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 has expanded its list of “preferred” developers who help brands, celebrities and a wide variety of organizations build applications, Facebook Connect integrations, or custom features for Facebook Pages. This means more visibility for the 36 newly added developer-consultants, so maybe some new clients for them. There are now 50 companies listed, more than half are operating internationally, and in a total of 15 countries.

Facebook created the Preferred Developer Consultant Program last December, and is continuing to accept applications from prospective companies, more here. Our Facebook Marketing Bible also contains a list of service providers that we recommend.

Here are the new companies in alphabetical order, followed by a list of the existing ones. Note the addition of Techlightenment and 77Agency, two companies that provide automation services for bulk purchases of Facebook’s performance ads.

New firms on Facebook’s list:

• 77Agency Ltd.
• Always Be Social by Blueye Creative
• Brand Networks
• Candytech.biz
• Carrot Creative
• Fan Appz, Inc.
• Fission Strategy
• Fluid
• Friend2Friend
• Gamaroff Digital
• GroupCard Apps
• Hearsay Labs
• i2we, inc
• Inigral, Inc.
• Kitoks.com
• Komfo
• KRDS
• Large Animal Games
• Nudge Social Media
• Plexipixel Inc.
• Promoqube
• Ralph
• Resource Interactive
• Sociabliz
• SocialAmp
• Syncapse
• T3 (The Think Tank)
• Techlightenment
• theKBuzz
• Thuzi
• Transpond, Inc.
• VaynerMedia
• Votigo, Inc.
• Wishpot
• Xihit Solutions GmbH
• Zibaba

They’re joining these firms, already on the list:

A couple athletes, a handful of musicians, two shoe companies and a few television shows, plus list regulars made up this week’s Top 20 Facebook Pages. Zynga’s Mafia Wars continues its domination of the number 1 spot with almost 10 million fans, but its partner in crime for the past few weeks, Texas Hold’em Poker, disappeared from the list this week.

	Name	Fans	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Mafia Wars	9,891,127	+364,698	+3.83
2.	Ricardo Kakà	1,165,322	+343,654	+41.82
3.	Converse	2,286,122	+127,174	+5.89
4.	Justin Bieber	2,052,557	+125,802	+6.53
5.	VANS	558,044	+124,530	+28.73
6.	Selena Gomez	3,797,516	+115,649	+3.14
7.	Megan Fox	6,150,914	+109,452	+1.81
8.	Starbucks	6,125,550	+106,906	+1.78
9.	Lady Gaga	5,566,682	+105,651	+1.93
10.	Facebook	7,577,121	+105,370	+1.41
11.	Skittles	3,994,668	+96,120	+2.47
12.	Michael Jackson	11,220,110	+92,391	+0.83
13.	Lil Wayne	3,306,267	+88,310	+2.74
14.	The X Factor	1,012,492	+86,609	+9.35
15.	Cristiano Ronaldo	3,611,756	+84,537	+2.40
16.	Taylor Swift	3,431,201	+76,443	+2.28
17.	Victoria’s Secret	2,935,646	+74,875	+2.62
18.	The Twilight Saga	5,183,477	+68,185	+1.33
19.	YouTube	4,388,681	+67,086	+1.55
20.	Dr. House	4,975,383	+65,841	+1.34

Two soccer (football) players for Real Madrid C.F. were on the list this week. Brazilian player Ricardo Kaká at number 2 with over 1 million fans and heartthrob Cristiano Ronaldo at number 15 with 3.6 million fans. Although both are fairly popular on Facebook, their rankings this week were helped by consolidations of 63,000 last week for Ronaldo (his page only grew by 84,500 so most of it was attributable to those spikes) and 229,000 on Wednesday for Kaká.

Next were the shoes. Vans, the shoe brand popular with skateboarders, seems to have landed at number 5 almost entirely due to what appears to be a page consolidation on Sunday of almost 123,000 (their total growth this week was 124,530), a large part of their fan base, given the Page has just 559,000 fans. Converse was also on the list again this week at number 3; the iconic shoe company grew by almost 111,000 fans Wednesday, but also recently launched a line of shoes featuring designs from the 1980s band Blondie.

Musicians took up another chunk of the list, with teen crooner Justin Bieber fourth with 2 million-plus fans; he’s been promoting a new single and  upcoming album. Another teenage musician, Selena Gomez, landed at number 6, partly due to growth of 90,000 fans over two days likely due to page consolidations, given her page grew by 115,649 last week. But, Gomez also told her 3.8 million fans this week that her latest album went gold, meaning it sold 500,000 copies.

Rapper Lil Wayne took the number 13 spot this week with more than 3 million fans.  Perhaps Lil Wayne’s popularity grew in response to his sentencing hearing scheduled for last week on a weapons charge, but it was delayed due to a fire and he was able to enjoy a few extra days of freedom. Finally, singer Taylor Swift was sixteenth on the list this week; she currently has more than 3 million fans, is on a U.S. tour and the official Taylor Swift iPhone application launched last week.

