In an effort to get more app developers on board using sections, the Facebook Developer blog released a list of best practices for creating customized sections and added section timeline analytics to their App Insight tool. After replacing aggregations with app sections last month, Facebook has rolled-out sections to everyone, and according to the blog post, "...are seeing almost 200 million items added daily." With sections, users can rate movie, TV show and book content directly on their timeline, as well as include ratings from apps. By highlighting a number of apps already using section [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook: Apps & App Center | Facebook: Insights | Facebook: Open Graph | Facebook: User Interface | Social Media Marketing

Today at Mobile DevCon (Facebook's Mobile Developer Conference) some major announcements were unleashed that will change the way that apps interact with Facebook. Of course, Facebook integration within mobile apps is more important than it ever has been. According to a statement released from Facebook, over 81% of top 100 grossing iOS apps and 70% of top 100 grossing Android apps integrate with Facebook. The changes are quite large for mobile developers including Open Graph integration with an Object API, better logins & Permissions and the creation of "Facebook Technology Partners." [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Mobile | Facebook: Open Graph | Top News

The "Pinterestization" of Facebook continues. The company today introduced changes to Timeline that allow users to more easily and prominently display collections of things they like (via apps). This was part of the introduction of an overall Timeline redesign. Images in posts are larger and are seen on the right (a mirror of some of the recent News Feed changes), while other photos, music and recent activity are clustered in a slightly narrower column on the left. There's also a bigger emphasis on apps as sources of self expression. App-based custom collections (movies, books, im [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Apps & App Center | Facebook: Open Graph | Facebook: User Interface | Features & Analysis | Top News

Those heavy users of Facebook lifestyle apps will soon be able to share more information with their friends that will gain more engagement. New actions will be displayed for these apps that will more accurately express just what was performed/seen or read. The new actions for lifestyle apps are as follows: Fitness: run, walk, bike Books: read, rate, quote, want to read Movies and TV: rate, want to watch Each of these actions will provide a more compelling, descriptive experience that follows along with  the new News Feed announcement from last week. This [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Open Graph | Social Media Marketing | Top News

[caption id="attachment_32500" align="alignright" width="300"] image from Stock.XCHNG[/caption] This month marks the nine year anniversary of when Facebook (then known as TheFacebook.com) was first conceived and created by Mark Zuckerberg. Since then, Facebook has grown by leaps and bounds, currently supporting over one billion active users (as of December 2012) and over 618 million active daily users. Facebook's capabilities and layouts have undergone the most obvious changes over the last nine years, and the way that marketers have learned to connect with users has grown, as well. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Business Issues | Facebook: Marketing | Facebook: Open Graph | Social Media Marketing Column

Looking to claim more real estate in a Facebook News Feed near you? Links may be the answer. According to InsideFacebook, a Facebook post with a link is going to take up nearly 3x the space of previous link previews. Here's a mock-up of the old link with the new size transposed on top (courtesy of InsideFacebook): The previous link images (shown in blue above) were just 90 pixels by 90 pixels. The new image size is 154 pixels by 154 pixels, just a hair under 3 times the overall pixels. According to InsideFacebook, this is not occurring on video links to sites like YouTube. Link [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Open Graph | Top News

Facebook continues to be the dominant platform for websites that offer social logins, but Google is gaining ground in the latest report from Janrain. The company says that Facebook's overall share of social logins fell to 49 percent as of Q4 2012, down from its all-time high of 54 percent in Q3. Google was the main reason or benefactor of that decline, with its share of social logins growing from 25 percent to 31 percent at the end of 2012. Twitter's share of social logins also dropped a bit, down to seven percent from it's previous high of 10 percent. Here's the current social login [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Facebook: Open Graph | Facebook: Statistics | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Social Media | Top News

Back in April Facebook's "Preferred Developer Consultants" were renamed "Preferred Marketing Developers." Now, all PMD's will be included in the new Preferred Marketing Developer Center. This will help folks find the right developers for their Facebook apps and enterprise tools. Some of the main features of the new PMD center include the addition of company profile pages that can include case studies, white papers, advanced details and more. All PMDs will be able to include a specialty list to more adequately display their core expertise. The center will also spotlight certain news and [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Marketing | Facebook: Open Graph

Open graph actions have been a boon to Facebook so far, driving engagement while increasing clicks and likes. However not all of the actions have been positive, such as auto-posted actions. Items that auto-post consumed content that aren't a standard action have showed a lower quality experience and will will be going the way of the Dinosaur. Facebook will be axing all actions outside of an approved core that auto-post when the content is consumed. Any new app submitted to Facebook with custom actions that auto-published won't be approved any longer. Those apps that are using a custom act [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Open Graph

Facebook continues to be web users' preferred option when it comes to social login, and has now seen two consecutive years of quarterly growth in that area. According to Janrain's latest quarterly report, Facebook now accounts for 48 percent of all social logins as of Q2 2012. That's up from 45 percent in Q1 of this year, and represents eight straight quarters that Facebook's share has risen -- dating back to Q1 of 2010. Google remains second at 30 percent in Q2, which is consistent with where it's been over the last six quarters. Twitter has moved into third place with nine percent, th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Facebook: Open Graph | Facebook: Statistics | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Social Media | Top News

