Facebook Application Measurement and Analytics

FYI- I had written this post for Omniture last week. Re-posting it here:

Facebook has drastically changed how people interact on web and how they consume information. Currently Facebook has over 200 million users and more than 70% of their users engage with one or more of the 52,000+ Facebook Apps. Marketers are now building interactive Facebook applications to reach out to and engage new customers. With that comes challenge of measuring and tracking the effectiveness of Facebook Applications.

On May 28, 2009, Omniture announced App Measurement for Facebook, enabling marketers to track and measure their Facebook apps within the SiteCatalyst reporting interface.

Implementation

Once you have downloaded the App Measurement for Facebook tag, you will find that the tag is similar to SiteCatalyst JS tag.

A common request of online marketers is to better understand and target social users with the right message. Many would be interested in reporting on app users’ information like “Network,” “Gender,” “City,”, “# of Friends,” “Interests,” etc. This information can be easily reported with the help of Facebook APIs and populating the API call value into SiteCatalyst variable tags.

Once you have figured out the metrics you want to measure, now simply just populate those in SiteCatalyst variables (eVars and sProps) and paste the code into app pages. Yes, it is that simple.

Key Answers every Facebook App Developer is looking for:

SiteCatalyst helps online marketers uncover key questions like: How is the app performing, what is the adoption rate of the app, how viral is the app, which user segments are adopting the most, what kind of social activity app users are performing, how many app invites users have sent to their friends, what kind of content app users interact most with, and how is the app impacting web events like conversions.

Adoption Rate and Social Activity: Online marketers can segment users by number of friends they have and categorize these segments by the social activity performed to better understand adoption rate.


App virality: Measure the number of users who have invited their friends to add an app enables marketers to understand how viral the app is amongst users.


App Content being engaged: Understand the features that Facebook app users are spending the most time with and identify potential improvements for these sections of the app.


Conversion/Web events: Understand how Facebook app users are converting, enabling online marketers to improve conversions.


Full documentation on the App Measurement for Facebook code is available within SiteCatalyst by going to Help > Help Home, then selecting Supporting Docs > Manuals from the left navigation menu.

Omniture SiteCatalyst is leading the way in innovation with social media measurement and you may be surprised with the marketing channels you can now measure with SiteCatalyst. Find out more by talking to your Omniture account manager or Client Care agent.

Find me on twitter: @vishalchordia

Retrieving information from RSS in .NET

In my earlier post I discussed on the overview of the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds and how it can be used by any user as a source of information. Today am going to talk about how as a developer you can utilize these RSS for fetching certain information for your application. Yes you can retrieve and use the information provided by these RSS feeds, depending upon what information is provide in the RSS.

Before starting to use RSS to retrieve information, let’s have a high level look on the RSS format. RSS is defined as a XML based Data structure, as shown in a sample below:

<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>Composed Crap</title>
<link>http://composedcrap.blogspot.com</link>
<description></description>
<item>
<RSS for .NET Developers</title>
<link> http://composedcrap.blogspot.com/2009/05/rss-for-.Net-developers.html </link>
<description>... content of the RSS feed... </description>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

For more details on the RSS structure, just google for it and I am sure you will find more detailed description.

So you know this information provided by the RSS since is in XML format, can be parsed easily to fetch the required details. Well, you don’t have to take the pain of parsing. Just download the ASP.NET RSS Toolkit from http://www.codeplex.com/ASPNETRSSToolkit and you are ready to go.

Once you download the Toolkit, add reference to the RSSToolkit API you just downloaded in you .NET Project where you want to retrieve the information from the feed.

