app

user “or their friends that are currently visible to the active user.” While Facebook

apps have been able to set Facebook users’ status updates for a long time, this is the

first time developers will be able to access current and recent updates for app users

and their friends. The availability of these APIs means a new class of real-time

communication tools is likely to be built on the Facebook Platform.

Close analogies for many of the tools that might work very well in the Facebook

ecosystem already exist around the Twitter API. The spectrum is very powerful and

broad, but many focus on the “real time” nature of status update-style

communication. For example:

• Twitscoop

• GroupTweet

• Mr. Tweet

• Twitter Search

• Splitweet

• ToAnswer

• twistori



• TwitPic

• Twittercal

• TwitterMail

• Tweebay

• TweetDeck

There are literally hundreds of tools built around the Twitter API, and many of them

should work well in the Facebook ecosystem - either on the Facebook Platform proper

or on third party websites through Facebook Connect.

Opening the status.get API reflects the priority Facebook is increasingly placing on

Status Updates. When the Facebook Redesign went live last year, the status update

prompt appeared at the top of the Facebook home page for the first time. And last

week, Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook will be adding more granular privacy controls

around status updates soon.

We expect that further updates will come to status updates as the application

ecosystem develops around this new functionality. Tools and conventions that have

become popular in the Twitter ecosystem may offer glimpses into future iterations of

Facebook’s own status updates tool.

33. Demographic Restrictions

Since the launch of the Facebook Platform, Facebook’s Platform Application

Guidelines have expressly prohibited applications that promote the sale of alcohol.

In August 2008, Facebook announced that, with the launch of its Demographic

Restrictions capability for application developers, that policy is changing. Now,

Facebook says it plans to allow application content that promotes the sale of alcohol,

provided that developers “specifically use the Demographic Restrictions feature to

restrict your application or content to users of appropriate legal age.”



Along with the announcement, Facebook enabled two new Facebook Platform features

that enable developers to restrict access to certain application content - or the entire

application itself - from users fitting certain demographic profiles. Facebook’s new

“Demographic Restrictions” APIs will enable developers to limit access to users

according to any combination of age and location restrictions.

Demographic restrictions have been requested by two camps of developers:

1. Those who have licensed content or games only in certain geographic regions -

like the US and Canada but not the rest of the world.

2. Those who want to limit access to certain application content or experiences to

users of a certain age group - like under 18 or over 21.

So, how exactly is Facebook going about implementing these restrictions? Facebook

says it will be using “a combination of what information a user has entered and

verified on Facebook as well as IP targeting” for location. Furthermore, Facebook says

that developers should not rely on Facebook to implement any restrictions developers

are legally obligated to.

[Developers] must use this technology whenever Facebook policies require it…

but you can and should consider implementing additional consent or

confirmation in your application as appropriate. For example, if for legal

reasons your application requires the user to affirm that they are of a certain

age or are in a certain location, you should continue to solicit that explicit

affirmation, and not regard the fact that the user passed through the

Demographic Restrictions as equivalent.

In November 2008, Facebook announced that starting January 6, 2009, it 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 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.

34. Verification and Certification

In July 2008, Facebook announced two new programs today that will give greater

visibility within the News Feed and possibly other communication channels for

applications that “deliver value to users and advance the Facebook Platform vision.”

Here are the details on the new programs: “Great Apps” and “Application

Verification.”

1) Great Apps Program

Facebook is selecting applications that “embody Facebook’s guiding principles for

social applications through their meaningful, trustworthy and well-designed user

experiences” for cerficiation through its “Great Apps” program. Great Apps will be

rewarded with “greater visibility on Facebook, earlier access to new features and

more feedback from Facebook.”

Great Apps will be chosen according to the degree to which they embody all 10 of the

following Facebook guiding principles, and help “advance the mission of Facebook” in

Facebook’s eyes:

1. Meaningful - It’s gotta be social, useful, expressive and engaging.

2. Trustworthy - It must be secure, respectful, and transparent.

3. Well-designed - Great applications are clean, fast, and robust.

Great apps must have a minimum user base and a strong track record of adherence to

Platform policies. Great apps will appear more like native Facebook applications, and



will have access to Facebook feedback. iLike and Causes are Facebook’s inaugural

Great Apps certification recipients.

2) Application Verification

The Application Verification program is designed to “offer extra assurances to help

users identify applications they can trust — applications that are secure, respectful

and transparent, and have demonstrated commitment to compliance with Platform

policies.” Verified applications will also “benefit from added visibility on Facebook.”

In November 2008, Facebook opened the application process to developers for

verification. Facebook has formed a team that will review applications “to ensure they

satisfy the company’s guiding principles around security, respect and transparency,

and have demonstrated commitment to compliance with Platform policies.”

After an application has been initially submitted, it will enter a rolling approval

process. When Facebook is ready to review developers’ submissions, they will be

notified by email, though Facebook says, “This may take several weeks as we ramp up

the program.” Developers can then choose to complete the application process by

submitting screenshots and answering more detailed questions. Developers must also

pay a $375 fee to apply - Facebook says this fee helps cover the operational costs of

the program (students and non-profits can apply for special pricing).

