facebook application development

With thousands of applications saturating the Apple App Store, its impossible to find all the games and apps that might suit your fancy. Granted, there are networks such as OpenFeint, Plus+, and Scoreloop, but these barely put a dent in the total, and even then one ends up searching these for what they might like. That’s where Toronto-based Kibboko comes into play with its Facebook Connect enabled application, Appblast, making recommendations to its users based on their own Facebook activity.

Using Kibboko’s “Bamboo personalization platform,” Appblast actually digs through everything the user has done, both recently and otherwise, on Facebook. People start out by selecting their device of preference — be it an iTouch, an iPhone, or an iPad — followed by a country of residence and Bamboo does the rest.

After digging through one’s Facebook activity, Appblast will make recommendations based on two elements: Your interests (“Liking” something) and recent activity. Digging back to when we “Liked” the Facebook game World at War months ago, it recommended any number of war-based games such as Call of Duty.

The second means of discovery, and also the most amusing, is based on recent activity; namely, status updates. It’s certainly a great idea, but as with any program that recognizes words, it usually can’t understand context. During our coverage of StarCraft II and Battle.net, we quoted the game: “Shields up, weapons online. Not equipped with shields? Well then, buckle up!” Appblast recognized “shields” and “buckle” and deduced that we might be interested in lifestyle apps about medieval shields and bucklers. However, one of the recommendations was about protection and held a bunch of fantasy quotes, so it wasn’t terribly far off.

Should users find something they do find interesting, Appblast has quick and convenient links that instantly bring up descriptions, screenshots, and any existing user reviews directly from within the app (no need to load up iTunes – unless you wish to buy it). Moreover, users can also mark each app as owned, if they have it, so that it does not pop up again.

This is actually where Appblast begins making use of Facebook’s social capabilities, as, if friends also use the app, they can see what their friends are buying and/or playing. That said, it is worth noting that while users can search for apps based on iDevice, the tab that houses all owned applications does not clearly state what device they are on. Also, the app does not appear to ever make recommendations based on the apps marked as owned.

Anyways, if your friends don’t own an iDevice, there’s little point for them to use Appblast, thus that discovery method goes out the window. Not to worry, though, as the application also includes a feed of best selling apps an what other Appblast users have been up to. In truth, it’s not nearly as effective as the recommendations (it’s basically the same as any of the App Store top selling lists), but it at least adds a small extra way to find apps.

In the end, Appblast is a pretty nifty little creation. It’s recommendation tools aren’t quite as sophisticated as one might think in that it appears to make most of its recommendation based on Facebook Likes, and it’s word recognition for status updates doesn’t always recognize context (though this can often be kind of fun). Overall, however, once players start adding in all the apps they own, Appblast does at least provide yet one more means of discovering something worthwhile for their devices.

Votigo, Inc. is a social media promotions company offering a range of services, including solutions for Facebook and Twitter, as well as widgets and different APIs applicable to a variety of other platforms.

Initially Votigo focused on user-generated photos/video contests, interactive sweepstakes and online promotions, but Facebook has increasingly become a focal point of the company’s business.

Founded in 2006 by Mike La Rotonda and Jim Risner in the Bay Area to help businesses better engage customers, the company has raised $1.27 million from Headwaters Holdings and several angel investors. The company also has an office located in Hyderabad, India. We spoke with Risner recently as part of our occasional series of Facebook page management company profiles.

Inside Facebook: What products and services does your company provide to clients using Facebook? What types of clients are you aiming to reach?

Jim Risner: We focus primarily on promotions (user-generated video, photo, and essay contests, sweepstakes, giveaways, and coupons) built as applications that can be added to a brand’s Page. We are full-service, but we also license our self-service tools and APIs. Our solutions come with content moderation tools and (other) features that help users spread the word about the promotion.

We tend to work mostly with larger brands and agencies like Ford, Coca-Cola, Southwest Airlines, Sharpie, KOHLs, and Shutterfly. Agencies we work with include DraftFCB, Ogilvy, Wunderman, and Arnold Worldwide, but we have solutions that work for small to medium sized businesses and agencies as well. The types of companies that use our solutions really ranges anywhere from CPG to automakers to large retailers to technology companies. Most companies are realizing the power of Facebook and building community around their brands. Promotions are probably the best way to do it. What we do isn’t limited to one type of company or category.

IFB: Can you share some highlights of how your company has helped clients meet their goals using Facebook?

JR: It’s not uncommon to see Likes or fan bases grow anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 in a few weeks to a month. Right now we have over 250,000 monthly active unique across our live promotions on Facebook. We also look at total user engagement. So things like the number of views, number votes, number of comments, number of shares, number entries and so on.

IFB: Overall, can you share metrics on the scope of your business?

JR: We work with over 100 different brands and agencies in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Halfway through this year we’ve already doubled our revenue from last year. The size of our team has tripled since this time last year. We are profitable and growing. We are fortunate to have a lot of repeat clients as well.

IFB: What metrics do you use to determine the success of a given campaign?

