Facebook introduced app ratings and negative feedback metrics to the app insights tool today as a way to help developers gain a better understanding of how users respond to their apps.
Detailed on developer blog post, these new metrics allow developers to go beyond monitoring growth trends and gain. Facebook has used this data to determine what appears in News Feed, but developers previously did not have the ability to see these insights or track their performance over time. Facebook says app ratings and negative feedback will also factor into what apps appear in the recently announced App Center.
The new app ratings dashboard in app insights will show developers how users have rated an app on a scale of one to five stars. Developers can view ratings as absolute numbers or relative percentages across different demographics, including age and gender, country and locale. Before, developers could only see their apps’ average overall rating and could not determine how the rating varied over time or by demographic.
The negative feedback metric will show developers how many times people have chosen to hide stories from an app, reported stories as spam or blocked an app completely. These reports are the same ones Facebook uses in its automated systems to detect spam on the platform, so it will be useful for developers in monitoring their performance over time. The insights will include the ratio of negative feedback to total impressions as well as an overview chart that displays green when an app is doing well and yellow when an app has reached a level for concern. Developers will even be able to compare the type of feedback they get from specific action types, as well as compare how users versus non-users respond to their content.
Source: Inside Facebook
Facebook has hired the team behind Android photo-sharing app Lightbox, according to a blog post on Lightbox’s website.
The app has already been removed from the Google Play store. It is likely Facebook did not acquire the company or its technology because of its recent acquisition of Instagram. As the social network plans to keep Instagram as a standalone app, the opportunity for Lightbox was diminishing. According to the Google Play store, Lightbox had between 1 million and 5 million installs. Instagram has between 10 million and 50 million.
What Facebook gains is a team that’s focused on mobile and Android specifically. Facebook is seeking to building out its mobile offerings and determine the best way to monetize the rapidly growing user base that accesses the social network from mobile devices. In addition to its $ 1-billion Instagram purchase, the company also picked up ambient mobile location app Glancee and mobile loyalty startup Tagtile this year.
According to TechCrunch, seven Lightbox employees will join Facebook. This includes Lightbox co-founder Thai Tran, who was previously a product manager for YouTube and Google Maps.
“The Lightbox team has incredible experience developing innovative mobile products that people love. We look forward to welcoming this world-class team of engineers to Facebook,” Facebook said in a statement.
Exisiting Lightbox users can continue to visit Lightbox.com and download their photos here. Lightbox says it will open-source portions of the app’s code for other developers to build upon.
Facebook had 488 million users access its site through its mobile site or mobile apps in March. On Monday, the social network redesigned its mobile News Feed so that photos display three times larger.
Source: Inside Facebook
Facebook proposed a number of changes to its Data Use Policy on Friday, including an updated disclosure about the potential for Facebook data to be used to serve ads on other sites.
The social network also added a number of examples and tips for users to better understand its policies. A pdf of the tracked changes and an explanation of the proposed updates are available from the Facebook Site Governance page. Users have until this coming Friday at 5 p.m. PDT to comment on the changes.
Notably, Facebook has modified its wording about the potential for ads off Facebook to suggest that if it began showing these ads, they may or may not include social context. Part of what makes Facebook ads effective is that they highlight the connections between a business and a user’s friends. However, users might be upset if this information began appearing in ads elsewhere online. Perhaps the company is considering whether to create an ad network that doesn’t show these connections so explicitly. Regardless of whether its ads display social context, the demographic and interest data Facebook has on more than 900 million users could allow Facebook to create an ad network that targets ads more effectively than Google’s AdSense.
Most of the changes Facebook is proposing to its Data Use Policy include editing language related to new features like Sponsored Stories, Timeline and Activity Log. The company has also added clearer examples of what its policy means for users per recommendations from the Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s Office, which audited the social network’s data collection practices last year. Here are some of the significant additions to the policy:
- New language that explains how Facebook will retain data. The company will continue to retain most data received from advertisers for 180 days, but it notes that there may be some times when it will need to keep information longer. For example, if an advertiser creates a Facebook page, the social network won’t delete information the advertiser puts on its page simply because 180 days had passed. Instead, Facebook will delete it when when the page owner deleted it or closed its account.
- New language to explain that, in addition to websites, apps — including those on page tabs — may also use instant personalization.