How will verified applications be treated differently within Facebook? Facebook say

that “Verified apps will have greater visibility across the site.” This means verified

applications will receive:

1. Greater distribution in the News Feed.

2. Higher viral channel allocation limits for notifications, requests, and emails

(though Facebook says “the application reputation system is still in effect”).

3. A “seal of approval” indicating that the application is verified. The first

verified badges will go live in the application directory and on application

about pages in early 2009. Facebook says it plans on doing some “user

education” around the meaning of the verified badges.



35. Translations

In February 2008, Facebook launched a Spanish language website. This marked the

first major step Facebook has taken to internationalize and grow its user base in

Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Shortly thereafter, Facebook

launched in German, French, Norwegian, and Japanese. There are translation projects

currently going on in 55 languages, including Français, Deutsch, Español, Català,

Čeština, Dansk, Euskara, Galego, Italiano, 한국어, Magyar, Norsk, 日本語, Nederlands,

Polski, Português do Brasil, Română, Русский, Slovenščina, Suomi, Svenska, ��,

Türkçe, 中文(简体, and 中文(繁體. In June 2008, Facebook launched a Chinese

language website.

At the same time, Facebook said that it intends to help application developers

internationalize their apps for users in different locale settings by making available

some of the same tools Facebook has employed to translate its own site. As of July

2008, that service is now available to developers.

Clearly, Facebook is signaling to the developer community that helping apps through

the extremely difficult process of internationalization is a top priority. (Though of

course, there is no way Facebook can solve all the technical challenges associated

with building localization support.)

Data: Stats on Facebook Apps Built for International Markets



Many developers have been asking whether they should develop for international

markets now or wait for Facebook to release its crowd-sourced translation tools for

applications.

Inside Facebook compiled the following data in July 2008 on applications

developed in other languages:

• In total, there are 527 apps currently listing a language other than English as

their primary language. That’s about 1.7% of the 30,000 Facebook apps

currently in the directory.

• The most popular apps in languages other than English are Sexo Quizz

(French), with 25,000 daily active users, Horoscope (French), with 18,000

daily active users, and Tarot Gratis (Spanish), with 13,000 daily active users.

• Spanish is by far the language with the most apps developed at 330. Next

comes French at 134. Trailing far behind are German (11), Italian (9),

Japanese (7), Danish (6), and Finnish (6). Less than 5 apps have been

developed in Chinese, Catalan, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, and

Korean.

I think there is a major opportunity for application developers to piggy back on

Facebook’s international growth. Facebook continues to grow internationally,



recently surpassing MySpace in global visitors for May 2008. Facebook’s Translations

efforts are definitely accelerating its international growth. In addition, Facebook is

gaining ground in important international ad markets, surpassing MySpace’s popularity

in the UK, France, China, Canada, South Korea, and India. However, few applications

have been developed in these local languages.

See breakdown of where Facebook users live, by country, as of August 2008 at the end

of Section I above.

Developers who take advantage of emerging and quickly growing markets – such as

many of those listed above in Europe, South America, Asia – have a lot of room to run.

Most American developers don’t understand many of these markets, and will be too

focused on running their core businesses in the US to focus their efforts abroad.

Tutorial: Translating Your Applications Using Facebook’s Crowd-sourced

Translation Service

In July 2008 Facebook launched access to its translation tool for third party

developers. The tool itself was developed by Facebook to translate the main site

and uses a crowd-sourcing model: users suggest translations in context of using the

site, and the translations approved by the most votes actually go live. It’s proved

highly successful as Facebook has been translated into over 60 languages, some of

which within days of Facebook launching the translation in that language

Being able to offer applications in local languages has obvious appeal to

application developers given the international growth of Facebook, so we decided

to try it out and see how it works in practice. The good news is that adding support

for the Translation tool to an application is relatively easy (depending on how large

the application is, obviously). The less-good news is that there is only so much the

tool can do.

Enabling Translations in Your Application



You can access the Translations tool by simply selecting the “Translations” option

for the application you want to add support for within your developer settings

page. Once you’re into the Translations application, it’s a simple matter of

checking boxes to select the languages you want to open up for translation.

Enabling languages for your application will allow users to translate what Facebook

calls your “static text”. This is what appears on the “About” page and other

locations.

Unfortunately, this won’t by itself be enough for your application to suddenly

display your own content in Spanish. Translated text only appears when another

user, who has also added the Translation tool, goes into your application and

decides to do some translating. This is likely to work better with higher traffic

applications, or any that have a significant user base from one region. How high

“higher traffic” is remains to be seen.

Integrating Translations with Your Application

Enabling in-application translation involves a little more work, and there are a set

of new FBML tags to support this (your pages need to be built in FBML). At it’s

simplest, you wrap pieces of text with a new tag. Facebook registers this text

(once someone tries to view it through the application) and highlights it to users of



the translation tool. Translatable text appears underlined in red.

(You can see what this looks like for your self by installing the Translations

application. Once you’ve logged into it, you’ll have a small globe icon next to the

chat and notifications area. This allows you to turn inline-translation on, as well as

switch languages easily.)

