Saturday, July 28, 2012

Facebook users are sharing 1B stories from Open Graph apps per day; Zuckerberg discusses options for future monetization


Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today that more than 1 billion stories are being shared from Open Graph apps per day.
Open Graph apps are those that share users’ actions, such as reading, watching, listening and other custom activities to Timeline, Ticker and News Feed. These were first introduced in September 2011, but only began to be widely developed and used as of January 2012, when the social network began approving third-party integrations.
Open Graph is an important aspect of Facebook’s growing platform, which Zuckerberg repeatedly referred to as being core to the social network’s overall strategy. The CEO also said that Facebook’s vision for the platform is “bigger than most people perceive.” He urged investors not to think about the platform as being solely about games on Facebook.com, even though that is the vast majority of the company’s $192-million payments business. Zuckerberg believes his platform will actually extend beyond the web itself. He talked about the future possibility of buying a new car, logging in with Facebook, and having the car populate with your favorite music, your friends’ addresses, restaurants you like and places your friends have been to.
Although Open Graph does not directly generate revenue for Facebook, except in the case of game developers who integrate the platform and also sell virtual goods, Zuckerberg discussed how in the future, the company will likely take a percentage revenue that is generated by applications that build on Open Graph. With games, Facebook takes a 30 percent fee, which Zuckerberg suggested was because Facebook was such a core part of what drives value to the game companies. With media apps and commerce integrations, which are “more nuanced” social experiences, he said Facebook will probably take a lower fee.
The company has not offered any time frame for these moves, but it is testing a new subscription billing option, which could be used by applications like Spotify and others, generating revenue for Facebook in the process. In the meantime, though, Zuckerberg says the company is focused on building tools and products that allow companies to build social products. He also noted that many of the top developers also become some of the social network’s biggest advertisers as they look to extend their reach to new users.

No comments:

Post a Comment