Facebook Rolls Out Analytics For App Links, Says 3 Billion URLs Have Been Enabled

The open-source effort that aims to make the mobile web less frustrating for users is gaining momentum. Developers will now be able to measure results better.

Martin Beck

Facebook’s effort to make the mobile web less frustrating is gaining momentum. Only 3 1/2 months since introducing App Links, its open-source platform for deep linking within mobile apps, Facebook says more than three billion urls have been updated to work in the system.
A month ago that total was said to be one million. The pace is being picked up by what Facebook says is now hundreds of app developers using the system. That means fewer people are experiencing this maddening scenario: tap on, say, a Pinterest link on a smartphone and be taken to a mobile browser page, instead of the appropriate place within the installed Pinterest mobile app.
Facebook product manager Vijay Shankar said too many users give up at that point.
“It’s a frustrating experience any time people click on a link and it takes them to Safari,” Shankar said in news briefing today in San Francisco. “People actually want to take action, they are ready to go do something, the intent is there but the experience is broken.”
App Links aims to fix the problem. And to make it more enticing for developers to adopt the standard, Facebook announced several improvements to the platform today:

• App Links analytics: App Links now includes support for three different analytics tools including Facebook Insights, Parse Analytics and Mixpanel, to measure traffic associated with the integration. Developers can also build their own analytics solutions using the open-source system.
• Improved Windows Phone support: App Links now supports Windows 8 and universal Windows apps.
• Back button Android support: Enabled support for back button on Android devices so developers can better understand returning traffic that comes via App Links.

Also, to better communicate about App Link developments, Facebook has created a blog on the AppLinks.org site, and its first post explains today’s update in detail.

“Ads on mobile have a lot of catching up to do, and this is going to help with that.”

For marketers the benefits of widespread adoption of the standard are clear. Any content that uses App Links will be more accessible to mobile phone users. And that includes advertising, the same plumbing that works for organic content can be used to serve links within ads.
“Ads on mobile have a lot of catching up to do, and this is going to help with that,” Shankar said. “Anyone who relies on ads in the mobile ecosystem in general can take advantage of it.”
E-commerce developers are also interested in tapping the system’s potential, Shankar said, and have inquired about enabling affiliate referral programs. Shankar said that is supported and that Facebook and its AppLinks.org partners are willing to adjust the system.
“We are basically trying to make any use cases that apps want to unlock possible,” he said. “For example if e-commerce apps want to test out the affiliate model, and they want to request a change to the standard to make it work better, we want to do that.”

(Stock image via Shutterstock.com. Used under license.)

 

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Thigh Bone On Mars Spotted In New Photo, Scientists Offer Explanation

A thigh bone spotted on Mars in a new photo from NASA’s Curiosity rover has alien enthusiasts excited, but scientists warn the picture may not be exactly what it appears.
The Mars-roving robot snapped pictures of what appeared to be a fossilized alien thigh bone partially buried in the red sand of Mars. The object resembled a femur, though a bit more jagged than one from a human body.
The thigh bone spotted on Mars is likely nothing too fantastic, scientists note. The supposed bone is really just a piece of normal rock cut into the shape of something that resembles an alien bone.
This would not be the first time a seemingly normal object on Mars has resembled something fantastic. Others have found objects in Curiosity’s photographs that include an an iguana and even some weird faces.NASA even addressed the look-alike photos last year, when some people swore they saw a strange shiny object.
“On Mars, as on Earth, sometimes things can take on an unusual appearance,” NASA wrote on its website last year.
While the thigh bone found on Mars might not belong to an alien, scientists did just make an important discover about life on the Red Planet. They found a strange structure resembling a cell inside a meteorite that fell to Earth more than 100 years ago. They believe the meteorite proves there was water on Mars, and that the ovoid structure could be some kind of microorganism, Space.com reports.
“The consideration of possible biotic scenarios for the origin of the ovoid structure in Nakhla currently lacks any sort of compelling evidence,” researchers claim. “Therefore, based on the available data that we have obtained on the nature of this conspicuous ovoid structure in Nakhla, we conclude that the most reasonable explanation for its origin is that it formed through abiotic processes.”
More pictures of the thigh bone on Mars — and other interesting discoveries from NASA’s Curiosity rover — can be found here

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