Right-clicking on a piece of underlined text brings up a dialogue box (see below)

where the use can enter the translation without ever having to leave the page.

(You won’t see this if you’re browsing in English – you can easily change to a

different language within the translation tool and then go to your application to

check that the underlined areas have been chosen correctly.) The translation

popup is shown here:

It’s possible to create translation options for HTML elements like form buttons

using the new tags but it’s more complicated. For instance, a relatively simple

form submit button becomes something like this:

<fb:tag name="input">



<fb:tag-attribute name="type">submit</fb:tag-attribute>

<fb:tag-attribute name="name">search</fb:tag-attribute>

<fb:tag-attribute name="class">inputbutton</fb:tag-attribute>

<fb:tag-attribute name="value"><fb:intl desc="Label for a text search

field">Search</fb:intl></fb:tag-attribute>

</fb:tag>

One line of HTML becomes six, plus the inline translation tool also doesn’t seem to

be able to render these very well at all, as you can see in the image on the right.

Managing Your Translated Application Text

All translated text is visible in the admin section of the translation tool. Here, you

have a dashboard with overall translation progress. One of the best ways to check

your progress is to change language and see a real-time count of translated and

untranslated phrases for each application. Unfortunately, keeping track of a long

list of languages is slightly cumbersome.

From the admin tool, you are able to approve translations individually (you have to

approve translations in order for them to appear in the application). Users can

vote on which suggested translations they prefer, so you may not want to accept

the first text that is suggested, but wait until a few contributors have all agreed on

the best piece of text. A larger volume of users should produce accurate results -

as has been the case with Facebook itself.

Limitations and Restrictions



If the idea of your users translating your application for you sounds too good to be

true, you may be wondering what the catch is. Well, there isn’t a catch, but there

are limitations. The application must be built using FBML, which it isn’t always the

case. Many applications have chosen a more portable iframe option - some

applications have been built on a templating system in order to use the same base

application across multiple social networks. These new tags push your applications

into slightly more proprietary territory.

Application elements built in Flash (like many games) will also be unable to use the

translation tool. It will be interesting to see if Facebook makes available new APIs

to allow non-FBML applications to retrieve translated content. This would be

technically feasible, but Facebook has always tended to promote development in

FBML.

Focus on Engagement and Repeat Use

Some developers, particularly big brand owners, may be unlikely to make use of

the tool as it relinquishes much control over content to users. The translation tool

could be of the greatest benefit to medium-sized application developers: those

with sufficient traffic to make crowd-sourcing feasible, but without the budget to

employ translators themselves. “One-hit wonder” applications may also be less

likely to be translated - users will be more willing to invest their time in

translating apps they use every day, but may be less likely to go through a quiz

translating it as they answer questions, never to return. This aligns with

Facebook’s desire for more engaging applications. It will be interesting to see what

the effects of translations is on application usage and the types of applications

being developed on the Facebook Plaform.

36. Analytics Tools



Any web marketer will tell you that measuring and analyzing user behavior and

conversions is vital to the constant improvement of any marketing campaign. While

Google and others have spent lots of time and energy building analytics infrastructure

services for the general web, specialized analytics services for the Facebook Platform

are still in their infancy.

Because of the nature of social network application development, app analytics is

inherently a fragmented problem: because only part of users’ interaction with your

software occurs in places that you can measure, application developers must depend

on the platform for visibility into channels the platform owns (on Facebook, this

means the News Feed, invitations, notifications, and others).

Although it did not provide developers with very much information at all for the first

few months of the Platform’s launch, Facebook has been slowly but steadily adding

more metrics to the Developer dashboard, including total invitation and notification

conversion rates recently (though they still don’t provide News Feed impression stats).

The rest is left to the developer.

Most developers will want to build their own analytics systems that gather user

behavior data. From there, the specific tables and reports you build and KPIs you

optimize for depend on your particular marketing and business strategy.

However, an increasing number of third party tools are aiming to help developers

understand what their users are doing:

List of Leading Third-Party Facebook Platform Analytics Providers

• KISSMetrics is a new service started by Hiten Shah. While not much has been

publicly announced, look for product announcements later this year.

• Sometrics is a new service recently funded by the MailRoom Fund started by Ian

Swanson, Matt Gray, and Joe Hsieh in Los Angeles. Sometrics looks at

demographics, user interests, and social actions (like sending links or uploading

photos) to help developers know more about who’s engaging with and clicking on



their ads. By combining analytics and ad platform services, Sometrics hopes to

be able to help developers make more money.

• Kontagent Viral Analytics is a new service started by Albert Lai that’s focused

on providing Facebook product and marketing analytics in one integrated

package. Kontagent offers viral channel effectiveness tracking and optimization,

A/B testing tools, and cohort analysis.

• Developer Analytics is a new service created by Charles Yong, Richard Chen,

and Jing Chen. Watch for product releases in the near future. In the meantime,

the dA website tracks top applications and provides predictive demographics and

application overlap/affinity information in the “Advanced Statistics” of each

application’s stats page.

