Facebook platform news: PMD Adquant offers support for newest mobile ad units

Facebook recently announced mobile engagement ads, video app install ads and the ability to bid on ads using cost per action. Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer Adquant (formerly Adotomi) is staying right with the social network, announcing support for these new ad units.

Adquant updated their mobile advertising offerings to make sure clients have all they need to succeed with these new advertising options. The new ad units debuted by Facebook allow developers to showcase their app through a video, as well as prompt users who already have the app downloaded to return.

Adquant CEO Joe McCormack announced this update in a press release:

We originally built Adquant to serve our internal needs as a game and mobile advertising agency.  We know how important these improvements are to our customers, which is why we worked around the clock to support them as quickly as possible.

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Facebook platform industry hires: Offerpop

Offerpop, a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer in apps, recently announced a round of talented new hires. Offerpop drew from Patch.com (an AOL company), ExactTarget and Oracle, among others.

Here’s the full list of new hires by Offerpop:

Martha Woldu, Recruiting Coordinator, former Recruiting Coordinator at Patch.comKevin Bobowski, VP of Marketing, former VP of Product & Marketing Solution at ExactTargetDaniel Lara, Assistant Marketing Manager, former Client Relations Manager at Alternative StrategiesDavid Yourgrauu, Corporate Sales Executive, former Regional Sales Executive at SCVNGR/LevelUpNicole Konover, Corporate Sales Executive, former Marketing Coordinator for TOMSCorinne Liebrich, Account Executive, former Account Director for AquentCatherine Coppinger, Business Development RepresentativeMichelle Lerner, Sr. Account Manager, former Social Strategic Partnerships Consultant at OracleJoe Schettini, Junior Designer, former Marketing Coordinator at Primary Systems Inc.Joe Friedl, Sr. Developer, former Associate Software Engineer at Dealertrack TechnologiesRobert Lum, Jr. Front End Developer, former Junior Web Designer at StructuredWeb

Companies who want their new hires included in the post must contact us directly at justin.lafferty (at) insidenetwork.com. Must be a Facebook PMD or Facebook Strategic PMD to be included.

Image courtesy of Offerpop’s Facebook page.

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Facebook platform news: PMD Adotomi rebrands, becomes Adquant

Adotomi, a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer in ads, announced that they have gone through a rebranding and will now be known as Adquant.

Tel Aviv-based Adotomi opened in 2007 and was one of the first companies to earn the Facebook PMD badge in 2009. Adquant will be focused on developing the technology launched by Adotomi, fueled by the concept of “holistic optimization,” which animates workflows and improves the performance of large-scale social ad campaigns. The company has handled Facebook campaigns for major companies such as Wix, SodaStream, Nissan and Konami, among others.

Adquant CEO Joe McCormack explained the rebranding:

Today we embark upon the Adquant brand because the company is now solely focused on bringing you the best technology available in the marketplace.

You might be asking why Adquant? The Adquant name tells our story. This first part “ad” highlights our devotion to advertising technology. The second part “quant” reflects our approach to technology. We believe in quantifiable results driven by a technology that is built on quantitative algorithmic optimization. Basically we focus on the numbers to get you the best results.

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Facebook reportedly testing mobile payment platform

In what AllThingsD calls a potential PayPal competitor, the site reported that Facebook is testing a mobile payment platform that would allow users to make purchases on mobile apps, using Facebook as their login mechanism.

If you’ve already provided Facebook with your credit card information, such as through a Facebook Gifts purchase or games payment, that would be stored and used during a purchase on a separate mobile app. Facebook confirmed the test to AllThingsD, noting that it should arrive in the next month or so.

Doing this would allow for a seamless purchase experience, where the user does not have to enter credit card information. As Facebook is the dominant social login utility, this would definitely be a competitor for PayPal on mobile. For many apps, when you make a purchase for the first time, the customer has to take out their credit card and enter in the numbers — adding complication and a potential roadblock.

According to AllThingsD, JackThreads (a shopping site aimed at young men) is the pilot partner for this mobile payment platform. The site points out that JackThreads already has a great relationship with Facebook and sees a significant portion of revenue coming from mobile.

