Premium cable network Starz is backing the second-season premiere of political drama “Boss” with video stunt Price for Power.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Source: AllFacebook
Users
Facebook appears to be testing its “action links” feature on mobile, making it easy for users to engage with third-party apps without leaving Facebook.
For example, when a user sees a friend’s story about checking into a location on Foursquare, they have a prominent option to “save this place.” If the user is logged into Foursquare, they can click the button to add the location to their Foursquare “to-do list” without ever leaving the Facebook mobile app. That action also generates a story on the user’s own Timeline.
Any developer can create custom action links to increase the viral potential of each story about their app that appears in News Feed. These sort of integrations promote discovery and re-engagement for mobile and web apps connected with the social network. If a user has not already added an app, they can be directed to add the app when they click on an action link.
Developers can designate an action link for any action they define in their app. Similar to the Foursquare example, Spotify could add a “add to playlist” action link on stories about a song or artist. Pinterest could allow users to repin items directly from the Facebook feed. Words With Friends might want to include a “play with this friend” or “challenge” link in its stories. This would allow users to easily begin a new game with the friend whose activity they saw in their feed.
[Update 7/16/12 12:30 p.m. PT - Spotify has already integrated action links to allow users to star songs as a favorite via the Facebook mobile site, Adweek's Tim Peterson found.]
Facebook introduced action links to the desktop News Feed in May. Before then, users could Like or comment on app activity or click to visit an app, but there weren’t app-specific calls to action that functioned the way action links now do. Facebook’s documentation on the feature still says this is unavailable on mobile, but we saw the Foursquare action link live on Sunday night. Facebook has not yet offered us details on whether this is available to everyone or in limited beta for now.
Here is how the Foursquare example works:
User sees action link in Facebook News Feed when a friend checks in on Foursquare.
User clicks “save this place” and location is saved in Foursquare without the user having to leave the Facebook app.
Story is pushed to a user’s “recent activity” section of Timeline.
Next time user visits the Foursquare app, the saved location will be included on the user’s to-do list.
Source: Inside Facebook
Call of Duty invading China with Tencent — Activision and Tencent are teaming up to bring an online version of Call of Duty to China. Call of Duty Online doesn’t have a release date yet, but it will monetize through the sale of virtual goods.
SongPop gets premium mobile treatment — FreshPlanet’s hit game SongPop is getting a new premium mobile version. Although SongPop’s already available on iOS, the premium version is ad-free, comes with the ability to “play with twice as many friends at once” and contains extended music clips.
Mango Games launching games for Indian users — Social game developer Mango Games is launching two new games for Facebook users in India. Details on the games, Rummy and Don, are vague, but they’re launching in July.
SimCity Social officially launches on Facebook — Less than two weeks after the open beta went live on Facebook, SimCity Social is now “officially” launched on the social network. You can read our review here.
Tom Hanks and Yahoo team up for new social animation series — Tom Hanks’s Playtone production company is working with Yahoo for a new animated series called Electric City that will have viewers exploring mysteries via social media and games on iOS and Android devices. Electric City launches July 17.
iGaming announces date for iGaming Meetup — iGaming Business announced its first “iGaming Meetup” will be July 17 in London. iGaming Meetups are conferences for social game developers, social media experts and investors.
No “clear-cut good and evil” in Game of Thrones Ascent — Jon Radoff of developer Disruptor Beam opened up to Strategy Informer about his company’s upcoming Facebook game, Game of Thrones Ascent. According to Radoff, there aren’t any “good or evil” forces for players to choose from, as such a mechanic wouldn’t work in the game’s universe.
Restaurant City getting fan-made successor — Fans of the defunct Restaurant City have decided to make a spiritual successor to the game, Restaurant World. The game already has an app page, blog, forums and almost 2,000 fans.
Source: Inside Social Games
Facebook now offers developers an easy way to allow users to follow other users’ activity within Open Graph applications, even if those users are not friends.
With the new built-in “follow” action, users will be able to get updates about other users’ app activity within the Facebook News Feed, rather than needing to visit the app to find out about it. For example, a person might follow a journalist within a social news app to see what they are reading or follow a celebrity chef within a food review app. Having these stories within News Feed could lead more users to see this activity and then visit the app or share it with friends.
