Posted by Jackie Cohen on September 23rd, 2011 1:25 AM
Although Facebook's f8 conference is intended for developers, this year's event has gotten more mainstream than ever due to the company's livestream — along with the viral promotions of the event circulating among people's news feeds.
Normally one would expect only good things to come from any increase in brand awareness, but this time around Facebook's f8 seems like it's driving already unhappy users over the edge.
People who don't eat, breathe and sleep technology, let alone social media development, still feel overwhelmed by the currently visible alterations of the site and are complaining in the comments sections of every public f8 post going into the news feed.
The most saturated demographic using Facebook's subscribe button happens to be employees of the social network, plus the developers and technology media attending f8. Many of them appear to have enabled comments by subscribers who aren't friends.
All of these folks with the subscribe button enabled are posting publicly visible status updates and content links related to f8, and these attendees might be too busy enjoying the event to think about moderating the comments on their walls.
Readers, what kinds of reactions are you seeing to f8 among your Facebook friends?
AllFacebook edited the top image from Shutterstock; the Dr. Seuss graphic below is publicly circulating on Facebook.
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Posted by Jackie Cohen on September 23rd, 2011 12:10 AM
Facebook's annual f8 developer conference promised a lot of things today, but one cool subset of them takes the most popular interaction on the site and spins off variations.
We're talking about the like button here.
Today, we click like when really a more specific action is involved but the thumbs-up is only option that exists.
So, get ready for buttons that could include:
Want
Buy
Own
Listen to
Read
Eat
Watch
Work out
Each of these verbs would describe a type of relationship between things that exist in what Facebook has up until today called the Social Graph.
Expanding into all of these other types of relationships ushers in what Facebook calls the Open Graph.
Like its name suggests, the open graph holds many more opportunities for third-party application developers to go to work.
And plugins based on the open graph would enable websites outside of Facebook to make commerce and content more social than ever.
And the open graph will also make people's news feeds more customized than ever, requiring a more complex algorithm than the one that currently determines what people see on their home pages.
The algorithm that Facebook today calls EdgeRank becomes GraphEdge tomorrow.
Readers, what do you think about these new variations on Facebook's like button and plugins? Will users feel as inclined to click on them as they do with the like button?
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You'll tell the story of you business, highlight the social interactions you've had with fans, and showcase the web assets you consider meaningful.
Page adminstrators will spend their time curating what content shows up, using new third-party apps that arise to help business timelines, and competing for dominance with GraphRank as to what shows up on their page.
Start thinking long and hard about what OpenGraph verbs — since like is spinning off several subsets of actions 0-0 describe your products.
Obviously, people eat or cook food products… but what about verbs for less consumer oriented companies? Are we going to see ticker items about system administrators install a VMware product or create a virtual machine? Probably not.
If you play the game, you will benefit from increased engagement on the Facebook platform because of the ticker and GraphRank.
Figure out how to use OpenGraph verbs, and you will see dramatically increased visibility in the new ticker versus what you get in the news feeds for fans of businesses.
Could the ticker be a game-changer for businesses whose posts never reach 80 percent of their fans? There is a first move advantage to be seized, that's for sure.
In the short term, creating an app on the platform is the best way to benefit from the new changes.
Apps, not pages, got all the attention today.
Apps from Netflix and Spotify enabled spontaneous TV and music consumption within Facebook. For now, pages can only dream about that level of social integration with Facebook's new products.
You should still pay for Facebook ads. They are the best way to reach people.
The new OpenGraph verbs will allow advertisers to target users on a more granular basis. For example, you can target people who are currently listening to "Redemption Song," not just users who like Bob Marley.
"You need to pay to get your message out. Facebook Ads are the best way to amplify your message." Facebook's Kay Madati said just two days ago at Social Media Week L.A. The more things change, the more they stay the same…
Readers, what do you think GraphRank, ticker and timeline mean for your pages? Guest writer Will McGrouther is the chief executive officer of Retained Search. Image from Shutterstock edited by AllFacebook.
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Posted by Jackie Cohen on September 22nd, 2011 5:28 PM
Get a load of the invite to this evening's party invitation, capping off a day of Facebook product announcements at the annual f8 developer conference.
Spotify Chief Executive Officer Daniel Ek and Napster founder Sean Parker host the happy hour portion of the event.
Unfortunately, none of this will livestream for those of you who can't make the event.
To keep you from feeling left out, we've got a video of Crystal Castles embedded below.
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Posted by Jackie Cohen on September 22nd, 2011 5:28 PM
Get a load of the invite to one of this evening's parties, capping off a day of Facebook product announcements at the annual f8 developer conference.
Just announced at the close of f8 sessions: a party at Zynga's new headquarters around the corner; the 6 pm dinner and open house occurs between happy hour and the 8 pm beginning of the official party. Yup, the invitation pictured to the right shows another party going on at the same time as these other events.)