In a statement provided to AllThingsD, Facebook said that this test is simply aimed at making it easier for app partners to facilitate conversions:

We continue to have a great relationship with PayPal, and this product is simply to test how we can help our app partners provide a simpler commerce experience. This test does not involve moving the payment processing away from an app’s current provider.

Readers: How do you feel about using Facebook as the login mechanism for mobile payments?

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What does Facebook’s potential mobile payment platform mean for businesses & consumers?

Ever see your friends’ birthdays appear in your Facebook notifications … and then see an offer to buy a Starbucks card as a gift?

You know how simple that is to do, right?  Just select the gift, choose the amount, and send it off.  Voila … instant transaction (even if you’re on a mobile phone) … and the payment was accomplished by one click.  No need to enter in your credit card info again, as Facebook already has that on record.

Facebook may be offering you the same easy ability to purchase goods via your wireless device.

Here’s how this idea works.  Think about buying something now from your mobile phone.  Often, you would have to type in your credit card number on your phone (something that discourages instant gratification due to the tiny numbers and extra effort).

What Facebook will potentially offer is a button that lets you tell Facebook to input the billing information that you already gave Facebook from buying gifts or paying games.

Your payment will be processed via the original payment processor the application originally used.

Facebook merely filled in the information and made it possible for a one-click purchase.

Talk about a time-saver!

But let’s take that a step further.

Think about Facebook’s stake in mobile advertising.  Let’s say that it currently charges an advertiser 14 cents per click … but that click leads to a $37 purchase online.

Facebook can now tell the advertiser that their investment is delivering profit to them. Profit – it’s what every business wants!

One thing to keep in mind – it was earlier reported that Facebook was looking to compete with PayPal. Not so! Why bother compete when you can maximize the benefits of each service instead?

So what does that mean for you as a consumer or you as a business?

The more data Facebook can gather from online transactions…the more data they can provide advertisers that their expenditures are making them money in the long run.

And customers get the benefit from a 1 click simplicity that allows them to buy even more.

Truly a win win for all involved – Facebook, businesses that advertise, and consumers.

Yet again, it’s more privacy that goes bye-bye into the distance, waving forlornly back.

I’d bet the majority of consumers would be quite willing to buy into it, how about you?

Barbara Ling is a 17-plus year veteran marketing entrepreneur, currently specializing in teaching others how to build a viral fanbase/community online using Facebook, Pinterest, blogging, coffee (lots of coffee, or maybe tea if that’s your preference) and more! See her Google Profile here!

Image courtesy of Shutterstock. 

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Facebook platform industry hires: Adaptly, Brand Networks

Two Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developers recently announced major hires: Brand Networks and Adaptly.

Brand Networks, a Strategic PMD in all four fields, added Anthony Green, the former Vice President of Development at Facebook PMD Optimal. Green will join Brand Networks as a Senior Vice President of New Business, driving growth into new markets and verticals. Prior to working for Optimal, Green co-founded Concep, a global B2B marketing technology provider.

The company has also hired Jeff Madison, the former Chief Operating Officer of Sparkart Group. He will become Brand Networks’ Vice President of Client Services, where he will grow the account management team to provide improved customer service. With Sparkart, he was responsible for the company’s day-to-day operations, working with major entertainment brands such as Bon Jovi, The Killers, America’s Cup and the UFC.

Brand Networks CEO Jamie Tedford commented on the new hires:

It’s an exhilarating time for digital marketers, as social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn blaze new advertising trails with continued innovation and steady growth. With our Social Marketing Stack, we help the largest brands in the world centralize and simplify their social efforts, empowering responsive social marketing at scale. We are cultivating a team primed to be a driving force as the social marketing space continues to expand and we are excited for the next phase with leaders like Anthony and Jeff.

Adaptly, a Strategic PMD in ads and insights, added JP Lester as its Chief Technology Officer. Prior to joining Adaptly, Lester was the CTO of Sony’s Digital Audio Disk Corporation group, leading a global engineering team.

Lester has built a stellar career in the music field, as one of the co-founders of TuneTo.com, which was acquired by Listen.com. After the acquisition, he was instrumental in the creation of Rhapsody, the world’s first legal on-demand music streaming service featuring content from all five major record labels.

