Following our posts last month on Facebook’s 2008 international growth by country and trends in 2008 social networking growth, comScore released additional data today on year-over-year social networking growth since June of 2007. Here are the highlights:
- Social networking continues to explode worldwide
- Facebook and hi5 are leading the international growth
- Facebook is growing everywhere
Facebook launched a new kind of ad unit today that has the potential to drive much more engagement than 
any ad product on the site ever before has: embedded multimedia with comments visible to users’ entire friend list.
Facebook has created new home page advertising inventory with its upcoming redesign. However, this is the first time we’ve seen Facebook fill the sponsored home page slot with this kind of unit. The 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 has launched a sponsored video ad offering as displayed in the image below. The videos display on the right hand side of the homepage in the area that Facebook announced would have sponsors when the site was redesigned. The only thing that the company failed to mention was that those sponsorships would be videos. The videos also enable comments. You can then view the comments that your friends have posted pertaining to that video.
Jason Beckerman was able to get me a screenshot and I checked out the site and it displayed as pictured below. The ad no longer displays for me but I’m guessing it will reappear shortly. This could be Facebook testing it out as Jason states in the comment, but it’s clear that Facebook would like to enter the video advertising space. This positions Facebook directly against VideoEgg who is currently one of the leading video advertising solutions providers on the market.
Facebook should also be able to charge a premium for video ad placements. It’s exciting to see Facebook expand their advertising offerings. We will update you with any news pertaining to this new advertising offering shortly.
Benjamin Ling will be departing Facebook according to Eric Eldon. Ben Ling joined the company less than a year ago and is already on his way out the door. While the company continues to post record-breaking growth numbers, the company can’t seem to hold on to many of their executives. What’s the source of all the problems? It could simply be that some employees would prefer to take stock options and leave, but that doesn’t appear to be the case for Ling.
Eric Eldon questions the reasoning behind his departure. While many have suggested that the reason for the exits was that the new executives, primarily Cheryl Sandberg, were not getting along with the old execs, that doesn’t appear to be the case. One Facebook employee that I’ve talked to, spoke highly of Cheryl and said that the company is finally getting some order, whereas before there didn’t appear to be much order to the organization.
As the company expands, executives appear to be dropping like flies but that may not be the worst thing. Perhaps the company simply has an effective model for wiping out those that aren’t in it for the long-term. At this point it’s all speculation. Ben Ling has been effective at fostering good relationships outside the company. It will be interesting to see how Facebook’s relationships with external companies change with this new departure.
Facebook issued the following statement:
Facebook confirms that Ben Ling will be leaving the company in the coming weeks to pursue other interests. We wish him well and appreciate his great contributions to the early success of Facebook Platform. Platform is poised for continued growth and success and the company is on track to deliver the range of major initiatives announced last month at f8, including Facebook Connect, fbFund and the Great Apps and Application Verification programs. Each of these programs have a strong team of professionals focused on attracting the best developers to Facebook Platform, helping developers succeed on Platform, and helping users find and enjoy great applications on Facebook.
One of the lacking features of the Facebook platform is the inability to modify groups and events from within applications. Eventually I also think it would be useful to add application support to actual event and group pages but for now developers have been granted the ability to create, modify and delete Facebook events via the API. In a blog post last night, Nathaniel Tucker wrote:
With an active session and the appropriate extended permissions, your application can manage your users’ schedules for any events created through your application. These events appear on their profiles alongside all their other events, so they can easily keep track of what’s coming up as well as invite more friends. Applications that could take advantage of this include those that manage personal events and those that host events.
This means that event focused applications such as concert applications and birthday applications can now assist users in maintaining their calendar through the events program. I could also see this eventually turn into a way to manage reminders for upcoming events. I’ve previously said that having a centralized contact list is important but based on this, it looks like Facebook could theoretically create a centralized calendar as well.
