by Ilya Sukhar - March 12 at 9:00am

Facebook F8 Developers Conference April 30 2014. Let's build.

Join us on April 30th, 2014 for F8, our global developer conference in San Francisco, California! Developers from around the world can now apply to attend the conference via the event website. Visit the F8 page to learn more and to submit your application.
There are a limited number of tickets available, which will be distributed based on an application system. This process is designed to ensure that we have a diverse mix of attendees at the event who represent the Facebook and Parse global developer ecosystem. Once your application is accepted, your attendance will be confirmed via email and you will be charged $495 USD for your conference ticket.
We're also excited to announce that we will be live streaming the keynotes and all afternoon sessions on the F8 page for those who can't be with us in person at the event. We will make session content available after the event. Stay tuned for more information, as we'll be sharing details about speakers and sessions in the coming weeks.
We can't wait to get the community together to see what we can build!

Announcing F8 on April 30th, 2014 in San Francisco

by Ilya Sukhar - March 8 at 2:30pm

I'm excited to announce our global developer conference, F8, to the Facebook and Parse developer communities. We invite you to join us on April 30, 2014 at the San Francisco Design Concourse for a full day of technical talks and hands-on sessions. At the event, more than 1,500 mobile and web developers from around the world will gather to learn more about using Facebook and Parse to build, grow, and monetize great apps.
This year, we're going back to our roots with a developer-focused conference. We will open with a morning keynote, followed by four technical tracks. These tracks will cover everything you need to know about building on the Facebook and Parse platforms, including getting started guides, technical best practices, infrastructure strategies, engineering deep dives, and advertising tips for making your app or game highly successful. We'll also have special sessions dedicated to exploring how developers can take advantage of open source technologies.
Facebook and Parse engineers and product team members will be available during the conference to provide one-on-one help and advice, and you'll also have the opportunity to learn from each other throughout the day. We'll close out the day with a celebration for attendees to unwind with drinks and entertainment.
Over the past year, we've hosted a series of smaller events for developers like FbStart, Facebook Game On, Facebook Mobile DevCon, Parse Developer Day, and Facebook + Parse Mobile Developer Day. We're excited to now have one event for everyone to come together and discover what we can build together.
To learn more about F8, and to be notified when registration opens, please visit the F8 site where you can sign up to receive more information. We'll begin accepting applications to attend soon.
See you in April!

Platform Updates: Improved Photo Sharing on iOS and Driving More Engaged Players to Games

by Chris Pan - March 6 at 10:00am

This week, we updated the iOS Share Dialog to make it easy for people to share local photos directly from your app. Additionally, people clicking on game stories in News Feed and canvas will now be sent to the App Details page so they can learn more about the game before installing.

Easily share photos with the iOS Share Dialog

We've made it much easier for you to let people share local photos from your app with the Share Dialog. Now, you can include support for local photos with a few lines of code instead of having to set up a custom Open Graph story. People can share one or multiple photos directly from their device's photo gallery with this new feature.
Download the new Facebook iOS SDK today and read our documentation about sharing photos with the iOS Share Dialog.

Sending more engaged players to games

We're giving people more information about your game before they install it. Now people who click on game stories in News Feed and game recommendations on canvas or on the sidebar in the right hand column will be taken to the App Details page instead of straight to the game. Since players are making a more informed decision, they install games they're more likely to keep playing. As a result, we have seen increased first week retention among players who install and start playing games in this way. Games don't need to do anything to benefit from this change.

March Developer Events for Parse and Facebook

by Ashley Smith - March 5 at 12:00am

March is going to be a busy month for the Facebook, Parse, and Instagram teams. We’ll be attending and hosting several different events this month, and hope that you can join us at some of the following:

SXSW Interactive – March 7 – 11, 2014 – Austin, TX

Facebook, Parse, and Instagram will be hosting several events during the course of the SXSW festival this year, as well as several talks at the conference. Check out this blog post for a full listing of events.

Parse Austin Meetup – March 10, 2014 – Austin, TX

Join us for our first Parse Austin Meetup. This event does not require a SXSW badge and is open to anyone in the developer community who is interested in learning more about Parse. RSVP here to join us in Austin!

Game Developers Conference – March 19 – 21, 2014 – San Francisco, CA

Facebook and Parse are excited to be at the Game Developers Conference this year. Stop by booth 1838 with your questions and meet with members of both teams and don’t miss the talk, “Facebook Unlocked: Trends & Growth Opportunities for Cross-Platform Games” which will include thoughts from Parse CEO, Ilya Sukhar.

BoxDev14 – March 26, 2014 – San Francisco, CA

Parse will be participating in BoxDev14, including an introduction to Parse talk. Visit our team on-site to chat with our team and bring us your questions about developing on Parse.
We hope to see you at some of the above events this month!

Parse + Facebook at SXSW 2014

by Ashley Smith - March 3 at 12:30pm

Facebook and Parse are excited to be participating in SXSW this year, and we have a great lineup of speakers and events for conference participants to attend. Keep an eye out throughout the event for the Parse + Facebook ice cream truck and be sure to register for the events below:

Friday, March 7th: Parse + Facebook Welcome Party, The Parish, 8PM - 12AM

Join us at The Parish to kick off a great week of events. We'll have performances by Learning Secrets, The Black Angels, and Holiday Mountain, plus much more. RSVP here today!

Friday, March 7th & Monday, March 10th: The Facebook Counter, FB HQ at the Belmont, 11AM - 3PM

Join us at “The Counter” at FB HQ during SXSW. Pop in, grab a drink, and get some tips from Facebook and Parse experts from the Marketing and Platform teams. You must RSVP here for a spot.

Sunday, March 9th: FbStart, FB HQ at the Belmont, 10AM - 12PM

Join Parse + Facebook at FbStart Austin for a special mobile-focused event covering how to best use Parse + Facebook. Including a fireside chat and Q&A session with the co-founder and CEO of Parse, Ilya Sukhar, the event is geared towards those focused on marketing, growth, and user acquisition. Apply to attend here.

Monday, March 10th: Parse Austin Meetup, Capital Factory, 7PM - 10PM

If you’ve never used Parse before and need an overview, or if you want to learn more about what Parse apps are doing in the wild, join us for this meetup. You can register to join us here - no SXSW pass necessary!
In addition to the events we're hosting, also be sure to check out the great talks from both Facebook, Instagram and Parse team members throughout the conference, including:

Saturday, March 8th: Rise of the DEO - Leadership Lessons by Design, Austin Convetion Center, 10:30AM-10:50AM

Maria Giudice, Director of Product Design at Facebook, will explore the intersection of creativity and business acumen, explaining how and why this unlikely coupling produces leaders most capable of solving our increasingly complex business problems. More info here.

Saturday, March 8th: Structuring Community During Exponential Growth, Sheraton Austin, 12:30PM-1:30PM

Josh Riedel, Community Manager at Instagram, will participate in this panel covering various approaches to establishing the organization, process, and priorities of Community teams at scale alongside team members from SoundCloud, Kickstarter, and Airbnb. Learn more here.

Saturday, March 8th: Bringing Sexy Back to Developers, Four Seasons Ballroom, 3:30PM-4:30PM

CEO Ilya Sukhar will talk about why backend functionality is just as integral as UX to building an app that attracts and engages people. More info here.