Nikhil Sethi, Adaptly’s Co-Founder and CEO, commented to Inside Facebook about the hire:

We’re excited to have JP Lester join the Adaptly team as CTO. … We look forward to the impact that he will have at Adaptly that will take our engineering excellence to a whole new level.

Companies who want their new hires included in the post must contact us directly at justin.lafferty (at) insidenetwork.com. Must be a Facebook PMD or Facebook Strategic PMD to be included.

Images courtesy of Brand Networks and Adaptly Facebook pages.

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Facebook platform industry update: Glow raises $1.3M; Offerpop makes hires

Glow Digital Media, a Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer specializing in ads, today announced it has closed $1.3 million in seed funding.

The U.K. company also announced that it is expanding to the U.S. by opening an office in Los Angeles.

With its social ad platform Glow Machine, Glow was named one of 12 Strategic PMDs in September 2012. SPMDs get access to Facebook alpha and beta products, as well as more support from Facebook’s business, product and engineering teams. Glow says it has more than 80 brands and agencies as clients, including King.com, Blue Ant Media, Bacardi, Kraft and Mercedes Benz.

Platform Industry Hires

Offerpop picked up a director of sales, director of client services, two senior developers and  a business development representative.

P.J. Franovic, Sales Director - former Manager of Inside Sales at Gilt City.Phil Rosen, Senior Developer - former Lead Developer and Co-founder at Media AMP.Manisha Shah, Director of Client Services – former Director of Client Services at Experian CheetahMail.Tim Shilstone, Business Development Representative - former Business Development Intern at Bala Real Estate.Adam Pan, Senior Developer - former Senior Software Engineer at Nexus Research Intelligence Inc.

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Facebook platform industry news: Adobe, Wildfire

Adobe

Adobe, a Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer, revealed Facebook Exchange results from its cross-channel ad platform, the Adobe Media Optimizer. It shared that its average CPC is up to 40 percent below the average of all real-time bidded ad supply sources supported by Adobe. One customer reported 50 percent lower cost per registration driven by Facebook Exchange, but cost and reached only a tenth of the of the size a concurrently running search campaign. Adobe’s closed with the indication that its FBX ads can help to convert on search ads at a later time.

Wildfire

Google has announced plans to integrate Wildfire into the DoubleClick platform. The DoubleClick platform is a unified platform put in place to help advertisers and agencies manage the entire breadth of their digital marketing efforts. It provides ad management and ad serving tools. its intention is to help marketers better understand how ad spend is being used. Because, currently, the tool does not have access to Facebook or other social platforms, reporting will be displayed on an aggregated basis. This means that marketers won’t be able to tie a Facebook post’s impression to a display ad click, but will need to correlate the compiled results. With Google’s acquisition of Wildfire, it is continuously looking for solutions to provide a seamless package for managing all online advertising.

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Facebook careers: platform hires, intellectual property, logistics and more

Facebook has removed 18 job listings from its careers page appearing to have made hires in for localization project managers and other miscellaneous positions.

Partner Manager, Preferred Marketing Developer Program (Menlo Park)Localization Project Manager (Contract) (Menlo Park)Localization Project Manager (Menlo Park)Product Manager (Menlo Park)Administrative Assistant, Mobile Partner Management (Menlo Park)Logistics Program Manager, Asset Management (Menlo Park)Partner Manager, Preferred Marketing Developer Program (Menlo Park)Data Analyst, Latin America (São Paulo)User and Client Support Analyst, Latin America – Spanish Speaker (São Paulo)Intellectual Property Analyst, User Operations, German (Dublin)Intellectual Property Associate, User Operations (Menlo Park)Agency Partner, Russian (Warsaw) (Warsaw)Administrative Assistant (Contract) (Singapore)Account Manager, Global Marketing Solutions (Gaming) (Menlo Park)Client Partner, Finance (New York)Performance (Direct Response) Sales Trainer (Menlo Park)Data Analyst, Content Operations (Menlo Park)Analyst, Vertical Measurement – Financial Services / Automotive (Menlo Park)

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Facebook platform industry news: AdRoll, iNvolved Media, Moontoast and SHIFT

