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
7 replies on “Notes from FacebookCamp Toronto 2, Part 2”
Great coverage – I will add a link to your post on my facebookcamptoronto2 post because there are a few points that I did not elaborate on that you did here.
I was really excited to listen to what they were saying at Segal, as a marketer I am interested in the possibility of extending branding efforts to facebook.
And now apparently myspace is trying to do something similar with applications? (chuckle)
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[…] who did not attend and want to learn more about the event. You might also want to check out the Global Nerdy blog’s coverage of facebookcamptoronto2 as the presenters were talking really fast near the end due to time constraints, and so I may have […]