Building Mobile Apps with Facebook

How and why you should integrate your mobile apps with Facebook. Covers SDK features, examples of use, how to grow your app's user base using Facebook for growth, and the benefits of using Mobile App Install Ads and app insights to learn more about your users.
Delivered at Social Developers London, 13th March 2013.

Transcript

1. developers Connor Treacy Developer Advocate connor@fb.com Building Mobile Apps with Facebook Monday 18 March 13
2. Why go mobile? Monday 18 March 13 How many of you are mobile app developers? Mobile web developers? Web developers? Good. Those who aren’t mobile app developers, you should be! Here’s why...
3. year years people bn+ years people m+ 2x Engagement 126m+ Mobile-Only Monthly Users Monday 18 March 13 Facebook has over a billion monthly active users. But it has over 680m mobile MAU. And this number is growing MUCH faster than it did on web.
4. Mobile Daily Users > Desktop Daily Users Monday 18 March 13 And those are twice as engaged. Makes sense, right? Your phone is your world. It’s always with you and it’s highly personalised to your needs and interests. The biggest problem for mobile app developers is having new users find your app and then getting those new users signed up - pain of username/password. We can help with both of those. This is how mobile signup should be.
5. Monday 18 March 13 Video of a user inviting another to use example app “Bonzai”. Two minutes long, recorded in realtime, and it shows how quickly you can get new users by integrating your apps with Facebook correctly.
6. 7/08 10/08 1/09 4/09 7/09 10/09 1/10 4/10 10/10 4/11 10/11 1/12 0 100 300 500 200 400 600 4/12 7/11 1/11 7/10 Available Apps (Thousands) Footnote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AppleAppStoreStatistics.png Apple App Store - number of apps Monday 18 March 13 The challenge right now is the amount of apps out there. On Apple’s App store, there’s over 600,000 apps. Users are spoilt for choice, and it can be hard for your app to stand out amongst the crowd.
7. Google Play - number of apps Footnote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Play Time 700 525 350 175 0 Available Apps (Thousands) Monday 18 March 13 And in Google Play, its even worse! - 700 thousand apps. How do you get your app noticed?
8. Open Graph Requests Feed Dialog Your App Organic Traffic Mobile App Install Ads Mobile Sponsored Stories Monday 18 March 13 There are a bunch of simple channels to get content from your app onto Facebook, including Open Graph, Requests and the Feed Dialog, which will in turn drive traffic (and therefore users) back to your app. This can be boosted by running Mobile App Install Ads and Mobile Sponsored Stories, to get predictable growth for your app. This isn’t like listing your app in the ‘featured’ sections on the stores; this gives you control over the volume and quality of your users.
9. Web sites Growth As A Service iOS apps Android apps Monday 18 March 13 All of which sets up Facebook as a service through which you can achieve growth for your app. Growth as a Service.
10. David S. David S. David Monday 18 March 13 Here’s an example of how doing it right paid off. Show of hands: who’s played Songpop? Did you play against friends? And did you stop to think about where they were playing? No. You’re on desktop, and you invite your friend to play. They're on the bus and their phone buzzes. They get a notification to play, and that takes them to the App Store or Google Play store. Of course they’re gonna install the app; they want to beat you. Songpop guaranteed its success by successfully using our SDKs and launching on all platforms.
11. http://developers.facebook.com About the SDKs Monday 18 March 13 Alright that’s the why out of the way. Let’s look at what the SDKs offer
12. Mobile SDKs Android iOS Web Monday 18 March 13 Our 3 main SDKs are on Android, iOS and Web, including Mobile Web. You can get them at developers.facebook.com (/android, /ios, /web).
13. Mobile SDK Features Session Request GraphUser UI Controls Insights Monday 18 March 13
14. Native UI FBLoginView FBFriendPickerViewController FBNativeDialogs Graph FBGraphObject FBOpenGraphAction facade (e.g. FBGraphUser) Core FBSession FBRequest FBRequestConnection FBSettings SDK Architecture: iOS Monday 18 March 13
15. SDK Architecture: Android Core Session Request Response UiLifecycleHelper Graph GraphObject GraphUser GraphPlace ... Native UI LoginButton FriendPickerFragment PlacePickerFragment ProfilePictureView Monday 18 March 13