List regulars this week included seventh place Megan Fox with more than 6 million fans now, Starbucks in eighth place also with over 6 million fans and Lady Gaga at number 9, trailing slightly with about 5.5 million fans, the songstress is currently on tour and has been promoting her new single/video “Telephone” on Facebook with exclusive stills and updates. Facebook’s fan Page landed tenth and Michael Jackson continues to hang out on the list, currently with more than 11 million fans, at number 12 this week.

Number 11 Skittles now has a Page with 4 million fans and grew by about 96,000 fans last week, about 71,000 of which came from two spikes on Wednesday and Sunday, albeit the company is also giving out coupons for a free packet of candy.

The popular television show “The X Factor” landed at number 14 this week almost certainly due to a Page consolidation; this page grew by 86,000 last week, 82,000 of which were added on Wednesday. Another popular television show, “House,” went back on the air this week after a hiatus, consequently the Page grew by 65,800 fans to land at number 20.

Rounding out the list was the number 17 Victoria’s Secret Page, which probably benefitted by 54,000 adds over two days to bring its total fan base on Facebook to about 3 million. At 18 was the “Twilight” Page, now with over 5 million fans and nineteenth was the YouTube Facebook Page.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	Fans	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Mafia Wars	9,891,127	+364,698	+3.83
2.	Ricardo Kakà	1,165,322	+343,654	+41.82
3.	Converse	2,286,122	+127,174	+5.89
4.	Justin Bieber	2,052,557	+125,802	+6.53
5.	VANS	558,044	+124,530	+28.73
6.	Selena Gomez	3,797,516	+115,649	+3.14
7.	Megan Fox	6,150,914	+109,452	+1.81
8.	Starbucks	6,125,550	+106,906	+1.78
9.	Lady Gaga	5,566,682	+105,651	+1.93
10.	Facebook	7,577,121	+105,370	+1.41
11.	Skittles	3,994,668	+96,120	+2.47
12.	Michael Jackson	11,220,110	+92,391	+0.83
13.	Lil Wayne	3,306,267	+88,310	+2.74
14.	The X Factor	1,012,492	+86,609	+9.35
15.	Cristiano Ronaldo	3,611,756	+84,537	+2.40
16.	Taylor Swift	3,431,201	+76,443	+2.28
17.	Victoria’s Secret	2,935,646	+74,875	+2.62
18.	The Twilight Saga	5,183,477	+68,185	+1.33
19.	YouTube	4,388,681	+67,086	+1.55
20.	Dr. House	4,975,383	+65,841	+1.34

Boomerang Networks has spent the last year quietly building an advertising offers service designed to take on established players like Offerpal and Super Rewards. Now, it’s taking the covers off.

Every offers company is busy trying to optimize which ads appear to which users. Boomerang’s offer wall includes thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons so users can vote on which ones they like. That’s the beginning: the company combines this user feedback with user comments, profile data — as Facebook’s and others’ terms of service allow — as well as number of clicks. Then, it analyzes the data to figure out which types of offers make the best fit between the user base (by country, age and sex), the category of application, and the price the users are typically willing to pay for the offers relative to the game. When users interact with the resulting offers, Boomerang gathers more information on their behavior and further optimizes the offers. It also has a customer service team pre-screen for deceptive offers, it says, and won’t repeatedly show offers to users who take them or vote them down.

The company has made internationalization a priority. Chief executive Honor Gunday tells us it has deals with more than 130 advertising networks around the world, so it is able to filter offers to be relevant to users in specific places. He provides a rough breakdown of what this looks like. For medium to high-engagement games in the US, offers can bring in from $1.00 to $1.50 per user; in southeast Asian countries, $0.50 to $0.80; in Latin America, $0.10 to $0.20.

The offer wall includes some other notable features. It has direct payments from more than 60 providers around the world. Although some are available through payment aggregators like PayByCash, Gunday also says that it has brought in some options not available through most rivals, such as Cherry Credits in Southeast Asia. The wall also provides categories of offers by content type and popularity, and shows banner ads. To make the experience easier for users, it also provides a detailed customer feedback form about each offer, and provides a window showing pending payouts and past offer votes.

Users also can click to view a full “customer relationship management” interface showing them the following information about each completed offer: title, date taken, status, earned or expected amount of virtual currency, payout timeframe, and user-generated quality ranking.

Boomerang’s current publicly-named clients include TheBroth and Hitgrab, and is in talks with more. The service is now live for apps on Facebook, MySpace, Hi5 and Bebo. Boomerang has raised a round of funding from angel investors, but the amount has not been disclosed.

In the years following U.S. troop deployments to Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, thousands of former soldiers, both men and women, have returned home to to continue their civilian lives. Some of these veterans return physically injured or paralyzed, others with psychological issues. As these veterans adjust to the civilian life, Facebook has become a tool for them to apply for federal benefits, return to college, search for work and find support from other veterans.

