News Feed algorithm tweak: Status updates from pages moving down

Facebook announced Tuesday another change to its News Feed algorithm, this time involving status updates. Some page admins last year found that plain-text status updates (or status updates including a link) were doing well in terms of reach. However, Facebook found that engagement was lower for these types of posts.

The social network decided that since status updates from pages behave differently than photo, video and link posts, they should be treated differently. While users may see more status updates from friends, pages may see a decline in reach for these types of posts, writes Facebook’s Chris Turitzin, Product Manager, News Feed Ranking:

As a result, the latest update to News Feed ranking treats text status updates from Pages as a different category to text status updates from friends. We are learning that posts from Pages behave differently to posts from friends and we are working to improve our ranking algorithms so that we do a better job of differentiating between the two types. This will help us show people more content they want to see. Page admins can expect a decrease in the distribution of their text status updates, but they may see some increases in engagement and distribution for other story types.

Many Page owners often ask what kind of content they should post. This is difficult to answer, as it depends on who your audience is and what they want to see.

The move is to prompt more pages to take advantage of Facebook’s more visual link share format, instead of posting a link within a status update (as illustrated above). Turitzin notes that the new and improved link share format (which pulls a large image from the website linked to) has led to enhanced engagement and provide a more visual experience for fans.

He emphasized that there’s no magic bullet format that page admins should be using:

In general, we recommend that you use the story type that best fits the message that you want to tell – whether that’s a status, photo, link or video.

Readers: What do you think of this decision?

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Getting no Facebook love? Some tips for getting your page updates noticed

Once you leave high school, it’s believed that the popularity contest is over, right? It no longer matters what brand of jeans you wear, if you’re a jock or a nerd or what kind of car you drive. Well, it matters again, especially if you’re trying to build your brand on Facebook.

Facebook is a tricky nut to crack, especially with all the talk of algorithms and things that, on a basic level, you probably don’t really understand. If you post something on your Facebook page, your fans should be able to see it and then “like” it. Unfortunately, Facebook is a little more complicated than that, but they’re working on it.

The new News Feed algorithm allows your brand’s posts to show up in a fan’s News Feed based on their interaction with you in the past. Other factors include:

The number of likes, shares and comments a post receives from the world at large and from your fans in particular; andWhether or not your fans and other people across Facebook are hiding or reporting a given post.

What does this mean for your brand? An increased emphasis is now placed on sharing posts that will get fans liking, commenting and sharing with their friends. As they do, your brand’s posts will land in their News Feeds more often. It does mean a bit more work for you, but here are some easy tips to get you more likes and more shares on the elusive platform.

Think visually: Text-only posts and links are great, but fans are more likely to “like” or share a video or photos. Right now, what most brands post on Facebook become the least likely to be shared. This is due mainly to link-only posts being shared. According to Pandemic Labs, photos and videos are five and 10 times more likely to be shared, respectively.Tell stories: Since you’re now thinking visually, how can you tell your brand’s story? Has your logo evolved? Are you in a period of growth? It’s quite easy to create a video of still shots (if looking at your logo evolution) and present it with a voiceover and music that represents your brand. Video doesn’t have to difficult.Don’t over self-promote: On any social media site, not just Facebook, it’s super easy to get a little full of oneself: “Look how great we are! Buy our product now!” You wouldn’t run up to a stranger on the street shouting, “Buy my [insert product here]!” Or maybe you would, but either way, it’s not cool. If you want the “likes” share more than buy links to your products are services.Be authentic: It’s perfectly fine to promote yourself, but make sure it’s not all your brand is doing on Facebook. The best thing you can do is create authenticity. Charmin (yes, the bathroom tissue) has done a great job making people feel comfortable about their “bathroom business” by joking around about it on its social media channels. Embrace your brand. Don’t try to be something you’re not.Be funny: If you can make someone laugh, chances are they’re going to like you more (unless they’re dead inside). As in the Charmin example, having a conversation about the bathroom is not only funny to 12-year-old boys, but 34-year-old women as well.Timing is everything: If you’ve been on Facebook enough, you’ve probably learned that posting around 11 AM is best. You don’t want to post when you’re sleeping (unless your audience is on the other side of the world) and you definitely don’t want to post while your audience is sleeping. Anytime between 8 AM and 4 PM is best, but test to find out what works best for your audience.

