Facebook for Journalists: More Work Than Twitter, but With a Bigger Payout
Last week, Facebook launched a Page called Journalists on Facebook in an effort to encourage the news community to use the site’s Page feature as a distribution and research tool. Historically, Twitter has been more popular with journalists. thanks to its focus on link sharing, the additional distribution they can get thanks to the ease [...]
Last week, Facebook launched a Page called Journalists on Facebook in an effort to encourage the news community to use the site’s Page feature as a distribution and research tool. Historically, Twitter has been more popular with journalists. thanks to its focus on link sharing, the additional distribution they can get thanks to the ease of retweeting, and the fact that it launched before Facebook Pages. But with Facebook sporting as many as 10 times more active users, journalists should still be focused on mastering the social network, even if takes more work than just tweeting copy and pasted URLs.
Twitter Is Quick and Simple
Twitter and Facebook offer different advantages to journalists. Twitter’s short-form nature means journalists aren’t expected to do much more than tweet the headlines and links to their articles, unless they also want to engage in discussion. Twitter’s public nature discourages low quality replies, so journalists don’t have to slog through thousands of comments the way they might on Facebook. It’s also easy to measure impact and success, even if inaccurately, by counting retweets.
Facebook on the other hand, requires journalists to craft compelling updates that stand out against the social content produced by their audience’s friends. Images, captions, and context have to be selected. Though comments to Page stories are also public, they’re not as visible as @ replies to a user’s own friends, leading large publications to receive hundreds of comments per post. While journalists want this engagement, many are too busy to actually wade through the comments and respond.
On Twitter, the line between personal and professional is easy to blur. A fledgling journalist can begin by tweeting out their articles amongst their more friendly updates, and slowly focus more on news coverage as they gain news-seeking followers outside their social circle. This transition is more difficult on Facebook. At some point, journalists have to start a Facebook Page from scratch with zero fans, or sacrifice their personal profile by turning it into a Page and converting their friends into fans using Facebook’s new profile to Page migration tool.
There’s an air of mystery to the news feed that might be discouraging journalists. With Twitter, if you tweet it, it will appear in a follower’s stream. But on Facebook, a journalist’s updates might not make it into the Top News feed, requiring users to actively sift through their Most Recent feed to find a journalist’s updates.
Twitter also had a head start, launching in July 2006 about a year before Facebook Pages, with top news outlets creating Twitter accounts in February and March of 2008. Facebook’s personal profiles have been able to publish status updates since around the time that Twitter launched in 2006, but journalists could only accumulate up to 5,000 friends. This allowed Twitter to set the tone of shortform news distribution, while Pages have instead been framed as something that businesses and journalists have had to adapt to.
The Power of Facebook’s Rich Content Posts and Applications
Facebook Pages holds great potential for journalists, though. Pages can post rich content such as photos or videos content with previews appearing in-line. The images and captions that appear beside posted links give users just enough information that they know they want to click through. Highly interactive posts, such as those using the new Questions product, can engage users while simultaneously securing additional distribution for a journalist’s posts.
Journalists can start their own Pages, as Facebook’s new initiative encourages, but even greater power is available from using a single Page to represent an entire news organization, as Facebook has been promoting with its Facebook + Media Page since last July. Pages are designed to facilitate multiple admins, unlike Twitter accounts, and aggregating fans to a single Page helps cross-promote the work of all of a news outlet’s reporters and build a fan community.
The use of applications by journalists, something widely unexplored, could help them forge deeper bonds with users. They can collect email addresses to expand the breadth of channels through which they can content them. Many apps, designed especially for Pages, can also pull demographic and interest data, helping journalists gain insights about who their audience is. Liking a journalist’s Page creates a link back to that Page in a user’s news feed and profile, driving Likes from a fan’s network much more effectively than Twitter’s follower lists.
Larger publications willing to spend to increase their reach can use highly targeted Facebook ads to gain Likes, while Twitter’s”Promoted Tweets” doesn’t have self-serve tool, and doesn’t provide the same level of granular targeting.
While Twitter is a natural distribution channel for news, it’s not necessarily the most effective, nor does it have the widest reach. Most major publications still have more Twitter followers than Facebook fans, but that could change with time. While Facebook might require journalists to learn a new skill set and apply some effort, there is great long term value to be gained from an investment in building an audience on Facebook.