• Refresh Analytics is a simpler service that provides developers with daily

snapshots of geographic, age, gender, education, political, and religious

distribution, and allows developers to see trends in its user base over time.

However, it does not provide behavioral information like page views or time

spent.

• And of course, there’s always Google Analytics. While Google Analytics can’t

help with many of the social and viral metrics that many of these packages can,

it can always serve as a good baseline for comparison.

New Metrics for Developers with Facebook Profile Redesign

Now that the Facebook redesign virtually eliminates the old concept of “installing”

an app (users will now be able to access apps without integrating them into their

profile at all), Facebook is changing metrics for apps again. Facebook is now

providing developers with aggregate stats on how users are interacting with every

profile integration point, including:

• # users who have added your application tab

• # users who have added your application profile box

• # users who have added your application info section

• # users who have bookmarked your application



• # users who are subscribed to your application emails

In addition, Facebook has announced that new application engagement metrics will

soon become available in the Facebook Developer application. Specifically, the

following new metrics will be added:

• Number of active users during the past 7 days

• Number of active users during the past 30 days

• Number of canvas page views

• Number of unique canvas page viewers

• Number of API calls made

• Number of unique users on whose behalf your application made API calls

• Average HTTP request time for canvas pages

• Average FBML render time for canvas pages

This updated version of app stats show how much Facebook wants developers to

create applications that are engaging by these metrics - bringing users back at

least once a week, giving users deep experiences on the canvas page, and being

valuable enough to users that they want to make your application part of their

profile.

37. Search Engine Optimization

While most developers think about optimizing their Facebook viral channels, most

don’t think about SEO as an important user acquisition strategy in the same way that

most webmasters traditionally do.

To help app developers increase their prominence in search engine results pages

(SERPs), Facebook recently enabled developers to serve XML sitemaps off the

apps.facebook.com. Sitemaps are used by webmasters to notify search engines of



updates to pages and page structure, and generally are a worthwhile exercise in any

SEO strategy. Since apps are served from apps.facebook.com, developers get to ride

on the back of Facebook’s PageRank - potentially a big leg up on regular web apps.

Obviously, applications that serve pages without requiring logins have the most to gain

from SEO, since Google’s crawlers don’t login to Facebook and install apps.

38. Mobile

The Facebook Platform for Mobile has been around for some time, but many users and

developers are barely aware of it. Ultimately, however, the limiting factors of mobile

platform adoption are not lack of awareness or lack of functionality, but rather:

• First-time users have to jump through a number of hoops before being able to

engage with mobile apps

• The near-crippling of application SMS integration through a less-than-friendly

permission granting system.

This unfortunately means that the Facebook Mobile Platform economy is struggling to

grow. Most developers have not yet taken the time to build a mobile interface for

their apps. The perception of lack of interest from Facebook doesn’t help, as is takes

a long time for bugs in the mobile platform to be addressed (e.g. here). As a result,

most mobile profile pages lack any applications.

Once you’re in, the functionality that Facebook provides within the mobile home page

is quite good: it’s quick to use and has some core features (including status updates,

pokes and messages). It’s also easy to use on a small screen. The functionality offered

by Facebook mobile is quite extensive, but country and

network provider limitations and the poor user sign-on

experience are big barriers. Until Facebook views mobile,

and especially SMS, as an integral part of the Platform, user

adoption will be limited.



Facebook for iPhone and Connect for iPhone

Facebook launched a native iPhone application in July 2008. At launch, users can take

photos with your iPhone and post them to your Mobile Uploads album on Facebook and

use Facebook Chat. In the future, Facebook says it will enable users to take advantage

of the iPhone’s GPS capabilities by sharing their location with friends and finding

friends nearby.

In September 2008, Facebook tonight launched version 2.0 of its Facebook for iPhone

application, bringing many features that were before only available on the site to a

mobile device for the first time. With version 2.0:

• The home page now features a full News Feed, along with access to filtered

views of the News Feed, like Status Updates, Posted Items, Live Feed, and

Events.

• Full photo tagging and posting is now supported.

• Notifications are now accessible for the first time.

• Profiles now have tabs, like the Facebook website redesign.

• Feed comments are accessible both here and on the News Feed.

Overall, Facebook for iPhone now looks and feels like a fully featured Facebook - it’s a

remarkably well designed product.

In addition, Facebook announced that its will be launching Facebook Connect for

iPhone this fall. While an official launch date was not announced, Facebook said the

service will be built as a Cocoa framework.

39. Customer Service

If customer service is the new marketing, then The Facebook Marketing Bible would be

remiss not to address how to handle customer service as a Facebook Platform

developer. Responsive customer service is of great importance to Facebook and app



developers alike. However, the inherent limitations of the platform make establishing

channels for user feedback an unnecessarily difficult task.

Unsurprisingly, given Facebook users’ familiarity with wall-to-wall communications

with friends, for most applications the wall is the most active channel of user

feedback. Most users post on application walls with a question or piece of feedback

and expect the developer to reply. Responses can of course be posted directly to app

walls as well, but without a means of notifying users, more often than not replies go

unread.

