As the Facebook gaming wars continue to heat up, analysts seek as many ways as possible to measure each companies’ gaming success.  Monthly Active Users (MAUs), Daily Active Users (DAUs), Page Views, Monetization… the list goes on.  There are as many ways to measure an application’s success as there are applications in the Facebook directory.  That said, the dimension of user loyalty has always been interesting to me, and the concept of the users-to-fans ratio for a given application does a good job of indicating what percentage of users play the game and publicly demonstrate their affinity by signing up as a fan.
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In Facebook Credits - Part 1, we looked at the history of Facebook Credits and the varying degrees of the many phases of the rollout.  Now available in at least 14 applications, Facebook Credits is moving from a small number of test applications to widespread implementation. So what applications are Credits now available in and what’s in the immediate future for Facebook Credits? We will answer those questions in more in the second part of our two part series on Facebook Credits.
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With rumors that Zynga will soon integrate Facebook Credits into FarmVille, the nature of microtransactions on Facebook is poised to change. The implications of Facebook Credits in abundant usage across the Facebook application platform are made more clear when we see the popularity of paid Apple iPhone applications. Studies of the success of iPhone applications (and iTunes) have revealed that a secret to Apple’s success is ‘one-click purchasing’. In similar fashion, Facebook Credits has the potential to making the barriers to buying an application or virtual good extremely low. Here we look at the long steps Facebook has taken to arrive at this point.
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Farmville has become the most popular Facebook application ever created. How and why did this one game rise to such popularity amongst a sea of competitors? The truth is, Farmville has an interconnected past that dates back to the initialization of the Facebook Application Developer platform. Learn how FarmVille rose to become a cultural phenomenon.
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When I saw an article from Marshall Kirkpatrick the other day about Mark Zuckerberg looking for another company to buy, I immediately thought to myself that Facebook needs to acquire an analytics service. While there are numerous companies that would fit well with Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear that he wants to hire for talent. While searching for talent, Facebook should keep their eyes on analytics companies as they’d provide an immense amount of value.
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Yesterday Facebook began rolling out post insights to Facebook Page administrators but since then many are wondering what they mean. While Facebook hasn’t officially announced the upgrade we have reached out to Facebook to find out what these numbers represent and got a response. The ultimate question is: do Post Insights really provide more insight?
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A new article published by CNet yesterday highlighted a report which suggests some of Facebook’s application settings put Facebook users at risk. The source of the issue is a relatively recent addition to the platform: extended permissions. Extended permissions are a feature within the Facebook Platform in which developers can request ongoing access to user information without the users interacting with an application again. So are users at risk? Possibly, but we explain how to protect yourself in this article.
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“Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a live audience yesterday that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public”. That’s Marshall Kirkpatrick’s interpretation of Mark Zuckerberg’s comments in an interview with Mike Arrington at yesterday’s Crunchies event. While I’m a little hesitant about drawing a similar conclusion, the question of a user’s privacy rights is still being discussed weeks after Facebook rolled out their new privacy settings. The reason it’s still being discussed is that users no longer have complete control of their information, something that will continue to be a point of contention until resolved.
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If Facebook was limited to democratic nations, I could understand Facebook’s decision to leave a lot of data public. However, while Facebook has always been a tool for spreading democracy around the world, it could be making things worse for many users who are under the control of tyrannical dictators and other aggressive regimes. Under the existing privacy system, your identity is only as safe as your weakest link (friend).
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Did you read the fine print when you went through the new Facebook privacy transition process? Many users didn’t and the result is that much of their data is now publicly available. After making further adjustments to the new Facebook privacy settings, it appears that most users have adapted to the new settings. So far, most users stand in two camps: those who don’t care and those who hate it.
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