We’ve just pushed Lite Engine 2.2 live, with some great updates that will allow you to further customize your campaigns.

With the changes we’re implementing we’re improving the user experience, expanding the features and now giving you the opportunity to track the performance of your campaign better.

Lite Engine is our platform that lets you create branded content and interactive campaigns for Facebook. From exclusive fan content to promotions to custom applications – Lite Engine gives you the tools to create a custom experience suited to your exact needs. If you do want more info on the platform, please contact us

So on top of all the cool stuff you’re already used to, we’ve added a few nifty things:

1. Customizing your newsfeed: Lite Engine generates a newsfeed once an entry has been successfully submitted, and in this 2.2 version you now have to opportunity to customize all levels of the newsfeed (so the title, caption, copy and visual). Absolutely tailored and therefore more engaging messaging and images.
2. Custom Tracking: in addition to the standard reports that are already part of the Lite Engine platform (Hits to the tab, Completed form, Shared in newsfeed and Referred entry), we’ve now created the opportunity for Custom Tracking. This means you can define and track your own interactions in the applications. Great to be able to track certain actions that users take in competitions and/ games.
3. Referral entries is another functionality we added, allowing you to reward participants in your campaigns with an extra entry in the competition if their friends enter. This mechanic is a great incentive for participants to share the competition with their friends, and will increase your participation rates. Of course this mechanic is only suitable for games of chance (ie sweepstakes) and not games of skill (ie 25 words)
4. Email confirmations; you can now send email confirmation when entries are submitted which is a great way to follow up with extra, more detailed marketing content.
5. Gallery options; this option can now be turned off (if desired), so that the gallery in a photo upload campaign is no longer visible.

Lite Engine 2.2 features are available today to customers that have beta access or have requested Pixolut to develop the skins. The SDK will be available for all subscribers to download on Monday, November 21.

If you want to know more about Lite Engine, this 2.2 update or what we’ve been up to, please get in touch:

Facebook: facebook.com/pixolut

Twitter: @Pixolut

Phone +61 2 8517 5080

In that last post I spoke about this concept of ‘artificial indicators’ - in summary – an artificial indicator is something designed by the developers of a platform to help you make sense of the huge amount of information in their platform (or a third party platform for that matter) since our brains are not designed to comprehend the vast amounts of data that humanity creating.

Examples of these platforms are:

Google, Facebook, Apple App Store, Twitter

Examples of Artificial Indicators:

Some examples of artificial indicators are: Page Rank, Most Popular, Number of Likes and the less obvious ‘Edge Rank’, Followers, Trending Topics, etc.

How did these platforms come to be?

One of the big transitions of the last decade was a fundamental movement from the web as ‘the wild west’ where every company had to have a website to the blog where every individual had to have a website and finally to growth of privatised platforms that sit on top of the web and use it as a ‘transport layer’ – where the human ‘context gaps’ can be filled.

Many search companies started this trend of ‘artificial indicators’ with the idea of search indexing. The artificial indicator was not the act of indexing the content per-se, but rather the way in which the algorithm for aligning the search text with the results. Google was the most famous of these with it’s Page Rank. This was also the beginning of ‘gaming the system’ with the idea of Search Engine Optimisation becoming an industry unto itself over the period of the first dot-com boom.

A paradigm shift occurred over the last decade as we saw the prevalence and acceptance of the web move the idea of ‘purpose based’ communication tools to ‘platform’ communication tools. This is like the hybrid of the blog with the bulletin board – this idea of a generic platform started hitting critical mass with MySpace and then Facebook. At the same time as this person to person communication on the web came to the fore the idea of filtering content based on behaviour was also emerging as a powerful trend with the super retailers like eBay and amazon.

So today we find an interesting predicament – because we have moved to ‘platform’ rather than ‘purpose’ – the platforms have boomed, yet-  it has created a kind of ‘context monopoly’ where there can only be a single incumbent for the platform to be attractive. The alternative is to re-introduce purpose and marginalise an element of your audience (example in point: MySpace vs Facebook where MySpace has had to focus on its relationship to music in order to attract a following)

Similar outcomes afoot in the space of mobile – in the era of ‘the wild west’ the operators desperately tried to introduce and control a  ’walled garden’ operator driven experience as soon as the internet was becoming available for GPRS and the first generation of 3G handsets. This was rejected by users as the operators simply could not provide the content, experiences or connectedness that consumers were demanding – the web and email was a miserable experience on these devices, but it was there – and this was a point in time when RIM was a shining light and the Blackberry revolutionised the experience.

