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Facebook News Feed Update

16 Sep

Facebook recently ‘upgraded’ some of its news feed features by implementing a lists option, subscriptions, a ‘top’ news feed and a real-time news feed.

Jennifer Starkey | Facebook ListsLists:  This feature allows you to segment your friends into various lists and only see posts from those people. Facebook has automatically placed your friends into lists based on their profile information and mine, linking commonalities. Lists are optional, and thank goodness because assigning each one of your friends to a list could be quite time-consuming.

Subscribe Button: In an effort to give users more control of the frequency that they see their friends’ posts, Facebook implemented the subscribe button.  According to Facebook the button will now allow users to:

  • Choose what you see from people in News Feed
  • Hear from people, even if you’re not friends
  • Let people hear from you, even if you’re not friends

Catch that last one? Don’t get too freaked out, you are able to choose whether you’d like people you’re not friends with to subscribe to your posts.  The problem here, is going through your friends and changing all of your settings.   Read more on the new Facebook subscribe button.

News and real-time feed: In the image below you will see my news feed in the middle and on the side.  The right-side bar is an auto update and the middle section posts stories that Facebook (and I by my list and subscription settings) deem appropriate.  The cool thing about the real-time feed is that you can view the photo, event, video, or comment chain just by hovering over the update.  What does this mean for your business page? See below!

All of this wreaks of Facebook’s attempt to capitalize on Google+’s ‘circles’ feature and Twitter’s ‘real-time’ communication.  But, will it work?  Recently Facebook updates have become a long line of failed attempts.  Facebook Places failed.  So did Facebook’s attempt at Groupon with their own ‘Deals’ application. But, what does all of this mean for your business? Will your posts show up in the middle sections? As a real-time feed? It’s uncertain at this point since subscriptions are not able to be altered for pages.  From what I’ve seen, posts from pages will show up in the big feed when they’re often commented on or recommended with the ‘like’ button.

6 Things To Take Away From Facebook’s Announcement

6 Jul

Facebook Video Calling

 

 

  1. Skype-powered integration of  video chat within the Facebook platform.
  2. Facebook video calling is available through chat tab and within each person’s profile.
  3. Video chat is extraordinarily easy, no download necessary and available in less than 30 seconds .  Even my Mema can use it.
  4. Group Chat: This text chat feature allows you to chat with multiple people at once without utilizing the full ‘groups’ feature.
  5. Users will have an easier time with the chat feature’s design and the ability to find friends online easily.
  6. Trends: 4 billion things are shared each day.

The announcement left many in the industry, myself included, underwhelmed.  Cool? Yeah.  Awesome? Debatable.  Groundbreaking? Definitely not.

Gmail has video chat too so what’s the big deal? Google Hangouts also offers the video chat feature and even allows people to chat with more than one person at a time.  Facebook did stress that they have set up the infrastructure to handle more complex applications.  Perhaps in the future we’ll see a music sharing/cloud music component or the ability to watch movies with your friends all within Facebook.  Time will tell.

Interview with SCVNGR: What’s Next and Growth

11 May

I recently had an interview with SCVNGR Business Development Executive, John Valentine, on the future of location-based services and social gaming like SCVNGR.  The $115 million company sets sights on becoming a global leader in social gaming and has new developments in trying to crack the science of brand/product loyalty.  SCVNGR has landed major stories on TechCrunch, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and even on the front page of CNN.com. It is an up and coming platform with huge potential. (more…)

Skype Sold for Billions

10 May

Rumors have been circling for quite sometime about the acquisition of Skype by potential buyers like Google, Facebook and Microsoft, however, it was recently announced that Microsoft won the battle.  Coming out victorious proved to be quite expensive with Skype’s price tag at $8.5 billion.  Yes, BILLION!

Mashable reported that Skype will soon be integrated with various Microsoft products like Outlook, XBox, and Windows phone.  The price tag is still mind boggling considering Skype has yet to really make it in the green, let alone making more than one billion dollars, ever.  On top of that, Skype seems to mesh better with Google and Facebook’s business.  It’s apparent that Miscrosoft is desperate to compete regardless of the price tag.

This comes as a blow to Facebook and Google whom have continuously tried to reinvent themselves.  Facebook has been searching for the next big thing to keep their current users on board when many early adopters seem to be using the site less  (my personal observation as most of my friends were early adopters of Facebook).  If anyone has legitimate stats on that, I’d be very curious!

Google has struggled to find a place in social media and online networking.  They need to move past Gmail and find something that is as strong as their search engine (which is also losing users, that’s a legitimate stat- Google Loses Market Share)  Google’s co-founder and new CEO, Larry Page, has also been making a big push toward social integration on search.

This purchase is huge for Microsoft but at that price, they need to do something huge with it in order to increase revenue.  I suspect some sort of integration with Bing which will allow them to further gain market share over Google and generate a larger user base of both Skype and Bing.

Groupon Now to Launch Next Week

6 May

The online ‘coupon’ giant, Groupon, recently announced at the Public Relations Society of America Digital Impact conference, that users and marketers will begin to see some changes in the near future.  Although I wasn’t able to attend the conference Twitter told the story.

Nearly one-third of all Groupon users are coming from direct referrals of people who have recently purchased a Groupon.  Here’s the kicker, those people are coming directly from a social media outlet.  (more…)

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