When your application meets the news feed

After we've been talking about good posting in How helpful is good posting in increasing the number of fans? post, let's take a look on the new statistics section in the application insights, which was added recently by facebook.

News Feed

The news feed section provides you an important information about your application's posts.
The following statistics are available:

• CTR - click trough rate, which means how many clicks on links in the story, relatively to the number of impressions your stories have got. This data shows you how successful the formulation of the stories is. If you're changing the text, you can learn from the statistics if the change had a positive effect.
• Spam - user can report your posts as spam. It can happened everywhere, but especially if your application is posting on users friends walls. It's not cool, so don't do it. Spam reports can hurt your application bad and in certain cases it may lead to removing of your application from facebook.
• Hides - users can hide the stories your application posts. It usually means that they have no intention to use your application ever and they don't want it in their news feed. It is not the end of the world, but facebook does consider it to decide how many impressions your application stories will get.
• Likes - likes are good, you want them. If your stories are more informative and less inviting, they'll get more likes. On the other side, the stories are the place to invite friends to use the application, so try to find the appropriate balance.
• Comments - comments are good, too. You can always try to start a discussion through the application stories. It may be accomplished by posting a question or an interesting fact or by posting some fun stuff. Personal stuff, if possible.

Summary

Facebook wants us to make applications that posts interesting stuff. The above categories help the machines to understand what's good and what isn't. Here is the guideline from the beginning of the "News Feed" Insights section:
The number of story impressions is highly correlated with positive user engagement and can decrease when we receive negative user feedback.


Remember, CTR, likes and comments are good, spam and hides are bad.
Good luck!