One solution to this problem is to use private messages to directly respond to

individual wall postings, but Facebook’s messaging limits make this approach

unworkable (the exact caps are unknown). In the experience of many, being able to

communicate through this channel has been valuable, particularly when compared to

alternatives like support email and the Reviews wall. The reward is not worth risking

your personal account, however, as you frequently hit the message limits - in some

instances, developers have actually had their accounts disabled entirely.

The addition of the Reviews app to application pages has been a source of some

controversy, as fake reviews have popped up with regularity. While planted posts were

certainly not the most desirable side effect of the Reviews wall, spam is a more

serious problem. Spammers openly adopted the Reviews wall, and today their posts

litter most application pages. Spammers add five star ratings to encourage developers

to not delete their posts as those ratings can drive up an application’s average rating,

while undermining the validity of the entire rating system in the process.

Some Reviews merit a developer response, but as with the wall the only means of truly

replying is via private message. Given these problems, it comes as no surprise that

many developers take steps to reduce the Reviews wall’s visibility, usually by moving

it to the bottom of the page beneath the wall and discussion board.

Not all is lost, however, as the discussion board is a useful channel for user feedback.

Replies to posts generate notifications that ensure that conversations remain open.

The discussion board is evidence that workable tools can facilitate meaningful



customer service. However, Facebook has a long way to go to make customer service

easy for developers.

40. Custom Tags

Since the Facebook Platform launched in 2007, FBML tags have always been created

and defined by Facebook. However, in an effort to make the Facebook Platform more

extensible, Facebook announced in January 2009 that developers can now create

custom FBML tags to widgetize their content or functionality for other developers to

use.

With custom tags, any developer can create new FBML tags. These custom tags can be

used just in their own applications, or they can be shared with other Facebook

developers as “widgets.” For example, developers who have interesting access to

content or functionality could now use custom FBML tags to extend their apps’ reach

to any Facebook application, increasing their distribution. That could mean new

partnerships and revenue opportunities.



Facebook said that although the company plans to make widgets built with custom

tags functional for any websites which have enabled Facebook Connect in the future

via XFBML, only applications that run inside Facebook will be able to use custom tags

for now.

Finally, Facebook says that another benefit of using custom tags are their potential to

improve application performance:

Much like how one FBML tag is a shorthand way to include a lot of markup

(think of fb:comments, for example), one custom tag can replace a lot of FBML

and HTML content inline. Using custom tags in this way lowers the

communication overhead between Facebook and your application’s servers.

One custom tag can render a larger amount of content. Instead of sending the

full FBML fragment with every request, you can replace it with a custom tag

that Facebook will expand when Facebook parses the page.



Developers interested in checking out the custom tags created by other developers can

use the custom tags directory on the Developer wiki. Facebook requests that if you’ve

created new public tags, “Please let the community know by adding their

documentation to this wiki article.”

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

When the Facebook Platform launched in May 2007, it included access to a number of

Facebook’s powerful communication channels right from the start (unlike some other

platforms that have launched since). Access to these channels - profile boxes,

invitations, notifications, and feed items - allowed applications to spread quite

quickly. However, due to user experience complaints, Facebook has been putting in

place limits on how much apps can use these viral channels throughout much of 2008.

While Facebook has not been explicitly clear in explaining what that feedback is, we

ran a Facebook Poll to gain some anecdotal quantitative evidence on what users are

complaining about. While the sample size was very small (only 200 responses), the

results may offer some clues on upcoming Platform changes.

Question:

What do you hate most about Facebook apps?

Answer Choices:

• Too many invitations

• Too many notifications

• Too much clutter on my profile

• Too much clutter in my mini feed

The Results:

• Invitations are still the most annoying thing about apps (especially for women).

• Mini Feed stories are clearly the least annoying thing about apps.



• Profile clutter is still a big problem (especially for older folks).

Assuming Facebook is seeing roughly the same data in its user experience testing,

what are some possible conclusions for the Platform?

• Facebook will likely update the rules on invitations again. Per-user limits or

stricter per-app limits are possible changes.

• Given that the new profile page is about to become dominated by the

Feed/Wall, apps will be increasingly given more functionality here.

• Facebook is also solving the profile clutter problem with the new profile page

design. Only 3-5 apps will have a box on the default tab. The rest will be

migrated to the new “Boxes” tab (name still TBD).

Poll Data:



Recommended Strategies for Application

Developers

Achieving viral distribution of your application on Facebook is all about taking full

advantage of all the viral channels Facebook makes available:

1) Invitations – make sure your apps give users natural and compelling ways to

invite their friends to add the app. Applications that prompt users to invite

their friends as part of the first time experience have historically grown

quite quickly.

2) Feed Items – every time your user performs a significant action in your

application, invoke a feed item on their behalf. Feed items are extremely

valuable from both an acquisition and retention perspective.



3) Notifications – notifications are like mini-email-newsletters, so think of

them as vehicles for increasing engagement. However, be careful not to be

too spammy, or Facebook will shut you down without telling you why.

Ultimately, the goal of any application is to get its viral factor above 1. Take

advantage of every opportunity to optimize your application’s virality:

Viral Factor = conversion rate * engagement rate * invitation rate

• Conversion rate = the percent of invited users who add the app. Maximize

this by iterating on your invitation copy.

