Facebook Establishes Foothold in Virtual Goods Industry. The following commentary comes from an independent investor or market observer as part of TheStreet's guest contributor program, which is separate from the company's news coverage. NEW YORK (Trefis) -- Facebook, the largest social network in the world with over 850 million users, is making a big push into the virtual goods industry. Up to now, text and display advertising is its most valuable business, accounting for a major portion of its revenue.
However, revenue from transactions related to virtual goods has become an important revenue stream for Facebook, which offers a virtual currency called Facebook Credits that can be used to conduct economic transactions on Facebook. It takes a 30% cut off all such transactions on its network. Since the virtual goods industry is expected to expand rapidly in the coming years, we expect Facebook to generate increasing amounts of revenue from Facebook Credits. Check out our complete analysis of Facebook here. Like our charts? Facebook Expands Timeline App Vocabulary With 'Action Links' - Mike Isaac - Social. Dollars, Sense, And 40 Billion Facebook Credits. Facebook Adds Action Links To Timeline.
Tranform[R] by Nurun. Le succès du Social Gaming en infographie. Facebook and Zynga Enter Into Five Year Strategic Relationship. Facebook and Zynga announced today that they have entered into a five-year strategic relationship that increases the use of Facebook Credits in Zynga’s social games. This is clearly a message that the two companies are planning a future together based on Facebook’s up and coming Credits currency. Unfortunately the two companies are not disclosing any details about the new partnership. I imagine this is to assure people that Zynga is not planning to make any drastic moves to separate from Facebook, although the press release does not refer to anything about where the games live. Certainly, a five year strategic deal is important for Zynga, who had been rumored to be separating from Facebook.
“Facebook was a pioneer in opening their platform in 2007 and in just three years tens of millions of Facebook users play our games every day, from FarmVille and Café World to Treasure Isle and Mafia Wars,” said Mark Pincus, founder and chief executive officer at Zynga. Le "Facebook chinois" lance sa carte de crédit. Jouer les passerelles entre le Web et le monde réel ?
Groupon et Foursquare le font très bien. En Chine, le réseau social Renren (adoubé ici-bas du surnom de "Facebook chinois") a décidé de pousser le "web-to-shop" encore plus loin. Le site lance sa propre carte de crédit, en partenariat avec la China Merchants Bank. L'offre "sociale" de cette carte rappelle le partenariat que Foursquare a récemment noué avec American Express : 10 000 marchands sont partenaires du programme de géolocalisation de Renren.
Cela permet aux internautes qui disposent de la carte de faire un "check-in" depuis le service de géolocalisation de Renren puis de recevoir les promotions des partenaires qui sont à proximité. Pour la banque, ce partenariat est l'occasion de toucher un public jeune. Le patron de Renren, Joseph Chen, a lui expliqué : "les réseaux sociaux entrent de plus en plus dans de nombreux aspects de la vie des gens. (...)
Facebook VP Chris Cox On The Company’s Past, Future, And Recipe. Today to close out its f8 developer conference, Facebook VP of Product Chris Cox took the stage to talk about the evolution of Facebook over the last six years, and how the company’s core principles have largely remained the same. During his presentation, Cox recounted Facebook’s early days, when the site’s profile photos were often of keg stands, and there weren’t Events, Facebook Chat, or even Photos (though you could see if your friends were logging in from a campus dorm — remember that?). Cox detailed how the then-small group of around ten engineers would watch how users were abusing existing features — like creating a personal profile for a fraternity, or, later, a Group for an Event — and implemented new features accordingly.
Through it all, he says Facebook’s recipe for success was the same: The products were simpleThey’re people-centricThe products were Hacks. Cox also discussed the future outlook of Facebook and the web. Médias & Publicité : Facebook étend son emprise sur. Plusieurs annonces sont attendues ce mercredi lors de la conférence de développeurs organisée par le réseau social, qui est en train de créer un index parallèle de l'Internet grâce à ses utilisateurs. Sans avoir l'air d'y toucher, Facebook est en train de mettre le Web sous sa coupe. Ce mardi, le réseau social a porté un premier coup à l'encyclopédie collaborative Wikipédia en annonçant le lancement d'un nouveau service appelé «Pages Communauté».