While these tips will help you create posts that will exponentially get more “likes,” keep in mind that algorithms are at play here. If you’re being annoying (posting too frequently) and fans are hiding your posts for their News Feeds, they will be less likely to see your new, awesome content. Tread smart and lightly.

Top image courtesy of Shutterstock. Graphic courtesy of Pandemic Labs.

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Facebook updates iOS SDK to help developers track conversions

Facebook today launched an update for the Facebook SDK for iOS, which seeks to make it easier and faster to develop socially integrated mobile apps and provide developers with better app analytics.

With Facebook SDK version 3.2, developers will be able to track conversions beyond installs. This means that developers will be able to see whether their mobile app install ads resulted in additional in-app purchases, engagement or other important events. Developers can install mobile pixels on the app pages they want to measure, such as a level completion, shopping cart or checkout page. With this in place, developers can optimize their ads for these conversions so that they don’t just get installs, but high quality users.

Facebook introduced a conversion tracking tool for ads last month, but this was not designed for mobile apps. Third-party companies, such as Nanigans, offered their own solutions to help advertisers reach users with the most lifetime value. Now any developer who integrates the Facebook SDK will be able to track and optimize for conversion events they define.

Additionally, today’s update includes API improvements that seek to make it easier for developers to open sessions from token data and to better handle app and deep linking. Facebook also says it has improved error handling by adding SDK support and documentation for all classes of error responses.

Facebook says more than 45 percent of the top 400 grossing iOS apps are integrated with Facebook.

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Facebook updates iOS app with free calls in the U.S., Canada

Facebook today released version 5.5 of its iOS app, which now allows users in the U.S. and Canada to call friends for free directly from the app.

Facebook users have been able to make free calls via the social network’s Messenger app for iOS since January, but today that functionality has been added to its more widely used main app. From a Facebook message, users can tap the “i” icon in the top right corner and select “free call.” This will only work if both users are in the U.S. or Canada and have the latest version of Facebook or Facebook Messenger installed on their iOS device.

Other changes in version 5.5 include more prominent buttons to Like, comment on and share posts in the News Feed. The design for the buttons is the same one that Facebook uses on its mobile site. In addition, the Share button to repost stories from the News Feed is now available in all languages.

We also noticed that the icon in the corner of posts that gives users options to hide or mark a post as spam has been changed from three vertical dots to an upside down caret.

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Facebook updates Promoted Post targeting after page owners complain about reaching less relevant audiences

Facebook today released an update for Promoted Posts that will by default target a page owner’s ad spend to the countries where most of the page’s fans reside.

Promoted Posts are a way for page owners to reach more fans and friends of fans without having to create ads using the Facebook ad tool. Instead they can use the “promote” button directly under a page post they’ve made. Previously, Promoted Posts seemed to optimize for reach, which led to many impressions among audiences in other countries that page owners did not value as highly. Many page owners were frustrated to spend money and still not reach the fans they wanted to reach.

Facebook says it took this feedback into account and decided to focus the budget on where the majority of fans come from. This could help some pages reach more relevant audiences, however, it’s recommended that page owners select their own targeting criteria rather than relying on the default.

Page posts can be targeted to specific locations or demographics, such as age, gender, education or relationship status. Page owners must select these criteria before making a post if they want to ensure that their Promoted Posts are only seen by this audience.

It’s possible to use Facebook’s self-serve ad tool to select targeting criteria after a page post has been published, and also to add more detailed targeting parameters, such as ZIP code, interests or mobile device type. However, page owners who use the self-serve ad tool cannot control whether their ads appear in News Feed or on mobile, whereas Promoted Posts always appear in the feed, never in the sidebar. Marketers have to work with a third-party ad vendor or gain access to the Facebook Power Editor in order to create more highly targeted ads and control their placement.

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Facebook updates developer SDK with support for iOS 6, more native UI controls

Facebook today released Facebook SDK 3.1 for iOS, which includes support for iOS 6 integration and more native UI controls that developers can plug into their apps.

The update builds upon much of what was announced in July with the 3.0 beta version, but now that iOS 6 is available for all users, development will ramp up. With the new iOS integration, developers can use the native Facebook Login so users don’t have to switch between apps during the auth process. There is also an option for apps to post to Facebook using the new native share dialog. Both features are seen below.

Today’s SDK update also includes ready-to-use UI controls — profile picture control, Friend Picker and Place Picker – which Facebook introduced this summer. There also seem to be additional login controls for easily building login and logout experiences. These components allow developers to begin from a template rather than building each from scratch. For example, the friend-picker tool gives users a familiar UI to invite their friends to use an app. It will even allow developers to filter friends by device and app auth status, so that users don’t send invites to friends who don’t use iOS devices or who have already added the app.