I’m happy to announce a great list of speakers for the upcoming Social Ad Summit. We will be announcing more speakers in the coming week (a few which I’m personally extremely excited about) but I wanted to provide an update. We just recently began sending out invitations to the event so if you haven’t received one, do not worry, we will be sending them out over the coming week. Also, if you are not sure whether or not you have received one, fill out your information on the Social Ad Summit homepage. Here is an updated list of speakers that will be in attendance:
* Brian Morrissey, Digital Editor, AdWeek, Moderator
* Allen Stern, Center Networks, Moderator
* Martin Green, COO, Meebo
* Jeremy Helfand, Executive Vice President, Classmates.com
* David Berkowitz, Director of Emerging Media, 360i
* David Bear, Executive Director of Mobile & Social Media, Atmosphere BBDO
* Sam Wick, Head of Business Development, Userplane
* Seth Goldstein, Co-Founder and CEO, SocialMedia Networks
* Scott Rafer, CEO, Lookery
* Anu Shukla, Founder and CEO, Offerpal Media
* Chris Cunningham, Founder and CEO, Appssavvy
* Michael Lazerow, Founder and CEO, Buddy Media
* Gordon Peters, General Manager, SocialCash.com
* Sean Ammirati, Contributor at Read/Write/Web, Founder of mSpoke, Moderator
* Albert Lai, CEO, kontagent
* Ian Swanson, Co-Founder and CEO, Sometrics
* Cam Balzer, VP of Emerging Media, DoubleClick
* Hooman Radfar, CEO and Co-Founder, Clearspring
* Carnet Williams, CEO and Co-Founder, Sprout
* Ben Pashman, Vice President of Sales and Business Development, Gigya
* Alex Blum, CEO, KickApps
* Clara Shih, Salesforce
Also, thanks to the following sponsors who are making this event possible:
* Offerpal Media
* Social Cash
* Buddy Media
* SocialMedia
* AppsSavvy
* Sometrics
* KickApps
* Doubleclick
We are in the process of finalizing speakers and sponsors over the coming week. We will be sure to update this site with more information regarding the conference as it gets closer!
I think I’m way behind on this but today when searching for Facebook’s advanced search feature, I ended up empty handed. The new search page only displays search by name, school and company. Previously Facebook enabled users to use the advanced search utility to find people by practically all areas of a user’s profile. Now there appears to be no more advanced search feature. I searched the web and couldn’t find any reference to the removal but this is significant.
First, this emphasizes Facebook’s commitment to making the site a social utility to browse among your own friends. There is also no longer a link to browse for users within the new design. While you can access browse by going to the following page, it doesn’t appear to be accessible via any other method. There’s another component of the missing advanced search story which is a little more sinister. It appears that someone has successfully attempted to capitalize on advanced search gone missing.
An application called “Advanced Search” claims to enable users to search through over 80 million users on Facebook. How do they let you do that? Well in the past month alone close to 50,000 people have accessed this application. When you visit the app, it automatically populates a bunch of form fields with you name, gender, birthday, schools you’ve attended, companies you’ve worked at and more. It looks just like Facebook’s standard advanced search which misleads users into submitting their information.
This application would be extremely useful for any of the ad networks that wish to use profile data to target users. The other funny thing about this application? It doesn’t appear to actually provide any advanced search functionality. Instead it simply collects data. When you view the “advanced search application” it states “Welcome to Advanced Search for Facebook - Before you start searching, please check, update and store your details so that other people can search for you.”
It then prompts users to enter there info. If you don’t enter anything, it doesn’t display the search. Yikes! I’ve tried searching for more information on this application which has been popular since last October and I couldn’t find anything. Have you been able to find Facebook’s advanced feature? Have you tried this misleading application? Do you think it should be shut down?
Today I will be attending Facebook’s f8 event in San Francisco. Me and the SocialCash team will be providing video coverage, live podcasts and live blogging. There is a lot of speculation about what will be announced (as I mentioned yesterday). A lot of industry insiders that I spoke to last night don’t think that Facebook will be making any massive announcements today and will instead be discussing the benefits of the new redesign, announcing five winners of the first FB Fund and talking about Facebook Connect.