Il consiste à mettre en réseau les membres du site qui partagent un centre d'intérêt -par exemple la cuisine- en les associant à une «page» dédiée au sujet. Celle-ci centralisera les contenus publiés à ce sujet sur Facebook. «Notre but à long terme est d'en faire la meilleure collection de savoirs partagés sur un sujet», s'enthousiasme Facebook sur son blog officiel. Les observateurs attendent maintenant l'étape suivante : la mise en service de l'«Open Graph API». Google bousculé. Facebook Announces Plan To Infiltrate The Entire Web. Facebook about to launch Actions, the final piece of its plan for frictionless sharing. Connect with leaders from the companies in this story, in real life: Come to the fourth annual VentureBeat Mobile Summit April 14-15 in Sausalito, Calif. Request an invitation. Facebook’s ambitious plan to weave various actions we take across the web into the social network via “frictionless” sharing is finally ready to be deployed, VentureBeat has learned.
The remaining pieces of Facebook’s new Open Graph are in the final stages of testing and are nearing release, a source familiar with the matter told VentureBeat. The social networking company is quickly working to validate partners and could turn on the latest element, Facebook Actions, any day now or, at the most, in a few weeks, the source said. The new Open Graph, unveiled at Facebook’s f8 developer conference in September, consists of three key elements: Timeline, Ticker and Actions.
“We’re currently focused on the rollout of Timeline, which already features several apps in the news, music and video categories. Facebook and The Emergence of the Socially-Validated Web | Brigh. Today Facebook rolled out the Open Graph and their new set of Social Plugins at the f8 conference in San Francisco. As you will see later on on in this post, we believe this is a massively important innovation for the Web and we’re happy to be one of the launch partners that Facebook has been working with.
We have created a way for Brightcove online video platform customers to quickly embed the Facebook Social Plug-Ins, such as the “Like” button and the “Recommendation” plug-in into their Brightcove video players using BEML. See "Facebook Open Graph Social Plugins in Brightcove Players" in the Brightcove Developer Center for a tutorial of how to do this. Having this functionality implemented in the player itself is both important and cool because it means that the social plug-ins travel with the video content wherever it goes.
If an end-user grabs the embed code and puts it their blog, the social plug-ins will be there. U.S. So does socially recommended video get watched? Facebook Presence - nearly a step into location services | Media. The tune Facebook chose to play at the end of Mark Zuckerberg's speech today said it all: Coldplay's 'When I Rule the World'. While Coldplay doesn't have much of a chance ruling anything, Facebook might be onto something. The annual F8 developer conference has become the event when the founder and chief executive takes to the stage and (generally) delights developers by revealing the most major and strategic improvements to the site. He also talks about the 'social graph' a lot. Much of today's announcements were leaked before the event, but there was something interesting kept under wraps; Facebook Presence.
This was presented as a bit of a gimmick to the developers and journalists at F8, giving each of them a Facebook RFID tag that they could use to 'check-in' at points around the conference venue. Those check-ins would give them access to a certain Facebook page or a photobooth. Sound familiar? Photo by _M-j-H_ on Flickr. Facebook Adds More Activity and Sponsored Stories to Ticker. Facebook Adds More Activity and Sponsored Stories to Ticker Facebook updated its Ticker over the weekend to allow posts from more types of user activity and Sponsored Stories. These additions turn Ticker’s automatic-content stream feature into a more lively activity hub on the home page.
It seemed that Sponsored Stories would eventually appear in the site-wide Ticker after Facebook mixed condensed Sponsored Sponsored stories into the games App Ticker in August. The activity update (like the addition of Open Graph Likes to the Ticker), meanwhile, seems a bit surprising as users could already see the Likes and Comments on Stories in the News Feed and could view them on Ticker stories by mousing over the Story to generate a popover window (see screenshot below). Both changes come as a boon to advertisers looking increase the story activity related to their brands.