Version 3.1 brings improved API support and session management, as well as a new ad analytics beta product for developers to understand the effectiveness of the mobile Facebook ads they run for their apps. More information is available from the Facebook Developer site here.

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Facebook tests subscribe button for pages to make it easier for users to receive updates without clicking Like

Some Facebook users are seeing a subscribe button on business pages that allows them to receive News Feed updates from a page without indicating that they “Like” it.

Facebook confirmed that it was testing the feature, which was first reported by Marketing Land. This seems to be an extension of the interest lists feature the social network launched in March. After rolling out Timeline for pages, Facebook began giving users the option to add pages to an interest list to subscribe to content without Liking the page. However, the feature is hidden in a drop down menu so it is unlikely that many users knew about it. If Facebook expands its test with the subscribe button, more users might be more likely to connect with pages this way and perhaps organize them into lists. Users can view interest lists as a separate feed or see summaries of content in News Feed.

Here is a screenshot of the new feature from Marketing Land reader Craig Smith:

We do not have the button on our own accounts, but here is the way to connect with a page without clicking Like:

We’ve previously questioned how ads will be targeted depending whether a user Likes a page or subscribes to it. We’ve also pointed out the problem that Facebook pages don’t get any information about how many users subscribe to their content through this button or interest lists.

Facebook introduced subscribe for personal accounts in September 2011 to allow users to allow for asymmetric relationships between users.

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Facebook amends S-1 filing to note Yahoo patent suit, Ceglia updates

Facebook today made an update to its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission to reflect the recent lawsuit Yahoo filed against the social network and the current status of proceedings with Paul Ceglia who claims partial ownership of Facebook.

Facebook says it intends to “vigorously defend” itself against Yahoo, which is claiming infringement on 10 patents related to advertising, social networking, privacy, customization and messaging. According to the filing, Facebook has not yet asserted any counterclaims or filed an answer to the suit.

The company did not make specific mention of the recent lawsuit from telecommunications company Mitel, which claims infringement of two patents. It did however add an update about the case with Paul Ceglia. Earlier this week, the company provided the court with more than 200 email exchanges between CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Ceglia in 2003. According to the latest S-1, Facebook filed a motion to dismiss Ceglia’s complaint and a motion for judgment on the pleadings on Monday. The company says, “We continue to believe that Mr. Ceglia is attempting to perpetrate a fraud on the court and we intend to continue to defend the case vigorously.”

Facebook did not amend the document to note its most recent purchase of patents from IBM. We received confirmation from Facebook that a sale did occur, but a spokesperson would not provide further information about the number of patents or price Facebook paid. According to unnamed Bloomberg sources, the social network bought 750 patents from IBM to help in cases of intellectual property. The company also added corporate and patent counsel to its job listings last week.

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Facebook resurfaces recent status updates

Some Facebook users are seeing a “Recent Status Updates” module on the right hand side of the page. The social network has shown “memorable stories” and “photo memories” before, but displaying posts from the past two months in this way is new. This could be Facebook’s attempt to share content users might have missed over the holidays.

From what we’ve seen of the feature, the status updates come from friends a user frequently engages with on the site. However, it might be useful for the social network to start showing posts from friends and pages that do not regularly make it into a user’s News Feed. If users interact with this content, it would suggest it is relevant and similar items should be featured in the feed more often. This would improve the EdgeRank algorithm that decides what users see in their streams.

Within the Recent Status Updates module, there is a “Show More” option that refreshes the box with two posts made between November and today. After a few clicks, the module changes to “Previous Status Updates” and shows content from as far back as April 2011. Along with Timeline, this is a way to remind users of the past and suggest the value Facebook has as a place to preserve memories.

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Facebook Platform Updates: Frictionless Requests 2.0, OAuth 2.0 and HTTPS Deadlines Tomorrow, FMBL Ending June 2012

Yesterday, Facebook announced updates to the Requests 2.0 including the introduction of frictionless requests that don’t require users to complete a Requests dialog. This could get users to send more Requests, helping apps gain new users and reengage existing users. However, some users might opt in to frictionless requests without fully understanding the feature’s implications, and later be surprised to find out their in-app actions have been sending Requests to their friends

It also set the deprecation schedule for FBML. Support will be discontinued on January 1st, 2012, and apps using FBML will cease to work on June 1st, 2012. Last week’s Platform Update also noted additions to the Graph API, a change to setAutoResize, and a new way for developers to have their apps indexed. Finally, tomorrow is the migration deadline for OAuth 2.0 and HTTPS.

