Posts filed under 'Facebook'
By Guest Author
This is a guest post by Emily Matthews, who is currently applying to masters degree programs across the U.S. She loves to read about new research into health care, gender issues, and literature, and lives and writes in Seattle, Washington.
The folks at Facebook seem to always be tinkering with their formula, and within the last couple weejs, Facebook introduced a new type of profile: Timeline. It’s quite a change from the old type of profile, with your picture in the left-hand corner and your wall covering the majority of the page. Now you can essentially chronicle your entire life, from birth to the present.
The first most obvious change is the cover photo that spans across the top of your profile. This seems to be a change that makes your profile more like a blog with a header image. Your cover is to “fill this wide, open space with a unique image that represents you best. It’s the first thing people see when they visit your timeline.” You can choose from photos you have already uploaded in your albums or upload a new image from your computer. For my cover photo, I decided to go with a Wordle image that I created from one of my pieces of fiction. Perhaps use an image from Flickr as your cover photo if you’d like something artistic. The cover allows you to customize your profile to a greater extent than Facebook has allowed before.
The next most obvious change is the wall. The wall has disappeared and been replaced by your stories, with staggered boxes on the left and right with your status updates, photos, friend activity, and everything else that was normally posted to your wall. It’s a little busy in its layout; your eyes bounce from one side to the other, trying to figure out what should be read or looked at first. Facebookers dislike change, and messy change is often the first to frustrate.
The third most obvious change is the timeline itself. Facebook has always fallen short in its ability for a user to go back to older posts. Now you can click on the year you want (right-hand side) and go back to posts from years ago. Enjoy déjà vu when yuo read status updates and friends’ posts from five years ago or more (depending on how long you’ve had a Facebook. I have had my Facebook since my senior year of high school, so reading posts about dinner reservations for prom brings back great memories. The timeline feature also allows you to post “life events” within the timeline, such as moving to new places, attending schools, getting married, having children, earning a degree, etc. You can post photos to accompany these events. Your timeline even includes a post of when you are born! Although I would, perhaps, stay away from posting an actual photo of your birth.
The new Timeline profile is available now if you would like to play with it, and it’s a rather fun new entry in Facebook’s incessant tinkering. Some days I rather wish for the old school profile and news feed (remember when the news feed didn’t even exist?), but the Timeline is interesting enough to play with that, hopefully, not too many people will complain once they are forced to switch over.
January 6th, 2012
By Ben Haber
With so many social networks, sometimes it can be difficult to figure out where to post content and information. It’s important to remember that each social network has a different audience, and they want and expect (and react to) different types of content. How do you figure out which social network to post different types of content on? Let this amazing flow chart guide you…
Click on the chart to expand.
But in all seriousness, it is crucial to treat each social network differently, because your connections will vary on each, and so will the information your connections are interested in receiving from you. So unlink your Twitter handle to the other networks (except perhaps LinkedIn) and give each social network some personalized attention, so show them they you know who they are, and want to engage with them.
November 2nd, 2011
By Guest Author
This is a guest post by Sarah Willey. Follow her on Twitter @willey774.
For quite some time, police departments have been using social media to push out notifications about missing children. In January, Facebook set up 53 AMBER Alert pages — one for each of the 50 states, along with pages for the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands. Interested Facebook users can sign up for alerts pertinent to their individual states. The notifications appear on news feeds as they’re issued, and can also be shared with users’ Facebook friends.
Since going missing last week, friends, family, strangers and even celebrities have taken to Facebook and Twitter to help find Indiana University student Lauren Spierer. Lauren was last seen in the early morning hours of last Friday walking to her apartment. She had reportedly been at a bar Thursday night and then went to a friend’s party. Her keys were found blocks away from where she was last seen, but there’s no other sign of her.
News of the situation was immediately shot out across Facebook: 126,000 people have agreed to attend a Facebook event titled “URGENT! Please help spread the word about Lauren Spierer’s disappearance!” and a Facebook page, find.lauren, has been liked by more than 20,000 people so far.
In addition, 11,000 people have joined a group in her name and a Twitter feed @NewsOnLaurenS which as of right now has more than 12,000 followers. It’s been used to tweet updates, distribute a photo flier, organize search parties and promote a fund set up by the IU Hillel to support search efforts. Several big celebrities have sent out tweets to help the campaign.