Retargeting platform AdRoll announced today that it has added the option for advertisers to run self-serve Facebook Exchange retargeting ads in the News Feed. Facebook made this inventory available to Qualified DSPs, including AdRoll, earlier this month. Previously, AdRoll and other companies could only run FBX ads in the right hand sidebar of Facebook.com, but now they can bid on desktop News Feed placement. AdRoll says early tests show clickthrough rates in the single-digit percentages for News Feed, as opposed to fractions of percent in the sidebar. Unlike other retargeting ads, retargeted News Feed ads incorporate Facebook’s share, comment, and like functionalities, which leads to additional engagement and viral potential. An example of a News Feed FBX ad is below. AdRoll is actually running FBX ads retargeting visitors to its own site.

iNvolved Media

Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer iNvolved Media this week announced a new interactive video unit to run across social, mobile and web content.  The Video StoryEngine, as it’s called, allows companies to to add a video layer to their premium media placements, including in the Facebook News Feed. Speed Stick used the technology for its Super Bowl spot, running an interactive, gamified version across more than 500 sports sites and within the Facebook News Feed that day. Hundreds of thousands of people engaged with Video StoryEngine’s trivia game. Other tests show Video StoryEngine leads to increases in recall, response, sharing, Likes and comments compared to videos that are not delivered through the new platform. Video StoryEngine is available with CPCV or CPE pricing, with clients paying only when viewers watch thirty seconds or engage with the brand’s interactive video.

Moontoast/SHIFT

Mobile rich media ad provider Moontoast today announced a strategic partnership with SHIFT, a collaboration platform for marketers and agencies. Moontoast will integrate with SHIFT’s Open Marketing Cloud, a suite of applications from partners covering media buying, community management, social promotions, analytics and more. The integration will give advertisers a way create, post and amplify social rich media ad units in the Facebook News Feed from within the SHIFT platform. Both companies are Facebook Preferred Marketing Developers that have forged partnerships with a number of PMDs and other advertising platforms.

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6 years since Facebook Platform launch, company looks to provide new app services

Today marks the six-year anniversary of the Facebook Platform, something that has been defining for Facebook as a company and already influenced a number of industries.

Now, Facebook is making its next big moves for the platform by introducing app services — new tools for developers that make it easier to build applications that span different devices and put users at the forefront. This is seen most clearly with the acquisition of Parse, a mobile backend as a service company, which will continue as a separate brand with a freemium services model for the time being. Facebook also recently hired the team behind Spaceport, a cross-platform development framework, and stealth software startup Osmeta, which was reportedly working on something related to enabling simpler development across devices.

“We’ve been thinking about how we can provide tools to developers to enable a more cross-platform world,” Facebook Director of Developer Products Doug Purdy said at a media “whiteboard” session Thursday. “We’re trying to create a platform that developers can build something that spans over devices and makes people the center. Regardless of the device that you or your friends are on, everyone can have a rich experience.”

Facebook Platform began on May 24, 2007, as a way for anyone to build applications that live within Facebook and take advantage of social features like friend lists, Wall posts and News Feed. Facebook had seen incredible success with its own Photos app, which did not offer high resolution photos or advanced editing features like other popular photo sharing services. Instead, it simply allowed users to tag their friends and then see other photos by who was in them. The social network saw the potential for a social component to be added to all sorts of experiences that it could not build itself, so it opened a developer platform. Within a week, there were already hundreds of apps on Facebook, including 15 with more than 100,000 users and one with over a million.

Since then, the platform has been expanded to allow applications to live on the web or mobile devices, instead of just on Facebook canvas. The platform also provides Social Plugins, which allow developers and web publishers to add social features to their sites with just a few lines of code. These include the Like button, recommendations bar, comments, activity feed, login button and more. The Open Graph is another major component of the platform, mapping connections between people and objects through actions. Developers can now define their own objects and actions and let users share their activity back to Facebook. These features make Facebook a horizontal platform that can be integrated into any experience, whether it’s on Facebook.com, desktop web, iOS, Android, smart TVs, wearable computers or anything else.