Spotify Chief Executive Officer Daniel Ek and Napster founder Sean Parker host one of the parties(the pictured invite says 5:30, but everyone else says it starts at 8, and the kegs started flowing at 3). Next comes a live performance by Crystal Castles, the official after party taking place in the same venue where f8 took place. This party lasts until midnight, but there's no word on how late the other two parties go. Unfortunately, none of this will livestream for those of you who can't make the event. To keep you from feeling left out, we've got a video of Crystal Castles embedded below.
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Create a social media strategy and learn from the biggest names in social media in our innovative online event, Social Media Marketing Boot Camp, starting September 27. Master Google+ with tech evangelist Robert Scoble, develop strategies for increasing your Facebook likes, and learn the benefits of geolocation platforms like Foursquare. Register today.
Create a social media strategy and learn from the biggest names in social media in our innovative online event, Social Media Marketing Boot Camp, starting September 27. Master Google+ with tech evangelist Robert Scoble, develop strategies for increasing your Facebook likes, and learn the benefits of geolocation platforms like Foursquare. Register today.
Posted by David Cohen on September 22nd, 2011 3:59 PM
Teachers in the Newark school system have incentive to step up their game — $10,000 worth of incentive, to be exact, in the form of grants to teachers or groups of teachers who create innovative programs in their classroom. But where is the money coming from? Try Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million donation.
The Wall Street Journal reported the news of the two-year, $600,000 teacher-grant program, and a news conference was held Wednesday featuring Newark Mayor Cory Booker, acting Education Commissioner Chris Cerf, new Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson, and Greg Taylor, new CEO of the Foundation for Newark's Future, which is managing the gift from Zuckerberg.
Foundation for Newark's Future has had to deal with its share of controversy, as chief of staff Khaatim Sheerer El did not leave the public school board of Atlanta on a good note. The schools in that southern city dealt with an extensive cheating scandal during his tenure there, although El was not implicated in the matter.
During the press conference, Newark officials reviewed the allocation so far of $6.4 million in grants from Zuckerberg's gift, which includes the new teacher grants, as well as discussing future plans, the Journal reported, adding that money from the Facebook CEO has also gone toward opening new schools, extending school days, and recruiting teachers.
The Foundation for Newark's Future is tasked with raising money to match the donation from Zuckerberg, and it has brought in $47 million this far, the Journal reported. Zuckerberg originally announced the donation to the Newark schools on The Oprah Winfrey Show last September.
Newark School Board member Shavar Jeffries told the Journal:
I think they're just getting started, from what I've seen. It's very important to facilitate opportunities for teachers to be entrepreneurial and use their professional expertise and judgment to meet the needs of the kids.
Readers: Would you like to see Zuckerberg play more of a role in the allocation of the funds he donated to the Newark public schools?
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Reaching Fans: Most of current Facebook marketing relies on reaching business page fans via the Newsfeed. About 27 percent of engagement happens there, and 21 percent on profiles. There have been huge changes to the Newsfeed, the introduction of the Ticker, and now GraphRank may behave differently than EdgeRank has.
Advertising: Facebook advertising also plays a big role, but it has not been mentioned in all of these changes. Perhaps there will be ripple effects and new features, but no changes to advertising have been mentioned yet. And although the Ticker takes up some valuable right-sidebar space, I still see at least one ad above the fold, and multiple ads on deeper pages like Photos.
Most reassuring is that it's likely that anything that has worked for you with Facebook advertising so far will continue to work through these changes — especially if you have been sending Facebook ad traffic to websites, rather than building fan bases.
Do The Newsfeed and Ticker Changes Break Fan Page Marketing?
But will the changes to the Newsfeed and the addition of the Ticker affect fan marketing? Will pages be able to reach their fans? Will it be worthwhile to spend ad money to build fan bases?
The jury is still out. I am waiting for more data to see if yesterday's changes will reduce the visibility of Facebook page posts to fans. I've heard anecdotally that this has happened for some, but we need more data to be sure. Some have theorized that the Newsfeed will now be even more hard on pages that get low feedback rates on their posts. That makes page posting best practices even more important.
Best advice for now: Focus even more on getting higher feedback rates, and do quality posts two to three times a day. Watch your data and adjust accordingly.
Recency, More Frequent Posting, and EdgeRank
And the blending of recent and top news means that posting more often may give you an advantage. However, this is dangerous — don't let the anxiety to post more make you post less engaging content, because that will hurt your feedback rate and could keep your posts from getting into Top News. The idea that posting more frequently will help you assumes that you are hitting an EdgeRank threshold that makes you visible to fans.
What's Up With GraphRank?
This is going to be the source of a lot of debate and study for the next year. The biggest clue Taylor gave us about how it's different is that it will include friend and family lists. Facebook may not show your mom something it would show your friends.
