Sexy Widget

Are We Web 2.0 Compatible?

Take the RateItAll Web 2.0 compatibility test for Facebook and see how our industry tastes measure up.

The Math Behind Facebook Distribution

Understanding the math that shapes your app's distribution curve is critical for understanding what needs to be tuned.  Andrew Chen has just written the best post that I've seen describing this math.

Sexy Widget's Guide to Feed.PublishTemplatizedAction

Feed.PublishTemplatizedAction is a tool that allows Facebook App stories to be pushed to the news feeds of people that have added your app AND people that have not added your app.  Currently many apps use feed.publishActionOfUser to push stories to the news feeds of friends of the person performing the action.  This feed only reaches folks that already have the app, so it's not ideal for making the app spread virally. 

Eventually, Facebook plans to deprecate publishActionOfUser completely, so all FB apps should use Feed.PublishTemplatizedAction.

For example:

With feed.publishActionOfUser - a user takes an action using an app. The story is pushed to their Mini Feed on their profile page.  The story also is pushed to the News Feed of friends of the user who have the app, according to FB's feed algorithm.

With Feed.PublishTemplatizedAction - a user takes an action using an app.  The story is pushed to their Mini Feed on their profile page.  The story also is pushed out to the News Feed of every friend of the user, according to the FB's feed algorithm, and whether or not the user has installed app.

Also important to note is that stories that don't require an immediate app install are more likely to show up in more users News Feeds. 

App developers should compile a list of actions that users of their app perform, and register those actions as stories using Feed.PublishTemplatizedAction.

Resources:

Developer Documentation
Wiki page: feed.publishtemplatizedaction
How to register news feed stories
Intro to feed.publishtemplatizedaction
New rule regarding how only actions undertaken by the user can be pushed into the news feed:

Facebook Beacon Isn’t Evil, It’s What We (I) Want

Facebook Beacon, the outreach program that extends Facebook’s news feed reach to actions that occur beyond Facebook’s walls, has been taking a lot of heat recently.  There have been stories of Christmas presents revealed one month too soon, of creepy connections made between sign in email addresses, and even posturing from the political attack group MoveOn.org, who try as they might, has not yet been able to link Beacon to George W. Bush.  Some believe that its demise is imminent, as Facebook wallows in bad press.

Beacon seems innocuous enough:

Add 3 lines of code and reach millions of users. 

Simply determine which user actions you would like publish to Facebook and add a few lines of code to your web page. Facebook Beacon actions include purchasing a product, signing up for a service, adding an item to a wish list, and more. When a user performs the action, they will be alerted that your website is sending a story to their profile and have a chance to opt out. No additional user action is needed for the story to be published on Facebook, and users remain in control of their information.

Three things in particular about the implementation seem to be getting Facebook in trouble: 1) The lack of a global opt out; 2) Botched notification on partner sites when a new item is published; and 3) Too much emphasis on commerce (especially during Holiday shopping season)

About six weeks ago, I wrote a post entitled “Plaxo and the Universal News Feed.”  In this post, I make the case that Facebook needs to open up its News Feed to actions that happen outside of Facebook:

There are two problems with the Facebook news feed.  First, it’s restricted to Facebook activities.  For example, if a friend of mine on Webmasterworld writes a great post, I’m not going to know about it unless I go to Webmasterworld.

And then later:

So, any site’s content can show up in the Facebook News feed, but first that site must build an app.  There’s an explicit, non-trivial action required, and the burden is entirely on the third party.  In other words, it’s a Facebook world, and you can participate if you want to, but you have to go to them.  And once your community’s activities are captured by the Facebook news feed, within the Facebook news feed they will stay – driving repeat traffic primarily to Facebook, and not your site.

Facebook Beacon addresses these issues.  It’s presumably a lot easier for a Facebook Beacon partner to “add three lines of code” than to build a winning app.

Most of the examples that people have given about how Beacon crosses a line have been around commerce.  I didn’t want anybody know that I bought that chicken costume.  My purchase of Kama Sutra is nobody’s business but my own.  I wish my boyfriend wasn’t alerted to his Christmas present via the Facebook news feed in November.

But I don’t see anybody complaining about say, Yelp’s implementation of Facebook Beacon. When somebody posts a review of a restaurant on Yelp that is also signed in to Facebook, a news feed story gets published to that person’s Facebook network, with a link to the Yelp URL.

I would argue that this is the MOST OPEN BEHAVIOR that we’ve seen out of Facebook yet.  They are willingly driving traffic to another social network’s site, without forcing that site to build an app.  This is beautiful, open behavior that could benefit a lot of sites, and make the Facebook news feed even more complete and enjoyable than it already is.

But instead of accolades, Facebook has gotten nothing but grief for Beacon.  Why?  Because of a clumsy implementation.  If Facebook had modeled its implementation off of Plaxo Pulse – who requires users to explicitly add the partner sites they would like to include in their Plaxo news feed – we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. 

Facebook Beacon is not a commerce feature – it’s bigger than that.  It’s the first step towards a universal news feed, and I believe, a defensive response to what Plaxo, Tumblr, and FriendFeed are doing.  I believe its early problems are a function of a clumsy launch, and should not be taken as indication of a flawed idea.

Beacon's launch missteps have jeopardized the program.  I hope Facebook PR is skilled enough to defuse all the politics and misguided attacks - and I hope that Facebook improves the opt  out and notification aspects of the program in a hurry.  The Beacon idea is too good to be railroaded out of town so soon.

For more on Beacon, see Carnage4Life, allfacebook, Steve O'Hear, and GigaOm. 

Buying Facebook Installs Off Facebook

At least one Facebook app appears to be looking to drive installs with Google AdWords:

Looking for Feedback on a Facebook App

My employer has just rolled out an early version of its Consumer Review app for Facebook.  I would appreciate any feedback from Sexy Widget readers - you can email feedback to me, post it on the FB app page, or leave it in the comments.

Thanks a lot.

A Tidbit from Where I've Been

Craig Ulliott, developer of the Facebook App "Where I've Been," just shared that his destination site, WhereIveBeen.com, that was built after the app and has not been formally announced / launched, is doing about 1,000 new registrations per day.

Some RockYou Stats

Today at the Community Next Platform Conference, RockYou CTO and Founder Jia Shen shared a few RockYou Stats:

• 43M Monthly Unique Visitors
• 430M Monthly Page Views
• 150M Widget Views Per Day

Doing some quick math on a lineup of RockYou Facebook Apps, I came up with 35M+ for the number of installs that they have - just from their top apps!

More interesting than the numbers was the process that RockYou uses to roll out an app.  They literally have it down to a science, complete with formulas to determine how viral an app is.

I will blog this at some point over the weekend - it's fascinating stuff.

Sneaky App Shenanigans on Facebook

I've been seeing a lot of pretty sneaky stuff recently from some popular apps.  "Share" buttons that blast out to your whole network, regardless of which friend boxes you check.  Apps making it into to my news feed without any action from me or my network.  And of course, the My Questions app which asked a question on my behalf, without letting me know about it.

Of course, it's hard to tell which are bugs, and what are deliberately sneaky actions on behalf of the app developers.  I tend to think that most would fall into the latter bucket, as all of the "bugs" that I've seen have resulted in excessive distribution, as opposed to limited distribution.

I'm wondering if we'll see Facebook lay the hammer down any time soon.  Because if they don't, other apps might feel the need to get sneaky in order to keep pace.

Without naming names, would anyone else like to share any sneaky stuff that they've seen recently?