Facebook says now more than 550 million people have personalized experiences on apps and sites each month as a result of platform features such as login and the Like button, and more than 1 billion stories from apps and sites are generated from the platform daily.

By enabling developers to create more apps that exist across devices and platforms, Facebook is looking to secure its position as the identity layer that powers these experiences and the distribution channel that helps them get discovered, organically or through paid advertisements. In the process, these apps continue to build Facebook’s graph of people and the world they live in, providing interesting content for News Feed, valuable information for Graph Search and an unmatched level of data for ad targeting.

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Facebook platform industry hires: HootSuite, Kenshoo, Work4 Labs

Social media management platform HootSuite has a new VP of marketing, Digital marketing software company Kenshoo recently hired a director of marketing research. And Work4 Labs, which builds recruiting applications integrated with Facebook, made a few new hires this month.

HootSuite

Dee Anna McPherson, Vice President of Marketing – former VP of marketing at Yammer

Kenshoo 

Josh Dreller, Director of Marketing Research - former senior director, client and industry solutions at Visual IQ Inc.

Work4 Labs

Robin Richardson, Client Success Manager - former consultant, strategic partnerships and marketing at Fitzgerald Petersen CommunicationsArthur Himmel, Software Engineer Intern - student at Ecole Centrale de LilleRobin Moisson, Software Engineer Intern - student at École Centrale Paris 

We report industry hires each week. Companies that want their new hires included in this post can contact us directly at mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com.

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Facebook platform now encompasses more than 50M pages and 10M apps

More than 50 million pages and 10 million apps are now part of the Facebook platform, according to a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission today.

Facebook provided these updated stats after last reporting 42 million pages and 9 million apps in April. Pages are only counted if they have more than 10 Likes. Apps include those on Facebook.com, as well as websites and mobile applications that use Facebook login or other integrations with the social network.

Along with stats about pages and apps, Facebook provided other updated figures for photo uploads and friend connections in its filing today. On average more than 350 million photos per day were uploaded to Facebook in the fourth quarter of 2012. More than 240 billion photos have been shared on the social network. There were also more than 150 billion friend connections among its more than 1 billion users as of Dec. 31, 2012.

On Wednesday, the company reported that it reached 1.056 billion monthly active users during the fourth quarter of 2012. It also reported that its mobile DAUs have exceeded web DAUs for the first time.

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Chinese SNS Kaixin001’s Open Platform Experiment

Kaixin001 is experimenting with an open platform, inviting select third party developers to participate. Kaixin001 lags behind RenRen and 51.com, but all Chinese social networks are now slowly but surely moving towards openness. Kaixin001 is immensely popular with Chinese white-collar workers, with a total of 25 million daily active users (86 million registrations).

It originally rose to prominence by spamming and its viral social games (Parking Wars and Happy Farm). At its peak Kaixin001’s Happy Farm had 15 million daily active users and still has over 10 million today, according to Hans Tung, a partner at Qinming Venture, which invested in Kaixin001. Although Kaixin001 since refocused on relationships, games are one of the most lucrative monetization channels for social networks.

Kaixin001 opened the platform to 3rd party applications on May 12, 2010. The network did a good job of copying games in-house at first, but as the expectations of users rise, Kaixin001’s offerings look increasingly anemic: its development team is slow (it needed 6 months longer than RenRen to copy Restaurant City by Playfish).

Its new open platform is divided into four sections:

In-house appsThird party appsApplication laboratoryWeb games

1) In-house Apps
Kaixin001 itself has produced 45 applications, of which 9 are games. RenRen is an “open platform,” but continues to develop apps in-house to the chagrin of third party developers. Likewise, Kaixin001 may well continue to develop some apps in-house.

2) Third-party Apps

The newly added 3rd party applications include seven social games and five other applications. Facebook generates huge revenues from 3rd party social game developers (Zynga is the largest advertiser), but Chinese social networks have not yet able to effectively monetize this channel.

RenRen’s contracts stipulate that third party developers cannot place their games on Kaixin001 for at least 6 months after launch on RenRen. Kaixin001 has responded in kind, offering 80% revenue share to developers who sign an “exclusive,” but only 60-70% for others, according to an industry insider. That’s still more generous than RenRen, which offers developers at most 56% revenue share for games that exceed 200,000 daily active users.