Does that change how we market? Probably not.
Fundamentally, these ranks serve to tell Facebook when to tell your connections about your activities (either as a profile or a page). So if you continue to do things that cause interest and engagement, you will continue to get visibility.
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Posted by Jennifer Moire on September 22nd, 2011 3:06 PM
Over the next three weeks, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives will compete head-to-head on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for the title of Most Valuable Player.
It's not a sports competition: It's the second annual Member Online All-Star Competition, which was recently announced by House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer's (Md.) office. The competition aims to boost social media use among members and grow their follower bases across the three social media platforms. The latest congressional contest comes on the heels of the GOP's New Media Challenge, which ended earlier this summer.
Stephen Dwyer, director of online communications and technology for the Democratic Whip's office, filled AllFacebook.com in on the details.
The top 50 members at the end of the three-week competition will be named All-Stars, with first place awarded to the MVP.
This year's contest is marked by a new technology twist. The idea of manually updating follower numbers seemed daunting, so Dwyer leveraged the open APIs of the three social media platforms. He directed Web developers to create an electronic scoreboard — using the image of racing donkeys to convey leader changes — which will be housed on the caucus' private intranet for any member to access.
With the digital scoreboard, members will be able to get updates on the competition at weekly caucus gatherings or more frequently — a good thing, given the level of friendly competition Dwyer says the annual contest generates.
Select results from 2010 All Star Competition
How does Dwyer think members will actually grow their followers? He is strongly encouraging the use of Facebook ads, along with the more traditional tactics of cross-promoting across channels, and sharing the members' social media addresses in regular mail, email signatures, and websites.
Dwyer said he hopes to top last year's contest, which generated 43,000 new followers on Facebook.
There's not much room in the caucus for new Facebook accounts, because a whopping 89 percent of Democrats in the House are already using the social networking site.
Do you believe elected officials should be encouraged to use Facebook?
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and others announced revolutionary and supercool changes to Facebook.
According to Zuck in his introduction to the keynote:
A record 500 million people used Facebook the same day. We're connected now. The next era will be defined by the social apps that use these connections.
PROFILE: The profile is the heart of the Facebook experience, and people invest a lot in their profile. The old 2004 profile: How you introduce yourself to people, the first five minutes of your conversation
People wanted more ways to express themselves, so we added the stream: That's the next 15 minutes of a conversation — what you've been doing recently — which came in the 2008 new profile.
But there's more to us, to our deepest conversations. You want to express the story of your life in terms of the most important and meaningful parts of your life — this is the heart of your Facebook experience
The biggest new element today is Timeline, which Facebook has been working on for a year, although the apps changes and implications of the new GraphRank are huge as well.
Timeline is the story of your life, in a single page
Timeline is about stories
A new class of apps will work with Timeline, Ticker, and the Newsfeed
This is about a new way to express yourself, and as you can see, it's much richer visually
And as Chris Cox, vice president of products, said, infographics have become very important — visualizing huge amounts of data. Timeline is about doing that for a person. What would a year in review look like for a person? Scrapbooks have been around for centuries, and this is a similar activity.
You can navigate via the the Facebook Timeline with the Time Slider
Blue dots: more important things
Gray dots: less important things
To add stuff to your timeline:
Click on timeline, composer, then post
Content for timeline can come from apps
You can add a major event to your timeline. We'll get more detail about this when it's widely released.
Apps can help you summarize activity into Reports
Mobile apps work with the timeline and can give you monthly or annual reports.
Express Yourself
Zuck says your Facebook profile should be "a place that feels like your home." You highlight and curate your stories to express who you really are. Your cover photo is the big wide photo at the top — it should be a unique moment in your life.
You still have your profile pic.
To add a cover photo, you first click on the star (which also tells Facebook this is important) and you get a big photo to use as a cover.
Timeline lets you control
What you show
How you display it, and
Who can see it
The way timelines look can be very unique — a traveler versus a musician versus a runner. Here is a musician's timeline:
Open Graph, Apps, and Connections
Facebook has created a new class of apps to deal with the next version of open graph. Facebook's mission is to make world more open and connected. They want you to have a more personal experience.
As of 2007, you could connect by liking. Now they want you to connect any way you want. What if you read a book but you don't want to like it? What if you watch but don't want to like a movie? You might not feel that strongly about it, and you might not want it to go into the Newsfeed to annoy your friends.
Now you'll be able to eat a meal, hike a trail, and so on. This means Facebook is adding verbs to the connections — verbs in the social graph. They believe this will create many, many more connections in the graph. It also helps you express yourself in new ways — you don't want to annoy friends with boring stuff.