JR: Success of a campaign really comes down to the client’s goals for that particular promotion. Sometimes it’s all about the fans, sometimes it’s about collecting great video content, or overall brand awareness, engaging existing customers and attracting new ones. So it really varies from campaign to campaign. I think the most common goal right now for brands on Facebook is acquiring new “Likes” (fans). But once you get the fans you need to continue to engage them. So many of the brands we work with will run several promotions throughout the year.

IFB: What have been your biggest challenges building on Facebook platform? What mistakes have you made and learned from there?

JR: The biggest challenge has been keeping up with the changes to the Facebook Platform. I can’t think of one particular mistake we’ve made, but we all make mistakes and as long as we learn from them that’s what really matters.

IFB: Beyond your own efforts, what Facebook changes have noticeably helped your company?

JR: Being added by Facebook as a Preferred Developer Consultant has been the biggest change that has helped our company in this particular area. We’ve seen a sharp and steady increase in people contacting us to create their next promotion on Facebook.

IFB: On the other hand, has Facebook made any recent changes that have noticeably hurt your company?

JR: Not really. We expect change and we’re eager to leverage any new changes that can help our clients succeed in growing their fan base and building their brands on Facebook.

IFB: If you could ask Facebook to make a single change, what would it be?

JR: Since our clients are primarily focused on Pages we would like to see more functionality in Pages including being able to leverage Social Plug-ins on them. basically right now you can’t really do anything on the pages, so just being able to leverage more the functionality for client request because they’re static pages. you have to click thru to the app before you can really start pulling in user info and seeing what they  like or recommend or tapping into any of the social info that you can capture within the app. So, those pages are fairly static.

IFB: How does your work on Facebook relate to your work on other platforms?

JR: Our promotions run across any social network, microsite, or blog. Our microsites include Facebook Connect and publishing features that allow users to post to their Facebook Wall when they do things like enter a contest, comment on someone else’s entry, or vote. Users can Like a brand’s Facebook Page from the microsite. We also have a really cool Twitter Sweepstakes solution that includes a fully branded site. I think more and more Facebook is becoming just as it is in the entire Internet world it’s becoming kind of a primary focus for us so it’s definitely  helping to drive the innovation, it’s really kind of in the last year or so kind of come even more to the forefront of what we do. Even though we offer solutions across the board, whether it’s a microsite or whatever, Facebook is becoming the go-to promotion platform. So for our clients the focus especially as of late is all about Facebook.

IFB: Do you have any specific plans that you can share?

JR: We are very focused on our Agency and Publisher tools and APIs right now. Making enhancements in that area is probably highest on our list. Making things a little bit easier to use, flow better, just making it all-inclusive and very modular so a client can just easily go into the self-serve tool and run it. After that we’re looking at ways to integrate mobile.

As part of Facebook’s efforts to spur more growth around the world — especially in places where it doesn’t have many users — the company recently signed deals with two large Russian mobile carriers, making it easier for users to access the Facebook site for free from their devices. The country’s users have, for a few reasons, so far preferred local social networking services.

Russia has recently become a more serious target for Facebook, with chief executive Mark Zuckerberg saying the country has been doubling sign-ups every six months, and a developer blog post recommending that developers localize apps for it. Only a few other countries, including Japan, South Korea and mainland China (where it is banned), still have so few Facebook users.

Indeed, our Global Monitor, part of Inside Facebook Gold, shows Russia having grown more than 200 percent over the last twelve months, to 1.24 million today. That’s under one percent of the Russian population. Local competitors like VKontakte, which began life as a Facebook clone, have managed to hold their own far better than most other local social networks around the world.

The mobile plan is as follows: Facebook and its Russian carrier partners, Beeline and MTS, will provide a free version of its site using “0.facebook.com,” a stripped-down interface that includes status updates, news feeds and other core features but not data-intensive components like photos.

Most Russian mobile users pre-pay for access, meaning that they’ve tended to skimp on using mobile data services in order to save money, as the BBC notes. Making key parts of Facebook freely available means that users might want to try it out.

This free access could push Facebook’s Russia growth up even faster, judging by the success of its mobile efforts. New mobile leader Eric Tseng said at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat conference this week that the company is already reaching 150 million monthly active users via Facebook mobile apps and mobile web sites (watch the video here). That’s roughly a third of the more than 500 million people using Facebook around the world every month. Tseng’s number is up by 50 million from the 100 million mobile users Facebook said it had in February, when it announced that it had reached 400 million MAU total.

Despite Facebook’s recent Russian growth, though, its local competitors continue to have advantages. An oft-stated one is that local competitors are more culturally Russian. That advantage is hard to quantify — and may not be especially significant considering how Facebook has successfully competed against strong rivals in other countries, like StudiVZ in Germany. There are also other reasons why Facebook may still have a long march into the country, as UK-based Russia social media blogger Katya Trubilova notes:

Nevertheless, Vkontakte offers a special feature which attracts more new members daily and makes them spend a lot of time online. Members are able to view thousands of pirated copies of domestic and foreign movies translated into Russian. In addition, it’s possible to upload and download video and audio files via VK Tracker application. This is the most significant advantage of Vkontakte over Facebook. It can be perceived that the majority of Vkontakte members will not be as easily persuaded to join Facebook and to give up their convenient online entertainment. Indeed, Facebook may offer a broader range of features and the possibility to interact with an international crowd. However, this may not entirely be significant enough for the ordinary user. Yet, professionals and companies may favour Facebook’s features to use as a social networking utility for business purposes.

