• Brandweek, Wednesday, August 13, 2008 11:16 AM

Facebook last week switched its metric for measuring engagement on its applications from daily to monthly usage. The move forces developers to shift their ad-selling focus to the long-term. It also forces them to develop applications that retain users' interest for a longer period of time.

Brandweek notes that research firms comScore and Nielson Online already report engagement on a monthly basis, so the move by Facebook is perhaps a step toward standardizing monthly engagement as a universal metric. "The more data perspectives the better," says Peter Blackshaw, evp, Nielsen Online Digital Strategic Services. "There's certainly something to be said for offering developers a longer-term engagement metric. This looks to be a net positive, especially if it's truly grounded in user or application developer feedback. I think we're in the early stages of converging around the right engagement metric."

Engagement here refers to a social networking user interacting with a third-party software program containing video, games or other content.

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