Here is the code for retrieving the feed items from a particular feed site, I am using ComposeCrap RSS here as an example:

//Retrieve the RSS from the site and load it into the RssDocument
RssToolkit.Rss.RssDocument rss = RssToolkit.Rss.RssDocument.Load(new System.Uri("http://composedcrap.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default"));
//For each Item in the RSS retrieve the description and wite it on the console
foreach (RssItem item in rss.Channel.Items)
{
Console.WriteLine(item.Description);
}

Now there are many RSS providers that do not provide the complete description of the feeds. In that case if you want to retrieve the complete description of an item, check for the tag <content:encoded> in the XML source of the feed. You can see the XML source of the feed through page source of the feed web page. This is because some sites do not provide the complete information in the description of the feed but however they want to publish the complete information through the feed that can be used by others (not reader).

Note: If a site does not provide the complete description of the feed items, it is not necessary that the content will be available <content:encoded> through tag. If the RSS site does not provide the complete information by either way you cannot retrieve the complete details using just the RSS toolkit.

To retrieve the information from the <content:encoded> tag, you first need to add the Encode information to the RSS Toolkit.

1. Open the RssToolkit solution from the Source folder of the downloaded toolkit.
2. Open the RssItem.cs file and add the following property:
   private string _encode;
   [XmlElement("encoded",Namespace = "http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/")]
   public string Encode
   {
   get
   {
   return _encode;
   }
   set
   {
   _encode = value;
   }
   }
3. Build the RssToolkit project and update the reference in you .NET project which is referencing the RssToolkit API.
4. After updating the reference, in the RssItem object, you will be able to access the property Encode, which provides the complete description of the item.
   RssToolkit.Rss.RssDocument rss = RssToolkit.Rss.RssDocument.Load(new System.Uri("http://www.bollywoodz.net/feed/"));
   foreach (RssItem item in rss.Channel.Items)
   {
   Console.WriteLine(item.Encode);
   }

If you are looking to use information from any RSS in your .NET application, go ahead and start using RSSToolkit for .NET following the details above.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Overview

Everyone here wants to be updated; updated with the information, updated with what’s going on, updated in their subject of interest, updated with where the world is heading towards; as it’s the key thing for your decision on your future actions. But the question is from where do you bring in all these data to be always updated? Quick answer on your mind “INTERNET”, an invaluable source of Information with anything and everything you want. Agreed! But here is the challenge with digging information in the Ocean of Internet.

As a traditional user of Internet, Lets say I log into 10 sites, and of which may be 3 sites give me the information that I was really seeking for. Thus, the time I spent visiting the other sites and searching for the content was just in vain. We as Users,

• Can’t Always spend hours searching
• Don’t have time to visit number of sites to read the good info
• Email is Overwhelming
  
• Can’t remember to visit all sites religiously daily.

Here comes the role of RSS, the information that arrives to you, rather than you going to seek for them.

With RSS you can subscribe to the contents of various websites at a single place, the “Reader”. The content you subscribe to is called a “Feed”. Any updates occurring to any of your feeds will be updated to your Reader as soon as the changes occur.

To subscribe to any site you need to first go and sign up with any of the Reader Sites like, www.google.com/reader, www.bloglines.com, www.newsgator.com, http://my.yahoo.com/, and there are many more in the list.

After you signup, to subscribe to any of the site that you want to get updates from, click on Add Subscription or Add Content link as shown below:

A sample of my Google Reader looks like:

where on the left hand side is my list of subscriptions while the right hand side shows the updates from the selected subscription sites.

Every time after you read a particular item from the feed, the item is marked as Read by the Reader, as it happens on your e-mail. Isn’t it so convenient when you know the items that you have already read and not search more into it?

Not only can you subscribe to a particular news site, or blog. You can subscribe even to a particular topic about which the information is scattered at multiple places on the internet. To do that Yahoo Pipes can be the most useful tool for you. Follow the following steps to get a subscription for a particular topic:

• Open the Social Media Firehose pipe on yahoo pipes http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=f1ae63990f6d5b9e48ce807a77bb9995
• In Search for comma separated terms type in the topic you want to search for with “Quotes”
• You can filter the result on the basis of location and can even block any particular URL if you want to
• After you provide the valid parameters, click on Run Pipe and it will bring you the result for the topic from all the possible locations on the internet
• Once you have the result from the Social Media Firehose, click on Get as RSS on top of the result. It will take some time to generate the RSS, say a couple of minutes, so be patient. You don’t have to do that always
• The above step will launch a page with the URL of the following format: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=f1ae63990f6d5b9e48ce807a77bb9995&_render=rss&terms=%22RSS+Feeds%22
• Copy the URL and Subscribe to it on your Reader. The subscription to the specified URL will bring you any updates on the topic you searched for on your Reader.