• Engagement rate = the percent of users who use the app. Maximize this by

designing compelling features and making thorough use of feed items and

notifications.

• Invitation rate = the number of invitations sent per user. Maximize this by

designing features that encourage your users to invite their friends.

Finally, think about each of the profile integration points deeply. The profile box,

the main profile area, the tab, the publisher, and the application info section are

all powerful and vital channels for the success of your application. For many

developers, they’re also the primary source of viral growth.



IV. Tools for Webmasters

41. Facebook Connect

In May 2008, Facebook announced Facebook Connect, a comprehensive set of Platform

services designed to let users take their Facebook identity, friends, and privacy

anywhere on the web.

The idea behind Facebook Connect is a big one. As owners of a very large and

relatively authentic part of the social graph, Facebook wants to allow users to share

the identity, privacy settings, and friend lists that they have established on Facebook

to application providers around the web. Historically, most social apps have attempted

to build their own social graph (i.e. many failed social networks) or have punted on

the idea of identity altogether (i.e. blog comments). With Facebook Connect, users

can trust that their privacy will not be violated when they share their Facebook

identity and friends with other sites.

Facebook Connect has 4 main features:

• Trusted Authentication. Facebook users are in total control of permissions

granted (though the identity crowd will note that it’s a proprietary

authentication system).

• Real Identity. Users can bring their real identity with them wherever they go on

the web, including basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends,

photos, events, groups, and more.

• Friends Access. Users are able to take their friends with them wherever they go

on the web. This will allow developers to create an entirely new class of

applications leveraging much deeper social context.

• Dynamic Privacy. Users’ Facebook privacy settings follow them around the open

web. For example, if you change a profile picture or change a setting, this will

automatically be updated in Facebook Connect partner websites.



With Facebook Connect, Facebook hopes to take the Facebook Platform to a much

deeper level around the open web. I think there is substantial opportunity for

developers to integrate Facebook Connect support into their existing social web

apps, and to consider creating new apps to take advantage of the deeper social

context that is now possible.

Overview: Integrating Facebook Connect with Your Website

Here are the steps webmasters need to tale to integrate Facebook Connect on your own

website:

1. Authenticating Users

Facebook has provided a sample implementation of Facebook Connect that fully

demonstrates the lightweight authentication process. Rather than mandate a standard

login button for websites using Connect, Facebook is encouraging developers to create

their own login buttons (you can also use the default).

When a user clicks the login button, one of three dialog boxes will appear:

• If a user isn’t logged into Facebook, the login/TOS popup dialog appears. If the user

then authorizes Facebook Connect, Facebook gives a session for this user on your site

and generates a callback to your site.

• If the user is logged into Facebook but hasn’t authorized Facebook Connect for your

site, an AJAX dialog appears. After authorizing Connect, the dialog closes.

• If the user is logged in and has already authorized Connect for your site, Facebook

generates a session for this user and provides a callback to your site.



2. Connecting Your Users’ Accounts with Facebook Accounts

Connecting accounts can be completed either when a user logs into Facebook from your

site, or by accepting a Facebook Connect request from another already-connected friend.

When a user logs into your site, you can encourage that user to connect to her Facebook

account by “calling connect.registerUsers, passing an email hash with it.” If the hash

matches the user’s address on Facebook, Facebook will automatically return that “hash in

the user’s email_hashes property.” This hash is then used as a key for merging your user’s

account on your site and her account on Facebook. Once a user accepts, you can then

determine which of that user’s friends are on your site.

Additionally, authorized users can generate Connect Requests for their friends, which

appear alongside all other requests on the Facebook homepage. When a friend receives a

request, that friend can visit your site, and can then return to Facebook to accept the

request.

3. Publishing Feed Stories

Depending on a user’s login state and their authorization of Facebook Connect on your site,

there are three possibilities:



• If the user has authorized Facebook connect and is logged in, you can publish one

line stories automatically, or you can implement feed forms to allow your users to

post short or full stories.

• If the user is logged into Facebook but has not authorized Connect on your site, an

approval message will be displayed to the user when your site tries to publish a one

line story. For other story sizes previews are displayed which the user can then

approve.

• If the user is not logged in, nothing can be published.

After f8, the Facebook Connect sandbox opened for developers. It launched to all

developers and users in full in December 2008.

Examples: 40 Sites Live with Facebook Connect Today

While over 1,000 sites have integrated some form of Facebook Connect, here’s a

list of 40 reference sites you can check out to see how they did it:

1. BrainFall.com

2. Cantorion

3. CBS’s The Insider

4. Citysearch

5. CNN’s The Forum

6. Connected Weddings

7. Deadspin

8. Diary.com

9. The Doghouse

10. EventVue

11. Fetch This!



12. Game-Rate

13. Global Grind

14. Govit

15. Howcast

16. Huddler

17. IModules

18. Indie GoGo

19. Inkling

20. Inside Facebook

21. Inside Social Games

22. Jooveler

23. Lociraj.net

24. MapMyFitness.com

25. MapMyRide.com

26. MapMyRun.com

27. MapMyTri.com

28. MapMyWalk.com

29. MileSplit US

30. Mloovi

31. Mobnotes.com

32. MoveOn.org

33. MyBarackObama

34. Newsbrane

35. Red Bull

36. San Francisco Chronicle

37. TechCrunch

38. Vimeo

39. vLane

40. Xobni



Citysearch: Each Item Shared Through Facebook Connect Generates 30

Clicks

Citysearch, one of the first websites to launch Facebook Connect integration in

beta last November, has rolled out its Facebook Connect integration to all users as

part of a larger redesign effort to make Citysearch more social.