For the same game, average revenue per user is 2-3 times higher on Kaixin001 than on RenRen, according to Tung. “We’re quite pleased with the results so far,” said Tung. The ascendancy of Kaixin001’s open platform may create a better bargaining position for Chinese game developers.

3) Application Laboratory
The application laboratory is testing 9 social games and 8 other applications. Only select users and their friends can beta test these games; it appears Kaixin001 intends to retain significant control over the number and quality of applications that are accepted onto its platform.

4) Web Games
All social networks push MMORPGs, the traditional moneymakers in China's gaming industry. RenRen is reportedly generating 3 – 5 million RMB per month through that channel according to Calvin Ng, who runs an MMORPG company. Benjamin Joffe, CEO of the internet market research firm +8*, comments: “This is also why Sohu, Sina, Netease moved to online games. SNS are also great user acquisition channels!”

Kaixin001 generated 100 million RMB in revenues in the first half of 2010 (80% from advertising). If all goes well with its open platform experiment, Kaixin001 will soon be cashing in on new social games as well.

Kai Lukoff is an analyst at BloggerInsight and an editor on China Social Games. Follow Kai on Twitter @klukoff

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Sulake launches API for Habbo Hotel game platform

Sulake today announced it’s opened an API for developers to create games on its Habbo Hotel gaming platform.

The new API provides developers with a means to publish both existing and new games on Habbo Hotel. While devs will still have to run the apps they create on their own servers, the API provides access to Habbo Hotel’s social graph and monetization features. Sulake tells us it usually takes less than a week to use the API to integrate a game onto the platform.

Habbo Hotel has proven a long-running success story for Sulake. The game has over 4 million monthly active users worldwide and is localized in 12 languages; these figures are especially notable because the Habbo Hotel’s marketed towards the oft-overlooked tween audience.

When we last heard from Sulake when we had the opportunity to sit down with CEO Paul LaFontaine at Casual Connect and talk about how Habbo Hotel was recovering after being caught up in a child safety scandal after the U.K.-based Channel 4 News ran a damning report claiming the title was a safe-haven for pedophiles and child molesters. The company’s response was immediate, starting with muting all conversation in the game while long-term safety plans were reviewed. After that, the company allowed users to have input on the future of the game with its “Great Unmute” event and dramatically increasing spending on moderation and user security.

Developers who are interested in the API can visit the official Habbo Hotel developer page, while any questions about the platform and developing for it can be sent to games at sulake dot com.

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LinkedIn takes Facebook approach and opens ad platform to developers

LinkedIn is creating an advertising platform that developers can build upon using an API similar to what Facebook has done to scale its business, according to Adweek.

Similar to Facebook’s Ads API, the LinkedIn Ads API allows developers to create ways for advertisers to start and optimize campaigns more efficiently, for example, automatically generating hundreds or thousands of ad variations or setting rules that reallocate ad spend in real time.

This could make LinkedIn more appealing to advertisers and grow the ads side of its business more quickly. By enabling third-parties to sell through its platform, LinkedIn benefits from all the sales efforts of other companies. Facebook has been able to maintain a relatively small sales team because external Ads API companies do some of the pitching and account services work for them. It also creates opportunities for other companies to build ad products to serve niches that LinkedIn might not have put its own resources toward. For example with Facebook, there are now third-party ad tools built specifically for musicians and for real estate agents. With LinkedIn’s B2B strength, there could be other industry-focused tools that arise.

LinkedIn launched its ad platform with Adobe, Bizo and Unified as partners, Adweek says. Adobe and Unified are both Facebook Preferred Marketing Developers building on the Ads API. In fact, the existing market of Facebook ads vendors could help LinkedIn’s platform grow quite quickly. A whole crop of companies have grown because of the Facebook API, and now they have teams and software that are likely to be able to accommodate LinkedIn ads relatively easily. LinkedIn’s platform could help these companies expand their business, especially as brands and agencies are looking for all-in-one solutions. Twitter, on the other hand, does not yet offer an ads API.