Searching for “vets” or “veterans” on Facebook yields dozens and dozens of Pages and groups, some official, but many simply begun by veterans or others wanting to use Facebook to express pride and support for the armed forces. These Pages and groups are used to share stories, some have formed tight-knit communities where people seem to interact on a regular basis, whereas others have become go-to resource forums.

Organizations and vets use an array of Facebook tools in these interactions, including Wall posts and comments, Groups, and Pages. Both offer discussion boards and ways of posting photos and videos — Groups are more focused on community topics, while Pages are intended to be public, and oriented around brands, organizations, and well-known people. As a result, Pages tend to help veterans make new and unexpected connections.

“I use Facebook while I’m deployed everyday, all day, through chat, messages, pictures and etc. I was on MySpace, but I rarely check it because I’m addicted to Facebook!” Army Sgt. Jose L. Aranda wrote us from his deployment in Iraq, noting that his family, wife and children, are still in Texas. Like many other active duty soldiers, Aranda uses Facebook as a lifeline to his loved ones while away from home.

Aranda, 27, is a native of McCamey, Texas, a town of about 1,600 in Upton County (population 3,149) about 285 miles east of El Paso. He stumbled upon and became a fan of the Upton County Vets Facebook Page, with 101 fans, photos of local vets and some information about the local courthouse; the Page formed late last year.

“I’m proud to say that I have family and friends in uniform besides me that came from where I grew up. Is it comforting? Yes, indeed!” he wrote us, noting that he’s found old friends there he didn’t even know had joined the armed services.

Veterans organizations have also taken advantage of Facebook to reach out to their membership. One such group with a strong Facebook presence was the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Page, which displays its latest public service announcements. The Wall is closed to its 67,824 fans, but posts generate dozens of comments where people ask each other questions, offer resources and have actual discussions, essentially functioning as a discussion board. The Page hosts many such conversations about everything from benefits to politics to job tips on the Wall, although a discussion thread about payments generated 108 comments. IAVA also uses Causes to raise money for their efforts to improve the lives of veterans from these wars and their families.

“Veterans need each other for support and now they’ve found a place where they can come find that — I’ve heard directly from people who’ve found other veterans that they served with 30 years ago and now they became Facebook friends,” said Joe Chenelly, spokesman for Disabled American Veterans, an organization 1.2 million strong with about 9,900 fans on Facebook.

Chenelly said DAV is incorporating Facebook into everything it does, but has also used MySpace (no longer active), LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and Buzz. He notes that Facebook has been the most accessible media to their mostly-Vietnam era membership — people who didn’t grow up with the internet, who find the site easiest to use. DAV’s Facebook presence began as a group last spring, changed to a Page last summer, incorporated some unofficial pages and now Chenelly tells us that the “highest levels” of the organization’s leadership is interested in DAV’s Facebook presence.

“Members, fans, are really using it to talk to each other, about their problems and success and it’s been a great thing for camaraderie, doing a good job of bridging the generational gap,” he tells us, referencing the ages of Vietnam versus Iraq/Afghanistan veterans.

The Wall, in particular, has allowed veterans to help each other, ask for help, find fellow soldiers and ultimately create new connections on Facebook, Chenelly tells us. It has also helped the DAV stay connected to its members needs and get the word out about legislation and other issues.

Unofficial Pages, like the Operation Iraqi Freedom Vets with 611 fans, are also used by veterans and their supporters to gather for comfort and to share information. Veterans tell each other the names of their units, where and when they served, while others thank veterans for their service. The official Paralyzed Veterans of America Page with 3,473 fans, is also a place for veterans and their supporters to gather for comfort, but as the organization strives to improve the lives of paralyzed veterans, sharing resources becomes much more important. Here it’s interesting to note that the Share function, wherein fans can post items to their news feed, has been heavily used in cases of petitions for pertinent legislation, something that’s previously been done via email.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has a Facebook Page with more than 19,400 fans and the Wall is primarily used to diffuse information about veterans’ benefits, news stories, studies, resources, suicide prevention and other health-related information for veterans. Other federal agencies concerned with veterans also have official Pages, including the Veterans Benefits Administration (3,753 fans), Veterans Health Administration (10,700 fans) and the National Cemetery Administration (706 fans). Although fans cannot post to the Veterans Affairs Wall, comments on status updates and other items are active with discussion amongst fans about resources, politics and experiences.

It’s interesting to note that veterans have begun to use the medium of Facebook as a discussion board, largely moving their conversations onto the Wall via comments, as opposed to limiting themselves to structured discussion threads. Governmental Pages seem to be more imposing than organization or fan Pages, as communication appears to be one-way and more tightly-controlled. But on Pages where vets are given the freedom to engage, they are taking full advantage of Facebook’s features and it appears that very meaningful conversations result.