Facebook just announced a tiny little change that could have huge implications to how we use our accounts to communicate with websites and brands.
Publishers who use like buttons across their content can now ‘talk’ to the feeds of all people who liked a specific page. What this basically means is that if you like this blog post for example, I will then be able to publish my next blog post directly to your news feed.
Obviously this could go a bit wrong, you don’t really want your wall to be filled with spam and crap, so it will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
But essentially it makes it a two-way channel, which is great for brands, if you like a pair of jeans, they could then send you a discounted matching t-shirt direct to your feed. Nice.
They’ve also implemented the ability to comment on the ‘liked’ item, turning it into a share button.
The Facebook blog has more information about implementation.
[Via All Facebook & @Webponce]
Facebook has just launched 0.facebook.com, a special mobile-only version of the site that can be accessed free of charge on 50 mobile carriers. The site is very similar to Facebook Lite which got canned a while back, it contains only key features and is stripped of photos to ensure speedy access. If users want to view photos they will be charged regular data fees (brilliant).
You’ve got to hand it to Facebook, this is a absolutely genius move to encourage growth and usage, especially in developing markets where access to computers is limited. In many cases these new users will never see the desktop version of the site.
I can now see Facebook hitting 1 billion users within a year, that will be insane, think about it, a social network with one billion users. My my.
Oh and guess how many people in these new markets will give a flying toss about privacy? Especially when people who can’t even afford a TV can now message each other for free using Facebook. Whatever you want to think about Facebook, this could improve so many peoples lives.
Just look at the kind of thing Google has done with SMS in Africa, there is no reason why Facebook can’t go down this route.
List of countries here:
There must of been some serious negotiations with mobile networks to get the Facebook site zero-rated (not a easy thing to do). You hardly ever see this in the UK let alone 50 countries.
I want to see how this one develops, my question is – now Facebook is in bed with operators, will deals be done to provide user location to them via a normal WAP session, enabling LBS status updates? That functionality is key for Facebook location to launch globally.
Also what about the opportunity to provide unique services to developing markets via Fan Pages/Groups?
Not content with overtaking Google to become the most popular website in the United States, Facebook is now looking to hit them where it really hurts -your default homepage.
I logged on yesterday to find the image above, asking if I wanted to make Facebook my homepage for ‘quicker access’. Sadly the button doesn’t work in Chrome (which I was using when it appeared), in fact I’m pretty sure it only works in Internet Explorer. That might sound a bit crap but Microsoft’s browser still has 59.95% market share.
Facebook receives 7.07% of internet traffic compared with Google’s 7.03%, I wonder how that will change if a small percentage of their 500 million users switches their homepage.
I’ve always thought Facebook would benefit by having a decent web search engine integrated into the site as there is so much dwell time, this could be the first step towards something like that.
Sorry this is really, really, reeeally geeky but I loved it and hey, it’s Friday.
Do you remember those adventure books and text based commodore 64 games where it would say stuff like “You enter a dungeon with your sword, a giant spider is guarding the gates stopping you from progressing. What do you do? FIGHT, PARRY or FLEE”
This is a bit old but I think it’s a really interesting (and potentially lucrative) revenue stream for Facebook.
According to the screenshot above, which was quickly removed from the website shortly after appearing, Facebook is partnering with Eventbrite to allow users to collect money from events.
Typical advert for driving customers to join Facebook Fan Page within premises.
Back in December whilst strolling around New York, I came across the best pizza place in the entire world called Patzeria, hidden away just off Times Square.
As I was eating 4 slices of the Mama Special I saw a sign on the door that you’ve probably seen a million times before in various businesses , it said ”Join our Facebook Fan Page!” (The similar image above was taken from my gym).
I started thinking how can Facebook mobilise this? 9 times out of 10 I’m going to forget about joining so what can they possibly do to make these signs actionable?
Caught this on Techcrunch today and it’s simply badass. Quite a nice follow up from the NFC-enabled iPhone news and shows the sort of creativity you can have with this technology.
The following is a product of the famous Facebook ‘24hr Hackathons‘ where everyone does an all-nighter to come up with new and wonderful things like Facebook Chat, webcam uploads and now….Keg Presence.
Keg Presence is an application especially for the staff at Facebook HQ in Palo Alto, CA which is hooked up to the office beer tap .
It notifies employees when the keg is empty or what type of beer is currently available.
But the really cool part is that employees swipe their RFID badge when they get there, triggering the camera on the iMac, which takes a photo of them pouring beer and updates their Facebook status (below).
UPDATE 11.30pm GMT : It has now topped $4 million in 36 hours
Twitter and Facebook proving they can actually be used to save the world.
The American Red Cross have been raising money for the earthquake disaster in Haiti and the tweet above has just been put out by the State Department member Jared Cohen.
The New York Times have just said that Facebook is reporting 1500 status updates PER minute containing the word Haiti.
It was like GQ was reading my mind. Check out the selection below taken from Eighteen People You’re Scared Of On Facebook, I’ve picked the ones that match the people I know.
I first tried the Facebook Advertising Network a few days after it launched. The first thing that hits you is the targeting ability, it’s absolutely insane, think about all the personal information on your Facebook profile – age, workplace, marital status, fan pages, birthday, all that and more can be targeted for advertising.
This is why I think one day soon we could see Facebook develop into a mobile advertising network especially when they get involved in location, not even Admob can target that good.
I recommend you try Facebook Advertising for yourself, even if it’s just to mess around with the targeting settings. It’s fascinating watching the audience estimates go up and down as you add and remove more criteria. If you own a blog, Twitter page, LinkedIn profile or any website at all and have always wanted to try it, now you can with this $50 voucher. Give it a go, what have you got to lose?