Sunday, March 9th: Brands Driven by Artistic Communities, Sheraton Austin, 11AM-12PM

Bailey Richardson of the Instagram Community Team will participate in this discussion of how artistic communities, such as Instagram and Spotify, are transforming imagery, music, and the maker movement. Learn more here.

Sunday, March 9th: GivingTuesday: Inside the Sharknado of Giving, Austin Convention Center, 5PM-6PM

In this fireside chat, three of the people behind the #GivingTuesday movement, including Facebook’s Libby Leffler, talk about philanthropy, Facebook, and the power of sharing. More info here.

Sunday, March 9th: Instagramming the News, Austin Convention Center, 5PM-6PM

David Guttenfelder, the AP’s chief Asia photographer, will discuss the growing influence of social media on professional photography with TIME Photo Editor Kira Pollack and Instagram Community Leader Dan Toffey. Learn more here.

Monday, March 10th: Leapfrogging the First World, Austin Convention Center, 11AM-12PM

Facebook Creative Lead Carla Echevarria will discuss a few case studies that can point toward innovative solutions for emerging markets that are truly scalable and work to overcome local barriers to enrich the lives of people all over the world. More info here.

Tuesday, March 11th: How Spartacus Dominated the Facebook Arena, Austin Convention Center, 11AM-12PM

Join Mike Rooney, Global Marketing Solutions for Entertainment at Facebook, and Starz for a behind-the-scenes look at the cultivation, activation, and sustainment of the Spartacus fan page. Learn more here.

Wednesday, March 12th: Come on Get Appy, Austin Convention Center, 2PM-3PM

Ime Archibong, Strategic Partner Manager at Facebook, will participate in this session exploring the changes in how people share, discover, and consume music thanks to popular music apps, and take a look at how key app developers are leveraging social networks to drive this music revolution. More info here.

Platform Updates: Breaking Change for Facebook Payments

by Xiahong Gao - February 12 at 6:00pm

Realtime Updates Breaking Change for Developers Using Facebook Payments

When we announced the migration from Credits to local currency payments last June, we also enabled developers to receive Realtime Updates to help reduce latency for their apps and provide asynchronous payment confirmation. We are now requiring developers to subscribe to and honor realtime updates to ensure order fulfillment and receipt of disputes from all payers by May 13, 2014.
We want to provide the best payments experience possible for people on Facebook, and part of that is ensuring they are able to receive the in-app objects they paid for and that they are receiving timely responses to their disputes. Please visit our documentation on realtime updates to learn more and our documentation on disputes to update us on status of handling disputes.

February Developer Events for Parse and Facebook

by Ashley Smith - February 4 at 8:10am

The teams from Facebook and Parse are keeping busy this month with a number of events. Check out where we'll be in February, and join us if you can:
ICE International Casino Conference – February 3 – 5, 2014 – London, UK
Facebook will be present at ICE in London in the first week of February and will be speaking on a variety of panels: Partner Manger, Will Collins, will be contributing to a panel on February 3 about understanding the on-going convergence between online and social gaming, and thinking of the mobile channel as the future. Marketing Solutions Manger, Tarquin Henderson will be joining representatives from Big Fish and Plumbee to discuss how mobile gaming is leveraging loyalty programmes, social, virtual currency and brands. Partner Manager, Guy Cross is taking part in a panel on social gaming, where he’ll explain how to monetize social gaming and explore the role of Facebook in casual gaming success.
Apps World North America – February 5-6, 2014 – San Francisco, CA
Facebook + Parse will be hosting a booth at Apps World North America, and Developer Advocates Christine Abernathy and Bear Douglas will be doing two different talks. This is a great opportunity to learn more about Parse and Facebook from our team, and stop by our booth afterwards with any questions.
Casual Connect Europe – February 11, 2014 – Amsterdam, Netherlands
London based Partner Manager, Bob Slinn will be opening the show with a keynote on The Power of Platform, discussing the Facebook ecosystem, local success stories and how the platform can help any game developer build a great social game, acquire high quality users and monetize.
IndieCade - February 14 - 16, 2014 - New York, NY
AJ Glasser will host a panel on the state of free-to-play indie games with panelists from PuzzleSocial, SpinPunch, and Disruptor Beam on Sunday, February 16th at IndieCade. Besides the panel, visit our Night Games booth on Saturday to compete in a tournament for the top score in Dead Trigger 2, a new cross-platform game from indie developer Madfinger games, or stop by our table in the exhibitor hall to ask questions any time.
DeveloperWeek - February 15-18, 2014 - San Francisco, CA
Parse engineer Bryan Klimt, of the always popular Promises blog post will be keynoting at DeveloperWeek this year. Besides his not-to-be-missed talk, we'll also have members of our sales and advocacy teams on hand at the Expo to answer any questions you have about building on Parse.
Unity Meetup - February 18, 2014 - Montreal, QC
Come to the Montreal Unity Meetup to see games partner engineer Colin Creitz speak about the Facebook Unity SDK and how to integrate Facebook identity and social features in your iOS, Android, or web game.
February Bay Area Parse Developer Meetup - February 19, 2014 - San Francisco, CA
Our first Bay Area Meetup of 2014 will take place in San Francisco at the 111 Minna Gallery. Join us for drinks, snacks, and great talks from the Parse team and customers. Register to join the group today for notifications on all scheduled meetup events in the Bay Area.
DeveloperWeek After Party - February 20, 2014 - San Francisco, CA
Parse and Facebook are hosting the DeveloperWeek After Party at Local Edition in San Francisco. Join us to to celebrate the end of a great conference and meet some of the Parse team. RSVP today!
Mobile World Congress - February 24-27 2014 - Barcelona, Spain
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's Founder & CEO, will be delivering a keynote on Monday February 24 at 18:00 CET which can be watched live here. At The Emerging Markets session at 14:00 CET on Wednesday February 26 Chris Weasler, Mobile Director and Chris Daniels, VP of Business Development, will be participating. Also at 14:30 CET on Wednesday Erick Tseng will be participating on a panel as part of the Carrier WiFi Summit.
We hope that you can join us at one or more of the great events we'll be attending and hosting this month!

Let's Bolt

by Bryan Klimt - January 30 at 6:01am

When Parse joined Facebook, we immediately started looking for ways to improve our SDKs by comparing code and learning from each others' successes. We found that there were a lot of small, low-level utility classes in iOS and Android that we had both implemented. Rather than continue to have two version of these components, we decided to collaborate on one common library between our SDKs. Today, we are open-sourcing that library to make it available to others.
Bolts is a collection of low-level libraries designed to make developing mobile apps easier. Using Bolts does not require using any Parse or Facebook services, nor does it require having a Parse or Facebook developer account. Simply download the jar or framework file and drop it into your project. Or you can download the source directly from GitHub. Documentation for all of the components in Bolts is available on GitHub as well.
The first component in Bolts is "tasks", which make organization of complex asynchronous code more manageable. A task is kind of like a JavaScript Promise, but available for iOS and Android. For example, if you have an asynchronous method for saving an object in iOS, you can have it return a BFTask*, and handle the result in a continuation block.