Others are hoping for big announcements that will help transform the businesses that they have spent the past year developing on the Facebook platform. A little over one year ago, Facebook announced the launch of the platform and now we have a mini-industry built around it. Just last night, Zynga gaming network announced that they had raised $29 million, led by Kleiner Perkins. Nobody knows what they’ll be doing with their massive war chest but they are now officially a serious force to be reckoned with.
As more funding pours into Facebook application companies, the industry awaits to see what is announced today. With all the anticipation, something big has to come out of this event. If you haven’t noticed, there is something else that has been attracting developer attention: the iPhone. While the iPhone doesn’t currently have the user base that Facebook has, the potential offered by mobile is something that no entrepreneur can ignore.
Whether or not big news comes out of f8 today, we will be providing up to the minute news about what is going on. If we don’t have it, chances are good that it simply isn’t happening! Stay tuned throughout the day for updates on what’s going on.
Mark Zuckerberg, Benjamin Link and Chamath are available for questions. Mike Arrington first asks when they plan on launching the payment platform. Mark Zuckerberg reponds “I wish I knew.” Eric Eldon of Venturebeat asks about how they are selecting applications which they end up shutting down. According to Ben Ling it is based on a history of violations. Jesse Stay asks, “When can we start working with the iphone integration?” Robert Scoble asks about improvements to the messaging capabilities. Mark Zuckerberg says they will.
Someone from InternetNews.com asks “How does Facebook make money?” Mark Zuckerberg says that they aren’t currently focused on monetization and instead are focused on building out the platform and reach. Mark Zuckerberg gives a relatively non-answer to one of the questions and says he says there will be a decentralization.
Journalist from Forbes asks whether or not Facebook will be joining OpenSocial. Mark Zuckerberg says he’ll comment on that when they have something to say. The Forbes journalist asks a question about Facebook’s actions against clone sites. A Facebook communications person says they are not supportive of imitation but instead innovation. Vasanth from Alley Insider asks about the Open Web Foundation. ABC7 asks about whether or not they see Facebook moving further into business networking. Mark Zuckerberg says that applications will eventually help people share in a business context as well.
Someone from Vator.tv asks if they plan on taking a cut of any virtual goods revenue coming through the site. Mark Zuckerberg says all of the questions regarding monetization says that they haven’t figure out the optimal way yet. Scoble asks if we are going to see a significant increase in the number of things that can be imported into the site. Mark says they will be adding to that over time. Robert Scoble follow-up with a question about something related to data swapping inside and outside of Facebook but Zuckerberg doesn’t seem to understand.
Today’s f8 was one marked by hype, speculation and confirmation of news which had been written about for the past few weeks. Just over one year ago Facebook announced their platform and today they announced that they are extending it to the web. Last year there weren’t as many attendees at f8 and there wasn’t a mini-industry of companies vying for attendees’ attention. It was a bunch of people that took a risk and decided to launch applications and try to build businesses.
It was the event which inspired me to launch this blog and while I wasn’t at the first one, I think a little piece of all of us covering the space hoped that something big would come out of f8 today. By no means is it right to downplay the changes that have been made. For the first time we saw the potential of applications that truly benefit the users. Visual Bookshelf was demoed with some great capabilities including the ability to interact with an application on a user’s profile without having to add the application.
We also saw samples of Facebook Connect in action. Will other sites embrace the new service? Potentially, but now it is completely left to the market to decide the fate of Connect and competing offerings. The crazy entrepreneurs that set up businesses just over one year ago continue to push forward with building out their businesses. What their businesses are in the long-term isn’t really known but they will continue to push on.
At f8 you have everybody from individual developers to sizable businesses with large coffers stuffed by venture capitalists. There were small developers that have been pushed to the limits on resources and the reality is beginning to set in that they are locked into the Facebook platform. While the next shiny object (the iPhone) is gaining their attention, it is unfortunately out of reach for many. This year around there are even mature businesses that have been in the internet space for years but are just now entering the Facebook market.