Ticker is a lightweight stream for less important stuff — a socially acceptable way to express lightweight activity
activity into ticker and timeline but not newsfeed
share goes into newsfeed
You can define an action and publish in this new class of social apps. There are a lot of naturally social actions — communication and games — and there are already social apps for these. But there are not-so-social activities … private things — medical, finance — and there are few or no apps for these.
Build New Apps And Rethink Industries: Music, Movies, and News
Frictionless: You can now add activity to the timeline without seeing a share box pop up. You can still publish, but you can add lightweight activity without the share box. Permissions: adding app to add activity, click add to timeline.
Real-time serendipity: This is about the Ticker. Friends are already doing lots of things — we just aren't aware of them. We'll find out about them in our ticker: "Oh, friend is listening to song, I'll listen too at the same time." Real time stalking
Patterns: This is about the Newsfeed. Sometimes people do stuff that's more rare or interesting (playlist created), or lots of friends listen to the same artist — this goes into new feed.
Music: Now you can chat and listen with your friends, regardless of the music player. You can find new commonalities with a friend.
The key to making the music biz work is trying to help you discover songs to buy more content than you would have otherwise. Discover music through your friends.
Zuck had the CEOs of Spotify and Netflix come up and talk about how social will accelerate what they do. As Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said, he might watch a movie he'd been putting off if a guy he was meeting later that day was watching it now. That's a great commonality and conversation starter.
This works for reading news, too. You can see what friends are reading, such as via The Washington Post social reader:
Taking Games to the Next Level
Games have been most successful app thus far. Now, no share box — activities go straight to the ticker. And more information will be visible to friends. Mike plays a specific word in Words with Friends while playing Carl, and I can see that word and even a picture of the board.
Integrating This Into Your Apps, and OMG GraphRank!
Very easy: Decide what action in your app fits into the social graph, and add an add to timeline button in your app. Facebook is launching six templates and a flexible query engine. You can add geolocation to the activities. It works everywhere — Web, mobile, iPad, everywhere.
App discovery: If people like it, they should see it. You shouldn't need tricks or gimmicks for people to find them.
GraphRank may be the new EdgeRank. What do I want to see in Newsfeed vs. someone's timeline? Different types of relationships work differently — work friends versus family, etc. — this is probably going to integrate the new friends lists and family categorizations.
App developers will see what activities people do the most and what annoys people.
Create a social media strategy and learn from the biggest names in social media in our innovative online event, Social Media Marketing Boot Camp, starting September 27. Master Google+ with tech evangelist Robert Scoble, develop strategies for increasing your Facebook likes, and learn the benefits of geolocation platforms like Foursquare. Register today.
Posted by David Cohen on September 22nd, 2011 1:48 PM
It's not just admissions officers for graduate business schoolsthat are probing applicants' social media accounts: A new survey from Kaplan Test Prep found that 24 percent of undergraduate admissions officers have poked around in a similar fashion.
That 24 percent figure was up from 10 percent in 2008, when Kaplan first began tracking the tracking of applicant's social networking sites. The test-prep firm added that 20 percent of undergraduate admissions officers have also Googled applicants.
Kaplan believes the 24 percent number should actually be higher, as some respondents said that while they personally did not visit applicants' social media pages, other colleagues in their offices had done so.
A total of 12 percent of respondents who admitted to probing via social media also said things they discovered in the process had a negative impact on applicants' admissions chances, with red flags going up for actions including plagiarism, use of profanity, photos of alcohol consumption, and illegal activities.
Kaplan vice president of research Jeff Olson said:
There's definitely a growing acceptance by college admissions officers in the practice of checking applicants' digital footprints, but for context, these checks are not routine and tend to happen because of a specific trigger in a particular situation, like an anonymous tip or a posting on an online forum. That said, college applicants need to be particularly mindful of what they post, and may even want to search online to make sure their digital footprint is clean.
On admissions officers actually using Facebook themselves, Olson added:
The growing role of social media in the college admissions process poses potential pitfalls, but also many plusses for applicants. For example, a college's official admissions page on Facebook allows it to reach prospective students in an environment in which teens are comfortable or expert. They can take virtual campus tours, learn about academic programs, and find out important admissions statistics like the average SAT or ACT scores for accepted students.
Readers: Do you think content on an applicant's Facebook page should have any bearing on whether or not they are accepted to a college?
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Posted by Jackie Cohen on September 22nd, 2011 12:30 PM
Whether you're attending Facebook's annual developer conference in person or not, we've got the ticket for you: Participate in a real-time dialogue with us while you watch the livestream here!
Refresh your screen regularly to catch the full conversation as we take your comments and questions in real time.
The event officially starts at 9:30 am Pacific Time, but we want to start the conversation going now, so please post questions and comments below — and respond to others' posts in the comment section as well.