I hope it pays for Lauren and her family so this nightmare her family is going can be over.
June 9th, 2011
By Ben Haber
If you’ve been watching the news lately, I’m sure you’ve seen the Rep. Anthony Weiner Twitter story. In short, he sent a picture of himself to a woman via Twitter. After denying he sent the picture for about a week (he claimed his Twitter account was hacked), Rep. Weiner finally admitted that he did indeed send the picture, but it was meant to be a direct message.
While the details of this story have supplied endless jokes for the late night comedy shows, it also shows that people have a fabricated sense of privacy. How many times have you heard about people mistakenly sending public tweets that were meant to be private, sending photos that weren’t meant to be shared, or posting a Facebook status that was meant to be a private message.
The social media snafus are endless, and a lot of high-profile people have been making them. Politicians, athletes, actors, musicians – everyone has had their fare share of mistakes. And it’s not just limited to people. Companies, such as Chrysler and Red Cross, have been victim of careless Twitter mistakes when employees published their own tweet to the company handle by mistake.
So what does this all mean? I think there are 3 valuable social media lessons we can learn from Rep. Weiner’s Twitter failure:
- Learn how to use social media: If you’re not sure how to use the platform correctly, you’ll probably make a mistake.
- Don’t be stupid: If you’re sharing something through social media, make sure it’s appropriate. Privacy is an illusion, just because you share something through a private message, doesn’t mean the person receiving that information won’t publicly distribute that content with one click.
- Be honest: If you make a mistake just admit it. Rep. Weiner attracted so much more attention to this story by lying about it, which dragged it on for an entire week. If you mess up admit it right away and move it.
June 7th, 2011
By Brittany Falconer
Given that we’re checking Email in the middle of the night, is it really necessary for us to be checking Facebook while driving? It would appear so, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article. Email, I can understand. As noted in our last post, many of us (especially us PR folk) work in industries that don’t shut down at 5:00 on Friday, and as a result, we have grown somewhat dependent on our mobile devices that allow us to stay connected to our work at almost any given time. The need to check friends’ status updates while on the road is another story.
That all said, I’m not really sure how to address this emerging trend. Texting and driving is illegal in many states, including MA, but I know many people who disregard that law regularly. And if people aren’t texting and driving, there’s a good possibility that they’re eating, doing their makeup, playing with the radio, or checking Facebook while driving. In the WSJ article, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood compares his goals to change attitudes toward distracted driving to the efforts being made to eliminate drinking and driving. While there is definitely a heightened awareness of the dangers of the latter, we hear about the consequences all too often. It’s a long, up-hill struggle, ahead.
What do you think? Is Facebooking and driving a threat? If it is, is there really anything we can do to prevent it?
June 1st, 2011
By Ben Haber
The valuation of social networks has always been a tricky subject. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn and others have been valued very highly at certain times, even though some aren’t yet profitable, and many not even have any revenue.
However, this morning LinkedIn officially IPO’d at $45 a share, and the stock price immediately shot up to over $100 per share (as I write this, it’s hovering around $110). While this gigantic share price leap is agonizing for shareholders that sold stock at $45, Facebook has to be watching this occur with a giant smile.
As the big dog in the social media world, Facebook not only is a stable of today’s life, but a very profitable company at this point. They’ve figured out how to turn their massive amount of data and information into a growing revenue stream and attract advertisers that want to directly reach their target audience. When (someday) Mark Zuckerberg and company decide it is time to IPO, they know with absolute certainty that their stock price is going to go through the roof, and will be one of the most highly anticipated IPOs in history.
May 19th, 2011
By Ben Haber
During the first two weeks of May I went abroad on vacation, but did much more then change locations. While I was away I turned off my phone shunned myself from all social networks – including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – and took a break from the fast-paced world of social media.
While I did use the Internet for the basic purposes of looking up directions, train schedules, etc., I thought of these two weeks as a cleansing period, where I could be disconnected from the (social) world. At first it was strange not to be constantly updated by friends and online connections, but after a few days my new reality began to feel normal. However, what I noticed most upon returning home, was the different feelings I’ve had towards Facebook and Twitter.
As I left for the airport I forgot about Twitter almost immediately and didn’t think about logging in until I received an email alerting me of a DM after returning home. Even then, it took three days for me to check Twitter. I’ve also found it awkward to begin using Twitter again after a 2 week hiatus, as tweeting (and mostly, reading all those tweets) feels more like a project then a welcome activity.