Source: feedproxy.google.com
Platform Update: User Viewport Info, Per-Post Impression Data From Pages
The most recent Facebook Developer Blog’s update announced the ability for developers to pull information about the viewport their application is being displayed in and scroll to a specific point. Pages can now grant access to their per-post impression data to applications. Facebook also recounted recent changes we’ve previously covered including the inclusion of titles, [...]
The most recent Facebook Developer Blog’s update announced the ability for developers to pull information about the viewport their application is being displayed in and scroll to a specific point. Pages can now grant access to their per-post impression data to applications. Facebook also recounted recent changes we’ve previously covered including the inclusion of titles, images and descriptions in posts published by Like buttons, and the introduction of a preview of these posts seen when buttons are clicked.
The JavaScript SDK now includes new functions for iframe canvas apps. FB.Canvas.getPageInfo returns information about the height, width, and length of user’s window viewport and the application’s iframe viewport. This information can help a developer configure their app’s viewport to create the optimal viewing experience. FB.Canvas.scrollTo allows developers to scroll to a specific point in the app’s canvas by specifying pixel coordinates.
Viewport configuration will be especially useful as users move to using Facebook from a variety of devices with different screen sizes and resolutions. For instance, it can help developers show their dialogs in the right place. Viewport capabilities have become a standard part of mobile browsers through the use of viewport meta tags.
Applications that have receive the read_insights permission from a Page’s admin can now pull per-post impressions from the stream FQL table. This will allow third-party analytics tools to help Page admins determine what timing and content produces the most user engagement.
The Platform Update also included some details about how Facebook’s platform team spends their monthly “roach motel” day where they address the backlog of developer-submitted bugs. Along with trying to reproduce bugs and file them to be fixed, the team also writes watir tests. These Ruby libraries systemically test Facebook’s webpages by clicking buttons, following links, and filling in webforms.
Source: feedproxy.google.com
Introducing Deals
UPDATE on Monday, January 31, 2011: Deals is now also available in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. Look for yellow or green tickets when you check in to places in those countries…
Source: blog.facebook.com
Phrases, Badoo, Zoosk, Book and Movie Challenges, Yahoo and More on This Week’s
Phrases, as well as Badoo and other dating apps, a few Connect apps, horoscopes, Friend Buzz and a Page tool were on our list of top 20 Facebook applications by monthly active users this week. Apps on the list grew between 411,000 and 1.7 million MAU this week. The list was compiled with AppData, our data tracking service [...]
Phrases, as well as Badoo and other dating apps, a few Connect apps, horoscopes, Friend Buzz and a Page tool were on our list of top 20 Facebook applications by monthly active users this week. Apps on the list grew between 411,000 and 1.7 million MAU this week. The list was compiled with AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook and covers apps that grew the most in the past week by MAU.
Top Gainers This Week
| Name | MAU | Gain | Gain,% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  Phrases |
20,606,742 | +1,704,743 | +9% |
| 2. |  Badoo |
67,976,269 | +1,582,045 | +2% |
| 3. |  Diamond Dash |
2,759,892 | +1,187,499 | +76% |
| 4. |  Book List Challenges |
1,545,394 | +1,065,757 | +222% |
| 5. |  Frases Diarias |
8,095,449 | +979,888 | +14% |
| 6. |  friend.ly |
2,511,080 | +963,091 | +62% |
| 7. |  FarmVille |
48,229,941 | +942,563 | +2% |
| 8. |  Yahoo! |
13,172,942 | +833,616 | +7% |
| 9. |  Cupid |
5,434,267 | +769,007 | +16% |
| 10. |  Are YOU Interested? |
16,595,172 | +740,478 | +5% |
| 11. |  Profiline Bakanlar ? |
727,198 | +727,198 | +0.0% |
| 12. |  Zoo World |
7,571,337 | +579,644 | +8% |
| 13. |  Monster Galaxy |
9,252,709 | +556,314 | +6% |
| 14. |  Daily Horoscope |
4,941,327 | +512,778 | +12% |
| 15. |  Phrases (new) |
4,933,153 | +484,587 | +11% |
| 16. |  Movie List Challenges |
503,948 | +462,100 | +1,104% |
| 17. |  การวิเคราะห์สมอง |
1,510,035 | +448,910 | +42% |
| 18. |  Zoosk |
6,771,138 | +432,591 | +7% |
| 19. |  Friend Buzz |
6,457,429 | +422,561 | +7% |
| 20. |  iframe + Static FBML + Welcome Tab = iwipa |
1,184,036 | +410,973 | +53% |
Phrases topped the list this week, seeing a whopping 1.7 million MAU, representing just a 9% increase for the app that allows users to post interesting quotes to their stream. Phrases is not currently available in the U.S. A similar app, Phrases (new) also made the list, but with 484,600 MAU. Frases Diarias, Phrases in Spanish, was a hit in Mexico with 980,000 MAU this week, representing a 14% increase.