With Facebook Connect, users can login with their Facebook accounts on

Citysearch and share their local reviews with Facebook friends through Facebook’s

feed system. In addition, users see the reviews written by their Facebook friends

at the top of the Citysearch listings.

How has the beta test gone? CEO Jay Herratti told Claire Cain Miller of the New

York Times,

In the four months the site has been testing Facebook Connect, 94 percent of

reviewers have published their reviews to Facebook, where an average of 40

people see them and 70 percent click back to Citysearch. That has translated

into new members: daily registrations on Citysearch have tripled.

In other words, each item shared through Facebook Connect generates 40

impressions and 28 unique visitors - a lot of traffic per shared item. While it’s still

too early to specifically characterize the value of that traffic in dollars, it’s very



interesting to see how Facebook is generating traffic to content sites. Facebook

drove more traffic to Perez Hilton than Google in January, and is sending traffic to

video sites with Facebook Connect as well.

Variety of Facebook Connect Plugins Now Available for Blogs and Wikis

Facebook has launched a directory of vetted Facebook Connect plugins that

includes Disqus, the WordPress plugin created by Sociable.es, the WordPress plugin

created by Facebook engineer Adap Hupp, a Movable Type plugin created by Six

Apart, an an experimental plugin for MediaWiki. Most of these plugins are open

source, meaning they are free for developers to use and modify (with any

appropriate attributions given, of course). Here’s the full list of approved plugins

as of early 2009:

• Disqus - Add Facebook Connect to the Disqus commenting system already on

your blog or website

• Movable Type - Open Source plugin by Six Apart which adds Facebook

Connect to any Movable Type powered site and allows any Facebook user to

sign in, comment, and share

• Wordpress plugin by Sociable - Open Source WordPress plugin which offers

community features including showing recent visitors, inviting friends, and

sharing comments with friends on Facebook

• WP-FBConnect Wordpress Plugin - Open Source WordPress plugin started by

Adam Hupp which adds login and commenting to your blog with Facebook

Connect

• MediaWiki - experimental MediaWiki extension to incorporate Facebook

Connect login and identity into your MediaWiki site

Facebook Connect is increasing the authenticity (and quantity) of comments and



discussion blogs that have adopted it thus far. However, many blog commenters

have also vocalized the tensions of connecting all blog comments to your Facebook

identity, pointing out that anonymity will always remain an important part of many

kinds of online discussions.

Related: Google Friend Connect

Google has created a similar product for website owners to add OpenSocial Google

Gadgets to their website called Friend Connect. However, as of July 2008,

Facebook blocked Google Friend Connect access to the Facebook API for violating

the Facebook Terms of Service. Facebook and Google are actively working on

resolving the matter behind the scenes.

42. Comments Box Widget

In February 2009, Facebook released its first in-house widget built on Facebook

Connect: the “Comments Box.”

With the Comments Box, users can login through Facebook Connect and leave

comments on your website with their real name and profile picture from Facebook.

It’s an easier way for websites to integrate social features through Facebook without

developing or managing custom plugins. A full list of Facebook Connect-enabled

plugins is available here.



When users post comments on your site with the Comments Box widget, they will also

have the option to share their comments on their profile. Non-Facebook users can

leave comments as well, and the widget can also show other related comments made

on Facebook too.

This is the first Connect-enabled widget Facebook has released. Others have been

developing Connect-ebabled widgets that both increase the social features on and

across websites.

While there is still some lack of clarity around what is and isn’t allowed exactly in so-

called “fourth party” design (i.e. creating Facebook Connect widget-to-user

relationships), Facebook has said it will update and clarify its policies soon.

43. Live Feed Widget

In November 2008, Facebook rolled out a Live Feed widget that allows website owners

to integrate a Facebook Status Update stream filtered by all users currently on your



website. For example, the integration has been very successful during US President

Barack Obama’s inauguration, as well as popular events like the Oscars.

For media companies, this could be an extremely viral way of getting conversation

around your content spread throughout Facebook much more quickly. However, it’s

only available through a direct deal with Facebook.

44. Facebook Share



Despite the growing interest in Facebook Connect as a way to

integrate Facebook identity and sharing features on any site

around the web, one of the untold stories about sharing on

Facebook is the simple power of the Facebook Share button.

With the latest Facebook home page redesign, the Facebook

Share button just became a lot more powerful: now, every

shared item is guaranteed to show up on users’ friends’ home

pages.