On the other hand, I went through Facebook detox the first few hours of my trip, wanting to log-in while waiting for my plane at the airport. While that feeling passed once I was in the air, upon returning home one of the first things I did online was check Facebook, and I spent some time on the site checking to see what friends had been up to while I was away.
Reflecting on my vacation and social media hiatus, I’ve come to the conclusion that Facebook is a much more natural fit to human behavior (at least for me). The way it organizes information and enables people to observe and interact is easy and interesting. I felt like I could easily see what I had missed while I had been away. On the other hand, Twitter didn’t pull me in, at all. It organizes information for real-time monitoring and engagement, and in no way was I functioning in real-time. It took me a few days to catch up to that speed (I’m still not there), and at points it feels like I need to re-learn the fast-paced Twitter environment.
I’m curious to hear from others that have taken a social media vacation, and how you’ve adjusted upon returning home. Please share your stories and experiences in the comment section below.
May 18th, 2011
By Ben Haber
Over the past week (and most recently yesterday), both Facebook and Google have announced that they have set up deal offers and will soon be launching their platforms in select cities (mostly on the west coast).
Google’s deal launch comes after a failed attempt to acquire Groupon, and Facebook had already added limited deals into its mobile check-ins which launched back in November 2010 and had been more similar to Foursquare then a daily deal site.
Even though Google and Facebook have hundreds of millions of users, it remains to be seen if they can successfully market their deals to regional/local audiences, something that daily deal companies Groupon, LivingSocial and BuyWithMe have successfully done.
Google and Facebook won’t be the first national Internet company to launch a daily deal. AOL launched wow.com, which is available in select cities around the US, and also features national deals. However, it’s never caught on like some of the others have.
While Facebook and Google have better access to users then AOL, their ability to successfully localize the deals and get the best merchants will be critical to their success. Of course, they could always team with current regional deal sites and publicize their offerings to a larger audience.
Will you check out the deals that Facebook and Google offer to your city?
*Disclosure: BuyWithMe is a Racepoint client.
April 26th, 2011
By Ben Haber
All businesses, large and small, want to see evidence that their activity on social media is worthwhile. Even though Facebook provides some data on user engagement, a new monitoring and measurement company called ContentAide recently launched, which provides business with information on content that attracts and retains loyal Facebook fans. The founder of ContentAide, Cody Barbierri (also a former colleague) answered a few questions about what makes ContentAide so valuable for businesses and PR folks.
If you want to find out more, you can register for a free trial of ContentAide here: http://app.contentaide.com/signup.
RaceTalk: Why did you decide to create ContentAide?
Cody Barbierri: As a social media strategist, I was constantly helping companies get started and implement various campaigns on Facebook. The major issue wasn’t setting up the page or running a promotional campaign, but rather the day to day posting of content through status updates. The companies literally didn’t know what to post and I often times had to have phone conversations or emails about the issue. We also created editorial calendars to map our updates, but those tend to be difficult as companies, consumers and trends change often.
With ContentAide, a business, whether small or large, can on a daily basis see the content that got the most engagement from the prior day. With this information, they can determine what style, format, topic and content type should be posted to get engagement from their communities.
It’s also a great way to keep track of specific brands. If you’re an agency, you can create daily reports for each client, which will include a section to keep track of competitors and their top posts. If something is working for a competitor, then it will probably work for your client.
RaceTalk: It seems like there is a lack of tools to help businesses with Facebook, while there is a surplus of platforms for Twitter. Did this factor into your decision to found the company?
CB: Exactly, there are very few tools. The most prominent at this time seem to be ones that help run contents or promotions. However, those are only good for a short time period and often times the consumer will “unlike” the page. So creating good content is important to keep those consumers, turn them into customers and get a ROI on social media efforts.
While there are tools for Twitter, we will be in the near future including the platform. However, it is a different type of social network, which means a different type of content. We need to make sure our algorithm works properly for Twitter.
RaceTalk: Is there a limit to how many companies you can track under one license?
CB: With one daily report, you can pick your company, it’s competitors and a category (each page has to select what category they fall under).
RaceTalk: Do you think ContentAide is most useful for tracking your own Facebook page or your competitor’s pages?