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You can't stop the music, and neither can Facebook, as perhaps the most anticipated announcement to come out of Thursday's f8 developers conference involves the social network's potential plans for a music dashboard.
As a co-founder of social recommendation service Headliner.fm, Mike More knows a little something about music. Headliner.fm allows Facebook and Twitter users to exchange their music recommendations, and more than 110,000 artists are currently using the service.
More spoke with AllFacebook about his company's expectations for f8, including its announcement of a partnership with cloud music-uploading service SoundCloud, and his thoughts on what Facebook will introduce on the music front.
Does Headliner.fm know whether Facebook is in fact stopping short of launching a full-on music dashboard at f8 (like Forbes.com suggested last week)?
We do not know if it will be a full-on dashboard, but they are definitely integrating music and media into their service in a more substantive way. It looks like it will be great for both artists and music fans.
What's the current nature of Headliner.fm's arrangement with Facebook? Does Headliner.fm have anything to announce at f8?
Headliner is one of many applications built on the Facebook platform. We do not have a special agreement with Facebook directly, like Zynga, but we work with their developers closely to optimize the performance of our app. Our goal is to enable artists of all sizes to reach new fans in the newsfeed. We are announcing our new partner agreement with SoundCloud at f8. SoundCloud is the best way for artists to share music in the new feed.
Do you think Facebook needs to quiet the storm over the newsfeed before any kind of music product can be successfully announced or launched?
No, I like the changes to the newsfeed. I think in the short term, most people will really like the newsfeed changes. From what I can tell, my newsfeed is sorting messages by the strength of my relationships, which makes it more useful for me.
Would a music product launch on Facebook suffice by itself to placate users — and even brand managers and members of the media — who are upset about the newsfeed?
I predict that they will make music easier to discover and share, and this will be great for music fans and artists. Do brands belong in my newsfeed? Music is not a brand. It's a work of art, like a movie, TV show, food, book, or fashion. If brands want to be in the feed, they should think about Facebook users first. I think their message should only show up if it is recommended by a friend, artist, or trusted source.
Does the current version of the newsfeed work against music advertising, or does music have a strong enough affinity with friendships to override what some other brand managers might be experiencing (i.e., that users prefer to see content from their friends, to the detriment of brands trying to get visibility in the new feed)?
The new newsfeed will be good for artists. It will help them communicate with their fans better. The newsfeed has to be about content from friends — this is a much better user experience. The only way messages should be included in the feed is if they are real recommendations from friends, artists, or a trusted source.
Or does the newsfeed change make it more imperative than ever for music advertisers to work with an outfit like Headliner.fm?
Absolutely. The changes in the newsfeed will be very good for Headliner.fm, music fans, artists, and Facebook. We do not think of our platform as an advertising product. We see it as a social recommendation platform. Ads for artists and most brands are not as strong as social recommendations. The messages on Headliner.fm are endorsed, approved, and then posted by the artists directly. One of our main goals is to help artists, managers, and labels reach the most relevant audience through authentic communication.
What advice does Headliner.fm have for entertainment brands looking to boost their visibility on Facebook?
Speak to your audience with love and respect. You can't fake the funk. We understand the need that entertainment brands have to reach a wide audience, but it cannot be at the expense of authenticity. Quality will help you gain visibly more than anything else. One of the cool things about Headliner.fm is that we are about artists recommending one another to their fans in the newsfeed, and recommendations are high-quality — in other words, they lead to quality messaging.
Is there anything else you want AllFacebook readers to know about?
Headliner.fm reaches about 15 million music fans every day on Facebook, and we are growing at a nice rate. We get a ton of requests from Facebook users who are not artists that want to use Headliner. We are listening to this feedback and opening up our platform for application developers, small businesses, Etsy users, and others who can gain visibility on Facebook through social recommendations. We are stoked that we can help so many Facebook users, and we want to share the love.
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The most popular reason: No time, according to 32.7 percent of the 1,674 small business owners surveyed by Pagemodo.
The Facebook-less also cited not understanding how the social network would help their business, the belief that their customers were not on Facebook, not knowing how to start a brand page, and not knowing Facebook brand pages existed.
However, despite all of the reasons cited above, more than 60 percent admitted plans to launch Facebook brand pages within the next 12 months.
77.5 percent of respondents with Facebook brand pages created those pages themselves via Facebook.
67 percent had websites before they had Facebook pages.
The most common use of Facebook brand pages was to share basic information about the business, cited by 85 percent of respondents.
Readers: Were you surprised to read that so many small-business owners are still confused about Facebook and how it can help them?
Create a social media strategy and learn from the biggest names in social media in our innovative online event, Social Media Marketing Boot Camp, starting September 27. Master Google+ with tech evangelist Robert Scoble, develop strategies for increasing your Facebook likes, and learn the benefits of geolocation platforms like Foursquare. Register today.