[[object saveAsync:obj] continueWithBlock:^id(BFTask *task) {
  if (task.isCancelled) {
    // the save was cancelled.
  } else if (task.error) {
    // the save failed.
  } else {
    // the object was saved successfully.
    SaveResult *saveResult = task.result;
  }
  return nil;
}];

The equivalent code in Android would be:

object.saveAsync().continueWith(new Continuation<ParseObject, Void>() {
  public Void then(Task task) throws Exception {
    if (task.isCancelled()) {
      // the save was cancelled.
    } else if (task.isFaulted()) {
      // the save failed.
      Exception error = task.getError();
    } else {
      // the object was saved successfully.
      SaveResult saveResult = task.getResult();
    }
    return null;
  }
});

Tasks have many advantages over the other models for asynchronous development on these platforms, such as AsyncTask and NSOperation. For more information and example code, please see the platform-specific README files on GitHub.
More Bolts will be coming soon!

A New Way To Re-Engage Your Existing Mobile App Users

by Greg Schechter - January 28 at 10:00am

Today we are introducing a new way to re-engage your mobile app users with Facebook ads. You can now advertise to people who have taken specific actions in your app through an update to Custom Audiences which allows you to segment your users without uploading any files.
With this update, you can now advertise to groups of people based on actions they have taken within specific time periods in your app. You can also choose to exclude people by actions they have taken, to make sure you are reaching the right people at the right time. For instance, you can reach users who have purchased an item in the last 30 days, but not the last 7 days, or people who have purchased an item over $5 but under $100, or even people who have added an item to their cart, but not completed the purchase.

Since we began testing this in October, we have seen several developers experience significant success driving engagement through Custom Audiences from mobile apps. JackThreads tested this new capability and achieved over 8x Return on Ad Spend by targeting people from their mobile app who added items to their carts but did not complete a purchase. And in another campaign, JackThreads achieved over 4x Return on Ad Spend by targeting purchasers from the last 30 days, but not from the past day.

We are also rolling out an update to Custom Audiences for websites that, similarly, allows you to add a few lines of code and reach people who have taken actions on your website by creating a new Custom Audience. For example, Seeking Alpha, a leading financial news app, saw their CPI reduced by 28% when they targeted their website visitors with mobile app install campaigns using this capability.
We will be rolling out the ability to create Custom Audiences from your mobile app over the course of this week, and Custom Audiences from your website over the next couple of months. We have made it our goal to invest in measurement, targeting, and optimization tools available to our developers and will continue to look for ways to do so.
To learn how to create Custom Audiences from your mobile app, please see our tutorial for a walk-through and some common audience creation scenarios. To learn about more new Facebook targeting improvements we are releasing, including Custom Audiences from your website, please see the Facebook for Business Blog.

Introducing App Insights 2.0 Beta

by Daniel Tomko - January 23 at 10:00am

Today, we’re introducing a major update to the App Insights product to help you understand how people interact with your app. App Insights 2.0 is more actionable, more reliable, and has better support for mobile apps. We've also made several improvements to the way we organize and report metrics.

1. Simple, clean interface

We’ve redesigned App Insights around how your apps integrate with Facebook as opposed to how users interact with Facebook. This should help you better understand the value of the your integration. For example, the new Overview dashboard shows the most important metrics for common functionality like Login and Sharing, and makes it easy to click to get more details.

2. Actionable data

We’ve re-organized the data you need to make a decision in one place. For example, we now have a single dashboard which tells you how much traffic you receive from Facebook, whether it's coming from Open Graph stories or Requests.
We realize that it’s difficult to make decisions in a vacuum. Now, you can compare key metrics for your app to those for other apps. For example, if you see an abnormal spike in the mark-as-spam rate for your app’s stories, you can see if the spike is isolated to your app or if other apps also see the spike. Note: metrics are aggregated and anonymized – Insights will never show your app’s metrics to another developer.

3. More reliable

We performed a comprehensive audit of our data sources and logging to significantly improve the quality and reliability of the data, especially for metrics that come from mobile on iOS and Android. In addition, App Insights will now display warnings on dashboards when there is an outage or a known issue with the data.

Over the coming months we will be working on further improving Insights 2.0 by bringing over more features from the previous version and introducing several new features. Until then, we will continue to support the App Insights 1.0 product as the default option. To try the beta, simply go to your App Insights overview page and click “try the new App Insights.”

Testing a new way for developers to monetize mobile apps

by Sriram Krishnan - January 22 at 9:45am

Monetization is a difficult problem for mobile app developers, particularly as people move toward downloading more free apps and advertising dollars lag behind time spent on mobile. We faced some unique challenges when we first integrated ads into the Facebook mobile experience, and we believe we’re now well positioned to help other mobile apps.
We are running a small test to explore showing Facebook ads in third-party mobile apps. In this test, we’ll be extending Facebook's rich targeting to improve the relevancy of the ads people see, provide even greater reach for Facebook advertisers, and help developers better monetize their apps.
While we have run similar tests in the past, this current test is more like a mobile ad network in that we are working directly with a small number of advertisers and publishers, rather than an outside ad-serving platform.
This test is currently limited to a few advertisers and partners. We are not currently accepting additional participants, but if you are interested in receiving future updates on the status of this test, please let us know.

January Developer Events for Facebook and Parse

by Ashley Smith - January 8 at 8:37am

Parse and Facebook are starting off the New Year with several events in the month of January. We hope to see you at one or more of the following:
MIT Independent Activities Period – January 8-13, 2014 – Boston, MA
Parse MIT Alums Jamie Karraker, Christine Yen, Christine Abernathy, and Stanley Wang will be leading sessions, having office hours, and hosting a happy hour during MIT's winter Independent Activities Period.
Microsoft Facebook Hack - January 17-18, 2014 - Menlo Park, CA
We're excited to invite you to spend two days with Microsoft and Facebook engineers to integrate Facebook Login and other social products into your Windows and Windows Phone apps. Food will be offered and prizes will be given for the best hacks. Register today.
January NYC Parse Developer Meetup - January 22, 2014 - New York, NY
We're starting off the New Year with a Parse meetup at Offsite NYC. Join us for drinks, snacks, and great talks from the Parse team, friends, and customers. Register to join the group today for notifications on all scheduled meetup events in New York.
Global Game Jam at Facebook - January 24th - 26th - Menlo Park, CA
Facebook is hosting a site for you to hack for the 2014 Global Game Jam. Free food and transportation from San Francisco included. Get a team together to create a game in one weekend! Register today.
Happy New Year from all of us at Parse and Facebook, and we hope to see you at one or more of the events we're hosting this month.

Introducing App Center Videos

by Niket Biswas - December 19, 2013 at 9:00am

Games and apps can now give Facebook users a taste of what it's like to use their app by adding videos to their App Details page in App Center. As the number two source of installs on Facebook, App Center is a great place for users to discover and start playing your game. Videos will automatically start playing without audio when people land on your App Details page on Facebook.com, giving them a way to instantly experience your game.

How it works

Adding video to your App Details page is simple. Developers can submit videos for review in the App Dashboard under the App Details tab, just as they do for other image assets. Please review the App Center guidelines for video submission criteria. After your video is approved, it will be added to your App Details page.
You can even customize your video for international audiences by adding other versions of it for different locales. Those videos will be shown to people who have set their preference for that locale in their profile settings.

Get started

Already, people can see videos on the App Details pages of games, including Baseball Heroes, Candy Crush Saga, ChronoBlade, KingsRoad, Marvel: Avengers Alliance, and Words of Wonder. Get started by uploading a video of your app today.