CB: ContentAide is best for getting a sense of what “works” on Facebook. In addition, it can be useful to see which updates of your own are doing well. As for competitors, it’s always nice to keep them close and being able to see a top update can help a company compete. As an agency, it’s valuable info to convey to a client on a daily basis, especially if they are asking for daily updates.
RaceTalk: How will ContentAide change the ways businesses approach and develop their Facebook page?
CB: For small businesses, it’s a confidence booster to get involved with Facebook. Often times, it’s the idea of not knowing what to post that deters them from gaining value from the social networks.
For social media media professionals, marketers or agencies, it’s a way to not only stay up to date on what consumers want to hear and see on Facebook through status updates, but it’s a way to track your brand or clients activity and help them create better content to be successful.
In the end, it’s the content you create that is going to get customers to be loyal fans. As much as they want promotions and coupons, they also want a connection and that is done through good engagement-based content.
RaceTalk: It seems like the algorithm you use to determine the success of each page is the key to your success. Can you explain what information is considered and why this feature is so important for businesses to understand?
CB: The secret sauce to ContentAide is the algorithm and it’s going to stay just that – a secret. However, what I can tell you is that we take multiple factors into consideration on each page and each status update, including community size and number of likes and comments.
Pages with millions of fans don’t have a hard time generating likes or comments, but that also doesn’t mean the content they are are creating is good or engaging. Rather it’s just noticeable by a larger group. Pages with a much smaller number of fans are going to need to create better content to get engagement, so if they are landing a solid number, then they should be ranked. However, that solid number might not be as much as the Page with millions of people. Our algorithm takes these types of factors into consideration when ranking which content is actually engaging.
RaceTalk: How should PR/marketing/communications agencies use this service?
CB: Agencies responsible for creating and running a clients Facebook account should create a daily report for each. That way the account managers for each client can help to manage and implement good content for their clients, which in turn makes the agency look good.
Even for agencies who might not be in charge of a particular page, being able to talk about what’s engaging on Facebook is a valuable tool. If you’re pitching a new company for their business and Facebook is a topic of interest, ContentAide could give you the means to bring valuable data and insights, including what the competition is doing.
Also, don’t forget about your own internal social media efforts. Agencies compete with each other as well. So having a report for your own agency could be very valuable.
RaceTalk: Are you concerned about Facebook developing their own platform to provide companies with this type of data, or do you not see them sharing this type of information with anyone besides each page’s administrators?
CB: I don’t think it’s in the best interests of Facebook to build out their insights features to include other pages. That could be a deterrent for people and companies to get involved with Facebook. Facebook also doesn’t have our algorithm.
RaceTalk: Do you have plans to expand ContentAide to other social networks and platforms beyond Facebook?
CB: Yes, our next step is Twitter. As I mentioned before, since it’s a different type of social network than Facebook, we need to make sure we are monitoring, qualifying and delivering the right content to our users.
RaceTalk: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
CB: ContentAide is not trying to replace any professional or agency in the social space, but rather is working to be a valuable aide. We want to help companies, professionals and agencies to make more engaging content to help increase customer interaction and loyalty on Facebook.
Also, we have a 15-day free trial for all new users to test the service. After, subscription options are super reasonable ranging from just $20 a month for one daily report to $200 a month for unlimited access.
April 23rd, 2011
By Ben Haber
Even if you aren't subscribed to the NYT, you'll be able to access their content for free through Facebook posts (like this one)
Last week the New York Times announced a new subscription model that would effectively put up a paywall for many users. Under this new system, people that aren’t subscribed to NYTimes.com are able to view 20 articles a month (that are subscriber-only) for free, before being blocked from reading certain stories. However, there’s a rather big loophole.
The New York Times has confirmed that people accessing their content through Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. will be able to view subscriber-only content even if they’ve already reached their 20 article monthly limit (similar to how you can access articles in The Wall Street Journal for free through Google). With this option in place, with the Times’ subscription model work?
The New York Times has already tried subscription-based access before (New York Times Select) which brought in $10 million in revenue, but wasn’t fully adopted by readers (it had 227,000 subscribers). It has also been reported that executives at the company were split on if a subscription model was their best option, especially since the value of their digital advertisements has been growing steadily.
It’s also been thought that this new subscription was meant to motivate people to sign up for weekend print subscriptions, which would give them unlimited online access. This would boost print circulation, and in return, ad rates.
So what do you think of all this? Do you plan on subscribing to the New York Times?
March 21st, 2011
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