So subscribe to your favorite Sites and Topics and Enjoy reading.

should I charge for my iPhone app or Run Ads?

Research Brief just released a report giving some insights on Mobile App market (especially iPhone):

• 24% of Smartphone users have spent anywhere from $10-$50 for a single application,
• 28% have spent between $5-10 on a single app.
• 86% of iPhone owners have paid at most $.99 - $9.99 on a single app
• 83% of these iPhone owners have downloaded at least six

The question for most app developers and marketers is always run into is to make the App free or charge for it? Bottom line developers are seeking higher ROI.

Let’s look how consumers think. Most of the consumers love stuff for free or for cheap. They don’t give a crap about developers, effort and money. However, a recent claim from PitchEngine claims that $5 is not too much for a smart App download. Note the word *not too much*- i.e. only 28% of Smart phone users.

Now let’s explore other option. Have the app for free and earn from advertisement? Basically you are hoping that users will love your content and interact often with app. But most of iPhone users get bored or stop using as frequently in a short while, so now developers are struggling to get pageviews for their app.

At the end it comes down if your app usage going to be high? Does your app has a social and viral effect? Does your apps sends out alerts to users with information which is personal customized to their taste? If yes then I would choose to make the app free or really cheap So that you can keep earning on ad impressions and clicks.

Well if the app is cool and interesting I would choose to charge for the App between $0.99 to $3.99. Assuming that the app has great UI, a good information user is looking access and fun for bit so that users don’t think they got ripped off. I would strongly recommend having Analytics on your app, to better understand your user behavior to make your app stickier.


I am not sure if this holds the same for AppWorld, OviStore and WebOS. Since other mobile platform is just does not make me to browse through the virtual store to shop for Applications (hope OviStore and WebOS would be better than AppWorld when they are out). Well iPhone atleast just makes me to check the virtual Store to check what’s new and cool. Android G1 once while makes me to go check out some apps, not as much as iphone.

Note: This blog post is target to individual developers who has full time or in school and building apps on side. Not for professionals or cooperates.
FYI – I use a BlackBerry, G1, Nokia and the iPhone.

Find me on Twitter @VishalChordia

Wish of list of a web2.0 marketer?

Recently Forrester Research just estimated that social media marketing spend is expected to grow from $455M in 2008 to $3.1B in 2014. There are over 450 million users when you combine the users of major social networking sites -Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Orkut and Hi5. With such extraordinary growth opportunity in social media there are some new unique challenges for marketers with content promotion and measurement.

In today’s web2.0 world the goal of every marketer is their content to have it own legs and spread as far as possible across social media channels. With that come the challenges of measuring the impact and effectiveness of their campaigns.

Marketers are wondering what if I could segment my social media viewer/users by age, gender, network, school, number of friends they have, and the city they live to understand how they interact with my content and what kind of action is triggered in each of the segments. What if I could get some insights to the path or events which led viewers/users to conversion or acquisition? Wouldn’t it be great if I could correlate my social media metrics with my conversion and acquisition events with other online channel such as Web, Mobile, Video, etc. to get a complete 360 view? Wouldn’t it be great if I could measure all my social media channels asily without any additional complexity?

Well stay tuned to my blog post in coming weeks to know learn about the solution which will help you answer all above questions.

-Vishal

Traditional Marketing Tactics are Dying, (But the Future is Bright…)

Until few years ago, corporations could largely control their public corporate message. With the emergence and rapid high growth of social media, that control has been decentralized from corporations. Now most of us think that we are in an apocalypse with social media trying to take over just about everything in the world, from politics to corporations, media to shopping, and friends to personal life and we are losing control in just about in everything.