Platform Updates: New Unity SDK Case Study and Updated iOS Developer Center

by Brian Jew - December 18, 2013 at 2:30pm

New Cross-Platform Unity SDK Case Study

With only a few hours of development work, Flying Monkey Interactive integrated Facebook's Unity SDK into their game, Strangelings, on iPad and brought the game to Facebook canvas, where over 260 million people play games monthly. By providing a cross-platform experience and using Facebook Login, requests and Open Graph, Strangelings increased user acquisition and substantially broadened its player base. Learn more about how the Facebook SDK for Unity was a game changer for this indie developer in our new case study.

Updates to iOS Developer Center and Sample Apps

We have completely re-written our iOS Developer Center and consolidated multiple articles into major topics such as Login, Sharing, and more to make it easier for you to navigate. We have also developed sample apps for these topics on Github and added a few new tutorials. Visit our new iOS Developer Center today and please feel free to leave any constructive feedback that you have in the comments.

Easier Ways to Use Mobile App Ads for Engagement and Conversion

by John Ketchpaw - December 18, 2013 at 11:00am

Mobile app ads for engagement and conversion offer you an effective way to keep users active within your apps. Today we are releasing three feature updates to make it even easier for you to create mobile app ads, reach existing users, and drive people back into your app.
First, you can now create mobile app ads for engagement and conversion from our Ads Create tool, offering a simpler way to set up engagement campaigns. This will roll-out over the next week. You still have the option to use Power Editor or a Preferred Marketing Developer depending on your advertising needs.

Additionally, we are making it easier to reach your existing app users with a more automated audience creation process. Now, if your application is measuring installs or app conversions with the Facebook SDK or a Mobile Measurement Partner, you can easily reach people who have installed your app by checking a box. While setting up ads, you simply check the "target people who have installed your mobile app" option when selecting your targeting and you will then see an estimate of the ad's audience size.

Finally, we have simplified selecting your ad destination. For an iOS app, you will need to have already excluded people who have your app installed. For an Android app, you will need to have already registered your class name on the Facebook developer site. You can then choose to launch your app from a mobile app ad for engagement without providing a deep link. When creating your ads, you can choose "launch app without a deep link" so that your mobile app ad for engagement will just open your app when clicked.

For more information on the required setup beforehand and how to use these features, please see our updated mobile app ads for engagement and conversion tutorial.
We are already seeing early success stories from developers like lifestyle app YPlan, who saw a 20% increase in paid event bookings and 215% ROI with mobile app ads for engagement. Entertainment app developer Movile realized a 60% lower cost per app purchase than other channels and its engagement campaigns on Facebook drove 16% of its premium subscription conversions for iOS users.
We will look for ways to continue improving our mobile app ads so they are easier to use, and provide even better ways for marketers and developers to reach their goals.

Creating an Effective Engagement Strategy for Your Mobile App Users

by Sriram Krishnan - December 12, 2013 at 10:00am

We launched mobile app ads for engagement and conversion in October to help mobile app marketers and developers not only grow their apps, but keep users active within them. We wanted to share some early success stories and explain how developers are using Facebook’s mobile app ads and push notifications with Parse to effectively engage existing app users.

Mobile App Ads Success Stories

YPlan, a mobile app that offers a carefully curated shortlist of the best events in town every night, started using mobile app ads to encourage their existing users to come back to their app and book new ticket deals. They saw immediate success with a 20% increase in paid bookings, and 215% ROI for their mobile app ad spend.
“Facebook's new engagement with mobile app ads is providing a unique channel for YPlan to interact with our customers," said Rytis Vitkauskas, the CEO of YPlan. "The impact on the business has been strong. With results like this after just one month, we see this channel contributing to our overall CRM strategy in the long term.”

Movile, a mobile entertainment provider in Latin America, used mobile app ads to bring existing users back to their Play Kids app. In fact, they found that 16% of their premium subscriptions on iOS were directly driven by their engagement campaign with Facebook. Even better, they realized a 60% lower cost per app purchase with Facebook when compared to other channels.
Eduardo L. Henrique, Co–Founder & Head of U.S. Operations for Movile, notes: "Our team have been doing push notifications and also in-app pop-ups to drive conversions to premium but the segmentation that the Facebook platform provides is much more powerful than everything I see in the market to re-engage users and convert them to paid users.”

Wait, But What About Push?

Movile and YPlan both represent two developers that tested various engagement channels to find which worked best for them. In fact, one common question we hear from developers is how our mobile app ads compare to push notifications. Each method has its strengths and can be highly effective when used in the appropriate scenario.
Due to their immediate, attention-grabbing nature, push notifications should be reserved for highly relevant messages that are time- or location-sensitive or that are related to the app’s functionality. Parse offers automated segmentation, geolocational push, and time-sensitive release, so your push strategy is more effective. Further, with Parse Analytics, you can track the effectiveness of your push campaigns easily, and use customizable options to drill down into how your users are engaging with your push content.
Facebook's mobile app ads are better for longer engagement or retention campaigns. Since they appear in News Feed alongside organic content, you can show them more frequently, matching user expectations. In addition, you can also show a beautiful, compelling image, text copy, and any of seven different customized calls to action. If you want deep measurement, use app events for iOS or for Android, and see downstream actions taken as a result of your engagement campaigns – for instance, how many purchases resulted from your campaign.

Thinking About Best Use Cases

Below, we outlined some of the best use cases for push notifications versus mobile app ads to help you think about your user engagement strategy.

Creating an effective engagement strategy for your mobile app depends on your goals and needs. Push notifications and mobile app ads are two engagement channels that can serve different goals, but act complimentary as you interact with your users.
For more resources, please see our pages on mobile app ads for engagement and conversion, Parse Push, our YPlan case study, and some tips we put together on how to drive installs in the post holiday season.

Platform Updates: A new way to drive installs to apps on Facebook and an updated Android SDK.

by Derek Cheng - December 11, 2013 at 2:00pm

Today we launched Facebook ads to allow you to effectively drive and measure installs for your desktop apps on Facebook (canvas apps). We also released a new Android SDK with feature improvements and bug fixes.

Introducing ads to drive installs to your app on Facebook

The new ads will appear in both News Feed and the right hand column of Facebook's website. The ads will have a strong call to action such as "Play Now" or "Use Now" and a large engaging image to show off your app to people. Each user that clicks on the ad will be taken directly to your app on Facebook to accept your app's permission. With this ad, you will be able to measure installs and continually optimize your ads based on its performance.

Get started driving installs to your desktop app

You can get access to desktop app ads through Ads Create Tool, Power Editor, or by working with one of our Preferred Marketing Developers. In our ads interfaces, simply select the objective you want to achieve, "App installs" for desktop apps. Then add your custom creative and select your placement options (News Feed and/or right hand column). Finally set your targeting preferences and place your bid.
Today, we launched to 10% of advertisers in our ads interfaces, and will roll-out to 100% of advertisers in the next several days. Go to our tutorial for step by step guidance on how to run these ads.

Android SDK 3.6

We released an updated version of our Android SDK that includes several feature improvements and bug fixes. These include:

AppEventsLogger is now out of Beta
Ability to set the selection property of the FriendPickerFragment that makes it easy to pre-select friends.
Added support for Gradle and Android Studio.

For more details and a list of other updates in this release, visit our change log. You can download the SDK here.

Full Availability of New Like and Share Buttons and Flexible Width for Embedded Posts

by Ray C. He - December 11, 2013 at 10:00am

People love sharing relevant, high quality media content on Facebook and across the web. Over the past year, we've introduced a series of updates - new Like and Share buttons, Embedded Posts, and News Feed changes - to help drive up average referral traffic to media sites by over 170% year over year. According to the latest report from Shareaholic, referral traffic from Facebook has increased by 47% over the past month alone and Facebook referrals accounted for more than 1/6 of an average site's referral traffic.
Today, we're building on this momentum by rolling out the new Like and Share buttons to everyone and introducing flexible width for Embedded Posts on the web.