Badoo was a big hit this week, too, with 1.6 million MAU; the dating app’s Q&A format has users answer questions about their friends, publishing a feed story with each answer. The app grew mostly outside of the U.S. Then there were three more dating apps that also made the list: Cupid grew by 769,000 MAU, Are YOU Interested? by 740,500 and Zoosk by 423,600 MAU.
Book List Challenges grew by about 1.1 million MAU, a 222% increase. The app allows users to complete a survey of which books they’ve read, publishing results to the stream with inviting language, often prompting other users to comment and submit their own results. A similar app, Movie List Challenges, saw 462,100 more MAU this week, a 1,104% increase.
Connect apps on the list included friend.ly with 963,100 MAU and Yahoo with 833,600 MAU. Turkish app Profiline Bakanlar? grew by 727,200 MAU, another Turkish app, Daily Horoscope with daily Wall posts, grew by 512,800 MAU.
The Thai การวิเคราะห์สมอง brain analysis app grew by 448,900 MAU and encourages virality by publishes feed stories and photo albums tagging a users’ friends. Friend Buzz is a Q&A app for users about their Facebook friends that publishes to the Walls of user’s friends when a question is answered; the app grew by 422, 600 MAU. Finally, iframe + Static FBML + Welcome Tab = iwipa allows users who are Page administrators to compile their social media content into one tab; the app grew by about 411,000 MAU.
Source: feedproxy.google.com
Making Photo Tagging Easier
Every day, people add more than 100 million tags to photos on Facebook. They do it because it’s an easy way to share photos and memories…
Source: blog.facebook.com
Plan the Perfect Trip with Help from Friends
When you’re planning a vacation, you can’t control the weather or flight schedules, but luckily you do have a say in where you stay, where you eat and the activities you do. Facebook has partnered with TripAdvisor to help you tap your friends’ travel experiences and plan the perfect trip…
Source: blog.facebook.com
Facebook for Journalists: More Work Than Twitter, but With a Bigger Payout
Last week, Facebook launched a Page called Journalists on Facebook in an effort to encourage the news community to use the site’s Page feature as a distribution and research tool. Historically, Twitter has been more popular with journalists. thanks to its focus on link sharing, the additional distribution they can get thanks to the ease [...]
Last week, Facebook launched a Page called Journalists on Facebook in an effort to encourage the news community to use the site’s Page feature as a distribution and research tool. Historically, Twitter has been more popular with journalists. thanks to its focus on link sharing, the additional distribution they can get thanks to the ease of retweeting, and the fact that it launched before Facebook Pages. But with Facebook sporting as many as 10 times more active users, journalists should still be focused on mastering the social network, even if takes more work than just tweeting copy and pasted URLs.
Twitter Is Quick and Simple
Twitter and Facebook offer different advantages to journalists. Twitter’s short-form nature means journalists aren’t expected to do much more than tweet the headlines and links to their articles, unless they also want to engage in discussion. Twitter’s public nature discourages low quality replies, so journalists don’t have to slog through thousands of comments the way they might on Facebook. It’s also easy to measure impact and success, even if inaccurately, by counting retweets.
Facebook on the other hand, requires journalists to craft compelling updates that stand out against the social content produced by their audience’s friends. Images, captions, and context have to be selected. Though comments to Page stories are also public, they’re not as visible as @ replies to a user’s own friends, leading large publications to receive hundreds of comments per post. While journalists want this engagement, many are too busy to actually wade through the comments and respond.
On Twitter, the line between personal and professional is easy to blur. A fledgling journalist can begin by tweeting out their articles amongst their more friendly updates, and slowly focus more on news coverage as they gain news-seeking followers outside their social circle. This transition is more difficult on Facebook. At some point, journalists have to start a Facebook Page from scratch with zero fans, or sacrifice their personal profile by turning it into a Page and converting their friends into fans using Facebook’s new profile to Page migration tool.
There’s an air of mystery to the news feed that might be discouraging journalists. With Twitter, if you tweet it, it will appear in a follower’s stream. But on Facebook, a journalist’s updates might not make it into the Top News feed, requiring users to actively sift through their Most Recent feed to find a journalist’s updates.