More than one-fifth of the web links to Facebook in some way, and almost eight percent use Facebook's Open Graph tags -- two numbers that offer a glimpse of Facebook's deep grip on the web. The numbers come from a Zyxt Labs study of about 1.3 billion URLs earlier this year. The study found that more than 242 million pages, about 21.7 percent of the total studied, referenced at least one Facebook URL -- usually things such as the Like and Share buttons and other social widgets, but also traditional links to Facebook profiles or Facebook Group pages. Here's a look at the breakdown of the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Facebook: Buttons & Plugins | Facebook: Open Graph | Facebook: Statistics | Features & Analysis | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: General | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Statistics: Social Media | Top News

Monday's WWDC Facebook announcement marked Apple's full integration of the top two social networks in the world.  The odd network left out (other than Google+) was Ping, Apple's social network.  Ping was launched in 2010 and was dubbed the social network for music but only ever saw mediocre usage.  The service allowed users to follow artists & friends to see what they were playing and view their updates. AllThingsD reported that Apple is going to retire Ping which won't be included within iOS6.  All of Apple's new social elements will now rely on Facebook or Twitter.  In the [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Apple: iOS | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Facebook | Facebook: Open Graph | Social Media Marketing

Looking to integrate Facebook into your WordPress site?  Well, now no third party plugins are required as Facebook officially launched the "Facebook for WordPress plugin."  Wordpress is the most popular publishing platform on the web to date, powering 16.6% of the web. The plugin allows publishers to socially publish all articles when pushing content live.  In addition, users can mention other friends or pages that may have been mentioned/interviewed in an article: One of the very slick features of the plugin is the ability to have an author's post show directly to their timelin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Marketing | Facebook: Open Graph | Social Media Marketing

The future of Facebook marketing isn’t about display ads. It’s about visibility and reach. There has been so much pre/post IPO chatter about the flawed Facebook display advertising model. It's been mentioned that nobody clicks on ads and that ads have been ineffective.  Frankly, these folks have it wrong. Facebook is undergoing an organification movement that fellow marketer Marty Weitraub has been preaching for years now. Facebook ad units that everyone screams and yells about are fading away; paid interactions, increased reach and word of mouth advertising are coming to the forefront [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Marketing | Facebook: Open Graph | Features & Analysis | Social Media Marketing | Top News

Facebook apps are are getting a new centralized, mobile-friendly destination for users.  The App Center has been officialy announced as the new home for all social apps.  Apps can be easily viewed, sorted, search, reviewed and previewed: Not only does the App Center look slicker, it will have a variety of benefits for users and developers.  Facebook stressed that app success revolves around quality (engagement & ratings) and have added new app metrics into Insights: This information will be crucial for App Center visibility.  Facebook states: "Well-designed apps that peo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Apps & App Center | Facebook: Marketing | Facebook: Open Graph | Top News

Last September, WaPo Labs (a division of The Washington Post Co.), launched the Washington Post social reader app to make reading and sharing news instant.  Today, the app appears to be losing some of its steam.  The social reader has upset many users as some people don't like the fact that others can see what they are reading (a feature that can be hidden) and some are unhappy that users must authenticate the app before reading an article. The required authentication has helped to make Social Reader one of the fastest growing apps ever.  However, social news site BuzzFeed, has re [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Apps & App Center | Facebook: Open Graph

Facebook is the number one choice for social login and its gains over the past two years have it now approaching 50 percent penetration among social login services, a new study shows. In analyzing at the 365,000 websites that use its services, Janrain reports that 45 percent of consumers use their Facebook accounts to login on third-party websites -- a number that's been increasing steadily since the first quarter of 2010. As the graph below shows, Google was previously the top social login service, but it's a fairly distant second place now with 30 percent market share. Janrain f [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook: Open Graph | Facebook: Statistics | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Social Media | Top News

Facebook applications will be getting a bit more customized thanks to a new Open Graph feature, action links.  Instead of just liking an actionable item, apps will be able to leverage the Open Graph Platform to customize the links that are shared. For example, instead of liking a recipe from NYCCookbook, a user can "save" the recipe.  When you see the item via Timeline or News Feed, the post will show the customized link: When clicked, the action will appear as "saved" rather than "liked": This is especially helpful for integrating account actions via Facebook.  For example, now u [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Open Graph | Top News

Over the past several months there have been a number of stories about how retailers and brands are shuttering their Facebook stores because no one was paying attention. The outlook would thus appear to be dimming for so-called "F-commerce." However earlier this week shopping site TheFind  launched a social shopping app (soon to be an iPad app too) called Glimpse. It may yet prove to be a model of sorts for commerce on Facebook and social commerce more generally. Some have argued it takes its inspiration from (or copies) Pinterest and seeks to be its rival. It's Pinterest-like in [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Business Issues | Facebook: Buttons & Plugins | Facebook: Open Graph

In a new change today, "Trending Articles" have been appearing in Facebook users' news feeds.  The new feature scrolls through 5 articles that appear to be hot across all of Facebook.  This feature very much resembles Google's  the "Hot On Google+" functionality but adds in the name of a friend who has recently read the article: The articles that we spotted did escort users off of Facebook to an external story.  Each article can be hidden and all articles from a given source can be hidden: All sources that we have seen have been tied to the social reader app.  For more info [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Marketing | Facebook: Open Graph | Top News