New buttons drive over 5% more Likes and Shares across the web

In early tests over the past month after launching the new Like and Share buttons, we've seen more than a 5% lift in Likes and Share across the web. This is significant, given that both buttons are viewed over 22 billion times daily. Based on these results, we've rolled out the new design to everyone and extended it to the Follow and Like Box plugins as well.

Embedded Posts with flexible width

We're making it possible for publishers to adjust the width of Embedded Posts on the desktop web. You can set the width from 350 to 750 pixels directly in the Embed Post dialog:

Here's an example of an Embedded Post with width set to 400 pixels:

Post by Barack Obama.

On mobile web, Embedded Posts now automatically scale to the width of the container.
If you haven't already, add the Like and Share buttons and Embedded Posts to your website today.

Facebook Games of the Year 2013

by AJ Glasser - December 9, 2013 at 10:00am

As the Facebook games ecosystem continues to grow and diversify in 2013, we've seen strong performance from international game developers based out of Europe, the rise of cross-platform games on both web and mobile, and breakout hardcore game hits. Join us as we celebrate Facebook’s 2013 games of the year.
A few highlights from this year’s list of games. Out of a total 23 games:

10 come from studios based in Europe or the Middle East
8 are cross-platform, integrating with Facebook on web and mobile
8 were developed by indie studios
7 are mid or hardcore games
5 are arcade games
5 are casino or slots games

The games of the year were selected based on user ratings, Facebook implementation, growth, and overall quality. We’ve also introduced a Staff Favorites category to share some of the games most played around our offices, and a Hall of Fame category for the games that launched earlier than 2013, but continue to be immensely popular with Facebook gamers. Lastly, while we have singled out one game that stands above the rest by all measurements, we’ve also decided to leave the Best New Games of 2013 list unranked.

Game of the Year 2013

Criminal Case by Pretty Simple
This hidden object game from a French indie studio combines crime scene investigation with engaging sharing mechanics to create the most successful Facebook game of the year. As detailed in our case study of the game, Open Graph stories featuring visceral artwork drove organic growth for the game throughout the first half of the year. Content updates and additional cases drove more growth for the game in the second half of the year.

Best New Games of 2013

Bake Shop Drop by Broken Bulb Studios An adorable match-3 game featuring delicious-looking pastries from the developers of the Miscrits, a long-running Facebook game franchise. Rather than switching or line-drawing match mechanics, players drop a single pastry from the top of a display case onto pastries of the same type below.
Farm Heroes Saga by King A farm-themed match-3 game from the makers of the wildly successful Candy Crush Saga. The bright colors and rounded edges of the art style distinguish Farm Heroes Saga both from other match-3 games and from King’s previous successes in the genre.
Heart of Vegas by Product Madness/Aristocrat This slots game is the first from this London developer since its acquisition late last year by land-based casino company Aristocrat. The high quality graphics and sound speak to the developer’s skill with the category.
Hit It Rich Casino Slots by Zynga This beautifully designed slots simulation from the FarmVille developer features slot machines based on characters and themes from movies, television, and comic books.
Jelly Splash by Wooga A richly animated line-drawing match-3 game from the developers of popular Facebook game Diamond Dash. Jelly Splash launched first on mobile before going cross platform on Facebook.com in summer of this year.
Kitchen Scramble by Disney Interactive This cooking-themed time management sim puts players in a food truck and sends them to various food-themed “countries” to serve local cuisine. This is the first original IP developer for Facebook that feels like a Disney production, right down to the animated mixing bowl loading screen.
Monster Legends by Social Point From the Barcelona-based developer of hit game Dragon City, Monster Legends lets players collect, raise and battle monsters of all kinds against each other. The “Pandalf” panda-wizard monster is an office favorite.
The Smurfs & Co.: Spellbound by Ubisoft A sequel to 2011’s The Smurfs & Co, French game developer Ubisoft follows up with a more personalized village-building experience featuring the lovable blue Belgian comic characters. Spellbound proves that recognizable brands still carry a lot of weight with players on our platform.
Soldiers Inc. by Plarium A real-time strategy game from an Israeli indie developer. This gritty war epic grew rapidly over the summer and still continues to draw a large audience of hardcore players.
Solitaire Tales by Qublix From a Toronto indie studio, Tales is a steampunk-themed solitaire game that treats players with familiar gameplay in a rich fantasy setting.
Thunder Run War of Clans by SpinPunch Games Another hardcore strategy game, this indie studio was founded out of a Stanford University dorm room just last year.
Vikings Gone Wild by EveryDayiPlay A hardcore strategy game from a Polish indie studio built with the Unity 3D engine. Players build armies of Viking warriors to pillage one another’s homesteads for spoils of gold and beer.

Staff Favorites

DoubleU Casino by AFewGoodSoft This high quality casino game from an indie developer launched in mid 2012 and provides real casino experiences with a unique virtual Vegas concept.
Game of Thrones Ascent by Disruptor Beam A role-playing simulation based both on the megahit "A Song of Ice and Fire" book series and its HBO miniseries "Game of Thrones."
King's Bounty: Legions by Nival A complex turn-based strategy game that has grown on a few of our staff over the last year.
Panda Jam by SGN A cross-platform casual game where players collapse cubes of matching colors to free trapped baby pandas.
Wartune by 7Road/Proficient City This is the English language version of a popular strategy massively multiplayer online game. Since its launch on Facebook by publisher Proficient City, the game has grown rapidly in size and is one of the most successful core games on the platform to date.
War Commander by Kixeye One of the earliest real-time strategy titles on Facebook lets players build up armies, attack each other and compete for resources. It’s still played regularly by Facebook staff two years after leaving beta.

2013 Hall of Fame

Candy Crush Saga by King The King match-3 game has been a phenomenal success this year entertaining audiences on Facebook.com and mobile devices alike.
DoubleDown Casino by DoubleDown Interactive/IGT With a suite of engrossing casino games, DoubleDown keeps players hooked with lively themes and opportunities to compete with others.
FarmVille 2 by Zynga Sequel to one of Facebook's earliest farm simulation games, FarmVille 2 features some of the slickest graphics on our platform. Exciting new content keeps players coming back and contributes to this game's remarkable performance.
Slotomania by Playtika/Caesar’s Interactive Always fresh and fun, this slots game keeps delighting web and mobile players with its creative categories and engaging graphics.

Introducing the New Facebook Developers Site

by Alan McConnell - December 5, 2013 at 12:00pm

As our offering of services continues to grow, we're constantly looking for ways to improve the developer experience by listening to your feedback. Today, we're announcing a redesign of our developer site so that it's easier to find the things you need to integrate Facebook into your app or website. Some developers will see the changes immediately and the site will fully be available to everyone in a few weeks.
Our developer site is our primary means of interacting with our community, and we want it to be as useful and as clear as possible. It is the entry point for you to learn about integrating with Facebook. You can discover the features and products available to you, as well as access the tools, dashboards and resources to manage your apps.