Then in 2007, the doors were blown off when Apple released the iPhone. Operators were supplanted by an operating system that facilitated the growth of the mobile web as we see it today. Within 24 months  Google’s Android simply added another nail in the coffin for operators making their ‘value added services’ pointless and turning their network in to a commodity. This ‘operating system’ model on the mobile devices leveraged the learning of the ‘wild west’ web of years previous and added the tools to provide a simple experience for users through ‘app store’  and ‘itunes’ – and thus another set of privatised platforms was built on top of the commodity of the mobile internet.

Where are we now?

What we see is a desire to simplify the experience. To not have to think about the details. Packaging up the experience in a digestible form is precisely why this prevalence of ‘context monopolies’ thrive. It’s actually a function of human nature – the more people use technology, the less they care about the technology and more about the objective.

Because of the inherent lack of ubiquity bound up with the ‘wild west’ web and mobile experiences, this generation of proprietary ‘platforms’ answer the people’s craving for consistency, reliability and simplicity. A set of common denominators that we all know. That are easy to learn and come with implied trust and an ‘understood’ set of artificial indicators. All of the platforms I have described in this article share these same attributes.

The byproduct of these privatised platforms having lots of users is that they are compelled to monetize these platforms as commercial entities. The other is that they will generally want to open them up to continue to grow and evolve the platforms with a developer community and . With these platforms comes arbitrary rule sets. Rules for users, third party developers and advertisers on how they can interact with the platform. This in turn can have unforeseen flow on effects and affect other users, developers or advertisers. Sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.

This is not a new problem,  the rules of taxation have had this effect for time eternal… The fine line between evasion and avoidance follows a similar guise as ‘gaming’ a platform versus ‘exploiting’ it. Marketers, developers and advertisers are painfully aware that they need to move with the flow of the platform and it’s developers to stay on the cutting edge of that platforms capabilities – not for the sake of technology but to know how best to execute real strategies on these platforms within the rules and regulations.

Some examples highlighting the kinds of arbitrary rules and the impact that changes to those rules have to developers and advertisers.

Apple

http://toucharcade.com/2011/04/18/has-apple-adjusted-the-app-store-charting-algorithms/

http://toucharcade.com/2011/04/19/apple-throws-down-the-gauntlet/

Facebook

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/04/19/facebook-makes-badoo-change-its-viral-mechanics-leading-to-a-75-drop-in-dau/

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/04/20/ad-ly-removed-monetizing-news-feed/

Twitter

http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2011/03/11/twitter-tells-developers-to-stop-developing-new-twitter-clients/

Google

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/internet/20110228-google-changes-search-algorithm-to-block-content-farms-promises-higher-quality-results.html

Some great reading from the last few weeks:

Share Buttons on Third-Party Sites and Facebook Now Provide Micro-Sharing Options

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/05/09/share-buttons-micro-sharing-groups-wall/

Facebook Partners with Web of Trust to Protect Users From Malicious Outbound Links

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/05/12/web-of-trust/

Facebook Sponsored Stories Ads Have 46% Higher CTR, 18% Lower Cost Per Fan Says TBG Digital Test

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/05/03/sponsored-stories-ctr-cost-per-fa/

Facebook Launches Three New Sponsored Stories Types for Pages, Apps, and Websites

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/04/26/sponsored-stories-pages-apps-websites

Facebook Canvas Apps vs Facebook Connect for Websites: A Quick Guide to What’s Best for You

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/04/22/canvas-connect-websites-best/

AdMob Survey Shows What the iPad is Good For

http://gigaom.com/apple/admob-survey-shows-what-the-ipad-is-good-for/

Snoozing And Losing: A Blockbuster Failure

http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/make-it-a-blockbuster-night

Some links to recent campaigns we have launched

Infamous 2 launch app

http://www.facebook.com/PlayStationAU?sk=app_197545966947399

Sony Playstation Escalation Pack (using Lite Engine) – designed by the team at Sony Playstation, and it looks fantastic!

