Adding Facebook Social Plugins

Fresh out of Facebook's F8 conference, I have added two of the announced social plugins the blog: 1. The Like Box in the right column, which features an activity stream of the latest 'liked' 2. The Like Button with faces atop each post The Like Button allows readers to like content directly from the post and see friends who have done the same... all without directly "connecting with the Facebook". Simple integration and even simpler interaction. Of course, when something is 'liked' it then makes its way into the Facebook stream; and when enough people like an item, Facebook batches the story into the feed.

Facebook makes it very easy to grab and place the code. It is a simple, configurable iframe (or FBML) and you just need to point to the correct URL:

iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fryanspoon.com&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=570&action=like&colorscheme=light" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:570px; height:px">

Quick Math: 100m+ Birthday Actions on Facebook per Day?

A rather obvious finding from my birthday yesterday: Facebook is immensely popular. My Facebook wall, email, notifications and SMS alerts were bombarded with birthday notes... several magnitudes greater than last year... and similarly the year before.

To be clear: this says a great deal about Facebook (popular!) and nothing about me (not popular!). Facebook usage and engagement are unbelievably high: at F8, Alex Schultz said that half of Facebook's 400m active users were active *each* day. And judging by the steady stream of comments and messages, users are doing more than logging in: they are viewing the birthday alerts, actively reading the feeds, giving Facebook gifts, creating JibJab cards, etc. It would be fun - and overwhelming - to look at the total number of Facebook actions / engagements that happen around birthdays each day. If you apply basic math and use me as an example:

- ~400m Facebook users - ~1.1m birthdays / day - ~100 actions per birthday

... Thats something in the range of 100m+ birthday actions a day. My guess is that last year's numbers were 10% of this.

Zynga's Treasure Isle: Economies of Scale in a Social World

There are two camps in the world of social gaming:- One side thinks that it has been won outright by Zynga - The other side believes that we are in the early innings of a nine-inning game No matter where you fall on this spectrum, it is clear that Zynga benefits greatly from their massive userbase (which they worked hard to amass). It is also clear that this is a major competitive advantage precisely because it is a tremendous lever to launch new titles.

Ever watched a popular television show or event and seen the constant reminder of an upcoming show on that same network? This is more powerful because it is in-browser, social and can be cleverly incentivized / connected.

Proof: Zynga's newest title Treasure Isle is days old (launched April 6). It now has roughly 17m monthly actives and 7m daily actives. Not only does that make Treasure Isle the fastest growing Facebook App, it makes it the 16th biggest game on Facebook ... in a matter of days.

It of course helps that Treasure Isle is very well done - a generational improvement over Farmville and Cafe World. But, as many developers know well, audience collection is often tougher than building the game. Zynga has done both:

Facebook Testing New Feed Posts to Drive Additional Comments?

It appears as though Facebook experimenting with new formats of news feed 'announcements' to escalate noteworthy, relevant content to your "top news" feed? This is the first time I have seen notifications like this via my Facebook Feed: essentially noting that two friends of mine have commented on an active post. It's interesting for a few reasons:

First, Dave McClure is a Facebook friend of mine as well... so his article already appeared in my feed. Second, the assumption must be that I am more likely to find it interesting and contribute to it because friends have actively participated. In fact, the newsfeed had already shown me McClure's post and then, on my second visit to Facebook, I got the "your friends commented on Dave McClure's link" alert. Good assumption by Facebook by the way.

These updates are usually reserved for the "most recent" feed and are tied to friend requests, calendar RSVPs, or wall-to-wall posts. I have not yet grouped alerts of friends who commented on a thread... interesting.

Also, very much worth reading Dave McClure's actual post - rather than my analysis of how it appears in my Facebook feed!

The original Dave McClure post which appeared in my Newsfeed prior to the getting the above feed post:

Polaris is Excited to Back Formspring.me

Yesterday, Formspring (http://www.formspring.me) announced a $2.5m Series A investment that was led by Baseline Ventures and FreeStyle Capital. Polaris is excited to also participate alongside a slew of terrific angel investors: Ron Conway’s SV Angels, Maples Investments, Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital, Kevin Rose, Travis Kalanick, Dave Morin and Scott Dorsey. Formspring is a social Q&A platform that makes it very simple to ask questions and receive answers from targeted users. Through Facebook Connect and Twitter , answers arrive almost instantly; and thanks to Formspring's large network, users and answers are highly targeted. The combination of:

- a simple user-experience - a clear consumer impulse (questions / answers) - that delivers immediate gratification - in a viral and social way

... has translated into significant growth. Since their November 25th launch, Formspring now reaches over 44m users and had over 300m questions answered. For a taste of their size, search for Formpsring.me on Twitter ... you will notice 100s of posts each minute:

Whether you are looking for creative direction or seeking input on a specific topic, I encourage you to give Formspring a spin.