The new design and interface will make it easier for you to:

Manage your apps and configure Facebook integrations
Navigate our improved documentation
Submit your app to Facebook App Center with a simplified flow
Find and report bugs with a faster response turnaround
Learn about the latest updates and news relevant to you on our homepage

When you first visit the new site, you'll be prompted to take a quick tour of the changes so you can learn more. As always, we'll keep listening to your feedback for ways to improve the Facebook developer experience.

December Developer Events for Facebook and Parse

by Elke Karskens - December 4, 2013 at 5:00am

The Facebook and Parse teams are hosting and attending some great events in December. We’ll have team members at the following events this month:
AppNationV – December 3-4, 2013 – San Francisco, CA
Deb Liu, Director of Platform Monetization at Facebook, will be opening the event as the feature keynote for AppNation V, at 9 am on December 3rd. In addition, Peter Yang, Product Marketing Manager, will lead a workshop on how to build and grow your app using Facebook Login at 12:45pm on December 3rd.
London Parse Developer Meetup - December 4, 2013 – London, England
Register today to join us for the first of our London Parse Meetups. Just like our US meetups, we'll have beer, food, and the opportunity to meet other developers from the community and members of the Parse and Facebook teams.
Bay Area Parse Developer Meetup – December 5, 2013 – San Francisco, CA
This month's Bay Area Parse Meetup will take place at General Assembly in San Fransisco. We'll have a pizza truck, beer and wine, and great talks from the Parse team. Parse Software Engineer Thomas Bouldin will give a talk on building "psychic" apps using Parse Push, and Software Engineer Stanley Want will speak about building scalable apps on the Parse platform. Register today to meet other developers from the community as well as members of the Parse and Facebook teams, and learn more about building on Parse.
AngelHack AppHack - December 8, 2013 - San Jose, CA
We're looking forward to participating in the final AngelHack AppHack hackathon for the year with developers around the world. Developer Advocates from the Parse and Facebook Platform teams will be giving introductions to Parse and answering any questions you may have about your integrations at the San Jose event.
LeWeb – December 10-12, 2013 – Paris, France
Join the Parse and Facebook teams at Le Web in Paris, France. We have a few Facebook leaders speaking at the 10th annual conference: Ilya Sukhar, Parse CEO, will be talking about Parse's origin and how it's changing the way Facebook offers developer services; Chris Daniels, VP of Business Development, will cover Facebook's strategy around partnerships and the shift to mobile; and Sriram Krishnan, Platform Product Manager, will discuss the success thus far of mobile app ads. We'll be in town all week so please email us at community@parse.com if you'd like to meet and chat.
We look forward to seeing you at one or more of the events we're attending this month!

The Value of a Facebook Login User

by Abigail Chambers - December 3, 2013 at 9:00am

Earlier this year, we posted about the value of a Facebook logged in user for mobile games. Since then, many developers have mentioned that people who log in with Facebook are more engaged and monetize better than people who sign up through other options. Below, we've highlighted a few examples of apps that are seeing strong results from using Facebook Login.

Applauze: Facebook Login users are 27% more likely to be repeat ticket buyers

Applauze, a Parse-powered app, lets people easily discover and buy tickets for concerts, sports, and other events. Applauze found that, compared to people that use other sign up options, Facebook Login users:

Account for 70% of their top 100 spenders
Return to the app 20% more often and are 27% more likely to be repeat buyers
Spend more per order on average

Threadflip: Facebook Login users spend twice as much time in the app

Threadflip offers a simple and intuitive way for people to buy women's fashion. Threadflip found that Facebook Login users:

Spend twice as much time using the app
Are 38% more likely to make a purchase in their first week of using the app and 50% more likely to make a repeat purchase in their first month
Perform 3x as many social actions (likes, follows or comments), and are 2x more likely to invite users from their social networks
Have a 30% higher average lifetime value

Cooliris: Facebook Login users are 50% more likely to initiate conversations in the app

Cooliris is a personal media hub for people to view all their photos in one place and share in private groups. Cooliris found that Facebook Login users:

Are 50% more likely to share their photos and invite 2x more friends to groups
Are 50% quicker to initiate Cooliris conversations, a private messaging service within the app

Swell Radio: Facebook Login users listen and interact more

Swell Radio lets people listen to personalized news and information radio stations from their mobile device. According to Swell Radio, Facebook Login users:

Listen on average 8% longer per session
Like and bookmark tracks more frequently

Learn how you can integrate Facebook Login today and follow our Login checklist to drive up your app's sign up conversions.

Mobile Dev Day by Parse + Facebook Videos & Hackathon Winners

by Ashley Smith - November 21, 2013 at 3:55pm

Thank you to the over 350 attendees to Mobile Developer Day, Presented by Parse + Facebook, for joining us last week at Facebook Headquarters for the event! We're happy to announce that the videos are now available below and at the Facebook Developers YouTube page.
The Parse and Facebook teams and speakers loved meeting current – and future – Parse and Facebook developers and we hope that everyone who came walked away with a greater understanding of how to build and grow their apps with the two platforms. After a morning of informative talks from Jocelyn Goldfein, Jason Russell, Christine Abernathy, Bear Douglas, Stephanie Shum, and Eddie O'Neil, attendees participated in a 4 hour hackathon that produced 32 awesome projects. We loved them all, but had to pick just 4 to win the day's prizes. The winners, who received free Parse Pro and Facebook Mobile App Ads credits at each level as well as iPad minis for the first place team members, were:

Eat@ developed by Matthew Kuhlke, Chris Kung, and Ben Kim
Opine developed by Dan Treiman, Peace Asukwo, Anas Alamoudi, Jay Chulani, and Ben Morrow
Hive Here developed by Nik Kalyani, S. Sriram, Yahui Jin, and Prashant Khanduri
Pictogram developed by Seth Piezas

If you weren't able to join us for Mobile Developer Day, we hope that some of you will be able to attend our upcoming December Parse Meetups in London, San Francisco, and Paris, or at one of our many events coming up in 2014. You can also see pictures from the events here and view the full videos from the day below.

Below is the full video series from Mobile Developer Day 2013:

Mobile at Facebook by Jocelyn Goldfein, Engineering Director, Facebook
Make it Sing: Designing for Mobile by Jason Russell, Product Manager, Rdio
Let's Build an App with Parse + Level Up: Making Your App More Powerful by Christine Abernathy and Bear Douglas, Developer Advocates, Parse
Grow & Engage Your Audience by Stephanie Shum, Product Manager for Mobile App Ads, Facebook
Sharing on Mobile by Eddie O'Neil, Product Manager for Mobile Platform, Facebook

Platform Updates: New Design for Follow Button and Like Box, iOS SDK Improvements and More.

by Ray C. He - November 21, 2013 at 9:00am

We recently introduced a new design for the Like and Share buttons. We're seeing positive results from the new design and have started rolling it out to the Follow button and the Like Box plugin. We also are releasing a new iOS SDK with feature improvements and bug fixes, removing a policy change for Requests that was previously communicated and are updating our browser requirements for our JavaScript SDK. In addition, we have a new advertising campaign structure coming to Facebook in 2014.

New design for the Follow button and the Like Box plugin

Similar to the Like and Share buttons, the Follow button and the Like Box plugin will also be updated with our new design as follows:

For more details, visit our documentation for the Follow button and the Like Box plugin.

iOS SDK 3.10

We're releasing an updated version of our SDK that includes several feature improvements and some bug fixes to enhance stability. These include:

Updated FBSession to receive permissions granted to your app at the time of login without requiring a permissions refresh. This enables your app to more reliably detect the current permission state of your app. This applies for any login flow except the iOS 6+ integrated authentication.
Ability to set the selection property of the FBFriendPickerViewController that makes it easy to pre-select friends.
Ability to set the login behavior for the FBLoginView control.