Some apps like Pinterest and Quora have already been using their own Open Graph “follow” actions to share this type of activity back to Facebook, but now Facebook has made “follow” built-in, just as it has done with “read,” “watch,” “listen” and “like.” Built-in verbs can include additional benefits. In the case of “follow,” developers will get additional distribution through News Feed, Ticker, Timeline and notifications.
The action of following someone will generate a story in Ticker and in the recent activity box on Timeline. Users will also get a Facebook notification when they follow someone. These features promote re-engagement and viral growth, though it’s odd that users who are followed don’t receive a notification that someone followed them. Likely to drive even more re-engagement is the feature that will put any user’s app activity in News Feed. Many users visit Facebook several times a day, but they don’t always visit other services as frequently. Now users won’t have to think to visit another app or site on their own. They will see prompts in News Feed that will take them there.
We saw evidence of Facebook testing a new “follow” action earlier this week, and wondered whether it might have been related to a deeper Twitter integration. Now it seems what we saw was likely related to today’s announcement. However, this might be further reason for Twitter to build an Open Graph app and take advantage of Facebook’s viral mechanics to engage users who aren’t as active as others.
Facebook says it will no longer approve custom follow actions. Apps that currently use a custom follow action must migrate to use the built-in follow in the next 90 days. Technical documentation about the built-in “follow” action is available here.
Source: Inside Facebook
More than six months after Timeline launched for users around the world, Facebook still hasn’t made the new profile mandatory.
Timeline, like most Facebook changes, has a large group of critics. But unlike most Facebook changes, this one has been opt-in. The social network has been patient about not forcing users into the redesign, even if it means there are some inconsistencies across the site. Facebook has not set a public deadline for when it will implement Timeline across the site.
Developers — and users who claimed to be developers — could switch their profiles during a beta period between September and December last year. On Dec. 15, 2011, Facebook made Timeline available to any user who wanted it. Although the new profile was opt-in, company spokespeople said Timeline would be mandatory for all users within a few weeks. Previously, Facebook had given users five weeks to convert to a new profile design, but it hasn’t done the same for Timeline.
An informal poll of 17 users found that an average of 62 percent of a user’s friends had upgraded. That percentage was calculated by taking the number of friends that have signed up for Timeline, according to this page, and dividing it by a user’s total friend count. This is slightly skewed since Facebook recently changed friend counts to include users who have deactivated their accounts, but in general, it’s clear there is a significant portion of users who haven’t switched, despite Facebook’s efforts over the past six months.
In December, Facebook began showing prompts on the profiles of users who switched to the new look. Facebook provided early access to celebrities including Britney Spears, and it continues to promote the pages of public figures who use Timeline. In order to use new Open Graph applications, such as social readers and music streaming services, users must upgrade their profiles. The social network has also tried running stories in News Feed about users changing their cover photos or adding places to their map, features that are only available with Timeline. This has been a much slower and deliberate rollout than Timeline for pages, which Facebook made mandatory for all page owners within one month.
Offering an extended opt-in period and promoting discovery through friends seems to have worked well for the first 50 to 80 percent of users, but it’s unclear how Facebook will transition the final group of holdouts.
Source: Inside Facebook
Facebook has redesigned its so-called “hover cards” which appear when users mouse over the names of users and pages that have upgraded to Timeline.
These hover cards now display a user’s or page’s cover photo, in addition to profile pictures. Pages associated with places have a slightly different format. In place of the profile image, there is a map thumbnail that directs users to a full Bing map when clicked.
The new eye-catching design could encourage users to click Like on pages they see in News Feed or elsewhere on the site. Hover cards allow users to learn more about and interact with items in their feeds without opening a new tab or navigating away from the page. Page owners should now consider how their cover photo appears at a smaller size. It’s also worth noting that a page’s name and info appears as a layer on top of the cover photo, which might be difficult to read on some cover photo designs.
For pages associated with places, the inclusion of Bing maps could be helpful local places of business. However, there is now a noticeable lack of logo for users to associate with a brand or trademark, which could be problematic. This can possibly be remedied by including a logo inside of the cover photo to help identify the card and page.
Used strategically, hover cards could lead to more new page Likes with a single click. The number of Likes gained “on hover” are measured in page insights, as seen in the graph below.
The previous hover card design, which still appears for users who have not converted their profiles to Timeline, can be seen below. Facebook first rolled out hover cards in 2010, inspired by Twitter. Interestingly, Twitter no longer uses this feature.
Source: Inside Facebook