http://www.facebook.com/PlayStationAU?sk=app_181234068597471

Gillette Champions – just because your a local team doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be treated like professionals…

http://www.facebook.com/GilletteAustralia?sk=app_131282930276526

Intel Win an Island

http://www.facebook.com/IntelSG?sk=app_207152969312540

a truly integrated Facebook and mobile campaign – also available on iPhone/Android at http://m.intel-island.com

available in multiple languages across APAC

ARU Qantas Wallabies – Rugby Rewards

http://www.facebook.com/Wallabies?sk=app_219950488023951

Hong Kong Tourism

http://www.facebook.com/HongKongTourismAustralia?sk=app_165523130173396

American Tourister for South East Asia

http://www.facebook.com/theamericantourist?sk=app_199003023471699

New policies for custom apps on Pages
Two new policies for custom apps have been added to the Facebook Platform Policies. To summarize the changes: apps on Pages cannot auto-play without people interacting with the app, and users must grant explicit permission for you to use analytics beyond those of your individual Page in order to customize their experience. See sections 1.7.a and 1.7.b for the full language of the new policies.

My sister and her family live in Tokyo. Last week was scary – and to be honest it still is with all of the after effects of this disaster. Thankfully, she is safe. She is still coming to terms with the impact – the enormity of the situation. She is not the only one. Many people around the globe are looking for ways to ‘get it’ – to try and comprehend the magnitude of this disaster. Not long after this grave event, the New York Times posted a page that let people see the before and after of satellite views depicting different areas affected by the quake or the subsequent tsunami: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/13/world/asia/satellite-photos-japan-before-and-after-tsunami.html – I used this tool and started to comprehend a few things about the dire situation this part of the country is now in.

These tools for ‘visualisation’ are becoming the norm – ways of seeing the world of data around us that we cannot otherwise comprehend. It might sound strange, but it seems that in a way we have become obsolete. Our minds are fed the complexity and enormity of world events, technology, huge numbers of people’s points of view – yet we are not capable of processing it. Information overload is the catch cry of the new millennium – and it’s true. We have created an ecosystem of media and information platforms we are not naturally capable of comprehending.

The problem with this is that we lose track. We rely heavily on artificial indicators to help us find our way around this unrelenting tide of information that is simply beyond our comprehension.

Take the example of Angry Birds in the App Store… It became a self fulfilling prophecy – it was very popular, because it was a great game – however – because it came early to the app store and the App Store’s minimal number of artificial indicators (Most Popular) created a ‘feedback cycle’ that propelled it to stratospheric heights. Bob Warfield has nailed it several times with his article here:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/efficient-marketing-means-doing-something-different/

Now – if you took a moment to digress and read Bob’s article, you will start to understand where I am going with this:

If you don’t fall in to a category on the platform you have chosen to market on – You Are Lost.

As an advertiser then, there must be a few ways to deal with this issue of being Lost:

1. Game the system – timing to market and optimisation on the system itself – be it Twitter followers, Google page rank, Facebook Likes.

2. Increased relevance – stand out as a beacon in the tide of noise with clarity and depth. Relevant, meaningful content can never be ignored as a robust tool.

3. On-platform optimised and targeted media – this is a form of ‘artificial indicator’ that the platform provides to target your message directly.

When all three are used in synergy – something special happens! You start to get found – and the more you get found, the more you get found – simply due to the nature of the feedback loop style of artificial indicators. Look at Page Rank, Edge Rank, Popularity, Followers, Likes – all of these are artificial indicators we rely on to guide our decisions en-masse when using our digital platforms of choice.

Anyway, I hope you subscribe to Bob’s blog – absolutely worth reading regularly.

In other news since our last update… well – feels like the whole universe has changed since the introduction of iFrames on tabs.

An interesting article from the Facebook Developer Blog on using OpenGraph to find what movies your friends like

http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/481

A great eBook for non-profits is available here called “The Goodness Engine” for some ideas around digital strategy with NFPs

http://www.deepfocus.net/hackathon/#ebook

“In an experiment, 41% of Facebook users were willing to divulge highly personal information to a complete stranger. This according to IT security firm Sophos, which invited 200 randomly selected Facebookers to befriend a bogus Facebook user named ‘Freddi Staur’ (an anagram of ‘ID Fraudster’). Of those queried, 87 responded to the invitation, among them 82 people whose profiles included personal information such as their email address, date of birth, address or phone number.”

http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070814/facebook-privacy/

Finally, a GREAT piece on the emerging landscape of social commerce

http://www.simplyzesty.com/brands/emerging-trends-in-social-commerce

Some things to think about with this idea in mind are:

* What are the perceived subtleties of different modes of communication? SMS, MMS, Email, App, Ad Units, Microsites etc.

