Less than a month we wrote that Facebook had just trademarked FishVille. Weeks later the company is officially launching FishVille. Happy Aquarium, the application which FishVille is based on, is now the 5th largest application on the Facebook Platform. Given Happy Aquarium’s presence, I’d expect to see FishVille advertisements all over Facebook.



So what is FishVille? It’s a game where you raise a fish, feed them and help decorate the tank which they live in. It’s similar to many of the other games like FarmVille, Cafe World, and Roller Coaster Kingdom, however in this one you are simply taking care of a fish tank. As you raise fish you can sell them to earn coins and experience. Honestly, it uses a similar format to all of Zynga’s other games which means the company could reuse a lot of the code from their other games.

In this game you simply grow fish, feed them, and then purchase items for your fish tank. Then come back once in a while to see how your tank is doing. Just like all the other games on Facebook, this one is passive so that you can check in a couple times a day rather than sit and play it non-stop. While I haven’t spent a lot of time playing this game, I’m sure that Zynga is actively tracking user metrics to ensure that this game is just as sticky as their other ones.

If it turns out to be a hit (which it probably will be), Zynga should blow past 200 million monthly active users, far outstripping any of the other competition on the Facebook Platform. If you want to spend your time building a virtual fish tank, go check out FishVille.

We were sort of surprised to discover how many of you proclaim your love for FarmVille, the social farming sim game from Zynga. We reported that the company had trademarked the name FishVille last month, and speculated that an aquatic derivative of the wildly popular social game might be in the works.

And indeed it was, with FishVille launching in beta today. It’s a bit of a late contender to the aquarium games space, with Happy Aquarium, Fish World and My Fishbowl all getting a head start. Nevertheless, Zynga has enough clout in the social games space to make FishVille a quick winner in all likelihood. With an estimated $200 million in revenue this year, it’s arguably the most successful of the companies in the space along with Playfish, Playdom, and others.

The game itself is fairly simple, like many of the Zynga’s other titles including YoVille and Cafe World along with FarmVille. You’re given a virtual aquarium with a few starter fish, that you feed and then harvest and sell to invest in new fish eggs. In a similar revenue mechanic to other Zynga games, you can either pony up real money to get credits to buy more eggs, or complete ad-related surveys and offers in exchange for credits — a practice that has recently come under some scrutiny as a host of less than reputable ads have been finding their way into social games from several companies.

Have you played FishVille yet, or tried out any other social games on Facebook or elsewhere? Let us know your impressions and your favorites in the comments.

Tags: facebook, fishville, games, offer ads, social games, virtual goods, Zynga

This afternoon Facebook posted an update about all the television networks that have integrated Facebook Connect, including ABC who has two new exciting integrations. The first is a promotion for the series “FlashForward” which takes advantage of Facebook Connect to integrate your profile data into a promotion. It’s similar to other promotions we’ve seen such as the Doritos promotion and the Prototype XBox game trailer.



In contrast to MySpace, who also has their own identity service, Facebook has been focused on striking large media integrations with Connect. Not only do these partnerships help increase engagement on the partner sites but it also helps Facebook expand the reach of Facebook Connect. Google has been heavily promoting their own service, Friend Connect, which is similar to Facebook Connect and they’ve already successfully generated 8 million communities.

However Facebook’s model is a smart one as they are going after high profile sites which end up generating more press coverage, building buzz for Facebook Connect. In addition to ABC’s FastForward trailer, ABC will also be launching a new video player tomorrow which leverages Facebook Connect to created a social experience as visitors watch full episodes of ABC content from the ABC website.

This sounds somewhat similar to Hulu’s integration, however it appears that this may be more integrated with the actual video player. We won’t know for sure until tomorrow, but this definitely sounds like what we would expect out of a truly interactive social viewing experience. Facebook is also highlighting a number of their other television integrations in today’s blog post.

It’s no secret that Facebook is humongous: 300 million users humongous. Yet it still shocks us that it keeps on finding new users to fuel its ascent into the social media stratosphere.

A little over a year ago (August 2008), Facebook reached 100 million users. And now according to AllFacebook, that number is now a staggering 325+ million users.

So just how fast is Facebook’s userbase growing? We sat down and did the math. First, here are Facebook’s major growth milestones, starting from when it reached 100 million users:

- August 26th, 2008: 100 million users

- January 7th, 2009: 150 million users

- April 8th, 2009: 200 million users

- July 15th, 2009: 250 million users

- September 15th, 2009: 300 million users

- Friday, November 6th, 2009: 325 million users

Half a Million New Users. Every Single Day.

So let’s do the math. From September 15th to November 6th, Facebook grew by 25 million users. That’s 53 days, if we include the start and end days. Divide that by 25 million and you get a daily growth rate of 471,698 users per day for Facebook. That’s a small city joining Facebook every single day.