Posted by David Cohen on September 22nd, 2011 11:44 AM
Not a fan of the new Facebook ticker, but also not a Google Chromeuser? Fear not: These two Firefox extensions will get that offending component out of your sight.
Developer Russell Gilbert was the brains behind Feed Filter, which, in addition to the new ticker, blocks a host of other Facebook posts, including:
Started using an app (except those users choose to display);
All applications (except those users choose to display);
Update your email address box;
Asked a question;
Answered a question; and
Others that are continually added as needed.
Feed Filter also enables users to:
Hide posts with specific words or phrases;
Create special application filter links on their newsfeeds to display posts only from selected apps;
Hide sections from the right sidebar (ticker, requests, suggestions, events), or move them to the top of the newsfeed; and
Automatically expand filters on the left-hand side of the homepage, as well as long posts or comments (those with "see more" links).
For Facebook users who are only concerned with removing the ticker, Ashley from TechnologyMob created Facebook Ticker Removal, a Firefox extension developed solely for that purpose.
Ticker haters: Have you installed any plug-ins, browser extensions, or other solutions to eliminate the ticker from your Facebook browsing experience?
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The possible introduction of a music dashboard and multiple streaming services at Facebook's f8 developers' conference Thursday has been top of mind — at least for consumers.
But what are brand managershoping to see the social network introduce at the confab?
Blake Cahill, president of 65-person social media agency Banyan Branch, spoke with AllFacebook about marketing on Facebook in general and what those who do it for a living would like to see announced Thursday.
Cahill weighed in on the changes to the Facebook platformthat were implemented Tuesday, saying, "It doesn't seem that pages (for brands) will be affected in any major way, but businesses should still pay attention to what's happening in user interface. Agencies like Banyan Branch have a responsibility to our clients to explain what these changes look like and what it could mean for brand pages in the future."
As an example of how fluid the Facebook world is these days, here's another take on the platform changes' impact on small businesses, from a different agency, Skinny.
On marketing via the social network in general, Cahill said, "You have to come up with unique, engaging content literally daily or weekly to keep this community fed. The most successful brands that are doing things in the social platform recognize that."
Cahill added, "When a brand's Facebook page is integrated with an overall social and/or marketing strategy, it can be one of the most powerful tools to reach that brand's goals, whether that's driving traffic back to your website, increasing brand awareness, really engaging with customers, or possibly driving sales. Basically, don't look at it as a stand-alone piece or return on investment."
He continued, "What is the ratio of sharing to selling? You can't just throw out a coupon every day, and when brands do that, people run away from it — 60, 70, 80 percent sharing to selling for most people."
Cahill is a proponent of the use of attention-getting features such as voting contests and photo contests, saying, "When you launch some kind of digital asset that gets your community participating, they're kind of like piranhas."
Besides contests, he suggested events such as live chats featuring product managers, brand managers, stylists, or whatever is appropriate for the brand or product, saying that hundreds of people attend events of this sort, pulling in new people. A special offer afterward seals the deal, he added.
Turning to Thursday's big event, here is some of what Cahill believes brand managers want to see out of f8:
Social commerce: "Brands would like to see social commerce enablement so that they can actually do more than just throw coupons out there –do photo sharing, do cause marketing. Connect all of this activity into a sales engine. Brands see 20 percent-30 percent higher sell-through ratios from cause marketing."
Analytics: "We work with 35 different data-collection tools across the Net. Everyone is hoping for more return insight and management tools. Why doesn't Facebook make its own Buddy Media killer for brands?"
Mobile: Cahill mentioned the Project Spartaninitiative to bypass the App Store from Apple, adding that mobile and tablet access to Facebook is "through the roof," and brand managers would like to see enhancements to the consumer experience on those platforms.
Finally, on features Facebook has launched and then pulled away from, like Places and Deals, Cahill said:
There is an inconsistency — they launch features and services, and then roll back from them. Other people are pulling it off and pulling it off really well. You would think there would be consumer fatigue with the amount of platforms, but people seem to like to participate on the different platforms, instead of all on one. I think the consumer views Facebook differently sometimes in terms of privacy and data, but then they'll go and share tons of information on the next platform.
Readers: What would you like to see introduced at f8 tomorrow?
Klout's marketing mangager, Megan Berry, will discuss the tools you need to measure your social media efforts at our Socialize: Monetizing Social Media, October 20-21, 2011 in San Francisco. Other speakers include Geno Church (Brains on Fire), Clara Shih (Hearsay Social), and Dallas Lawrence (Burson-Marsteller). Learn more.
Posted by Jackie Cohen on September 21st, 2011 9:03 PM
Facebook has changed far more of the site than what it formally announced, adding to users' unhappiness with the site.
These changes have occurred ahead of the f8 conference in an effort to make users more comfortable with them, like our sibling blog Inside Facebook astutely notes.