For more details and a list of other updates in this release, visit our change log. You can download the SDK here.

Removing policy change for "Select All" and "Pre-Select"

We are removing our previously announced policy change regarding select all and pre-select for Requests, which was set to go into effect on January 8, 2014. We may revisit this policy change in the future, but will also work on other ways to improve user engagement and sentiment for Requests.

Changed browser requirements for the JavaScript SDK

In order for the JavaScript SDK to be able to communicate with Facebook, we now require either native support for HTML5 postMessage, or support for Flash, minimum version 8.0.24. As part of this change, we are no longer supporting the use of the channelUrl initialization option to provide a fallback mechanism.

Campaign structure updates: a better way to organize, optimize and measure ads

We recently shared an update with Facebook Preferred Marketing Developers (PMDs) about a new campaign structure coming to Facebook in 2014. This new structure will make it easier for advertisers to organize, optimize and measure the performance of their ads by introducing a third level to our current campaign structure. The updated structure will include levels for campaign, ad set and ad.
We'll bring these features across all our client-facing ad interfaces in the first half of 2014 -- including the Ads Create Tool, Ads Manager, Power Editor -- and third-party client-facing ad interfaces built by PMDs, FBX partners and Mobile Measurement Partners. These changes won't affect advertisers this year.
Here's what advertisers will be able to do after the update:

Specify a campaign objective to make all of its ads serve that objective, and to improve optimization and reporting.
Use multiple ad sets, each with their own budget and schedule controls, to optimize spend and delivery within each audience segment or placement.
Get better control and aggregate stats, including total reach, at the campaign level.

We'll provide additional details as we get closer to launch. Until then, please remember that these changes will not affect advertisers this year.

Microsoft Adds Facebook Login Support to Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8

by Dhiren Patel - November 14, 2013 at 9:00am

Facebook Login provides a fast and secure sign up experience across web, iOS, and Android apps. Today, Microsoft is adding official support for Facebook Login in Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 apps in partnership with Facebook. Facebook Login for Windows 8 is ready to use in production apps, while Windows Phone 8 support is being launched in beta.

Setting up your Windows and Windows Phone apps

To use Facebook Login in your Windows or Windows Phone app, you need to set the appropriate Microsoft IDs in your developer settings:

To obtain your Windows Store ID, login to your Windows Store account and follow the rest of the steps. To obtain your Windows Phone ID, find the product ID you entered in your WMAppManifest.xml file without the dashes.
We're excited to partner with Microsoft to help Windows and Windows Phone developers reduce sign up friction and reach Login conversion rates of 70% or above. For more details, please visit the documentation for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8. You can also use the Facebook C# SDK developed by the Outercurve Foundation and sponsored by Microsoft.

Introducing new Like and Share buttons

by Ray C. He - November 6, 2013 at 10:00am

In 2010, we introduced the Like button to the world. Together, the Like and Share buttons are viewed over 22 billion times daily across more than 7.5 million websites. Like and Share are important drivers of Facebook referral traffic, which is larger than all other social networks combined according to a recent Shareaholic report.
Today, we're introducing a new design for both Like and Share to help people share more great content across the web. We're already seeing a favorable increase in Likes and Shares with the new design and will be rolling these buttons out to everyone in the coming weeks. If you are currently using the old Like button, you'll be automatically upgraded to the new design as part of our roll out. We've also made it easy for you to include the Like and Share buttons side by side and the Share button by itself:

Use Like and Share together to drive Facebook referral traffic to your website

The Huffington Post is one of the most popular domains in number of links posted back to Facebook and takes full advantage of the new Like and Share buttons. Like lets people post links to Facebook with one click, while Share allows them to add a personalized message and customize their target audience before posting:

Button placement also matters. According to The Huffington Post's Head of Product Nico Pitney,
"We place the Like and Share buttons right below the headline of our articles and in a persistent left side bar that stays with the user when they scroll down the page. We want to give people every opportunity to like and share content, and, at this point, I like to think we've made it hard not to engage in social actions."
You can use our configuration tool for Like and Share to display the buttons in multiple styles similar to The Huffington Post.

The business value of Facebook Likes and Shares

In addition to media publishers, businesses of all kinds can benefit from including the new Like and Share buttons on their website. Since integrating both buttons, Hotels.com has seen a huge spike in the number of hotel bookers arriving directly from Facebook. According to Hotels.com Product Manager Iain Niven-Bowling,
"The stories that are generated when a customer clicks on the Like and Share buttons are clearly resonating with friends and groups, resulting in high referral traffic and ultimately bookings to the 220,000 plus hotels at Hotels.com."
Additionally, the Hotels.com team has found that referral traffic is usually more qualified and converts at a higher rate compared to other types of traffic.

Similarly, JustGiving, a leading global social giving platform, uses Facebook sharing to encourage people to tell their friends about the non-profits that they care about after donating to them. JustGiving’s data shows that each Facebook share of a JustGiving page generates on average an extra $8 in additional donations. From October 2012 to October 2013, Facebook referrals to JustGiving generated $58 million in donations to good causes. According to JustGiving Product Manager Jonathan Waddingham,
"Facebook is the single biggest source of traffic for us, surpassing even our direct traffic. We've worked hard to make it easy for users to share their donations on Facebook, as we know it has a huge impact on support for their cause."
To learn more, visit our documentation for the redesigned Like and Share buttons. You can also find more best practices for sharing by visiting our Facebook Sharing checklist.

November Developer Events for Facebook and Parse

by Ashley Smith - October 31, 2013 at 10:35am

Parse is on the move again in November! We’ll have team members from the Parse and Facebook at the following:
AngelHack AppHack - November 2 - Los Angeles, CA and Seattle, WA; November 9 - Austin, TX and Guadalajara, Mexico; November 16 - Lima, Peru; November 23 - Barcelona, Spain and Santiago, Chile; November 30 - New York, NY, Washington, DC, and Sacramento, CA
We're looking forward to joining the AngelHack team and developers around the world for the next hackathon series, AppHack. Developer Advocates from the Parse and Facebook Platform teams will be giving introductions to Parse and answering any questions you may have about your integrations. Find the event in your city and register to participate in the AppHack series.
NYC Parse Developer Meetup – November 7, 2013 – New York City, NY
Register today to join us at 6:30 pm EDT at Offsite NYC for the November Parse meetup. We'll hear from Parse Software Engineer Thomas Bouldin about push notifications and Twilio Developer Evangelist Jon Gottfried about integrating Twilio and Parse in your next app. As always, we'll also have beer, pizza, and the opportunity to meet other developers from the community and members of the Parse and Facebook teams.
LAUNCH Hackathon – November 8-10, 2013 – San Francisco, CA
We're excited to be partnering on the LAUNCH Hackathon this year, the largest hackathon in the world with over $1.5 million in prizes. Parse Developer Evangelist Prashant Sridharan will be giving a demo at the event and he and other members of the Parse team will be on hand to answer questions about using the platform in your projects.
AWS re:Invent – November 12-15, 2013 – Las Vegas, NV
The talented Charity Majors will be speaking at AWS re:Invent again this year. Be sure to catch her one-hour breakout session on "How Parse Built a Mobile Backend as a Service on AWS" on Thursday, November 14th at 5:30 pm.
Unity Meetups - November 12-14, 2013 - Texas
The Facebook Games Team will be traveling to Texas to present to Unity Meetup groups about the Facebook SDK for Unity and to host office hours. The team will be in Houston on November 12, Dallas on November 13, and Austin on November 14.
Mobile Developer Day, Presented by Facebook + Parse – November 14, 2013 – Menlo Park, CA
Join Parse and Facebook at Facebook HQ in Menlo Park, CA for a mobile-focused day spent learning about UI, optimizing app functionality with Parse, and how to grow an audience through effective promotional efforts on Facebook. After morning talks from Rdio, Facebook, and Parse, show off your Parse skills in the hackathon, where you’ll have a shot at some great prizes. This event is by application only and space is very limited, so apply now!
FbStart Moscow – November 28, 2013 – Moscow, Russia
Join Parse CEO and co-founder Ilya Sukha and Julien Codorniou, Director of Platform Partnerships EMEA at Facebook on November 28th for FbStart Moscow. This event is designed to help rapidly growing, leading start-ups and VC backed companies in Russia accelerate user growth, engagement, and ultimately drive greater business results by leveraging Parse and Facebook in their app development.
Hopefully we'll see you at one or more of the events we're attending this month! Email us at community@parse.com if you have any questions.