Mediabistro Course Hands-On Social Media Training for Beginners. Hey Facebook, Where's That Timeline and Open Graph You Promised? - Liz Gannes - Social. Two and a half months after Facebook promised that a huge revision of its self-expression and sharing tools were coming soon, users and developers are still waiting. Way back in September, Facebook told the world it was launching two major changes to its service: A revision of user profiles, called Timeline, that would make them more substantive and beautiful records of people’s lives; and “Open Graph” tools for developers to automatically share activity by logged-in Facebook users to their Timelines and friends.
Facebook didn’t give a firm date for the new launches, though it indicated they would be ready soon. “We’re going to roll [Timeline] out widely over the next few weeks as we polish all the edges,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told developers and press attendees in his keynote at f8 on Sept. 22. But we’re already in December, and those tools have yet to arrive. Why the delay? Facebook To Launch A Subscribe Button For Websites.
Facebook subscriptions are about to blow up! At Le Web, Joanna Shields, VP and Managing Director for Facebook Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), announced that the company is planning to roll out a “Subscribe” plugin for all websites. The plugin will allow a website’s visitors a one-click way to begin following all of the news from an individual reporter, public figure, politician, celebrity, or anyone else who wants to post public updates via their Facebook user profile. You may recall that Facebook launched its “subscriptions” feature earlier this fall at its annual f8 conference. The button, available as an optional addition to your Facebook user profile, introduced a Twitter-like functionality to the social networking service.
It introduced one-way friendships (at last!) Where a user could follow someone, like a public figure, celebrity, politician, journalist, etc., without that person having to “friend” the subscriber in return. Facebook Testing ‘Suggested Events’ Based on Pages and Places. Facebook Testing ‘Suggested Events’ Based on Pages and Places Some users are seeing a “Suggested Events” feature that recommends events based on pages they like and places they’ve been, as first reported by TechCrunch.
This replaces and expands upon the “Friends’ Events” section that listed events to which others had RSVP’d. [Update 12/23/11 10:45 a.m. PST: We have learned Suggested Events also includes recommendations based on artists users have listened to.] Suggested Events is an example of how Facebook can leverage data beyond the social graph, connecting users to things based on interest and location as well.
For example, in the past users might have been shown an event listing for a concert that their friend is attending. The problem with Suggested Events in its current iteration is that users are unlikely to find it on their own. We’ve seen the social network making other changes to Events in the past two months to make the product more relevant to users. Sponsored Post. Facebook To Launch ‘Relationships’ At f8, Teams With Zynga To Sp.
Later this month Facebook is holding its f8 conference, where it will be launching a slew of new features (we’ve already broken the news on quite a few of them). Tonight, the company has written a blog post announcing what is perhaps the most ambitious and creepy of them all: Facebook is looking to get into the dating game, and it’s turning to Zynga for help. The gist of the new product? Dubbed ‘Relationships’, Facebook is going to soon offer a section of the site dedicated to helping users meet potential romantic partners. To do that, the company has been working with Zynga over the last four months to develop games that “synthesize romance and foster relationships through social gaming mechanics”, helping users flirt and get to know each other using Farmville-like games to help break the ice.
The site appears to be broken up into three sections: at the top is a section for ‘Flirts’, which displays the Facebook friends you’ve been interacting with most. The 6.8 Project. Facebook pages for artists now include ‘listen’ button. Facebook pages for artists now include ‘listen’ button Facebook has implemented a “listen” button on artists’ fan pages that lets users instantly stream songs from an artist’s catalog. The button, which sits between options to Like and message the page below an artist’s cover photo, plays music using whichever Facebook-connected streaming service a person uses most frequently. Users can play and pause a song with the button, but they have to visit the streaming service to skip to the next song or fast forward through a track. The feature will help users sample music when they visit an artist page for the first time and could help make Facebook a go-to option for people looking for new music, similar to how many people used MySpace in its heyday.
Facebook’s new listen button isn’t the only way users can play music instantly from the site. Currently, most users visit the site to see what friends are saying or to share something about themselves. Mediabistro Course.