facebook application development

­Women make up the majority of Facebook users and their presence on the social network has not gone unnoticed by department stores, who have set up shop on Facebook (literally, in some cases) in an effort to foment a relationship with their customers as fans. We recently reported that women in the U.S. constituted over 56% of the overall Facebook population, part of a longtime trend, especially women between 26 and 44 who are more likely to have disposable income to spend and are likely to spend it on themselves.

We looked at a total of seven department stores that seemed to be focusing most, if not all, their efforts on women: Bloomingdale’s had about 21,000 fans and Macy’s had 256,000 or so (they’re owned by the same company), Dillard’s with under 19,000 fans, JC Penney with almost 784,000 fans, Kohl’s had over 952,000 fans, Nordstrom with almost 55,000 and Sears with more than 158,000 fans.

Most of the Pages: actively updated their status with store deals, allowed fans to post to the Wall (except Sears) and were very responsive to posts/comments. In terms of media, they featured a lot of photo albums, mostly of merchandise, a few dozen videos, links to their web sites. They highlighted specials in some way — either with a tab, a box or an application. Only a few used discussion boards, events or notes frequently but all of them linked to Facebook from their web sites (and vise versa on Facebook) and were pretty active about talking back to the customers who posted/commented on their Walls. Dillard’s included a full-service store on their Facebook Page.

Three of the stores featured specials or apps on their Facebook landing pages; JC Penney included a slide show of swim suits, Macy’s The Daily Fashion Challenge app/game which linked to their site for a chance to win a $500 gift card and Sears promoted “amazing offers” only for Facebook fans.

Apps the stores featured on their Pages were interesting because they had a wide range. Kohl’s had an LC Lauren Conrad tab that included an app to see the making of her collection, in addition to boxes for Twitter and YouTube and videos. Macy’s create a game/app called The Daily Fashion Challenge asking users to create an outfit from merchandise to enter to win a $500 gift card, although the game was played on Macy’s web site, not Facebook, one place the company could make a change to more fully engage their fans. Dillard’s had the most exciting app, an online store, complete with inventory, a shopping basket, and the ability to purchase right on Facebook.

Dillard’s also included an interesting on their Facebook Page, Phoebe “The Fit Girl,” a mascot-like cartoon that helps women find the proper sizes for undergarments; Phoebe even has her own Facebook Page and blog, both featured on Dillard’s Page. The Page also featured a Polls tab with a lot of polls, a signup tab for their email/mail lists, a Twitter tab filled with tweets and an I Do tab for weddings that linked to their web site, strange considering how the company created a store online but didn’t do the same for their wedding registry.

Most Pages built in many, many tabs.

Kohl’s had a Celeb Style tab, Receipt Contest tab, Scholarship Tab, Green Scene tab, Style & Savings tab and a lot of activity on their discussion tab; each of these tabs was well-built with information about the contest, scholarship, green programs or ways to save money at the store. JC Penney had a Weekly Obsession tab for highlighted items, a Spring Poll tab, Style File and Sweepstakes tabs. Macy’s had a tab for prom, a Trend Report tab featuring “hot” merchandise, a Give Back tab for charities on Facebook and a Polls tab that had seen more than 44,500 people vote since August. Sears included tabs for their rewards program, a Theme Song Quiz, a YouTube tab and was the only store to feature a Careers tab.

Compared to some of the other categories of Facebook Pages we’ve investigated, the department stores seem to be on the ball. Dillard’s, of course, took this one step further by featuring a full store on their Page, but they could also have done the same with their wedding registry. Overall, most of these stores incorporated their merchandise and specials into everything they did on Facebook, creating original content to keep fans on the social network and paying attention to what their fans said about and to them. For retailers looking to take further advantage of Facebook Pages and other features for reaching customers, be sure to check out our Facebook Marketing Bible.

Facebook’s move into location has seemed inevitable for some time, and it now appears that the company will officially reveal its plans at next month’s Facebook developer conference –- f8.

According to The New York Times, the social network will incorporate location in two ways: (1) its own features for sharing location and (2) APIs to let other apps — like Foursquare and Gowalla –- offer location services to Facebook users.

Presumably, Facebook will make sure to address privacy issues with its location features — for example, perhaps with settings that allow you to share your location only with a select group of friends. The Times’ report doesn’t detail the specifics of such features, though it notes that the social network updated its privacy policy late last year in preparation for a location launch.

Facebook will be rolling out its location features to an enormous user base — there are now more than 400 million users of the social network in total, 100 million of which access the site via mobile regularly. The company also has its own native apps for all of the major mobile platforms. All of this gives Facebook’s location features an enormous edge over the competition.

The Times’ report suggests that the competition isn’t the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla, however, but rather Google and its huge base of local small business advertisers. Of course, the startups aren’t ignoring this opportunity either — earlier today, Foursquare shared details of upcoming features it plans to release to help local businesses utilize checkin data.

With Facebook entering the space, though, the other players will need to look to create value in ways beyond checkins and knowing where your friends are located at any given point in time. That’s why Foursquare seems to be so focused on partnerships and gaming, while Gowalla is making moves (as recently as last night) in virtual goods.

In any event, location remains the huge trend so far in 2010, and literally each day seems to bring new indications of which way it will all play out.

Tags: facebook, foursquare, social networking, trending

Large populations and growing internet connectivity are pushing Asia’s Pacific Rim countries to the forefront on Facebook. Our latest stats, for the month of February, show Indonesia and the Philippines picking up a combined three million users, more than the combined growth of the entire mainland.