Here are a few examples of various corporate points-of-view about the downside of social media.

Marketers are watching customers shout out new product messages, advantages, disadvantages, capabilities and limitation over Twitter, messages boards, Facebook, Linkedin and other social sites without their consent or control.

Product Managers feel they are losing control and privacy of their product road maps. Customers are openly discussing potential enhancements, current limitations, new features sets, etc. Product managers are afraid customers are revealing their secret product road map to the benefit of their competitors.

Support Agents and Consultants fear customers not getting accurate information from the online community.

Analysts fear diminished credit as customers are now publicly writing competent reviews, for free!

Welcome to the age of Social Media & Web2.0 where those you can’t control have as much, or more, say about your organization and its offerings. Not unlike the way the print media was once considered the 4thbranch of the government, the public online masses are now, for better or worse, the new team in your marketing department.

Open-Source Marketing
Open your marketing department and welcome your customers to your open community. Customer’s comments, messages and promotion are more authentic and believable than those that come from within an organization. They’re based on their intimate knowledge of the product, not crafted in the often “too slick,” and sterile corporate fashion. They are not concerned with meeting corporate message structure or including the new messaging of the marketing team.

Open-Source Product Management
Most businesses spend a ton of time and money understanding how their customers are using the product, and what the right enhancements are to be made. With social media, your customers are openly discussing your product, giving you their ”wish list” for free . Indirectly, they are your product managers guiding you directly to what they like and what are the willing to pay for.

Open-Source Customer Support
The aim of consultants and customer support is to provide excellent service to their customers—to solve their problem and help them better understand how to take better advantage of the products. Today, customers are helping each other online, enabling customer support to focus on much larger problems and equip their community of product supporters with even better information to help other customers.

Apple is one of the few organizations who have gotten the social marketing strategy right. They have a massive network of customers standing by at all hours, ready like an Army of soldiers to jump into an argument or issues they consider to be unfair to Apple. Organizations crave to have fans like Apple’s, but they’re afraid to open the doors to welcome this new generation of customers out of fear of losing control.

Many Internet experts anticipate a day when social networking sites take over the search engines and become the preferred form of online advertisement, that day is not that far.

With this, the new challenge for organizations is to measure the effectiveness of social media efforts, brand monitoring, real time in-sight into customer communications, sentiments and actionable data for next steps. That will be the topic for my upcoming series of blog posts. To be continued…

MS SQL Server - Index Internals III

Today’s discussion continues on the different types of Indexes available on MS SQL Server.

Unlike from my previous example of index on the back of an Atlas, which normally has one index, a table may have multiple indexes. These indexes can be defined on one or more columns of the tables. The two major types of indexes in SQL Server are Clustered and Non-clustered Indexes.

Clustered Indexes: A clustered when defined on a column of a table, the data of the table in the data pages are sorted in order of the column on which index is defined. This column is referred as an Index Key. Since the data is sorted physically on the disk, the leaf page of the index pages are the data pages of the table.

Inserting a new row in a table with clustered index defined, SQL Server ensures that the row is placed in the correct physical location in key sequence order. Structure of the Clustered Index is as given below:Non-Clustered Indexes: A Non-clustered index contain only the index key (column on which non-clustered index is defined) and a reference to find the data. The items in the index are stored in the order of the index key values, but the information in the table is stored in a different order (which can be dictated by a clustered index). If no clustered index is created on the table, the rows are not guaranteed to be in any particular order.

Non-clustered index structure is depicted as: At any given level in the index, the pages are linked together as shown in Figure below, and this is true regardless of whether the index is a Clustered index or a Non-clustered index.
Both the clustered and non-clustered indexes can be defined on one or more columns of a table, to serve the frequent database queries. However there can be only one clustered index defined on a table while there can be 249 non-clustered indexes created on a table.