Even more shocking is that the number used to be higher. Between July 15th and September 15th, 63 days, Facebook grew by 50 million users. If we do the math, Facebook was growing at a clip of 793,650 users per day. We’re barely able to come up with the words to describe this type of growth.

The Facebook train has to eventually slow down; there are only so many people on planet Earth with an Internet connection (yes, that’s how big their potential audience is), and it seems to be already slowing. However, if you consider half a million users per day “slowing,” then you know you’ve done something right.

This train’s going towards the sky for a good, long time.

Tags: facebook

These days, running promotions on Facebook Pages and inside Facebook apps is one of the simplest and most effective ways of engaging Facebook users. However, while Facebook does allow third parties to run contests and promotions on Facebook, it has been posting increasingly specific guidelines throughout the past year detailing just what is and what isn’t allowed.

Now, Facebook has just posted a new set of promotional guidelines that go into much more detail. We’ve excerpted and highlighted some of the most relevant sections below, but the most important part: All promotions that run on Facebook must be fully located on either 1) the canvas page of an application, or 2) in an application box or tab on a Facebook Page – AND you must get prior Facebook approval before the promotion starts.

The Updated Policies

Here’s the most important section of the updated promotional guidelines:

Section 3. Administering a Promotion through the Facebook Platform

You may not administer any promotion through Facebook, except that you may administer a promotion through the Facebook Platform with our prior written approval. Such written approval may be obtained only through an account representative at Facebook. If you are already working with an account representative, please contact that representative to begin the approval process. If you do not work with an account representative, you can use this contact form to inquire about working with an account representative. If we provide you such approval, you agree to the following:

3.1 You will only administer the promotion through an application on the Facebook Platform, as directed by us.

3.2 You will only allow users to enter the promotion in the following locations on Facebook:

3.2.1 On the canvas Page of an application on the Facebook Platform.

3.2.2 On an application box in a tab on a Facebook Page.

3.6 You must submit materials for any promotion you plan on administering through the Facebook Platform to your account representative for our review and approval at least 7 days prior to the start date of such promotion. Promotions not approved in writing within such time period will be deemed unapproved.

What’s Clearly Not Allowed

This means the following types of Facebook contests are not allowed:

• “Status update” contests


• “Photo upload” contests


• Any kind of contest that requires commenting on or responding to items in the News Feed (brands could otherwise boost their News Feed engagement and thus distribution by constantly running contests in the feed)

Instead, all contest promotions must be run through third party applications, and must be approved by Facebook “at least 7 days prior to the start date.”

This is especially important for all Page administrators to be aware of, as many businesses and organizations have been experimenting with different types of contests to drive traffic and engagement on their Facebook Page.

Two More Details

1) Aside from the usual prohibitions around allowing users under 18 to under or including any alcohol, tobacco, etc, in the campaign, the new guidelines say clearly that marketers must not require users to “purchase a product” or complete “a lengthy task” in order to enter.

Section 2. Prohibitions

2.6 The promotion is a sweepstakes that conditions entry upon the purchase of a product, completion of a lengthy task, or other form of consideration.

2) Facebook says marketers must not indicate in any way that Facebook is a sponsor or administrator of the promotion.

Section 4. Publicizing a Promotion on Facebook

4.1 You will not directly or indirectly indicate that Facebook is a sponsor or administrator of the promotion or mention Facebook in any way in the rules or materials relating to the promotion.

Examples of What To Do and Not To Do

Finally, Facebook has given the following examples to help marketers understand how to apply the new Promotion Guidelines:

You cannot: Condition entry in the promotion upon a user providing content on Facebook, such as making a post on a profile or Page, status comment or photo upload.

You can: Use a third party application to condition entry to the promotion upon a user providing content. For example, you may administer a photo contest whereby a user uploads a photo through a third-party application to enter the contest.

You cannot: Administer a promotion that users automatically enter by becoming a fan of your Page.

You can: Only allow fans of your Page to access the tab that contains the third-party application for the promotion.

You cannot: Notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles or Pages.

You can: Collect an address or email through the third-party application for the promotion in order to contact the winner by email or standard mail.

You cannot: Instruct people (in the rules or elsewhere) to sign up for a Facebook account before they enter the promotion.

You can: Instruct users to visit the third-party application to enter the promotion (as described in Section 3.4(i)). Since users must have a Facebook account in order to access an application on the Facebook Platform, if you give this instruction, they will be prompted to sign up for a Facebook account if they do not already have one.