- New section explaining Facebook’s use of “cookies” and other tracking technologies.
- New language about groups and subgroups to reflect the launch of “Groups for Schools,” which are special groups that are only open to people who have a confirmed email address for a particular school.
Since 2009, the social network has taken a unique approach with its terms of service. Before instituting any new policies, the company shares proposed changes with users, who then have a period of time to comment and ask questions. For example, in April, Facebook proposed revisions to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities based on feedback it received on the first draft in March. In some cases, Facebook even puts issues up to a vote.
Last week the social network created a new hub for all of its terms and policies here.
Source: Inside Facebook
Facebook today announced a new design for its mobile News Feed that displays posts in individual boxes similar to how they appear on Timeline.
As part of the redesign, photos now appear three times larger than before, which could make browsing more efficient since there is less need to tap to see an image fullscreen. Fewer stories are visible at one time, but each one stands out more now that Facebook has added a light blue background to the feed.
This could improve engagement with page’s posts on mobile devices. Currently in the desktop feed, photos from pages appear significantly smaller than those from personal profiles. However, the mobile feed treats posts from pages and profiles the same, which could be particularly beneficial for advertisers running Sponsored Stories that appear on mobile devices. Facebook did not comment on whether it would make any changes to the desktop version of News Feed to be more similar the mobile experience.
Nonetheless, pages should consider sharing square photos to maximize the amount of space their posts take up in the mobile feed and increase the likelihood that fans Like or comment on the activity.
These design changes will begin to roll out on iOS, Android and m.facebook.com today. Users will not have to download a new version of the Facebook app to get the new layout.
Source: Inside Facebook
Facebook analytics platform PageLever has added features that let page owners categorize and compare their posts, as well as receive alerts about any changes in key metrics.
With post tagging, PageLever users can indicate which of their posts are related to a particular campaign or employ a certain tactic, for example, asking a question or making a fill-in-the-blank post. Then page owners can quickly compare the performance of different types of posts. PageLever co-founder Jeff Widman tells us one media company that used this feature discovered that posts about Google were, on average, twice as popular as posts about Apple. These insights would be difficult to discover through manual aggregation and analysis.
Another new PageLever feature — page alerts — helps page owners see changes in reach, growth rate and People Talking About This, among other metrics. For example, page owners can see alerts about a higher-than-usual number of fans unliking their page. PageLever users can adjust the sensitivity of alerts to be notified more or less often. Users will see their alerts when they log into the platform, through email or via RSS.
Widman says these features were both part of the original vision for the PageLever platform, which launched in August 2011. He says his team is working on additional features that build upon the existing Facebook Insights API to present information in a way that is more actionable for page owners from small businesses to large agencies.
Source: Inside Facebook
Facebook has nearly doubled the size of “Page-Like” Sponsored Stories in News Feed by adding a recent post from the page to the story.
It is unclear whether the change will make these ads more effective in helping advertisers get new Likes. However, because the unit also includes a recent post, advertisers can get across a more specific message and promote engagement in the form of commenting or sharing. Previously, pages could not get their posts featured in News Feed unless a user’s friend took action on that specific post. Now, a recent post will be displayed with any Page-Like story.
Facebook seems to be trying to find a design that makes Sponsored Stories effective for advertisers without making users feel their experience is being disrupted by ads. Although the new story takes up more space, it is in some ways less noticeable than the previous version, which looked very different from any other story in the feed. The old Page-Like stories included a much larger version of the page’s profile picture and listed more friends who Liked the page. This new unit emphasizes a page’s content rather than its logo. Because of that, the “Like Page” call to action has been moved the upper right of the story, which could be unfamiliar for users. However, the unit no longer includes the distracting “Find More Pages” link that took users to the page discovery browser rather than to an advertiser’s own content.
This is the second time the social network has redesigned the Page-Like Sponsored Story unit since it began showing ads in News Feed in January. In March, Facebook changed the unit from being a simple line of text to a much larger one including the page’s profile image and thumbnails of more friends who are connected to the page.
The new design will apply to Page-Like stories that have not been sponsored, but we have not yet seen an example of this.
Here is the previous design for “Page-Like” Sponsored Stories, which first appeared in March:
This is the first iteration of ”Page-Like” Sponsored Stories in News Feed, which we saw in February:
Source: Inside Facebook