By optimizing the way your site supports Facebook Share,

webmasters can get as much as the 20-30 clicks per feed story

that some Facebook Connect partners are seeing with much simpler integration work

(it can be as simple as adding one line of code). Here’s how to optimize your site for

maximum Facebook Share click-through traffic.

1. Add the Share Button to Your Site

There are 4 different versions of the Share button: icon only, link only, link and icon,

and share button. Grab the code here and put the button you like best on all pages

you want your visitors to share.

2. Make Sure Facebook Can See Your Title and Description

When sharing content on Facebook using Share, Facebook looks for a title, description,

and thumbnail image to pull into the feed story. While Facebook will always try to find

this for any shared link, you can actually specify this copy for the Facebook crawler if

you want to have more control over the copy or images that show up in Facebook.

At the very least, you should test out sharing content from your site in order to make

sure Facebook is picking up a title and description for pages shared from your site.

Just make sure you’re setting these two lines of code in your site’s header:

<meta name=”title” content=”SXSW Driskill Flashmob: When Friends Converge

& Create Memories” />



You may also specify the type of content being shared by using the following tag:

<meta name=”medium” content=”medium_type” /> (where medium_type could be

“audio”, “image”, “video”, “news”, “blog” 0r “mult”)

Video Sharing

Here are the tags you’ll need to set with each page containing video:

<meta name=”title” content=”video_title” />

<meta name=”description” content=”video_description” />

<link rel=”image_src” href=”video_screenshot_image_src url” />

<link rel=”video_src” href=”video_src url”/>*

<meta name=”video_height” content=”video_height” />

<meta name=”video_width” content=”video_width” />

<meta name=”video_type” content=”Content-Type header field” />

Audio Sharing

And here are the tags you’ll need to set with each page containing audio:

<meta name=”title” content=”page_title” />

<meta name=”description” content=”audio_description” />

<link rel=”image_src” href=”audio_image_src url (eg. album art)” />

<link rel=”audio_src” href=”audio_src url” />

<meta name=”audio_type” content=”Content-Type header field” />

In addition, these tags are optional:

<meta name=”audio_title” content=”audio_title (eg. song name)” />

<meta name=”audio_artist” content=”audio_artist_name” />

<meta name=”audio_album” content=”audio_album_name” />



However, in order to make your videos embeddable on Facebook, Facebook says you

need to email [email protected] with the domain names where your

video files reside. This is a somewhat conservative decision by Facebook to limit

aggresive marketers from surreptitiously embedding videos in Facebook Share.



Conclusion

Never before has a social platform emerged that combines the authenticity of

Facebook’s culture with the raw power of Facebook’s multitude of viral channels to

offer such an unprecedented marketing opportunity.

While some remain pessimistic about the potential of social networks to become viable

direct marketing channels, I believe that direct marketers who craft intelligent

strategies for the Facebook environment–which will require much more creativity than

SEM campaigns–will find success. At the same time, Facebook offers brand marketers

entirely new paradigms for designing immersive and persuasive brand experiences.

At the same time, we are still early in the game, and we have a lot left to learn. Only

when marketers learn how to capture new kinds of value available for the first time

ever inside Facebook will the markets realize just how valuable Facebook is.

♦



Recommended Partners

As you craft your Facebook marketing strategy, we’re always here to point you in the right direction. If you’d like to have a conversation about where to start, Justin Smith is available for short consulting calls. He can be reached at [email protected] or +1.650.468.5175. In addition, we’ve listed partners below who we trust to provide high quality solutions to parties interested in taking next steps. For more details, check out their websites listed below.

Context Optional partners with premier brands and their agencies in delivering

successful brand marketing and consumer promotions on Facebook, MySpace, and the

iPhone.

Contact: Jeff Feldman - [email protected] / 415.738.7997

Buddy Media, a leading company for branded app-vertisements and social media

strategies, provides the world’s largest brands the ability to extend their advertising

campaigns into the social world.

Contact: Michael Lazerow, CEO – [email protected] - 646.786.1444



AdParlor is a full service social networking agency that helps brands with their social

media strategy, build custom applications, and deliver millions of ad impressions

daily.

Contact: Hussein Fazal, CEO - [email protected] / 416.840.4505

Razorfish is one of the world’s largest interactive agencies, with 2,100 people

operating in eight countries.

Contact: David Deal – [email protected] / 312.696.5056

AdNectar helps brands design and execute measurable peer influence marketing

campaigns by seeding branded items across 40+ social applications reaching 50+

million users.

Contact: Nir Eyal, CEO - [email protected] / 917.279.8578

Viximo is a complete virtual goods solution for social media sites providing

infrastructure, content, and viral features that helps bring more revenue at lower

costs.

Contact: Brian K Balfour, CEO - [email protected] / 617.583.5671



appssavvy is a direct sales team for the social media space. The company connects

hundreds of social media applications with leading brands and agencies.

Contact: Chris Cunningham, CEO - [email protected] / 212.941.5759

750 Industries distributes video marketing campaigns through social networks for

major brands and media companies.

Contact: Dan Greenberg, Founder & COO – [email protected] / 415.644.0054

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