Open Graph - How to connect all the things - AllFacebook DevCon Berlin 2012

Open Graph - How to connect all the things.

thanks for the ad(d).

Open Graph - How to connect all the things
AllFacebook DevCon, Berlin 11/2012
Michael Kamleitner, Die Socialisten http://die.socialisten.at
Michael Kamleitner, Die Socialisten

About: Die Socialisten
"Die Socialisten" is a Vienna-based social-software agency
focussing on the design & implementation of apps and
marketing-solutions on social web platforms like
Facebook.
To date, we have successfully built more than onehundred
brand-pages, applications and integrations of external
websites.
Our clients include Red Bull, Axel Springer/Bild.de,
Bertelsmann, FTD, Krone Multimedia, ATV and Hitradio Ö3.
"Die Socialisten" are Austria's ﬁrst agency listed in the
ofﬁcial "Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer"-program.
http://die.socialisten.at | http://facebook.com/diesocialisten
die.socialisten.at
social network development

Timeline & Open Graph:
1 Year later: Apps, Actions & Analytics

die.socialisten.at
Photo: Chip.de

Timeline & Open Graph:
Opportunities

- Social Graph Integration: Open Graph Protocol (OGP) was just the beginning!

- Social Graph Customization: Objects, Actions, Aggregations

- User Growth & Distribution: Newsfeed, Ticker, Timeline

- Personalization: Facepile & other Social Plugins

- Cross-Platform: Web, Mobile (Native/Web), Devices ...

More: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/technical-guides/opengraph/

http://die.socialisten.at
Social Software Development

7 Rules:
Designing great Open Graph-Apps

Bye bye, FB.ui({method:‘feed’},...)
die.socialisten.at

Bye bye, FB.ui({method:‘feed’,...})

Good ol’ Wall-Posting is losing relevance:

- Feed-dialogue is bugging users!

- Feed-dialogue will mostly get cancelled anyway!

- Feed-publish in the background (/me/feed) is sleazy.

- Stories published via Feed-dialogue look always the same
(title, description, image, user message)

- Distribution of Wall-Postings on Newsfeed is decreasing, and fast!


Comparison: Distribution
Feed-dialogue vs. Open Graph Action
Distribution Feed-dialogue:

March ’12: 130x

July ’12: 68x

Oct. ’12: 31x

Insights taken from same app, Feed-stories haven’t been changed content-wise! Social Software Development

Comparison: Distribution
Feed-dialogue vs. Open Graph Action
Distribution Feed-dialogue:

Oct. ’12: 31x

Distribution of Open Graph-action:

Oct. ’12: 126x

Distribution will vary according to content and type of action!
Examined action was optimized content-wise!

Rule #1:

Each story that is currently published via Feed-dialogue or /me/feed,
could potentially reach a greater audience when implemented as
Open Graph-action!


Guideline:
Passive Sharing / Content Consumption

Passive Sharing = Open Graph-actions which are published
automatically without any explicit user-interaction.

Mostly used for actions in the area of Content Consumption -
i.e. users consuming articles, videos, music...

Mostly implemented as Built-in Action (“read”, “listen”, “watch”)

Examples: Washington Post- & other Social Readers, Spotify ...

Users’ Perception & Acceptance of Passive Sharing was quite
challenging to begin with, even when Open Graph started.


Guideline:

The dark side of Passive Sharing:

Some apps have been abusing Passive Sharing for actions which
had nothing to do with Content Consumption. They also failed to
clearly communicate the automatic nature of Passive Sharing to
their users.

Starting February 2013:

Passive Sharing for Custom Actions will be forbidden!

Authenticated Referrals will be removed – the “Viral Loop” of
Passive Sharing will therefor be clearly diminished!

But: Custom Actions actively shared are here to stay!


Guideline:

Since Summer 2012:

Reach & visiblity of Built-in Actions in Newsfeed (“Trending
Articles”, “Trending Videos”) have clearly been reduced by
Facebook!

Built-in Actions “Watch” & “Read” show up in
Ticker very, very rarely (or not at all - to-be-conﬁrmed)!


Summer 2012

OG-Launch 2011


Example: “Read”-Action

Period: June-July 2012

MAU: 125.000

Actions: 166.000x “Read” published

Impressions: 24.7mio (149x)

CTR: 0.87%

Distribution:
No Insights-data available!

Example: “Read”-Action

Period: September-October 2012

MAU: 100.000

Actions: 81.000x “Read” published


CTR: 0.85%

Distribution:
Insights-data f. Ticker might be ﬂawed!

Example: “Watch”-Action

Period: March-April 2012

MAU: Max 11k

Actions: 12.000 “Watch” published


CTR: 1.4%

Distribution:
No Insights-data available!