Twitter also had a head start, launching in July 2006 about a year before Facebook Pages, with top news outlets creating Twitter accounts in February and March of 2008. Facebook’s personal profiles have been able to publish status updates since around the time that Twitter launched in 2006, but journalists could only accumulate up to 5,000 friends. This allowed Twitter to set the tone of shortform news distribution, while Pages have instead been framed as something that businesses and journalists have had to adapt to.
The Power of Facebook’s Rich Content Posts and Applications
Facebook Pages holds great potential for journalists, though. Pages can post rich content such as photos or videos content with previews appearing in-line. The images and captions that appear beside posted links give users just enough information that they know they want to click through. Highly interactive posts, such as those using the new Questions product, can engage users while simultaneously securing additional distribution for a journalist’s posts.
Journalists can start their own Pages, as Facebook’s new initiative encourages, but even greater power is available from using a single Page to represent an entire news organization, as Facebook has been promoting with its Facebook + Media Page since last July. Pages are designed to facilitate multiple admins, unlike Twitter accounts, and aggregating fans to a single Page helps cross-promote the work of all of a news outlet’s reporters and build a fan community.
The use of applications by journalists, something widely unexplored, could help them forge deeper bonds with users. They can collect email addresses to expand the breadth of channels through which they can content them. Many apps, designed especially for Pages, can also pull demographic and interest data, helping journalists gain insights about who their audience is. Liking a journalist’s Page creates a link back to that Page in a user’s news feed and profile, driving Likes from a fan’s network much more effectively than Twitter’s follower lists.
Larger publications willing to spend to increase their reach can use highly targeted Facebook ads to gain Likes, while Twitter’s”Promoted Tweets” doesn’t have self-serve tool, and doesn’t provide the same level of granular targeting.
While Twitter is a natural distribution channel for news, it’s not necessarily the most effective, nor does it have the widest reach. Most major publications still have more Twitter followers than Facebook fans, but that could change with time. While Facebook might require journalists to learn a new skill set and apply some effort, there is great long term value to be gained from an investment in building an audience on Facebook.
Source: feedproxy.google.com
Platform Update: User Viewport Info, Per-Post Impression Data From Pages
The most recent Facebook Developer Blog’s update announced the ability for developers to pull information about the viewport their application is being displayed in and scroll to a specific point. Pages can now grant access to their per-post impression data to applications. Facebook also recounted recent changes we’ve previously covered including the inclusion of titles, [...]
The most recent Facebook Developer Blog’s update announced the ability for developers to pull information about the viewport their application is being displayed in and scroll to a specific point. Pages can now grant access to their per-post impression data to applications. Facebook also recounted recent changes we’ve previously covered including the inclusion of titles, images and descriptions in posts published by Like buttons, and the introduction of a preview of these posts seen when buttons are clicked.
The JavaScript SDK now includes new functions for iframe canvas apps. FB.Canvas.getPageInfo returns information about the height, width, and length of user’s window viewport and the application’s iframe viewport. This information can help a developer configure their app’s viewport to create the optimal viewing experience. FB.Canvas.scrollTo allows developers to scroll to a specific point in the app’s canvas by specifying pixel coordinates.
Viewport configuration will be especially useful as users move to using Facebook from a variety of devices with different screen sizes and resolutions. For instance, it can help developers show their dialogs in the right place. Viewport capabilities have become a standard part of mobile browsers through the use of viewport meta tags.
Applications that have receive the read_insights permission from a Page’s admin can now pull per-post impressions from the stream FQL table. This will allow third-party analytics tools to help Page admins determine what timing and content produces the most user engagement.
The Platform Update also included some details about how Facebook’s platform team spends their monthly “roach motel” day where they address the backlog of developer-submitted bugs. Along with trying to reproduce bugs and file them to be fixed, the team also writes watir tests. These Ruby libraries systemically test Facebook’s webpages by clicking buttons, following links, and filling in webforms.
Source: feedproxy.google.com
Introducing Deals
UPDATE on Monday, January 31, 2011: Deals is now also available in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. Look for yellow or green tickets when you check in to places in those countries…
Source: blog.facebook.com
Phrases, Badoo, Zoosk, Book and Movie Challenges, Yahoo and More on This Week’s
Phrases, as well as Badoo and other dating apps, a few Connect apps, horoscopes, Friend Buzz and a Page tool were on our list of top 20 Facebook applications by monthly active users this week. Apps on the list grew between 411,000 and 1.7 million MAU this week. The list was compiled with AppData, our data tracking service [...]