Facebook first began working with ad partners in 2009. It officially released the Ads API in 2011. Now there are 51 Preferred Marketing Developers certified with the ads badge, and several other companies outside the PMD program that have access to the API. Facebook earned $3.154 billion in ad revenue last year and has brought in $2.95 billion from ads between Q1 and Q3 2012.

Advertising makes up only about 30 percent of LinkedIn’s revenue. Its recruiter program makes up half and paid subscriptions bring in the other 20 percent. The company has earned $175.1 million from its marketing solutions business between Q1 and Q3 2012.

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Facebook platform industry hires: Adknowledge, GraphEffect, Nanigans, Sociable Labs, TBG Digital and Unified

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com, and we’ll get it into our next post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes either from the companies themselves or from company updates from LinkedIn.

Adknowledge Social Channel, formerly AdParlor

Olesya Zinovieva, Account Manager - former online campaign manager at Adconion Media GroupStephen Eng, Account Manager - former account manager at Adconion Media GroupJessica Burnie, Designer - former graphic designer at Guidelines Advertising Inc.Kahla Braedy, Corporate Recruiter/HR Specialist - former senior HR coordinator at Intact Financial Corporation

GraphEffect

Lynnea Bothwell, Sales Planner – former sales planner at She Knows LLC

Nanigans

Jeff Colombo, Senior Software Engineer – former web developer at JNJ Mobile (Mocospace)Carmen Yuen, Ad Optimization Manager – former marketing associate at CrowdstarAllison Fecteau, Ad Optimization Manager – former SEM manager at Kaplan UniversityChris Wilson, Account Executive – former marketing director at Cloud Provider USAGeorge Fitzgibbons, Ad Optimization Technical Specialist – former display media buyer at D50 MediaLibby Freeman, Ad Optimization Manager – former ad desk manager at AOL

Sociable Labs

Derek Tam-Scott, Marketing Manager – formerly in marketing at Iron Aircraft

TBG Digital

Vasiliki Tavoularea, Social Media Analyst – former PPC account executive at Unique Digital

Unified

Ethan Horne, Sales Planner – former intern at Hurrdat Social Media

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

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Facebook complicates privacy settings and hide users’ email addresses, favoring its own messaging platform

Facebook appears to have hidden users’ third-party email addresses from Timeline, but left users’ Facebook.com addresses visible. It has also added a confusing new setting to the email portion of a user’s contact info.

Although users can choose which of their email addresses are displayed on Timeline and change the privacy setting for each address, it is odd Facebook has hidden addresses that users had previously indicated they wanted to share with friends or the public. This seems like a deliberate move to promote its own messaging service over others, but instead of changing users’ privacy settings to do it, the social network simply added a second setting.

In addition to being able to manage the privacy setting of each email address they have connected to their accounts, users now have another setting to control whether to “show” or “hide” that account on Timeline. This makes it difficult for users to understand which addresses they are sharing. As seen in the example below, the privacy setting for the Yahoo account is “friends,” as it has been for years. The Facebook.com address is set to “only me,” as indicated by the lock icon. But when Facebook added the second setting to the right, it defaulted all non-Facebook.com accounts to “hidden from Timeline” and left Facebook.com accounts as “shown on Timeline.” The social network does honor the “only me” setting so the Facebook.com address is not visible to anyone it wasn’t intended for, but it makes the user experience quite unclear.

In April, Facebook made a vague announcement about “updating addresses on Facebook to make them consistent across our site.” It did not say that it would hide users’ non-Facebook.com addresses. It simply said, “Now, the address people use to get to your Timeline and send you email on Facebook will be the same.” However, users’ Facebook email addresses had always used the same address as their personalized URLs, so this did not seem to be news at the time.

Now Facebook is referencing this press release to suggest that it did, in fact, let users know that it would be making a change to how email addresses appear on Timeline. It provided us and other news outlets with the following statement:

“As we announced back in April, we’ve been updating addresses on Facebook to make them consistent across our site. In addition to everyone receiving an address, we’re also rolling out a new setting that gives people the choice to decide which addresses they want to show on their Timelines. Ever since the launch of Timeline, people have had the ability to control what posts they want to show or hide on their own Timelines, and today we’re extending that to other information they post, starting with the Facebook address.”