Instead, leaving changed features out of yesterday's news feed announcement has resulted in confusion on Facebook.
Some of Facebook changes have gone live earlier than others, and there are a few live tests in the mix, but the unannounced features include:
Posts can now be as long as 5,000 characters, ten times the previous maximum length.
You can no longer accompany a friend request with a message.
Part or all of the navigation bar can remain on the screen even when you scroll down the page.
You can create bookmarks, labeled favorites, in the left-hand column.
Birthday reminders appear in the upper right side well-wishes now show up as notifications on the upper-right-hand corner of the screen, near where you see poke notifications.
Friend lists that existed before the new smart list prompts have an entirely new management interface.
The poke button has become a link tucked into a pull-down to the right of the add friend button.
A thumbnail image of the user, and his or her name, appears int the right corner of the top blue navigation bar; when one surfs the site using a page alias, the name and main image appears in the same place.
These are a lot of things for people to learn how to use, and unwillingness to do so drives the complaints on the site.
Either it will take longer for folks to become comfortable with the new layout and features, or… No, we're not going to go there.
Media outlets looking to make their coverage more dramatic ("raise the stakes" is common advice among journalism professors) say these changes are driving people to switch to Google Plus, Facebook has 75 times more users and continues to benefit from the network effect.
Sure, a blog called AllFacebook.com would seem to have a vested interest in Facebook sticking around that might motivate a post to say that social network won't die anytime soon. However, we are part of broader-themed network of blogs, including our siblings at Social Times, which covers Google Plus more than us and has yet to say the search giant's social network has killed off Facebook.
So now it's time for me to ask you, dear readers, will it take longer for the average Facebook user to become comfortable with the site's changes, or will the social network have to allow the option to revert to the old version?
Klout's marketing mangager, Megan Berry, will discuss the tools you need to measure your social media efforts at our Socialize: Monetizing Social Media, October 20-21, 2011 in San Francisco. Other speakers include Geno Church (Brains on Fire), Clara Shih (Hearsay Social), and Dallas Lawrence (Burson-Marsteller). Learn more.
Posted by Jackie Cohen on September 21st, 2011 6:35 PM
Posting complaints about every change the site makes dates back to the original launch of the news feed five years ago; but has the latest round of kvetching set a new record for Facebook?
And in all but a couple of instances, bitchfests have quieted down organically as Facebook users got accustomed to the change in features.
The last 24 hours do have quite a bit in common with the original launch of the news feed: (then) new technology itself made it possible for people to see more complaints, which encouraged more such posts by complainers and those commenting on the issue.
Now the news feed serves users content based on what they already engage with, so people who click on complaining posts see more of the same. And so on, and so on, and so on, and so on.
But comparing the behaviors of today's 750 million Facebook users to the low-eight-digit population of five years ago — well, let's see what you think instead of trying to call this one.
Readers, do you think the complaints about Facebook's latest changes to the site have reached a greater magnitude than any prior kvetch-a-thon?
Let us know your opinion by voting in our informal poll below. Feel free to explain your rationale in the comments section. And be sure to check this post later to see how others are voting.
Image edited by AllFacebook.com using content from Shutterstock.
Klout's marketing mangager, Megan Berry, will discuss the tools you need to measure your social media efforts at our Socialize: Monetizing Social Media, October 20-21, 2011 in San Francisco. Other speakers include Geno Church (Brains on Fire), Clara Shih (Hearsay Social), and Dallas Lawrence (Burson-Marsteller). Learn more.
Oh, that sneaky Facebook! Changes to its platform that weren't announced Tuesday keep popping up. And some of them have serious implications for brand pages on the social network.
Colin Murphy, director of social for advertising and marketing agency Skinny, examined the impact of the changes implemented by Facebook Tuesday on brand pages and made several disturbing discoveries that were not included in the official announcement by the social network.
These discoveries suggest that Facebook's latest upgrades may have a detrimental impact on advertising revenues, which just might motivate the site to rejigger things, fast.
Without further ado, here's more of the skinny from Skinny, along with our own analysis.
Uh, oh: When users like content within Facebook, that activity no longer being publishes in the news feed, Skinny says.
That includes liking posts on brand pages, friends' walls, or the newsfeed. Pages liked within Facebook were also not showing up on newsfeeds.
However, liking content outside of the Facebook platform, such as a news story on another site, is still displayed on news feeds, and content can still be shared.
The issue for brand managers: Fewer likes being displayed mean fewer mentions and less opportunities to lure friends of fans to brand pages.
Our understanding of the news feed changes is that users see more content related to things they've already interacted with; so, when likes happen to involve a topic that a particular user has already engaged with, that individual will see that thumbs-up action. Admittedly, we're still learning about this, and would love to hear what you, readers, are seeing.
