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]

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.

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”

Well one Facebook user kinda tried that with his status update. Check it out:

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.

It reads:

Collect money for your event with Eventbrite
Eventbrite is partnering with Facebook to enable you to collect money for your event. Your attendees pay with credit card and Eventbrite collects the money on your behalf and sends you a check when your event is over. We charge a small service fee for every ticket sold. 5.5% + $.99c, which attendees pay, costing you nothing.
Eventbrite has helped event organizers around the world sell over 10 million tickets. We’re excited to help you sell yours and put some delightful cash in your pocket.

So everyone wins, you make your money and a cut goes to Facebook and Eventbrite.

Facebook recently made the change to the events page which allows you to see any public events your friends are attending. It seems they might be edging into that category of ‘what’s going on around me’ rather than just knowing what events you have been invited to. Could this be linked to what they have planned for location?

With over 400 million users, this could pull in some serious cash for Facebook (and users!). It’s fascinating to see them thinking of these benefit-led ideas for monetising parts of their social network.

Facebook also launched the ability to shop directly from the news feed last year.

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?

At first I thought maybe SMS but that would be difficult to achieve in all the territories that Facebook covers. And then Techcrunch reported on QR Code options appearing on profile pages and it all became clear..

I’ve got to admit as much as I hate QR Codes, it is a genius move by Facebook because it really is the only way they can cover their global consumer and business user-base. So expect to start seeing signs like this instead:

The historical problem with QR Codes is that you can’t interact with them unless you have the application downloaded on your phone. If it’s the first time you’ve seen a code, the whole experience is going to be filled with problems such as downloading, installing, waiting…the drop off rates are generally quite high, especially for those who aren’t tech savvy.

However this isn’t going to be a problem for Facebook because they already have their application installed on millions of phones. This means with a simple app update Facebook will enable a huge amount of users to be QR Code ready.

And now think about the educational process, 400 million users are going to be slowly taught about QR Codes, what they are, how to use them etc. This is pretty big for mobile and QR Codes in general, the boost will be gratefully received.

The other side to this is the possibility to compete with Foursquare, using the QR Codes to ‘check in’, notifying your friends of where you are and the other token stuff like coupons, special offers etc.

But I still think the real win is location-based status updates, not sure if this is actually going to happen but if it does then we’ll see some amazing services and applications off the back of it.

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).

Simple. Fun. Creative.

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.

I much prefer Social Media being used for this rather than trying to complain or communicate with a brand (who don’t care).

God bless the ‘hide’ button.

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?

0.018% isn’t amazing but probably not far off similar sorts of adverts. To be fair I’m advertising a mobile blog and not ‘Meet hot singles!’ or Mafia Wars like most of the other ads on Facebook so I shouldn’t expect too much.

How many of those 44 people translated into new readers? Sadly I forgot to add campaign tracking on my Google Analytics profile so I’ll never know.

Head over to Facebook Advertising and give it a go.