However, the ability to decide which email address to show or hide on a user’s profile predates Timeline. Users have been able to do this since as early as 2010. What’s new is the confusing second setting we discussed above. Further, we’ve heard from users that this setting has been live for them since last Monday, if not earlier.

Facebook is most often criticized for revealing too much of user’s information, not for hiding it. But when it comes to email, things get complicated for the social network. In 2010, Facebook and Google were involved in a public dispute over the issue of how email contacts should be used. Facebook would not allow users to export their friends’ email addresses, but it helped Gmail users manually download their Gmail contacts and then re-upload them to the social network. Facebook also allowed users to import their friends’ e-mail addresses when they were using Microsoft or Yahoo services.

We wonder whether Facebook’s latest change to hide email addresses is more than just a way to promote its own messaging feature over third-party email services, and if it could be related to preventing contact importing and exporting. A Facebook spokesperson could not comment on this issue.

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Facebook platform update: FBML apps won’t work after today, live stream plugin to be removed

FBML apps are set to stop working today as part of the removal of Facebook Markup Language. Facebook also announced that it will remove the live stream plugin from the platform in favor of the comments box.

Some old page tab applications and very early canvas games that have not been migrated to the new format will have “FBML Removal” migration enabled today. It will be possible for developers to disable the migration and re-enable FBML until July 5, when FBML will be removed completely.

The shift away from FBML has been a long process for Facebook. The social network began recommending iFrames over FBML for canvas applications in 2008. The company further moved away from FBML in August 2010, when it decided to allow page tab applications to use iFrames rather than its own markup language. FBML was useful for some page owners who didn’t have much programming experience because it used uniform code snippets. However, iFrames allow developers to build both canvas and tab applications on the same programming model, and integrate more functionality through social plugins and the Graph API.

Beginning in March 2011, page admins were no longer be able to install new FMBL apps and developers were no longer be able to create them. Recently, Facebook has provided weekly reminders about the upcoming change through posts on its developer blog. More details about the removal here.

As for the live stream plugin, Facebook says it will be removed on Sept. 5 and replaced by the comments box plugin. The live stream plugin is a real-time chat widget that was released publicly in 2009. It had been used for apps and websites supporting live-streaming video, webinars, massively multiplayer games and other live events. Although the comments box allows users to log in with Facebook and add comments to a page, it does not support real-time updates. Users have to refresh a page to see new comments, which makes it less ideal for real-time events and conversations. Facebook also notes that live stream allowed publishers to have multiple plugins on the same page, but the comments box can only be used once per page. More details about the migration here.

Other breaking changes are discussed in Facebook’s latest developer blog post.

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Facebook platform companies Shoutlet, Unified, Identified raise combined $50M

Social marketing platforms Shoutlet and Unified, as well as Facebook-based career site Identified, announced new funding rounds this week totaling $50 million.

Although Facebook’s own stock has performed weaker than expected following an initial public offering, there seems to be confidence for other companies building on the platform. These new investments and recent acquisitions of Buddy Media and Vitrue suggest the Facebook ecosystem is thriving despite the social network’s own battering on Wall Street.

Social media management software provider Shoutlet raised $15 million in a Series C. Shoutlet’s platform helps marketers make posts, launch applications and maintain customer profiles across networks like Facebook. The latest round from FTV Capital brings Shoutlet’s total funding to $24.2 million in outside investment. The company says it plans to use the funding to further build its product, strategic partner network and internal team.

Social ad platform Unified picked up $14 million — $10 million in a Series A round from Advance Publications and a $4 million debt facility from Silicon Valley Bank. The company’s Social Operating Platform helps brands and agencies manage paid media campaigns across Facebook and other networks. Operating in stealth mode since April 2011, Unified launched publicly in January.

Identified, a professional networking site that users connect with their Facebook profiles, raised $21 million in a Series B round of financing. Identified seeks to gamify career development and job searching. VantagePoint Capital Partners and Capricorn Investment Group co-led the round with participation from previous investors including Tim Draper, Bill Draper and Innovation Endeavors. Identified has raised a total of $22.5 million since it was founded in 2010.

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