LOLapps Releases New Website, Sees Facebook Growth with Yakuza Life & Band of Heroes

Polaris portfolio company LOLapps has launched a new version of their website to conclude an active week where two of their new social games (Yakuza Lords and Band of Heroes) are the 8th and 9th fastest growing on Facebook. If you are unfamiliar with LOLapps, you have probably used one of their applications on Facebook: over 44 million people use LOLapps apps each month:

- Quizzes (hundreds of thoussd of personally created quiz applications) - Gifts (user generated gift creator) - Diva Life - Band of Heroes - Yakuza Lords

Yakuza Lords and Band of Heroes are both new games and are growing very quickly on Facebook. From InsideFacebook's Top Gainers of the Week:

"Two other role-playing games are also growing fast, and although neither lists a developer, both appear to be made by LOLapps. While both have the same underlying interface components (more on that over on ISG), each one has surprisingly striking, unique-looking graphics. One, Asian mafia-themed Yakuza Lords, grew by 155,000 users to reach 930,000 monthly actives. It is on its way to graduating from this list. The other app, World War II RPG Band of Heroes, is smaller but growing relatively more quickly. It gained 161,000 to reach 269,000 monthly actives."

Diva City, Yakuza Lords and Band of Heroes are just the first for LOLapps: "[we] will be launching a new game every few weeks to address the huge demand and niches that our users care about."

If you are interested in partnering with LOLapps, you can contact them and learn more here.

Facebook Launches "Friends of Connections" Ad Targeting

One of the biggest stories not heavily discussed this week was Facebook's new Ads Platform targeting of "Friends of Connections": "How do you find more fans for your Facebook Page, more people to interact with your Application, or more people to engage with your business? Target friends!

'Friends of connection' targeting is now available for Facebook Ads. Expand your audience reach by delivering your ads to the friends of people already connected with your Page, Application, Group or Event."

As brands and marketers focus energy, product and budgets on increasing their Facebook presence (fan pages, ads, etc), this is a very powerful lever.... particularly for brands with already-popular fan pages.

Consider that the average Facebook user has 150 friends (this is across all 350million users - so it is probably much higher for active users... who are most likely the people being targeted here. Let's say the average for a highly engaged user is 300 friends).

A fan page with 10,000 fans then has the potential to reach 150,000 - 300,000 fans. For a brand like starbucks that has 5,000,000 fans, this allows them to reach a hug percentage of active users... and in a socially relevant way.

Here is a screenshot of the targeting in action from AllFacebook. Notice that the social context of the ad (Your friend Rolland Lawrenz is also a fan).

Facebook describes the unit further:

"Let’s take a look at an example. Annie is a fan of the Etsy Page. When Etsy wants to promote their Facebook Page, they can choose to target an ad to Annie’s friends by selecting the 'Friends of connection' filter. Annie’s friends will receive the Etsy ad with the following sentence: 'Annie Ta is a fan of this Page.' Annie’s friends are naturally more interested because Annie’s interaction with Etsy is showcased directly in the ad. "

Targeted, relevant and dynamic - it's a terrific ad unit and another example of how Facebook's social graph is changing advertising.

Spotted: Zynga's Billboard on 101 (Grand Avenue)

This week, I wrote about the resurgence of billboard advertisements on 101 - spotlighting Droid, eBay, Zazzle, Yahoo and Zynga. While driving this morning, I captured this photo of Zynga's billboard on 101 around Grand Ave (exit 425):

With no direct branding other than the red / white dog - I do wonder how many people (even in Silicon Valley realize this is Zynga's logo. And worth noting, there is no direct call to action particularly considering that Zynga's activity is within its games' brands.

The Role of Ego, Competition, Badges & Statistics on the Web

Over the last three nights and dinners, the same debate has arose among three separate groups of friends: the role of competition within the the web and user behaviors.

My strong feeling is that, other than pure content digestion (like reading the New York Times), the web is driven by ego. Ego does not necessarily mean self-adoration or superiority - but it does mean the desire to be publicly thought of as interesting, smart, authoritative, popular, etc. And, equally important, the desire to be display improvement across those traits.