More reading: VCMike: Why Polaris is Backing Formspring

Whats Hot in iTunes? Location-Based Apps.

SXSW 2010 was all about location. In fact, we could look back on 2010 as the year of location and geo... which would be a natural progression from 2009's mobile growth.

According to iTunes and its "What's Hot" category: the App Store is also all about location. While I do not know exactly how 'hotness' is defined, we know a couple things: - it seems to be a mix of curation + popularity - it is distinctly different from "new" apps and "top downloads" - it usually features a mix of free and paid apps... as it clearly behooves Apple to drive paid downloads - it usually features a mix of app types: games, sports, utilities, etc - for specific themes, Apple creates curated 'storefronts' (like "Baseball App Store Essentials" or "Independent Games Festivals") So it is unique that the six "hottest" apps are: Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl, MyTown and Citysearch. All are free and location-based, check-in applications. In fact, only one of those applications (Booyah's MyTown) features in-app purchases; but while they are not direct revenue producers for Apple, these are all highly viral and sticky applications.

I would love to see another app category: "most active". Ultimately, I care far more about ongoing usage and adoption than the download. And ultimately, Apple should favor sticky, oft-used apps (like Pandora and Facebook... and these location apps) than those with very high churn. You can extrapolate usage through downloads and ratings... but that is flawed because 1) ratings are predominently negative due to Apple's implementation) and 2) we do not have great visibility into downloads. A barometer of activity - no matter how disguised it would be - would be powerful... and I imagine that, for the time being, these six apps would appear in that list:

I would love to see a

Testing Apture on RyanSpoon.com

My friends at Apture have given me access to the new Apture 2.0 and I am actively testing it on RyanSpoon.com. You will notice that as you scroll down, the Apture toobar appears and allows you to: - share / view shares on Facebook - post / view posts from Twitter - share via email - search and access results directly onsite

Two screenshots are below - followed by a video of how Apture 2.0 works. Would love feedback

Close up:

Facebook: 2.8 Billion Visits, 21.9 Visits / Unique in February

January marked the month where Facebook passed Google in visits and Yahoo in Uniques. Today, Compete released their February 2010 numbers and the trends continued:

1. Google remains the largest by reach (with 141m uniques) and Facebook has gained some distance ahead of Yahoo. All three sites dipped consistently (4.3-4.9%) from January.

Google: 141.3m uniques Facebook 127.9m uniques Yahoo: 125.4m uniques

2. Facebook is the largest in terms of visits - really pulling away from Google (2.8b vs. 2.5b). Again,all three sites declined - but while Facebook's decline was 2.5%, Google and Yahoo dipped 9.2 and 12.7% respectively... which is turn created separation between Facebook and the others.

Facebook: 2.8b visits Google: 2.5b visits yahoo: 2.2b visits

3. Google and Yahoo each see 17.8 visits per unique. Facebook sees 21.9... a substantial difference.

4. It is also interesting that Google's top "referral" and "destination" site was Facebook (Yahoo was #2 and YouTube #3).

Foursquare Traffic Sources: Facebook 33%, Google 22%

As you can tell from recent blog posts, I have been spending time looking at traffic sources for various sites (Facebook, Huffington Post, Perez Hilton, etc). New data from Hitwise reveals that one-third of Foursquare's traffic comes from Facebook:

Top traffic sources for Foursquare 1. 33% Facebook 2. 22% Google 3. 08% Twitter In total, nearly two-thirds of Foursquare's traffic arrives from three sources (one search and two social).

A few things pop out:

- Facebook's referral traffic has steadily grown on a relative basis... and considering that Foursquare's SEO 'juice' has most likely strengthened over time, that means the relative growth has overcome success on Google.

- Twitter as a traffic source is relatively volatile: large peaks around 30% and lows around 7%. It is likely an outcome of power Twitter users and large events (like SXSW - though not reflected here).

- I imagine the visits differ dramatically between Google and Facebook + Twitter. SEO likely sends more branded (foursquare.com) and deep visits (directly to locations - ie a specific venue's name); whereas Facebook and Twitter are more social and circular (driven by the individual rather than the location).