The Page Apps/Management Ecosystem

This update should be a boon to companies like Buddy Media, Context Optional, Wildfire, Fanappz, Involver, theKbuzz, and Vitrue that are helping big brands, small businesses, and celebrities engage users on Facebook through white label application platform specifically designed for Facebook Page and application promotions. By requiring all promotions to occur within applications of some kind, Facebook is both keeping the News Feed cleaner and signaling to the tools community that it wants them heavily involved in the future of marketing on Facebook.

There are a few diamonds in the rough mix of simple applications on this week’s list of the top 20 up and coming apps. We put this list together by looking at the applications with between 100,000 and 1 million monthly active users in AppData, sorted by which applications gained the most users in the past week. As this week shows, looking at this segment of apps can show great apps before they become hits.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	What kind of mask do you wear?	235,158	+207,243	+88.13
2.	JibJab	896,201	+190,506	+21.26
3.	what are you born to do?	913,576	+189,108	+20.70
4.	商業大亨Web	243,784	+184,795	+75.80
5.	Which Zodiac Sign Are You Most Compatible With?	707,949	+153,073	+21.62
6.	iTop Hits Photo	999,975	+143,170	+14.32
7.	Icy Tower	735,383	+135,090	+18.37
8.	Acımasız Gerçekler	339,686	+117,885	+34.70
9.	Do you think…?	208,255	+98,426	+47.26
10.	MixPod Playlist	621,098	+92,855	+14.95
11.	Huggles	155,295	+92,448	+59.53
12.	Tarjetitas	958,169	+85,017	+8.87
13.	Goobox – Free Games	526,077	+84,995	+16.16
14.	Snowball Fight!	245,950	+80,096	+32.57
15.	Happy Halloween	122,360	+79,734	+65.16
16.	Halloween Costume	293,201	+75,416	+25.72
17.	Petits quiz entre amis	643,118	+72,898	+11.34
18.	Band of Heroes	107,565	+72,519	+67.42
19.	Fun Cards – Thanksgiving & More!	497,893	+71,508	+14.36
20.	A Special Bouquet Greeting!	599,752	+66,856	+11.1

Not speaking of great apps, though, at the top of the list is a quiz app called What kind of mask do you wear? We’re not going to cover it too closely, other than to note that it is made by Quiz Monster, and its interface misleads users into clicking on an IQ Quiz ad, as you can see from the screenshot below. The app has managed to grow quickly, gaining 207,000 to reach 235,000 monthly active users this week.

Not every quiz app misleads users like this, of course. Some of the others near the top of the list, like what are you born to do? and Which Zodiac Sign Are You Most Compatible With? are not intentionally designed to drive users to IQ quiz ads, even though the quizzes are basic templates. Judging by my number of Facebook friends who have played both of the latter apps, many people enjoy them.

Now, for the diamonds on the list. At the top is animated e-card creator JibJab, sort of. The app lets you create and share these cards with your Facebook friends — although the company has apparently taken the app offline, because when you try to add the app you’re taken to a landing page telling you to visit JibJab’s main site. JibJab has been big on using Facebook Connect, and apparently it decided its home site was a better venue for its business. We’re not sure how the app is continuing to post growth: It gained 190,000 new users to reach 896,000 monthly actives.

Further down the list, a few other apps deserve a mention. Icy Tower, an Ice Climbers-style game we covered recently over on Inside Social Games, grew by 135,000 new users to total 735,000. Another app, called MixPod Playlist, gained 93,000 to reach 621,000 monthly actives; the app is sort of similar to iLike, in that it lets you create playlists of songs using content like music videos from YouTube. Another game we recently reviewed on Inside Social Games, called Goobox – Free Games, is also seeing a solid surge. It grew by 85,000 to end the week at 526,000. The game is actually a collection of mini-games, with each one having a goo theme.

Also notable is the diversity of this list. As we’ve seen in past up-and-coming lists, this one includes apps in Turkish, Chinese, Spanish and French.

A new plug-in for Facebook from music player WinAmp may be a long-awaited key to comprehensive music sharing that has been lacking from the site — at least for people who still use Winamp. I am Listening To gives Facebook users the ability to share what they’re listening to at any given time, as well as load playlists directly to their profiles.

The Facebook Listening To v1.0 application updates your Facebook status when you listen to songs with the WinAmp music player. Your Facebook friends will know exactly what tracks you’re enjoying, or you can load entire playlists to share with everyone, marking a big improvement over some of the current options for sharing music on Facebook. The plug-in even has the ability to post your WinAmp tracks when you’re not logged into Facebook. The application is free, though donations are encouraged, and setup requires a special user ID and key code.

There are a few ways to let Facebook friends know about what type of music you enjoy. These are mostly limited to linking to songs in outside sites or programs, like the integration with iTunes, and programs that have offered music sharing directly through Facebook are often short-lived due to licensing and DRM issues. And, recently, Facebook let people send virtual songs to each other through Lala.