16. So, what can you do? Monday 18 March 13
17. Login with Facebook LOGIN Monday 18 March 13
18. Login with Facebook: iOS Four ways: ▪ iOS native Login Dialog ▪ Fast app switch to FB native app ▪ Fast app switch to Safari ▪ Web-based Login Dialog Monday 18 March 13
19. Login with Facebook: Android Two ways: ▪ FB native Android app as proxy ▪ In-app webview Monday 18 March 13
20. Feed Dialog SHARE Monday 18 March 13
21. Feed Dialog: iOS ▪ Lets users publish a story or link ▪ Appears as a pop-up in your app FBWebDialogs Monday 18 March 13
22. Feed Dialog: Android ▪ Lets users publish a story or link ▪ Appears as a pop-up in your app WebDialog.FeedDialogBuilder Monday 18 March 13
23. Publishing Open Graph actions Monday 18 March 13
24. Open Graph on Native Mobile ▪ Set up a web server that can host OG objects ▪ Create FBGraphObject/GraphObject subclass for your OG object ▪ Post actions to same graph path as on web: graph.facebook.com/me/ NAMESPACE:ACTION_NAME ▪ Configure app links to direct users to particular content pages Monday 18 March 13
25. Monday 18 March 13
26. Deep Linking Monday 18 March 13
27. Deep Linking ▪ Link to your native app directly from News Feed ▪ Automatically opens your app (if installed) or redirects to the App Store or Google Play Monday 18 March 13
28. Deep Linking ▪ Easy setup in App Dashboard ▪ Can configure app links to direct users to particular content pages Monday 18 March 13
29. App Install Ads Monday 18 March 13
30. Mobile App Install Ads An new and effective way to grow your mobile apps ▪ Target your ad to the audience you want ▪ Reach people where they're most engaged in news feed ▪ Measure and optimize your ad performance Monday 18 March 13 So what are THEY? They’re a brand new way to grow your mobile apps and get to your first ten thousand, hundred thousand, million users. And they’re super effective. They let you target exactly the audience demographic you want. They reach people where they’re most engaged and most likely to convert. And they let you measure and optimise the performance of your ad campaign, to get predictable, sustainable growth.
31. How do they look? ▪ Appear in News Feed on iOS and Android ▪ Large, engaging images and clear Install Now prompt on both platforms ▪ Drive installs by sending users to the App Store and Google Play store Monday 18 March 13 Right, how do they look? They appear in news feed on iOS and Android, with rich visual content and a clear call to action at the bottom. They drive installs by sending users directly to YOUR app in the App Store and in Google Play.
32. Who’s using them? Monday 18 March 13 So who’s using them? Lots of companies are already using these ads to grow their apps. Established brands like Spotify, Fab and Barclaycard are growing their users. And partners like Kabam, Fab, TinyCo and Big Fish were able to reach a more relevant audience and efficiently drive installs. In one example, TinyCo saw 50% higher clickthroughs and much higher conversion rates compared to their current mobile channels. And because of their targeting, the new players they got were measurably more engaged than those who installed organically
33. Build and launch your ads ▪ Promote ▪ iOS ▪ Android Monday 18 March 13
34. Build and launch your ads Set up for each feed ▪ Choose your audience ▪ Set goal and budget Monday 18 March 13
35. Build and launch your ads ▪ Customise ad content for each platform Monday 18 March 13
36. Measure your success ▪ Basic Insights in the App Dashboard ▪ View More Insights to get a detailed breakdown of your campaign Monday 18 March 13 Once your ad gets going, you can see how it's doing. Click "View More Insights" for details on its performance. The insights in ads manager lets you see how effective your ad campaign is. If you want app specific insights, for example total installs for your app, go to your app insights, select the app you want more insights for, and then click on mobile app installs from the left hand navigation. To access these measurements, you need to have the latest SDK integrated with your app.
37. Why go mobile? Growth As A Service Monday 18 March 13 I asked this question at the start: Why go mobile? Hopefully it’s clear why you should be using our SDKs in your app. Facebook offers growth as a service. Now, head to developers.facebook.com and get started! Good luck!