Example: “Watch”-Action

Period: September-October 2012

MAU: Max 11k

Actions: 382 “Watch” published

Impressions: 9.200 (24x)

CTR: 0.75%

Distribution:
Insights-data f. Ticker might be ﬂawed!

Rule #2:

Passive Sharing with Built-in Actions (!) is still OK for
content-heavy apps & sites.

But: please say goodbye to uber-optimistic expectations in regard
to distribution. Also, be extra-fair to your users when publishing
passively...


Clear indication with popup/overlay
http://apps.facebook.com/meinklub when action is published, easy Undo!

Easily accessible option for permanent
http://apps.facebook.com/meinklub opt-out, historical action-log with undo.

Guideline:
Open Graph Custom Actions

Recommendation: Design 4-5 Custom Actions per app, ideally:

- Custom Actions modelled after existing user-interactions in app

- Actions having a low entry-barriere for user (“1-click action”)

- Actions with big volume (many actions = more impressions)

- Actions designed with nice OG-Tags (title, desc, image, video...)

- Actions with rich metadata & connections to other objects

- Actions crosslinked with Action-Links


http://apps.facebook.com/lastfm-og-scrobbler/ http://die.socialisten.at

Example: Custom Action “Scrobble”
http://apps.facebook.com/lastfm-og-scrobbler/

Period: March-November 2012

MAU: Max 85k

Actions: 150mio “Scrobble” published

Impressions: 1.7 billion (12x)

CTR: 0.27%

Distribution:
Ticker (56%), Newsfeed (26%), Timeline Development
Social Software (18%)

Guideline:

Recommendation: Actions with “Explicit Sharing”:

Useful for Actions that represent a clear “user-intent”!
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/technical-guides/opengraph/explicit-sharing/

Actions published with “Explicit Sharing” are currently always
displayed on publishers Timeline-proﬁle.

Actions published with “Explicit Sharing” offer
better distribution on Newsfeed of publishers friends.


Guideline:

Not allowed for “Explicit Sharing”:

- Built-in Actions, Passive Sharing

- Actions with low entry-barriere: “Like”, “Favorite” ...

- Actions with high volume and low information:
“Follow”, “Friend” ...

- Actions occuring during gameplay:
“Playing”, “Building”, “Achieved” ...


Guideline:

Very suitable for “Explicit Sharing”:

- Content generated by the user: photos, videos ...

- Text manually entered by the user: comments, postings ...

- Actions with geo-location: checkins ...


Guideline:

How-to: “Explicit Sharing”

- Activate migration-setting (Default for new apps):


Guideline:



- When publishing: fb:explicit_sharing = true


Guideline:



- When publishing: fb:explicit_sharing = true

- “Explicit Sharing” has to be approved for each action!


Explicit: Custom Action
“Love” with Explicit Sharing

Period: October-November 2012

MAU: Max 85k

Actions: 7.500 “Love” published


CTR: 0.70%

Distribution:
Timeline (71%), Newsfeed (17%), Ticker Development

Guideline:

Recommendation: Actions with “User Message”:

Publish actions with additional text-messages
manually entered by the publishing user.
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/actions/

Actions published with “User Message” are currently
always displayed on publishers Timeline-proﬁle.

Therefor: no sense in publishing Actions with both
“User Message” and “Explicit Sharing”.


Guideline:

Recommendation: Actions with “User Message”:

“User Message” has to be approved for each action!


Example: Custom Action
“Comment” with User Message

Period: October-November 2012

MAU: Max 85k

Actions: 361 “Love” published


CTR: 1.3%

Distribution:
Newsfeed (41%), Timeline (41%), Ticker Development

Rule #3:

Design your app with 4-5 Custom Actions. For better distribution, enable
“Explicit Sharing” or “User Messages” for 2-3 suitable Actions!

Good Custom Actions have high volume &
low entry-barriere for the user!


Guideline:
Distribution of Open Graph-Actions

Impressions/ Referrals/
Type Example Total Distribution
Factor CTR

Newsfeed (99.73%),
1.200.000 10.500
Built-In “Read” 81.000 Timeline (0.27%),
(x15) (0.85%) Ticker (0%)

Newsfeed (78%),
9.200 70
Built-In “Watch” 380 Timeline (12%),
(x24) (0.75%) Ticker (0%)

Ticker (56%),
1.700.000.000 4.6mio
Custom “Scrobble” 150.000.000 Newsfeed (26%),
(x12) (0.27%) Timeline (18%)

Timeline (71%),
Custom / 380.000 2.700
“Love” 7.600 Newsfeed (17%),
“Explicit Sharing” (x51) (0.7%) Ticker (11%)

Newsfeed (41%),
Custom / 15.800 206
“Comment” 360 Timeline (41%),
“User Message” (x44) (1.3%) Ticker (18%)

Ticker (44%),
Custom / 4.300 20
“Checkin” 70 Newsfeed (33%),
“Geo-Location” (62x) (0.46%) Timeline (23%)


Guideline:
Optimize Custom Actions

Actions published with “Rich Content” (f.e. user-generated content),
show better distribution in Newsfeed, Ticker and Timeline!