Previously, developers had to force users through a Requests dialog every time they want to send a Request. Developers can now enable frictionless requests, which allows them to automatically send Requests on behalf of its users when a user opts to send a Request to a friend they’ve already sent one to.

If enabled, when users go to send their first request to a specific friend, they’ll see a checkbox for “Don’t ask again before sending Requests to [this friend] from this app.” Next time they opt to send a Request to that same friend from that same app, the Request will be automatically sent without interrupting usage of the app.

As Requests are an important driver of growth and retention for apps, making it easier for users to send Requests should help apps increase their user counts. Frictionless Requests may also be compatible with Facebook’s forthcoming HTML5 mobile app platform, which will allow users to send Requests that are delivered as notifications.

Facebook is also implementing a new breaking change to Requests 2.0 that will improve its performance. A new migration setting called “Requests 2.0 Efficient” is now available in the Developer app. When activated this “changes the format for request IDs in the JavaScript requests callback method.” Developers should make the change to their JavaScript and then enable the migration.

In 90 days on January 1st, 2012, all apps will be opted into both Requests 2.0 Efficient and Upgrade to Requests 2.0. Developers should make sure they’re ready to prevent breakage. New apps are now opted into both these migrations and cannot opt out. Apps are also now responsible for deleting old Requests. Details for making the migration are available in the Requests documentation.

Facebook announced over a year ago its plans to deprecate FBML. In March 2011, it ceased to allow new FBML apps to be created. Now it has scheduled the final two steps of the deprecation.

On January 1st, 2012 Facebook will stop supporting FBML and cease to fix bugs except for those related to privacy and security. On June 1st, 2012, Facebook will remove all FBML endpoints and any apps built on the language will stop functioning. The deprecation will make Facebook app development more accessible as programmers won’t have to use a proprietary language.

The two main parts of FBML that remain useful to developers are Requests and Static FBML. Requests can now be handled with Requests 2.0, and Static FBML can be replaced with iframe apps. Several Facebook Preferred Developer Consultants offer free iframe app builders, including Wildfire Interactive. Facebook has also worked with Wildfire to offer a FBML to iframe migration tutorial. XFBML will not be deprecated.

As detailed in a Platform Update, problems with FB.Canvas.setAutoResize have forced Facebook to rename the call for controlling how an app is displayed on the Canvas page. The function is now named FB.Canvas.setAutoGrow and only works for increasing the size of an app. To shrink an app, Facebook recommends using “FB.Canvas.setSize with a height parameter to set the iframe height explicitly.” FB.Canvas.setAutoResize will be deprecated on January 1st, 2012.

Mutual friends between two users can now be retrieved from the Graph API with the call: https://graph.facebook.com/me/mutualfriends/FRIEND_ID

The following information about an application can now be pulled from the Graph API:

canvas_namelogo_urlicon_urlcompanydaily_active_usersweekly_active_usersmonthly_active_users

To do so, developers can use the call https://graph.facebook.com/ANY_APP_ID

To simplify how apps are indexed by Facebook’s internal search engine, now when apps reach 10 month active users they are queued to be indexed in the next index rebuild which happens ever two to four weeks. Developers no long need use the setting page’s Submit to Search link. This will make sure apps that are gaining users aren’t accidentally left out of search.

In May, Facebook announced that developers would eventually need to migrate to a more secure way to pass access tokens and allow users to browse their apps over a secure HTTPS connection. This followed a security issue where apps were found to be leaking permissions tokens that could give third-parties unauthorized access to user data. The migration becomes mandatory tomorrow, October 1st, 2011.

Developers must use OAuth 2.0 for authentication, encrypt access tokens, and have an SSL certificate and provide a secure browsing URL. To assist developers, Facebook has released admin.setAppProperties which allows the necessary settings changes to be made programmatically. FBML apps must also have SSL certificates and secure browsing URLs.

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Facebook Updates APIs, Canvas, Home Page to Improve the Games Experience

Facebook posted updates to its developer blog today detailing changes to the Canvas Page, Graph APIs and bookmarking, and games stores in the news feed. The changes are designed to improve game discovery, retention, and user experience. features that better surface games stories.