Competition thus is a key component of ego and the public persona because it signifies rank and progress.... and it incents activity. It is why 100,000s of people review products on Amazon; why millions blog; millions more post status updates to Facebook and Twitter. I am guilty of all of these (and many more).

Badges play a critical role because they: 1. signify authority and reputation 2. incent continued activity and growth 3. encourage users to promote their successes From Amazon Reviews to Foursquare badges, users want to continually unlock new badges and then gloat about their 'rank' once it is achieved. When I launched eBay Reviews & Guides, our team thought long and hard about the number of badges available, how they would be represented and (importantly) the spread between different achievements. As we predicted, user activity was highly correlated with the desire to be viewed as authoritative and well-read.

Below is the profile badge for Harriet Klausner, a librarian and the #1 reviewer on Amazon with over 110,000 votes on her Amazon reviews, lists and guides. Harriet has reviewed over 20,000 items and her reviews are far from short - normally thoughtful paragraphs that are well-written. Why does she review 1,000s of items a year? I don't know but assume it is part knowledge base, part an interest in sharing and part a desire to maintain her 'fame' and #1 reviewer status:

MySpace figured this out early on by publicly displaying friend counts and lists - a public popularity widget of sorts. Have you ever been in a conversation where you are asked "How many Facebook Friends / Twitter followers or LinkedIn connections you have?" It is as much a question of curiosity as it is a measurement of their own activity.

Understanding this (and that it is subconscious root of so much of our web and social activities), I ask for more. I would like to see same game mechanics that make Farmville so popular applied to my personal web usage.

Below is a screenshot of my favorite iPhone App, Golfshot, which applies detailed statistics to your golf rounds and history. It is amazingly addictive and powerful (the data unquestionably improves my golf game):

I want to see deeper statistics around the web activities I spend so much time on (Facebook, Twitter, blog, email, etc):

- Which of my Facebook posts are most popular? - Which friends interact most with my content? Does that change by content type? By interaction (like, comment, share, etc)? - How does my activity compare with others in my graph? - Who do I message most on Gtalk? Email? How often do we talk? Who responds most promptly? - How have my activity and social graph changed over time?

There are countless ways to represent activity, engagement and progress... and I want to see more - particularly presented in statistical, data-heavy manners!

Incentivizing Facebook Fans: Papa John's Doubles Fans with Free Pizza

As brands and marketers continue to grow their presence on Facebook through Facebook Pages, 'fan acquisition' becomes as important as ongoing engagement / marketing. Like traditional traffic acquisition, there are various methods - some organic and viral; other through paid programs. A powerful trend on Facebook is, obviously, the movement of Facebook Advertisements from destination sites to Facebook Pages. Facebook clearly has recognized this with the addition of the "Become a Fan" button.

And brands recognize that acquiring fans is both difficult - but valuable considering the ability to engage with consumers on an ongoing basis.... leading to incentivized Facebook Fan Ads. Below is a great example from Papa Johns who offers a free medium cheese pizza in exchange for becoming a fan.

In reality, this is a unique coupon code for Facebook Fans... which, assuming that the economics work out for Papa Johns, is very smart because it allows them to directly track the 'redemption rates' of the Facebook offer - effectively understanding the direct commercial value of their advertising campaign. Meanwhile, there is downstream value in the growth of Facebook fans, the ability to interact with them, future coupons / promotions, and so forth.

The campaign worked. Papa Johns is the third biggest gainer in Facebook Pages - nearly doubling their fan base and driving 250,000 new fans in a 48 hour period.

Wendy's Real Time: An Interactive, Social Ad Campaign About Bacon

Wendy's has been advertising their new Bacon Deluxe burger which features four strips of Applewood bacon:

So unless you love bacon, why is this interesting? Because Wendy's has been promoting the burger heavily in an interactive campaign that runs on prominent websites like ESPN and Gizmodo - and concurrent to a large television campaign... and that the campaign is billed as "Wendy's Real Time" - a play on the real time web and their focus on "real burger" taste.