Images / Photos
http://instagram.com


Guideline:

Rich Content: Photos, videos or Flash-content, geo-location.
CTR increasing, since resulting stories are more interesting to friends!

Geo-location
http://www.stadtkinder.com


Guideline:

Rich Content: Photos, videos or Flash-content, geo-location.
CTR increasing, since resulting stories are more interesting to friends!

Videos /
Flash-content
http://apps.facebook.com/
lastfm-og-scrobbler

<meta property="og:video:type" content="application/x-shockwave-flash"/>
<meta property="og:video" content="https://www.youtube.com/v/..."/>
<meta property="og:video:width" content="398"/> http://die.socialisten.at
<meta property="og:video:height" content="239"/> Social Software Development

Rule #4:

Distribution & CTR can be improved by adding “Rich Content” to actions:
Videos, Flash-content, images & geo-location.


Guideline:

Crosslinking Open Graph-Objects enables richer,
more interesting stories and increases CTR!


Guideline:

Crosslink two Open Graph-Actions with “Action Links”!
Enables 1-Click-responses & increases volume of published actions.

Cross-linked Actions
“Love” <> “Scrobble”

Cross-linked Objects
“Artist” <> “User”


Rule #5:

Distribution & CTR can be improved by connecting
Open Graph-Objects, Actions-Links & adding Rich Metadata.


Facepile &
other Social Plugins

Guideline:
Facepile & other Social Plugins

Social Plugins promise fast & easy Personalization.

Facepile - Friends who are connected to a particular object by a
particular action (f.e. friends that read a certain article)

Activity Feed - Highlight recent actions & popular
content of your friends

Killer-feature: Works without App-Auth!


Guideline:

Unfortunately, Social Plugins are not always the best solution:

- Hardly any styling possible

- Hardly any options to customize content displayed
(f.e. displaying ony most recent actions of friends ...)

- Bugs!
(problems with internationalization, missing actions etc.)


Guideline:

Original Facepile: 2 Friends

Custom Facepile: http://die.socialisten.at
6 Friends! Social Software Development

Guideline:

Recommendation: Log all published actions to your app/database.
Develop your own, custom widgets to replace Facepile, Recent
Activity - get creative, but warrant privacy settings!

mysql> select id,created,user_id,action,action_id,substring(action_url,1,30) from actions limit 10;
+----+---------------------+-----------------+-------------------+-------------------+-------------
| id | created | user_id | action | action_id | action_url |
+----+---------------------+-----------------+-------------------+-------------------+-------------
| 5 | 2012-05-08 18:02:22 | 100001903705011 | news.reads | 327098717363582 | ... |
| 9 | 2012-05-09 16:32:49 | 609190863 | meinklubdev:react | 10150966819840864 | ... |
| 10 | 2012-05-09 18:02:09 | 609190863 | news.reads | 10150967610995864 | ... |
| 11 | 2012-05-09 18:07:10 | 609190863 | meinklubdev:react | 10150967623110864 | ... |
...

Bonus = enables Undo for historical Actions!

Major Downside: works only after App-Auth!


Guideline:

Example: Custom Facepile


Rule #6:

Don’t rely on Standard Social Plugins! Be more ﬂexible and awesome by
developing your own, custom Widgets!


Rule #0:

Stay up-to-date! Subscribe & read the Docs & Facebook Dev-Blog!
Try out new features, keep optimizing your Actions &
watching your App-Insights!


http://conceptingsocialmediaconcepts.tumblr.com http://die.socialisten.at

BREAK
YOUR
OWN
RULES

“Facebook Programming -
Developing Social Apps & Websites”
Michael Kamleitner, Galileo Computing 2012

http://book.socialisten.at
die.socialisten.at

Michael Kamleitner
Die Socialisten

Let’s connect!

michael@socialisten.at
http://facebook.com/michael.kamleitner
http://twitter.com/_subnet

Open Graph - How to connect all the things - AllFacebook DevCon Berlin 2012

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (19)

Similar to Open Graph - How to connect all the things - AllFacebook DevCon Berlin 2012

Similar to Open Graph - How to connect all the things - AllFacebook DevCon Berlin 2012 (20)

More from Die Socialisten

More from Die Socialisten (14)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Open Graph - How to connect all the things - AllFacebook DevCon Berlin 2012