As promised, Facebook is also improving its automated systems behind surfacing games stories and making it easier to locate games in a centralized location. The homepage bookmarks panel has been updated so that the number and order of bookmarks in the groups and apps section changes based on a user’s habits, presumably so users who actively play more games will see more bookmarks. Users can also manually add bookmarks to a “Favorites” section, which appears at the top of all bookmarks if they want to keep a game handy despite engagement with other games.

Facebook is also changing how game stories appear in the news feed. This could improve discovery for all Facebook users after nearly a year of non-gamers only seeing the occasional story about a friend installing a new game. “We’ve begun rolling out a new ranking system that better surfaces app stories to the people who will most likely to engage with it, including those who don’t already use the app.

Games that publish stories that receive high volumes of Likes and comments will be more likely to have their stories appear in the news feed, while those whose stories are often hidden from the feed or marked as spam will be less likely to appear. Depending on how the system is tuned, it could reduce the reliance of developers on paid marketing channels.

As you can see from the screenshot below, game discovery is now available through Bookmarks that appear at the top of the right-hand corner of Facebook while users are playing games. The Bookmarks with red numbers indicate apps without outstanding requests, prompting the user to click on the Bookmark for quicker re-engagement with games requests.

> Continue reading about the changes to the Canvas page, including information on the new dedicated games ticker on Inside Social Games.

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Facebook Updates APIs, Canvas, Home Page to Improve Discovery, Retention, and the Games Experience

Facebook posted updates to its developer blog today detailing changes to the Canvas Page, Graph APIs and bookmarking, and games stores in the news feed. The changes are designed to improve game discovery, retention, and user experience. features that better surface games stories.

As you can see from the screenshot, game discovery is now available through Bookmarks that appear at the top of the right-hand corner of Facebook while users are playing games. The Bookmarks with red numbers indicate apps without outstanding requests, prompting the user to click on the Bookmark for quicker re-engagement with games requests.

Below that is the real-time activity ticker dedicated to stories about a user’s friends engaging with games. The stories include traditional game stories, as well as automatically-generated games stories created when a player’s friends start using a game, or consistently use the same app.

You’ll notice the example displays a “high score” story; this comes from updated Graph APIs that allow developers to generate games stories whenever a user completes an in-game achievement, passes a friend’s score, or reaches a new rank on the leaderboards. These stories could help increase virality and discovery without interrupting the game experience with prompts to share.

The final component to the module above is the Fluid Canvas. This allows developers to expand the size of their apps based on a user’s screen resolution. When enabled, the app can be left-aligned to take up the full height and width of user’s browser. This should give users an optimized experience regardless of whether they’re playing on a large desktop setup or a small laptop.

As promised, Facebook is also improving its automated systems behind surfacing games stories and making it easier to locate games in a centralized location. The homepage bookmarks panel has been updated so that the number and order of bookmarks in the groups and apps section changes based on a user’s habits, presumably so users who actively play more games will see more bookmarks. Users can also manually add bookmarks to a “Favorites” section, which appears at the top of all bookmarks if they want to keep a game handy despite engagement with other games.

Facebook is also changing how game stories appear in the news feed. This could improve discovery for all Facebook users after nearly a year of non-gamers only seeing the occasional story about a friend installing a new game. “We’ve begun rolling out a new ranking system that better surfaces app stories to the people who will most likely to engage with it, including those who don’t already use the app.

Games that publish stories that receive high volumes of Likes and comments will be more likely to have their stories appear in the news feed, while those whose stories are often hidden from the feed or marked as spam will be less likely to appear. Depending on how the system is tuned, it could reduce the reliance of developers on paid marketing channels.

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FrontierVille Trading Post updates trade-ins; finally useful again

by Joe Osborne, Posted Apr 6th 2011 4:20PM

When's the last time you used the Trading Post? We thought so. Thankfully, FrontierVille Info has discovered that FrontierVille's potentially most useless building has been updated to accept excess Goal items from Valentine's Day, Groundhog Day and Wedding Chapel Goals. Unfortunately, you won't get much in return for your trade-ins, but a few coins and some scraps of Food are always welcome. Especially if you're working on that fools errand more commonly known as the Canning Master Goals.

[Image Credit: FrontierVille Info]

Have you made use of the new acceptable trade-ins? What do you think of the returns on these old items? Share with us in the comments. Add Comment.
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Tags: canning master, frontierville, frontierville info, trading, trading post, update, zynga

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