* How do these subtleties affect perception of the message?

* How are different groups of people going to perceive those subtleties based on age, gender and culture?

* How do we bring different modes of communication together to create a cohesive experience for a person that makes a difference?

News in Brief:

http://www.strandreports.com/sw4395.asp

Some other interesting news from Inside Facebook weekly roundup thanks to some interesting stats from ChompOn.

Sharing on Facebook Most Lucrative for E-Commerce – ChompOn released data comparing Twitter and Facebook actions. Turns out Facebook Shares are worth more than Likes, which are worth more than tweets, which are worth more than follows on Twitter.

JAVASCRIPT PERFORMANCE

Great news for next generation browser-based game developers with new Javascript optimisation engines premiering in Chrome improving speed by 64%.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9210299/Google_ups_speed_of_Chrome_10

HILARIOUS HACK FOR NERDS

Check out this guy’s license plate – absolutely hysterical if you understand some simple hacking skills.

http://bullshit.tumblr.com/post/3208223711/jacobjoaquin-r03-urban-sql-injection

San Francisco is hosting the 2011 Inside Social Apps conference and the CTO of Facebook, Bret Taylor sat down and spoke about what the year holds in store for the Facebook platform.

The key takeaway from the interview is that “Mobile is the primary focus for [the Facebook] platform this year.” – This means that the many disparate platforms that currently exist for using Facebook on PC browsers and mobile devices and browsers will start to be aligned in functionality and capabilities.

I have been saying that this would happen for the past year… The impact of this focus on mobile will see changes to the way mobile devices deliver the Facebook experience to allow the use of Facebook Social Apps on these devices as well as Newsfeed and Notification integration with Facebook apps.

The most interesting thing about this conversation with Taylor was his point about HTML5; it is becoming the de-facto standard for developing applications that ties together the next generation of computing platform (Tablets and Phones) with the last (Desktop).

As we have all seen the proliferation of ‘smart’ mobile devices in both phone and tablet form factors appear over the last 12 months – we find the common thread between them all is the web; more specifically Webkit and it’s support for the emerging HTML5 standards.

This common thread of HTML5 connecting all the desktop operating systems and the mobile operating systems (and form factors as well as input models like touch versus mouse) allows developers to move from writing code for completely different platforms to simply creating front-end variants of their code using one technology and one service delivery mechanism.

With regards to Facebook, my expectation is that this will mean changes to the way we make apps – possibly adding the idea of a “mobile canvas” on top of the current “tab” and “canvas” app contexts to allow Facebook to continue to control the environment developers work within.

Also, expect to see the Facebook advertising formats extend on to these new platforms – again, most likely to appear on the “mobile app canvas” space. Consider the fact that there is no advertising in any of the many Facebook mobile platforms at the moment – which means a huge lost revenue opportunity for Facebook every second they are not owning that space.

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,500 times in 2010. That’s about 8 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 7 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 230 posts. There was 1 picture uploaded, taking a total of 4kb.

The busiest day of the year was August 30th with 56 views. The most popular post that day was About Joe Cincotta.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were theweb.dk, pixolut.com, forums.37signals.com, forum.37signals.com, and docs.cksource.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for joe cincotta, pixolut, basecamp agile, basecamp and agile, and jquery ajaxform example.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

About Joe Cincotta March 2007
1 comment

Getting Agile with BaseCamp August 2007
5 comments

jQuery AJAX form serialization example May 2009
1 comment

The difference between Vista 64 bit and 32 bit February 2007
5 comments

Kick Assembler October 2006
2 comments

Why?

Well – a few reasons.

I think Facebook has displaced a lot of what used to go in to a blog like this – the day to day commentary. For that Facebook is a more intuitive platform because it has the social graph associated with it.

The bigger thinking, articles and updates have stopped for a different reason; I stopped programming. I miss it and I still work with my development team every day – but really, now that Pixolüt is the size it is, I just can’t.

Every minute of the day counts when it comes to running a growing business and sharing the big ideas or thoughts from the days discoveries with the universe is the last thing on my mind.

So why keep the blog?

It’s time to hand the blog over to the guys at Pixolüt to continue the tradition. I think that as we share some of our thinking and projects together then this blog will see a lot more action and be a lot more use to the guys that used to read it again!

So, Merry Christmas… enjoy the break.