According to Murphy, the new algorithm that populates the newsfeed on Facebook emphasizes relationships and gives priority to friends over brands, which is clearly a disadvantage for the latter.
Again, this could be the result of individuals preferring to see their friends rather than brands, based on what we know of the news feed functionality. This phenomenon seems consistent with the way the chorus of complaints about the news feed has overtaken just about everything else that we're seeing on the site.
The size of photos within the news feed increased, but Murphy found that this change was not being reflected in photos shared via brand pages, which still appear in the smaller format (see screen grab below, from Murphy).
When it comes to photos, bigger is better, and should this discrepancy not be adjusted, the smaller photos from brand pages will not attract as many eyeballs as the larger ones from friends.
Murphy summarized the supposedly hidden changes and their impact on brand pages:
Brands were undervalued in this update in three primary ways. First, Facebook pages weren't included in the photo display and recent stories updates. With recent stories, it seems like Facebook's algorithm will favor a "friendship" over a "brand relationship," meaning brand content won't show up at the top of a user's feed. Second, with the updated newsfeed, photos on brand pages won't look as sleek and big as they do for personal accounts.
Third, and possibly most important, when a user likes content (again, content, not pages) within the Facebook platform, that content will no longer post to the user's wall, meaning greatly decreased impressions for brands. To clarify, content outside Facebook that is liked will post to that user's wall.
These three strikes against brands might be intended to get more of them to pay for the visibility they lost on Facebook, but that seems like an adversarial way to try to get more advertising dollars.
We've yet to hear about any advertisers withdrawing from Facebook or cutting back spending because of the changed news feed.
More likely, brand advertisers will continue to brainstorm about how to optimize their content around the site's changes.
Readers: What do you think the next move should be for brand managers? What about for Facebook?
Klout's marketing mangager, Megan Berry, will discuss the tools you need to measure your social media efforts at our Socialize: Monetizing Social Media, October 20-21, 2011 in San Francisco. Other speakers include Geno Church (Brains on Fire), Clara Shih (Hearsay Social), and Dallas Lawrence (Burson-Marsteller). Learn more.
Posted by David Cohen on September 21st, 2011 2:34 PM
The rash of complaints about the changes Facebook introduced Tuesday has led to a resurgence of support for browser extensions that eliminate many of the social network's "unwanted" features.
Better Facebook offers features such as tabbed news feeds, skins for users' pages, advanced feed filters, the option to hide posts that have been read, removal of recent activity from profiles, enlarged thumbnails when hovered over, and highlighted new comments, among others. It is available for Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera 11, and Greasemonkey, but not for Internet Explorer.
The litany of changes to the Facebook homepage and newsfeed affected Better Facebook, as well, as a note on its homepage advises users that only the most current version will now work.
And F.B. Purity, short for "Fluff-Busting Purity," helps Facebook users filter out application spam (such as game notifications and quizzes) and select which boxes they want displayed on the right-hand side of their homepages, as well as adding the ability to hide the following Facebook features in its new release: ticker/happening now, the chat box, comments on event walls, comments and likes in top news, and questions.
The extension — available for Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera — also adds a "delete recent activity" button to users' profile pages.
Readers: Do you use any browser extensions or other overlay applications to improve your Facebook experience? Or do the latest changes to the site make you want to go use these applications right now?
Klout's marketing mangager, Megan Berry, will discuss the tools you need to measure your social media efforts at our Socialize: Monetizing Social Media, October 20-21, 2011 in San Francisco. Other speakers include Geno Church (Brains on Fire), Clara Shih (Hearsay Social), and Dallas Lawrence (Burson-Marsteller). Learn more.
Posted by David Cohen on September 21st, 2011 2:05 PM
Are you complaining about the changes to the news feed and ticker? Here's a way to make sure that someone who works for Facebook reads your beef.
A page labeled Your Home Page Suggestion may have originally been designed for actual technical problems with users' news feeds, as hinted at by the text in the screen grab below; but it's the go-to place for letting Facebook know what you think about the latest changes to the site?
The suggestion box can be accessed by entering the help center, and then selecting "browse Help Topics," then "news feed," and finally clicking the last link on the page.
Incidentally, there are now two ways to get to the help center on every single screen within Facebook. The new addition shows up in a pull-down menu accessed by clicking on a small white triangle in the upper-right corner of all pages on Facebook; this supplements the previously existing link on the word "help" that appears in the bottom right-hand corner.
Readers, what suggestions do you have about the news feed?
Klout's marketing mangager, Megan Berry, will discuss the tools you need to measure your social media efforts at our Socialize: Monetizing Social Media, October 20-21, 2011 in San Francisco. Other speakers include Geno Church (Brains on Fire), Clara Shih (Hearsay Social), and Dallas Lawrence (Burson-Marsteller). Learn more.
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