Updated Unity SDK for cross-platform games

by Brian Jew - October 31, 2013 at 9:00am

The Facebook games team is focused on bringing high quality games to Facebook users. One way we're doing this is by building tools to help developers provide social experiences in 3D games, like those built with Unity. We've made our SDK for Unity even easier to integrate with cross-platfrom games and added new features to help you grow your games. With these changes and more, we are happy to announce that the SDK is officially out of beta.

The newest version of the SDK makes cross-platform development easier by providing unified function and return call values across all supported platforms and increased compatibility for apps using multiple plugins. Additionally, the SDK is up to date with the latest features of our iOS and Android SDKs, including support for app events that help you measure the effectiveness of your mobile app ads. It also has improved support for deep linking, which takes people directly from social stories to a customized destination in your game.
The updated SDK also makes it simple for games to let users share screen shots of their game experience with friends. This feature is very popular among players of Cmune's Uberstrike, a game that recently integrated our SDK. Users share over 65,000 pictures a day and have shared over 2 million pictures in the last 30 days.

Other Unity games using the SDK are having great success. For example, Madfinger launched its mobile only game, Shadowgun: Deadzone on Facebook and increased its total daily players by more than 75% for the first couple weeks. Since integrating the SDK, Nival's strategy and combat game, Kings Bounty: Legions, has doubled conversion of Facebook users who install the Unity plugin and start the game's first fight.
We encourage all Unity developers to download and start integrating the SDK today on iOS, Android, and Facebook canvas. Please continue to share your feedback about the SDK on Stack Overflow using the tag "facebook-unity-sdk". We'll keep improving the SDK and make it even easier for Unity games to grow with Facebook.

Get efficient installs with video creative and CPA buying for mobile app ads

by Radu Margarint - October 21, 2013 at 10:00am

Today we're offering two new capabilities to mobile app ads that will improve the efficiency of your app installs.

Use video creative to engage new customers and get more installs

Now you can use video creative in your mobile app ad aimed at driving installs to bring your app to life in Facebook's mobile News Feed. Potential customers will be able to click play to watch a video featuring your mobile app before installing the app. Video creative has proven to be an effective way to drive engagement in News Feed, and we look forward to helping developers use their video creative to find new app installs. DoubleDown Casino was one of our early partners to test video creative in mobile app ads. "In our early tests, we found that using video in our mobile app ads resulted in increased install rates and decreased costs per install," said John Clelland, Vice President, Interactive Marketing for DoubleDown Casino. "We've seen tremendous success with mobile app ads and are looking forward to using video to make them even more engaging with rich media like video."
As always, compelling creative is critical to effective mobile app advertising. We recommend videos that showcase the best features of your app, including use of lifestyle or product shots along with in-app screenplays.

Bid on cost-per-action (CPA) to improve your mobile ad performance

Facebook has simplified the buying process for mobile app ads by giving you the option to bid and optimize for mobile app installs. Previously, we offered advertisers the option of bidding on cost per click (CPC) or optimized cost per impression (oCPM). Developers can now set a cost per action (CPA) bid to better manage their budgets while maximizing installs. Through CPA bidding, developers are only charged when a user downloads and installs their app, offering greater control over spend on mobile app ads. Based on internal Facebook tests, buying on CPA drives, on average, 20% lower cost per install than buying on CPC.¹ In order to bid on CPA, you need to be measuring installs for your ad campaign. You can measure installs either by integrating with our SDK or working with a mobile measurement partner. Learn more about our measurement options and the benefits of CPA buying.
Over the next several days, we will gradually roll out the video creative and CPA buying options out to all developers and advertisers who are measuring installs.

Get Started

Go to our comprehensive tutorial to learn how to drive installs with Mobile App Ads and how to get started with these two new features in Power Editor, Ads Create Tool, or via your Preferred Marketing Developers.
Our mobile app advertising solution focuses on 1) getting the right people to install your app, and 2) then making them return and remain active within your app. We recently introduced the ability to drive engagement and conversion within mobile apps so that you can keep your existing users coming back. However, the features announced today are focused specifically on driving users to install your app.
Check out our most recent case study from Facetune on driving installs with mobile app ads. We will continue to add and improve features to drive mobile app installs, engagement and conversion.
¹ Based on an internal test of eight advertisers over two months.

Platform Updates: Monetization Tips & PMD Innovation Competition

by Yongyan Liú - October 16, 2013 at 10:00am

Over the last week, we shared ways to achieve Facebook Login conversion rates over 70% and attended developer events in Berlin, Cannes, Mexico City, Tel Aviv and Kuala Lumpur.

Monetization Tips for Canvas

Now that all canvas developers are using our new payment system, we wanted to highlight a few important monetization best practices:
1. Encourage first time purchases. The payer promotions API is designed to help you convert people that haven't previously purchased virtual goods on Facebook. Facebook sponsors this feature, which lets you offer these people a discount on your game's virtual currency.
2. Monetize through offers. You can enable users to earn virtual currency by directly integrating with TrialPay for offers. A direct integration with TrialPay will allow for quicker load times, more specific reporting, and easier troubleshooting than before. For more information about offering reward based advertising, please visit TrialPay's Facebook Developer Center.
3. Streamline gift card redemption. You can now implement the Gift Card Dialog directly, to make it easy for people to buy your game’s in-app currency. Facebook Gift Cards are available in over 20 countries and in approximately 130,000 retail locations worldwide.
We hope these features of Local Currency payments will help you better monetize on Facebook and provide players with a great user experience.

PMD Innovation Competition Winners

The Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) Program is pleased to announce the six winners of the PMD Innovation Competition. The winners each demonstrated excellence in building technology that bridges marketer needs across the four dimensions of the PMD Program: Pages, Ads, Apps and Insights.
This year's jury grand prize was awarded to Optimal, who's new tool called Open Signals lets advertisers link their Facebook advertising campaigns to data APIs such as in-store inventory levels, store traffic, weather conditions, TV commercials, and coupon redemptions. Other winners include: BLiNQ Media, Kenshoo, Maverick, Salesforce + ExactTarget, and SocialWire.
You can find additional details about the winners and the products they’ve built here.