While WinAmp has been around for years, its popularity has waned due to more users migrating to players like iTunes and Windows Media Player. If this application can gain a little steam, this integration might help it gain a little momentum.

Facebook has continued to grow at an impressive rate throughout the year, most recently announcing the 300 million user milestone. According to Facebook’s own advertising statistics though, the company is now beyond 325 million users and continuing to grow. The story has become relatively repetitive at this point: Facebook is growing like a weed and doesn’t appear to be slowing.



The other part of the story that we regularly hear is that Facebook is growing at the expense of companies like MySpace, hi5, Bebo, and any other social network which was once successful. While many industry pundits are looking for the young users to go running out the door to Twitter and other sites, the new trend is that the generational gap is being killed and users of all ages are on the same platforms.

Facebook has been able to pull this off through the use of granular privacy settings and increasingly strict limitations which let you connect to only those people you actually know. The result is that Facebook has the most accurate data about user relationships and is increasingly likely to become the default online identity provider. While I’d be willing to throw some water on the flames, it’s hard to find a negative statistic about Facebook at this point.

The only thing we can say at this point is that Facebook is smoking hot and doesn’t appear to be cooling anytime soon.

Last night Facebook restated their commitment to fighting off aggressive advertisers and as part of that commitment they have shut down two more ad networks which continue to violate the platform terms. Unfortunately we have no idea which ad networks they shut down and even after talking to multiple sources we have yet to uncover who those networks are. Perhaps the people who were shut down are irrelevant, but as I wrote at the beginning of the week, casualties were inevitable.



Techcrunch has become the source for finger pointing and Offerpal has been forced to make highly public changes. Regardless of how this has flushed out, Facebook has been taking steps to protect the users on Facebook since early on. Most of the time Facebook has been going back and forth with ad networks on what ads they can run and which they can’t.

Last time advertising related issues took place on the Facebook Platform, the company shut down SocialReach and SocialHour. However as Mike Arrington pointed out last weekend, many scam ads still existed but in one week it appears that the vast majority of those ads have been eliminated from the platform. The overall impact will be that CPMs drop however this move by Facebook is important for the long-term sustainability of the company and the Platform.

One thing highlighted by Nick Gianos of Facebook last night was that, “It should be clear what matters are the ongoing actions taken when things are quiet by platforms, ad networks and developers, and not brief reactions when the market’s paying attention.” This speaks to our statement that many of these companies just put the skeletons in the closet when bloggers and users are tracking what’s going on.

While we can’t be completely sure, it appears that IQ Quizzes and similar quizzes have been deemed unacceptable by Facebook for the time being. It will be interesting to see how the Platform advertising space evolves over the coming weeks and months in the wake of these changes.

Other relevant articles

• When Entrepreneurs Need Bodyguards, Something Isn’t Right

• Ad Networks On Edge As Facebook Shuts Down Developers

• Facebook Begins Going After Developers For Aggressive Ads

• Facebook Announces New Ad Policy Which Eliminates User Data From Third Party Networks

• Affiliate Marketers Flock To Facebook And Click Fraud Skyrockets

• Facebook Developers And Ad Networks Participating In Race To The Bottom

Retailers that are launching or beefing up their Facebook pages may not be able to easily track a monetary return on the time and energy spent on the pages, but many are starting to see benefits. Engaging in customers and building large fan followings is giving retailers like Kohl’s valuable insight into what their customers want, so sellers are better able to tailor their sites and specials to meet buyers’ needs.

A recent poll buy Shop.org revealed that as the holiday shopping season  get in full swing, almost half of all online retailers will begin to ramp up their presence on social sites, including Facebook. The more successful retailers wil be able to utilize Facebook to converse with consumers, mainly those who frequent their sites and stores, to create a better shopping experience.

While several applications, like the recent offering from Payvment, are allowing retailers to set up actual storefronts inside Facebook to translate fans into actual dollars, the real value comes from the free information Facebook offers, according to the report. Companies have traditionally paid a great deal to have outside companies conduct surveys to pinpoint trends in their respective industries — with Facebook, those companies can simply ask their customers themselves. The information gathered on Facebook can be used to implement sweeping changes across the brand or specialized offers to targeted demographics.

According to a report in the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, retailer Kohl’s has been using its rather popular Facebook page to listen to improve its site and service for customers. The company is even planning to alter the look of its Facebook page to match a holiday ad campaign. The company’s willingness to embrace both praise and criticism on its page has proven beneficial, with Kohl’s using the information to give consumers more of what they want, and giving the brand the ability to directly address any complaints.