Canadian Firm, German Govt File Against Facebook - Toronto-based Merchant Law Group filed paperwork seeking class action status in a lawsuit against Facebook this week claiming Facebook mishandled user data during the most recent privacy changes, and seeking the sum of the money the company made as a result of making user data public in that change. It’s not clear how strong the firm’s particular arguments are; what is clear is that some law firms pursue such cases when they think they can get money or at least publicity out of their efforts.

Meanwhile, perhaps more seriously, Germany data protection official Johannes Caspar said in a statement this week that his office had initiated a legal process that could ultimately cost Facebook thousands of euros in fines. The action comes over privacy issues, specifically, April privacy setting changes that exposed the information of people who don’t use the site through Facebook’s email importing settings. Facebook has until August 11 to respond to the legal complaint.

Facebook’s Economic Geography - Visual Economics created a really interesting map of what Facebook’s economy would look like if it were a landmass, representing app companies and Pages by size, and other interesting representations.

Microsoft’s Docs Integrates Facebook - Microsoft’s new Docs.com site has made some changes to its program that allows for better Facebook integration. Currently you can post a document to your Facebook Page. Docs.com users now have the ability to:  post documents for a Page, author a document as a Facebook page, add a Docs tab to your Page and share/manage docs with other Page admins.

Buy a Drink, on Facebook - It’s now possible for Facebook users to buy their friends drinks — real drinks — even if they live in different cities. Web developer Webtab uses Facebook Connect and its Bartab app to coordinate the purchase.

Basically after paying a $1 fee (on the site or via the app) a user can send a drink to someone in the app network in the form of a digital coupon; the indicated drinker must then go to the indicated bar to redeem the coupon.

DC Team Focuses on Privacy - The Hill interviewed Facebook Spokesman Andrew Noyes this week noting that the company’s D.C. team is setting its sights primarily, 90% to be precise, on privacy.

Facebook’s Buchheit Gives Gov a Hand – Code for America, a group working to “import the efficiency of the Web into government infrastructures,” is the beneficiary of the services of Facebook’s Paul Buchheit. The organization is working on several projects with a variety of government groups.

Ladies Love Facebook – Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research released a report about Facebook usage by women this week. Among the findings was that about one-third of women aged 18-34 check Facebook as soon as they wake up, even before heading to the bathroom. Other findings: 42% of women think posted photos of them “visibly intoxicated” are okay;  57% interact with people more online than face-to-face; 39% call themselves Facebook “addicts”; 21% check Facebook in the middle of the night; 63% network on Facebook; 79% think posted photos of them kissing are okay and 50% are friends with strangers.

Doctors Talk Health on Facebook - USA Today has a piece this week that explores how some health care professionals are using social media tools to help their patients.

Facebook Supports Rel-Me - Chris Messina posted a screenshot showing that Facebook now seems to be supporting the rel-me attribute on its site, used for identity consolidation. Links on one web site about someone connect to other Links about that person, establishing a bi-directional personal rel-me link.

Facebook Pushes Ad Quality, Privacy - The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Facebook is promoting its social-context banner ads service as superior to competitors — including by impression volume, as the graph from the article shows, below. Incidentally, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg wrote a company blog this week describing the way ads work, taking special care to spell out how user privacy is maintained.

Users Like Likes - A couple of different outlets reported on the number of Likes Facebook users are serving up. One promoted the figure of 3 billion Likes a day, with 350,000 sites using Facebook’s social plugins.

Bharti Airtel, India’s largest cellular service provider, announced a partnership with Facebook yesterday that will bring free access to the site’s mobile version, m.facebook.com, to Bharti’s 130 million customers. For all of July and August Airtel subscribers can utilize key Facebook features like status updates, photos, and private messages with no data charges. The promotion aims to hook users on accessing Facebook from their phones, similar to 0.facebook.com, the free, text-only mobile version of the site Facebook is working with carriers worldwide to bring to users without data plans.

Unlike Facebook Zero, Airtel users will have access to m.facebook.com’s wider set of features, including data-intensive photos, but excluding more complex features like chat and games. Depending on the quantity of photos served, the promotion’s data transmission could become very expensive for whoever between Facebook and Bharti Airtel is footing the bill. The companies are betting they can recoup these costs from users who become accustomed to m.facebook.com and purchase data plans at the end of the two month trial. The promotion will likely boost m.facebook.com’s 19.8 million MAU and 7.76 million DAU, which it in turn seeks to push towards the better user experience of Facebook’s native mobile phone applications.