Phrases, as well as Badoo and other dating apps, a few Connect apps, horoscopes, Friend Buzz and a Page tool were on our list of top 20 Facebook applications by monthly active users this week. Apps on the list grew between 411,000 and 1.7 million MAU this week. The list was compiled with AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook and covers apps that grew the most in the past week by MAU.
Top Gainers This Week
| Name | MAU | Gain | Gain,% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Phrases |
20,606,742 | +1,704,743 | +9% |
| 2. | Badoo |
67,976,269 | +1,582,045 | +2% |
| 3. | Diamond Dash |
2,759,892 | +1,187,499 | +76% |
| 4. | Book List Challenges |
1,545,394 | +1,065,757 | +222% |
| 5. | Frases Diarias |
8,095,449 | +979,888 | +14% |
| 6. | friend.ly |
2,511,080 | +963,091 | +62% |
| 7. | FarmVille |
48,229,941 | +942,563 | +2% |
| 8. | Yahoo! |
13,172,942 | +833,616 | +7% |
| 9. | Cupid |
5,434,267 | +769,007 | +16% |
| 10. | Are YOU Interested? |
16,595,172 | +740,478 | +5% |
| 11. | Profiline Bakanlar ? |
727,198 | +727,198 | +0.0% |
| 12. | Zoo World |
7,571,337 | +579,644 | +8% |
| 13. | Monster Galaxy |
9,252,709 | +556,314 | +6% |
| 14. | Daily Horoscope |
4,941,327 | +512,778 | +12% |
| 15. | Phrases (new) |
4,933,153 | +484,587 | +11% |
| 16. | Movie List Challenges |
503,948 | +462,100 | +1,104% |
| 17. | การวิเคราะห์สมอง |
1,510,035 | +448,910 | +42% |
| 18. | Zoosk |
6,771,138 | +432,591 | +7% |
| 19. | Friend Buzz |
6,457,429 | +422,561 | +7% |
| 20. | iframe + Static FBML + Welcome Tab = iwipa |
1,184,036 | +410,973 | +53% |
Phrases topped the list this week, seeing a whopping 1.7 million MAU, representing just a 9% increase for the app that allows users to post interesting quotes to their stream. Phrases is not currently available in the U.S. A similar app, Phrases (new) also made the list, but with 484,600 MAU. Frases Diarias, Phrases in Spanish, was a hit in Mexico with 980,000 MAU this week, representing a 14% increase.
Badoo was a big hit this week, too, with 1.6 million MAU; the dating app’s Q&A format has users answer questions about their friends, publishing a feed story with each answer. The app grew mostly outside of the U.S. Then there were three more dating apps that also made the list: Cupid grew by 769,000 MAU, Are YOU Interested? by 740,500 and Zoosk by 423,600 MAU.
Book List Challenges grew by about 1.1 million MAU, a 222% increase. The app allows users to complete a survey of which books they’ve read, publishing results to the stream with inviting language, often prompting other users to comment and submit their own results. A similar app, Movie List Challenges, saw 462,100 more MAU this week, a 1,104% increase.
Connect apps on the list included friend.ly with 963,100 MAU and Yahoo with 833,600 MAU. Turkish app Profiline Bakanlar? grew by 727,200 MAU, another Turkish app, Daily Horoscope with daily Wall posts, grew by 512,800 MAU.
The Thai การวิเคราะห์สมอง brain analysis app grew by 448,900 MAU and encourages virality by publishes feed stories and photo albums tagging a users’ friends. Friend Buzz is a Q&A app for users about their Facebook friends that publishes to the Walls of user’s friends when a question is answered; the app grew by 422, 600 MAU. Finally, iframe + Static FBML + Welcome Tab = iwipa allows users who are Page administrators to compile their social media content into one tab; the app grew by about 411,000 MAU.
Source: feedproxy.google.com
Making Photo Tagging Easier
Every day, people add more than 100 million tags to photos on Facebook. They do it because it’s an easy way to share photos and memories…
Source: blog.facebook.com
Plan the Perfect Trip with Help from Friends
When you’re planning a vacation, you can’t control the weather or flight schedules, but luckily you do have a say in where you stay, where you eat and the activities you do. Facebook has partnered with TripAdvisor to help you tap your friends’ travel experiences and plan the perfect trip…
Source: blog.facebook.com