The Philippines, in particular, are jetting ahead. The country just passed 10 million Facebook users overall; according to our forward projections, that number will be multiplied several times over by year’s end. That growth could be bad news for Friendster, the aging social network that found one of its last bastions in the Philippines. Also, note that the data in the report is based on Facebook’s advertising tool, which typically reports traffic a few weeks behind.

Another sub-region of Asia that’s picking up the pace is the Indian subcontinent. India itself is accelerating slightly; but the country to keep an eye on over the next couple months is Pakistan, which doubled its January gains in February. Pakistan now has about double the market penetration of India, at 1.1 percent — although that’s still very low.

Overall, Asia’s Facebook population grew about 8 percent in February, down only slightly from January. It is our third-largest region with 79 million users, or only two percent of the 3.75 billion people in the region. For detailed stats on each country, check out our full Global Market Monitor report.

Eager to start picking their brackets, Facebook users have begun flocking to the leading bracket applications by the thousands since the beginning of the month. The three most popular applications are developed by Citizen Sports, Watercooler, and CBSSports.com each have distinct business objectives from one another. The applications have driven over 500,000 visitors so far this month.

While the traffic to all the applications have most likely come from cross-promotion and Facebook advertising, March Madness is always an extremely active event on the Facebook Platform. It’s the result of a long history with Facebook, which began with the company developing their own internal application which was later branded by CBS Sports.

March Madness was the center of controversy on Facebook in 2008 as CBSSports was granted access to premium promotion spots in addition to being granted 100 invites per user per day, far more than any other application. Last year there was far less drama surrounding the applications, although they were extremely popular as usual.

In late February, users began flocking to March Madness applications, at which point Watercooler had already attracted over 111,000 users to their application. This year is comparable to last year. Right now Citizen Sports has almost 400,000 users, while Watercooler has around 100,000 users via their application, and CBS Sports has around 50,000 users. Of all the applications, Citizen Sports has no shame when it comes to promotional partners.

Both Miller Lite and Sports Illustrated have partnered with the company for this year’s brackets. Miller Lite also has a promotional fan button to drive new fans. This is similar to last week’s Bing promotion on FarmVille which drove over 400,000 fans in a day. While this promotion hasn’t driven as many fans in a single day, Miller Lite could definitely see a huge fan conversion as March Madness proceeds.

If you want to get in on this year’s madness, you can join the Citizen Sports bracket challenge, Watercooler bracket challenge, or the CBSSports.com brackets.

Is it enforcement day for Facebook? Several of the top placers on this week’s AppData list of fastest-gaining apps by monthly active users (MAU) redirect to Facebook’s front page, indicating that the network may have at last taken notice of, and action on, shady tactics used by a particular developer.

We’re not sure, but we think the same developer is behind all the apps in question: Friend Quiz, Friend FAQ, Friend Quizzes – Dating! and Friend Poll!. They’re all among the top ten gainers below:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Static FBML	36,892,114	+9,443,232	+25.60
2.	Friend Quiz	20,667,405	+8,100,641	+39.20
3.	Friend FAQ	13,497,001	+5,736,127	+42.50
4.	Slide FunSpace	23,432,250	+1,705,579	+7.28
5.	Friends Exposed	18,280,121	+1,153,129	+6.31
6.	Marketplace	13,274,027	+1,057,287	+7.97
7.	Friend Quizzes – Dating!	1,001,005	+953,245	+95.23
8.	How Fast Are You?! PROVE IT	1,915,222	+833,647	+43.53
9.	Friends Emotions [Emociones de Amigos]	1,501,781	+746,238	+49.69
10.	Friend Poll!	611,274	+597,203	+97.70
11.	Bubble Island	1,101,968	+594,265	+53.93
12.	Tiki Resort	1,218,159	+575,310	+47.23
13.	FarmVille	83,127,751	+561,878	+0.68
14.	My City Life	3,908,234	+537,319	+13.75
15.	PetVille	19,619,857	+475,914	+2.43
16.	Ninja Saga	3,926,247	+453,121	+11.54
17.	Video 4 You	1,587,038	+410,554	+25.87
18.	MindJolt Games	19,925,788	+398,103	+2.00
19.	Daily Photo	6,659,520	+393,930	+5.92
20.	Translations	379,238	+374,515	+98.75

On Friday, we explained how these quiz apps were subverting Facebook’s developer policies. After Facebook added mandatory opt-outs for users allowing them to decline giving their email address or permission to post to their wall, these apps added in boxes of their own that forced the user to hand over permissions, or else go away.

The takedown will be a big blow to the developer, who is listed on two of the apps as FriendQuizzes, Inc. Friend Quiz and Friend FAQ don’t list a developer name, but all four are identical in form and function. In total, this group of apps had over 35 million MAU, about as many users as Facebook’s third-largest app overall.

One developer’s (self-inflicted) bad luck could be another’s jackpot strike. Topzy, which makes Friends Exposed, should be dancing for joy; its quiz app is very similar to those banned, but it has survived unscathed and free to pick up all the quiz-bereft users. As you can see from its placement at number five above, Friends Exposed was already growing strongly.

Rounding out the top growers this week: Static FBML isn’t worth more than a passing mention, as it’s just a Facebook-built app for customizing Pages that’s indirectly picking up users. Slide FunSpace is coming off a growth binge spurred by Slide figuring how to take advantage of Facebook’s new policies — although, obviously, with more respect for the actual rules than the unfortunate quiz developer. Marketplace has a similar story, except its surge came from a sweepstakes.