The takeaway (which I moved up from the bottom of the post) is that this is a unique and interesting swing at real time advertising / branding... but it is too dynamic and too big. The interactions and user experience would be greatly simplified if they integrated with Twitter's OAuth and also with Facebook Connect. Why ask people to leave Wendys.com to post, interact, etc. Make it simple up front and then push the data both directions: on Wendys.com and on Twitter / Facebook (both of which have clear benefits).

Below is a screenshot of an expansion leaderboard ad that features the burger and invites you to "view Wendy's real time":

The leaderboard retracts into a traditional size, but it is also matched by a skyscraper with similar messaging:

The ad takes you to the "real time" experience - which is a mix of Twitter updates, user photos and videos, Wendy's messaging, etc. It is cooler than it is effective (or even decipherable) - content is dynamic and constantly moving, but much of it is neither about Wendy's nor bacon.

When you click on a post, it expands the Twitter message and displays the user's Twitter information (allowing you to follow him / her).

The video experience is easier to digest and the incentives for posting are more clear: hamburgers for a year. By posting videos of your Wendy's experience, you are eligible for the contest. The UI is slick and this content clearly be reusable for other campaigns (such as on Facebook).

Finally, Wendy's encourages you to Talk Bacon with their Twitter account (@urBaconMeCrazy).

Following the Bay Bridge Opening On Brizzly, Twitter

Minutes ago, the Bay Bridge re-opened and I was able to follow in real-time through Brizzly (and their in-stream multimedia) and @hnshah's Twitter / Twitpic stream (who for some reason wanted to be the first across!):

Live Streaming Heidi Klum's Halloween Party with Modelinia & Facebook

Two weeks ago, I wrote about Modelinia's Facebook contest that gave creative fans the opportunity to spend Halloween with Heidi Klum at her famous Halloween Costume Party.

Tonight, everyone has the opportunity to spend Halloween with Heidi Klum thanks to Modelinia's live stream of the party on their Facebook fan page.

TechCrunch covered the live stream and provided a great overview of the event and how to join:

You can find the live stream on Modelinia’s Facebook page starting at 9 PM PT tonight. The streaming itself is being handled by Livestream, who will run it through 11:30 PM, we’re told. Klum’s Facebook fan page along with Modelinia’s page have nearly 700,000 fans, so if you do watch this, you definitely won’t be alone. And there’s a chat widget running next to the stream to talk with others watching it.

To participate, become a fan of Modelinia on Facebook and watch the live stream there - or below:

What You Missed in Yesterday's Tech News (Lots of Activity)

I wrote this on Twitter and Facebook last night - but yesterday was a very full day of news across a variety of tech space: mobile, social media, advertising, gadgets, etc. Here are a few of the important and interesting headlines from a very active day (articles are on the clickthrough):

Facebook's Platform Changes - D-Day For Facebook App Developers (TechCrunch) - First Screenshots of Facebook Platform Changes (InsideFacebook) - Our Complete Rundown of Facebook’s Massive Platform Changes (InsideFacebook)

Google's Musical Announcement - Making search more musical (The Official Google Blog)

Droid is a Week Away - Hello Humans: Droid By Motorola Arrives Next Week (Verizon) - Motorola DROID official on Verizon: $199 on contract, coming November 6th (video) (Engadget)

iPhone Moving Beyond AT&T? - Apple predicted to sacrifice ‘sweetheart’ AT&T deal for Verizon (AppleInsider)

Google Announces Turn by Turn Navigation - Announcing Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 (The Official Google Blog) - Google’s New Mobile App Cuts GPS Nav Companies At The Knees (TechCrunch)

Brizzly Adds Facebook Integration - Brizzly Gets A New Coat: Facebook (TechCrunch)

Pandora Also Adds Facebook Integration - Share Pandora with Your Friends on Facebook, Twitter, and Beyond (Pandora)