Developers and entrepreneurs came from around the globe to hear what revolutionary new product or service Mark Zuckerberg would be announcing. Unfortunately this time around it wasn’t a new platform that’s ready for launch, providing new businesses with millions of new users. Instead we found a more cautious and more wise company that is now focused on improving the overall experience for users. For many of us (myself included), I think that the reality set in that you can’t revolutionize industries once a year.
It takes time to build businesses and while starting is quick, expanding is not as easy and takes a lot of hard work. Even for Facebook it sounds like they aren’t sure what the future holds. From the tone of Mark Zuckerberg after the keynote, the payment system appears anything but certain. I can understand their concern. Does Facebook want to have a payment system which is simply used to build a virtual gifts economy?
There are a lot of uncertainties and complete unknowns at this point. One thing is clear though: most of the people at f8 today are along for the ride and the ride is not going to be a short one.
This month is one of anticipation. The first full week of July is the week that everybody is waiting for the new iPhone to be released. With the new iPhone application directory preparing to be launched, the device is set to transform the social web as well as mobile gaming. Within weeks there is another event that many in this industry are anticipating: f8. Last year’s event helped spawn an entire industry around social applications.
This year is expected to a pretty big one as well. Many are now speculating what will be announced at the upcoming f8 event. So far there appears to be three large things to come out of the event.
1. Launch of Facebook Connect
Facebook recently announced their Facebook Connect service which extends the Facebook platform to the entire web. MySpace was the first to launch a similar service but little buzz has been generated since the launch more than a week ago. I see a huge potential for the new Facebook Connect service and I expect a lot of external websites to start using the service. Simply put, not all activities on the web can happen in Facebook and that’s why Facebook Connect is being launched: to make the whole web more social.
2. Launch of Facebook Payment Platform
While Facebook has made no promises about this launching at f8, most of us are expecting it. I have even suggested that the payment platform will be Facebook’s answer to the monetization problem, helping them to boost their valuation overnight. Also, if their payment platform is as easy to develop with as the application platform, there’s a great chance that it will be a huge hit with developers.
3. Updated Mobile Platform
The iPhone launches this week and while there is a lot of buzz about the new applications, many have been wondering why Facebook doesn’t have a better mobile platform. While there are currently ways to build mobile applications, it is simply not as easy or enjoyable to develop as the Facebook general platform is. Jesse Stay speculates about a new mobile platform release. I know for a fact that Facebook has been working on an updated iPhone offering but I don’t know how robust that new offering is yet. I have a feeling that we’ll learn more at the f8 announcement.
If you’ve been paying attention over the past few months, there has been a lot of conversation about the monetization of social networks and a discussion about lack of revenue. I figured that this would provide a great opportunity to put together a conference strictly on this topic. We will seek answers to important questions that media buyers and social technology executives face on a daily basis.
We will also work to help define how these parties can work together to develop more mutually beneficial relationships which will help drive the industry forward. We have already begun planning and have lined up some excellent speakers which we will begin announcing in the next week or so. The event is currently planned for September 15th in New York City.
We picked New York City since it is the center of global advertising and following discussions with some of our sponsors we determined that this would be the best place. This event is invite only so if you are looking to attend but have not received an invite, please let us know of your interest by filling out the invite request form.
Also, to keep up to date on what is taking place related to the summit visit the Social Ad Summit website. Over the coming weeks we will begin making some exciting announcements about speakers and sponsors. If there is a speaker that you’d like to see please send an email to socialadsummit@gmail.com.
