Notes from FacebookCamp Toronto 2, Part 2

Ami Vora making her presentation. Image taken from Pink Internet Marketing.

Here’s part 2 of my notes from last night’s FacebookCamp Toronto 2 sessions. In case you missed part one, it’s here.

Building an App for Your Brand (Janice Diner and Michael Scissons, Segal Communications)

Segal Communications:

• What they do: “Create experiences that help companies build brands and generate sales”
• Showed video of Segal’s work:
  • Club kids
  • Hip hop soundtrack
  • Images of events and apps
  • Split it — testimonials

The advertiser’s view:

• Brands are either on Facebook or thinking about getting on Facebook
• They still get some calls along the lines of: “I want my ad put on people’s profiles”
• They work with brands to figure out “how to engage in this space”

Facebook applications

• Top 44 apps = 200M installations
• 16M daily active application users

Brands have these advertising options on Facebook:

• Sponsored stories
• Graphical ad units (a.k.a. “banners”)
• Sponsored groups
• Flyers
• Branded app dev

Estimates:

• 100s of millions of dollars have already been spent by brands on Facebook (source: eMarketer)
• It is expected that $1 billion will be spent by brands on Facebook by the end of 2009 (source: eMarketer)
• There are more than 41 million active Facebook users

Inroducing Janice: Creative Director

• She’s been “playing w/ brands on Facebook for close to a year”

Apps engage users in a number of ways, among them:

• Social experience
• Personal publishing

Branded apps they’ve worked on include:

• A “Rock Paper Scissors” game for Red Bull called Roshambull
• A political views survey for the Washington Post called The Compass
• A college roomate expense-sharing assistant for TD Canada Trust bank called Split It

Brand Social Network

• The idea is to link a brand to an experience that is social in nature
• How? By connect brands with Facebook’s social graph
• The hope is to create community of “brand ambassadors”

Brand opportunity

• Facebook presents a new opportunity to connect brands with consumers
• It may also present new revenue models

• There aren’t many branded apps yet
• Many are still in development

Red Bull’s Roshambull app:

• 360,000 installs
• For the day of October 6th, 7000 people played it
• “Our goal was to create an app that users would enjoy having on their profiles and would want to share with their friends”

Washington Post’s The Compass

• A “political compass”-style app

TD Canada Trust’s Split It

• Aimed at students, who have a hard time asking for/sharing money
• Allows students sharing a residence to track expenses and split bills on Facebook
• Launched August 2007, still looking to build user base

Brand apps get consumers talking:

• More and more companies will be designing their own Facebook apps
• Designing and spreading an app requires a unique set of skills
• Success requires a solid understanding of consumer needs and wants
• Segal: “Helping brands develop the ideal Facebook advertising solution”

Marketing Your Application Inside Facebook (Roy Pereira)

• At the last FacebookCamp Toronto, Facebook rep Megan Marks said that there were “at least 12 different touch points for your application inside Facebook”.
• What are these 12 ways?

Simple Advertising

• Banners
• Flyers (very cost-effective)
• Sponsored news stories
• Sponsored groups

Advertising in other applications

• Banners in applications
• Ads in profile box

Application Directory (“The boring way” / “Like going through the telephone book”)

• What you say in the description, the name of your app, the icon — all go a long way

Application “Add” Page

• Needs to be interesting
• Look at “Compare People” (interesting) vs. “Neighborhoods” (Not so interesting)

Profile Page

• Add the URLs for your apps in your profile’s “Web Sites” section

Status Updates

• Promote your app in your status updates: “X is happy about his Y application”

• Message Attachments — to wall or email
• Invite requests

Notifications

• Different from news feed
• Directed at a user

(External) Emails

• Probably going to be deprecated by Facebook

Mini-Feed (“By far the best way”)

• Mini-Feed is shown only on a user’s profile
• Mini-Feed does not have any view/post restrictions like Newsfeed
• Not too many apps publish to the Mini-Feed (publishStoryToUser vs. publishActionOfUser for newsfeeds)

Newsfeed — guess of what you want to see

• Newsfeed uses rules — is based on:
  • the actions your friends take
  • the privacy settings of everyone involved
• Send lots of feeds — use photos — make relevant to events that triggered them

Analyzing the Top Applications (Jesse Hirsch)

• Actually, don’t look just at the top, but the “mushy middle”
• Facebook is a “Social Operating System” — and as an emerging ecosystem, it needs diversity to survive and thrive
• When viewing your user base, consider “Total users” vs “Active users”
• Active users are those who touch your app every day
• The long tail still applies in the Facebook ecosystem — see O’Reilly’s active user drop off graph

Application Approach 1: Filling a Void

• These are apps that fill some kind of need not filled by any other Facebook feature of application
• They have “First past the post” momentum

Application Approach 2: Infectiousness

• Simple – Easy to understand
• Social – Involve action towards a friend
• Viral – Each action encourages a new user to repeat cycle
• Involve contests and competitions that reward participation

Application Approach 3: Exchanges and Expression

• With our friends, we engage in a shared daily narrative and collaborate on building a semi-public stage upon which to act out
• The same need drives blogging and LiveJournal

Application Approach 4: Integration and Enhancement

• Success often results from the relevance of the content for users in general as well as a balance when it comes to messaging and notification

Application Approach 5: Ratings, Reviews and Favorites

• Social hierarchy is important — an organizing principle — consider the “Top Friends” app
• Taxonomy or folksonomy adds layers of value

Successful apps are:

• Original – they are unique and useful
• Infections – they encourage social transfer and promotion
• Engaging – they facilitate ongoing use and acceptance
• Integrated – they have relevance and add value
• Empowering – they offer control and allow organization