Guardian Facebook App Nears 4M Monthly Active Users

[![][1]][2]U.K. national daily newspaper _[The Guardian][3]'s Facebook application has garnered 3.9 million monthly active users in just a few months._

Facebook said more than half of the Guardian app's users are under the age of 25.

A Facebook developer [blog post][4] [][5]highlighted the _Guardian_ app's use of action items such as read, watch, play, agree, and disagree, as well as the app's aggregations of top authors, top videos, articles read, podcasts played, articles agreed with, and articles disagreed with.

The developer blog post says:

[![][6]][7]The app publishes actions across a range of content: news articles, videos, and even podcasts.

The team carefully [modeled its data][8] by linking each article to the authors who wrote it, adding object properties for the article's section, subject tags, and correctly specifying the publish date, allowing the team to generate more meaningful aggregations.

They also created lightweight actions agree and disagree for [opinion articles][9] to enable people to share their sentiment on issues.

The feature generates authentic debates and discussions among friends, resulting in more traffic to these articles.

_The Guardian_ focused most of its design effort on article pages (where the vast majority of app traffic lands), rather than on the app homepage.

Article pages were designed to give social context about the friends who've read the article using the [facepile plug-in][10], and to help people find more _Guardian_ content their friends had read through the [activity feed plug-in][11].

Finally, _The Guardian_ drives adoption of its app by giving people the opportunity to install the app when clicking on a _Guardian_ link in the news feed.

Readers: Have any features in Facebook apps stood out for you?

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[1]: http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/GuardianFacebookWatched.jpg (GuardianFacebookWatched)
[2]: http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/GuardianFacebookWatched.jpg
[3]: http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-social-readers-amass-millions-of-users-2011-11 (Facebook 'Social Readers' Amass Millions Of Users)
[4]: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2012/03/02/developer-spotlight--the-guardian/ (Developer Spotlight: The Guardian)
[5]: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2012/03/02/developer-spotlight--the-guardian/
[6]: http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/GuardianFacebookTopAuthors.jpg (GuardianFacebookTopAuthors)
[7]: http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/GuardianFacebookTopAuthors.jpg
[8]: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/og/object?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fmedia%2F2012%2Ffeb%2F29%2Fguardian-tv-ad-open-journalism (Object Debugger)
[9]: https://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/commentisfree/2012/feb/12/banknotes-not-worth-their-paper (Charlie Brooker: The true value of money – or why you can't fart a crashing plane back into the sky)
[10]: https://developers.intern.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/facepile/ (Facepile)
[11]: https://developers.intern.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/activity/ (Activity)
[12]: http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/GuardianFacebook.jpg (GuardianFacebook)
[13]: http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/GuardianFacebook.jpg
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[24]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/allfacebook/~4/jmq3Xtn5jng

URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/allfacebook/~3/jmq3Xtn5jng/facebook-guardian-app-2012-03