Last night Facebook announced that registration for the upcoming F8 event in San Francisco is now opened. The event currently costs $150 at an early bird rate and $50 for students. Here is the schedule that Facebook posted for the event on the F8 registration page:
12:00-2:00PM Registration/Partner Pavilion Open
2:00-3:00PM Keynote by Mark Zuckerberg, Founder/CEO
3:30-4:15PM Breakouts: Set I
4:30-5:15PM Breakouts: Set II
5:15-6:00PM Reception
6:00-6:45PM Breakouts: Set III
7:00-7:45PM Breakouts: Set IV
7:45-8:00PM Closing Remarks
I will be flying out to attend the event as to see what Facebook will be announcing as well as what developers cook up during the hackathon. Facebook announced their platform at last year’s F8 and it is highly expected that Facebook will announce their e-commerce platform as well as potentially release Facebook Connect. If last year’s event was any indication of what will follow, this event could very well be transformative for the social networking industry.
Benjamin Ling of Facebook is currently speaking at the Graphing Social Patterns conference. I hate to be overly critical of Facebook but as usual the presentation displays nothing new. Benjamin is giving an overview their new profiles and how the wall is different. I’m not quite sure why Ben called this a “sneak preview” because it definitely isn’t. Ben is going over how many applications, application developers and number of users engaging with applications are on Facebook.
Ben is going over how they are trying to “remove friction” on Facebook. They are trying to make it so you can write an application once and use it everywhere. This can be done via Facebook’s licensing model. This licensing platform was announced back in January the same day that the Bebo platform launched. Ben is going over other things that have already been covered on this website including partnerships they’ve made with Joyent and Amazon.
Ben is now pitching usage of the developers marketplace. Following this, Ben is discussing the mult-language capabilities now available on the platform. He is mentioning how they are in Spanish. I actually wrote about how they launched German on Saturday. Now Ben is discussing how to leverage the social graph. I can’t describe how rehearsed this presentation sounds (just a side note). They have a really pretty visualization on the screen showing how people are connected via the social graph.
Ben is now going over what is usually brought up by all Facebook presentations: they have the largest photo application in the world. Sometimes I wonder if Facebook’s PR firm creates these presentations. Ben is now discussing how they are going to add Facebook payment services. This has been rumored to launch during the first quarter this year. Applications will be able to access the same payment system that is used for purchasing gifts on Facebook.
The next topic discussion is spammy applications. He discussed how they have decided to remove forced invites and displays a screenshot for reporting. He is emphasizing that people should be building high value applications such as the Visual Bookshelf application that has been created by the D.C. company, Hungry Machine. That’s the end of the presentation. It was well rehearsed and the powerpoint presentation was phenomenal!
As you’ve probably noticed, my blogging has taken a hit over the past week. I’ve been at Graphing Social Patterns and I’ll be at SXSW for the next week. I’ll be posting regularly on The Social Times with liveblogging and video coverage. I will also be liveblogging Mark Zuckerberg on Sunday on this site and posting a copy of the video soon after.
I will be back to regularly scheduled posts later in the week and I will definitely have any breaking news updated on this site. If you are going to down in Austin at the event please feel free to give me a shout. The easiest way is through my Twitter account but you can also shoot me an email that’s on our contact page.
I’m watching the Boulder Facebook Developer Garage live right now. If you are interested, check it out below. Thanks to Kevin Cawley for posting it.
Want a new free iPhone? If you are a developer attending the Graphing Social Patters conference there is a free 3G iPhone waiting for you. While I don’t have one on hand (since it isn’t in stores yet), we hope to have one at next week’s event. There will be a private event being held for developers attending the event. If you would like to attend there is a 20 percent discount code for AllFacebook readers: gspe08nof. Additionally, Dave McClure is offering developers who enter their apps in the GSP AppNite Live Demo contest 50% off normal registration.
The event is next week and is sure to be a blast. If you plan on coming, are a developer building social applications and would like a shot at the free iPhone, send an email to allfacebook [aT] gmail [DoT] com with your name, email address, phone number and links to applications that you have built on the platform. This offer is for developers only. Otherwise, if you are attending GSP East there will be a number of other events going on as well that will provide a great opportunity to network.
There is an awesome lineup of speakers at the event. I will also be there to moderate a panel on building engaging social applications. There will be representatives from Google, Facebook, MySpace, RockYou, LinkedIn, Clearspring, Buddy Media and a number of other companies. Don’t miss it!