The 2011 f8 Gave Marketers MUCH to Celebrate
| Justin Kistner
Yesterday’s news from F8 was some of the most exciting announcements to come from Facebook in years. I live tweeted the event and have compiled those tweets at the bottom of this post, which contains some tidbits not covered in this summary. There are numerous posts that covered what was announced, so I wanted to take a moment and break down the impact of Facebook’s announcements for marketers.
Newsfeed Updates
I’ll start with the changes that were made to the Newsfeed the day before f8. Facebook updated the layout of the Newsfeed and added a new feature called the Ticker.
The Newsfeed has eliminated the Top News and Most Recent options and instead has combined both into a single stream. Now there is no way for users to opt out of an EdgeRank sorted view, which makes it more important than ever to understand how to reach your fans through engaging content.
Instead of combining Posts and Recent Activity into the same stream, Facebook created the Ticker as the new home for Recent Activity. Facebook did indicate that “rare” Recent Activity may still make its way into the standard Newsfeed, but they didn’t offer a definition for “rare”. I assume that would be Recent Activity like a friend updated their relationship status to engaged or something. The rest will go to the Ticker. This is also in preparation for the fact that the new Open Graph apps for the Timeline will be cranking out a lot more Recent Activity updates, which can now be pumped through the Ticker. Recent Activity updates from Open Graph apps will offer instant interaction through the Ticker. For example, the Spotify music app will automatically share updates about what music you’re listening to with your friends through the Ticker. Your friends will be able to hover over those updates and instantly listen to the song you’re playing. The same functionality is true for watching shows on Hulu or movies on Netflix. Huge opportunity there for marketers to enable social discovery for their apps and content.
Timeline
Obviously the Timeline was Facebook’s biggest announcement. Basically, it’s a new version of a profile that allows for a curated view of updates instead of simply a chronological view sorted by EdgeRank. Facebook is keeping the profile for the time being, but it’s logical to assume they will merge these two views in time.
One notable piece that is missing is the ability for Pages to have their own Timeline. Given Facebook’s pattern of linking the features and layouts of Profiles and Pages, most likely the Timeline will be rolled out to Pages, but it may take as long as a year.
From a marketer’s perspective, the Timeline is essentially a new channel for content distribution in Facebook. The biggest opportunity is to become a popular app for the Timeline. Let’s take a closer look at the Open Graph apps for the Timeline and why it’s such a big opportunity.
The Timeline will be rolling out over the next few weeks. If you want it now, here are some instructions for how to get the Timeline for yourself today.
Open Graph Apps
Facebook originally announced the Open Graph at last year’s f8. Outside of a handful of marquee partners, the open specification had very little traction. And that was because it didn’t really integrate with the rest of the Facebook experience. All of that has changed now.
Now, apps can define Open Graph objects on Facebook. Previously the only objects were defined by Facebook. Those objects were things like posts, photos, videos, etc. And Facebook defined the only verb, which was Like. So, if a user clicked a Like button on your post, Facebook would publish Recent Activity that read, “John liked a post.” Now Facebook allows apps to create their own verbs and nouns. That means instead of like, you can define words like read, watched, played, etc. And, instead of posts, you can define nouns like movie, song, food, etc. The implications are really huge for an app to be able to define how the updates are presented in the Ticker. It also means that apps can buy Sponsored Stories against their own Open Graph objects. Let me talk more about that.
New Sponsored Stories
Facebook announced two significant updates to Sponsored Stories. First, they now allow advertisers to buy Sponsored Stories based on their custom Open Graph objects. That means if Netflix creates an object called a movie and an action known as watched, they can buy a Sponsored Story of users watching movies. It might read something like, “Justin watched Blade Runner.” Super cool!
Facebook also announced that advertisers can buy Sponsored Stories on actions taken on apps they don’t own. For example, a movie studio may want to buy Sponsored Stories on IMDB for all of their movies. That way if a user watches a trailer for an upcoming movie release, the movie studio can advertise that. To begin with, Facebook is allowing anyone to buy Sponsored Stories for any app, but they did say they will be watching that program closely for any policy adjustments that might need to be made for abuse of the privilege. This is a massive opportunity for big brands who don’t own the end customer such as fashion labels, movie companies, food franchises, CPG brands, etc. They no longer have to build their presence to reach their consumers. They can piggy back on their distributors apps’ audience.
Action Targeting
In addition to their updates to Sponsored Stories, Facebook also announced the ability to target Open Graph actions. So, if Ticketmaster wants to sell tickets to the upcoming Coldplay concert, they can now target people that have taken the action of “listening” to Coldplay on Spotify. That is huge. Previously the only way to target people was based on interests, which was terrible because most people didn’t spend much time filling out their interests to begin with and even fewer updated them over time. Actions, on the other hand, will be a rich data set that is constantly updated and will be a much more powerful targeting mechanism. I’m excited about the possibilities for action targeting! Yes, I am a geek.
Graph Rank
Graph Rank was an interesting announcement. Last year Facebook announced EdgeRank and even gave us a screenshot of the basic formula. EdgeRank is the algorithm that determines what to display in a user’s Newsfeed. It changed the way Pages had to think about their editorial calendar for their wall because it tied distribution to engagement. Now, Facebook has released Graph Rank, but this time they didn’t share anything about the formula. The name, however, does reveal that it seems like the concept of EdgeRank, but applied to the entire graph of objects, not just the newsfeed. Graph Rank appears to power the Ticker and Timeline. In time, brands will have to learn how to build affinity with their audience in order to have effective distribution in any part of Facebook.
Buttons
Just before f8, Facebook announced the Subscribe button. This button brings the concept of following to Facebook. It had been a source of frustration for users that you couldn’t get around EdgeRank’s determination of what content you should see. Now users can choose to Subscribe to content from their friends and can even filter it to specific things, which is much more like Twitter.
But, that’s not the only button we’ll see. Open Graph apps will also have the ability to have their own buttons based on their custom objects and actions. For example, Amazon can roll outa “Read” button for their books. As Mark put it during his keynote, “People read 10 times more books than they like.” Just as the Like button creates a connection for a brand to target with posts and ads, I assume these custom buttons will also allow for content targeting.
All in all, an amazing event and the richness and potential of the Facebook ecosystem for marketers has gotten a lot more interesting!
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To see my live tweets from the f8 floor, go to Storify.
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