This credit only works for first time users of Facebook Advertising, more instructions about what to do with it here.
$50 Facebook Advertising Coupon Code: 66KT-39T1-F56K-5N9N
Expiry date: Must be used up by March 2010.
You can choose either CPM or CPC with the ability to set daily budgets, allowing you to stretch that voucher out over the course a few weeks. Or you can throw caution to the wind and blow it all in one day. And why not?
My Campaign
Check out my recent campaign for this blog using the same voucher. I decided to target Facebook users that were between the age of 20-49, and worked at advertising agencies and tech companies. This equalled 71, 260 users. Cool hey?
So how did my campaign do?
The whole point of applications is to enable functionality that isn’t available in mobile browsers at this present time. It’s not often you see a app playing second fiddle to it’s WAP counterpart, especially for a service like Facebook.
If you look at the iPhone Facebook App, it’s rich in features and adds functionality which isn’t possible on the mobile site. Things like chat, full screen images and photo uploads make it a much more enhanced experience worth the 2mb download.
However the Blackberry Application is a big let down, in fact it’s such a weak experience I find myself using the WAP site for my daily social networking needs. The Facebook mobile site is one of the slickest you’ll see, it’s very simple and has a almost flawless user experience that works across hundreds of different handsets.
The only area where I think the Blackberry App wins is the notification system, a little icon appears on your homescreen when there is some activity related to you. Nice.
After speaking to all my friends with a Blackberry it turns out that no one uses the app, they all find it easier to log onto the WAP site. What about you?
[polldaddy poll="2442792"]
Facebook have launched a new feature that’s bound to get brands drooling – products can now be sold directly in news streams.
Once users have signed up to ‘become a fan’ they will receive status updates in their news feed from brands just as they normally would, however those updates now have the interactivity of a store front.
One company already running offers is The Limited. Fans of the woman’s clothing retailer will see a offer for 30% discount off their infinity scarf, exclusive to Facebook.
Users can pick the colour and enter their address and payment details right there and then. There is also the ability to share the offer with friends.
Head of over and test it out on The Limited fan page and see for yourself. Click here.
You’ll need to click on the ‘play’ button on the status update (similar to videos) first to expand the area into the shopping mode. This is a smart move by Facebook to keep the news feed from getting taken over by large shopping widgets.
Update: As you can tell from the angry comments, the app got shut down.
Question for you – would you like to know who visits your Facebook profile without them knowing? Course you would. I’m sure the majority of people would love a feature like that, I even think many would even pay for it.
Well there is such a application available. It not only allows you to see what friends of yours have been looking at your profile but also those who aren’t even in your friends list. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen the secret application with my own eyes and tried it out.
I know that such apps are totally against the Facebook Developer Policy, after all, how much fun would Facebook be if you couldn’t stalk in total anonymity? What I didn’t know is that this sort of stuff was possible with the Facebook API, but these loopholes apparently exist.
Of course there are a ton of those crappy ‘profile visitor’ applications where you can see who visits your profile…as long as they have the same app too, which makes it completely pointless. This application requires only you to have it installed.
If everyone could do this it would dramatically change user behaviour on Facebook, people would use far more caution when browsing through photo albums of friends of friends or people they barely know. It would basically ruin a large part of what makes the site good. But right now for a select few that have the app, it’s probably amazing.
It’s called Footstamp and only has a few hundred actual users. This is because it has a closed invite system (i.e you need to know the developer, if you add it you’ll just get a error page) which is a smart move because it keeps it controlled and less likely to get shut down (Google searches brings up nothing about it). More info in the Facebook Footstamp group. Read More
Sometimes it’s a fine line between appearing innovative and just plain pissing people off..
A couple of weeks ago, Ikea managed to get tons of praise for their latest Facebook campaign which allowed users to win furniture by tagging their name onto the desired item. Westfield Australia however have done just the opposite, they’ve managed to annoy users enough to push them into creating their hate groups related to the promotion. That’s pretty special.
Westfield created a Facebook application to promote its $10,000 gift card prize draw. The application updates the user’s status with a Westfield branded message “All I Want for Christmas is a Westfield Gift Card“, with some extra copy thrown in stating the user has now gone into the prize draw to win the card. This was a viral hit straight away.
Over 369,000 Facebook users have installed the application and updated their status in just 5 days, great news right? Yes of course, just 10k to get 369,000 people engaging with your brand sounds like a steal…but the promotion has attracted a large amount of backlash from other users.
As you can imagine 369,000+ people updating their status in a country with 6.5 million users is bound to spam quite a few news feeds. What is the natural course of action for all these angry people? Yep, create and join a Facebook group.
There are now a total of 25+ anti-Westfield Gift Card groups, which is amazing considering the length of time this has been running. The largest group called ”If All You Want For Christmas Is A Westfield Gift Card, I Don’t Want To Know” now has over 4000 members but not all group names are that lovely, here are my favourites…
(Click on the video above to view)
Absolutely love this Facebook campaign by Ikea, great to see such a big company do something a little bit funky.
To promote their new store opening in Malmo, Ikea set-up a Facebook profile for Gordon Gustavsson, the store’s manager. Gustavsson (or the agency) uploaded pictures of the stores showrooms to his photo album and any ‘friends’ who tagged the products with their names won them!
If you’re familiar with Facebook you know that tagged items then appear in other peoples news feeds, basically turning the social networking site into one big word of mouth promotion.
[Agency: Forsman & Bodenfors]
[Via Creativity Online]
