Facebook

An excerpt from Robert Scoble's experience at the F8 conference…Amazing stuff!

Facebook’s ambition
by ROBERT SCOBLE on APRIL 22, 2010

1. It gets Facebook plastered all over the web. Already Facebook likes are on many many sites and I’d expect to see Facebook’s new social features to show up on at least 30% of the web’s most popular sites within a month.

2. It lets us apply our social graph “fingerprint” to sites we visit. You do this by adding social plugins to your site, which is pretty easy to do.

3. It lets us apply our behavior “fingerprint” to sites we visit. Again, by adding social plugins onto your sites.

4. Facebook gets to study everything we touch now and will bring a much more complete stream back to the mother ship. This lets them build new analytics features for publishers, too, as All Facebook’s Nick O’Neill writes, but now Facebook will have the best data on the web for advertisers to study.

5. Facebook gets us to keep our profile data up to date. Marketer Ed Dale nailed why this is such a big deal.

6. Facebook gets to overlay a commerce system, called Credits, on top of all this. Justin Smith of Inside Facebook writes about that.

7. Facebook has opened up to enable all this stuff to flow back and forth and has removed the 24-hour limitation on storing data gained from its API. This is probably the biggest deal for developers, Inside Facebook writes about that, but they’ve also made their API more granular so that sites can ask for, and get, very specific data instead of getting everything stored on a user. We’ll be talking about this for a while, because it actually has good implications for privacy.

8. All this new data will enable Facebook to build new kinds of search experiences, as All Facebook hints at in a post where they say Facebook is trying to build a version fo the semantic web. Search Engine Land goes further in detail about what these changes will mean.

9. It lets Facebook minimize the need for a “public” fan page, like mine. Inside Facebook explains more in detail why this is true. Mostly because they’ll spit all those bits over onto my blog, if I add the code to my blog (which I’m pretty sure I will).

10. Finally a stream of focused bits for the people who are actually visiting your page can be pushed back out to you, as Inside Facebook demonstrates.

11. They made the API much simpler and shipped a powerful graph API so more developers can build apps for Facebook (this has been one of the advantages of Twitter, for instance, because Twitter’s API was simple to figure out). Heck, you can even hit it from a web browser to see what it returns. Here is what it returns for http://graph.facebook.com/scobleizer (if you want to try it yourself, just include your Facebook name instead of mine).

(full article, including many great videos of the F8 conference, here)

5 Fantastic Facebook Fan Page Ideas to Learn From

by Matt Silverman (source)

So your business is on Facebook, and brand engagement is up thanks to some savvy social media strategy. You may even be interested in further distinguishing your brand by building a custom landing page for your account.

But what kind of value does a custom Facebook Fan Page offer? What are your fans looking for on a social network that they can’t get from your business website? For some insight, let’s check out how some big-name brands have stepped up their engagement by investing a little more TLC into their Facebook presence.

Interactivity

Social networks are not passive, so your Facebook landing page shouldn’t be either. It’s nice to have a great looking “Welcome” splash, but users are going to want to do something when they arrive.

Facebook is all about sharing, and The Gap has an ingenious promotion on the Baby Gap tab of their Fan Page. The simple splash image has a link to one of their photo albums where fans can upload pictures of their babies wearing their favorite Gap denim gear.

This kind of campaign provides a wealth of free, user-generated content that displays Gap products, and best of all, the functionality of photo uploading is already built into Facebook — no development necessary. This is an interactive idea that any small business could implement.

The Home Depot has built a bit on the shareability of Facebook actions with their DIY Gifts app. From Home Depot’s Fan Page, you can grant the app access to share your gift purchases with the recipient and your friends. While this approach may not work for everyone, it’s a step toward increasing consumer visibility on Facebook — a growing trend.

A Full Website Experience Within Facebook

Some companies go all out when it comes to their Facebook presence, integrating fully fledged mini-websites right into their Fan Pages. Adidas sneakers is a good example. They’ve added a multimedia content hub under the tab “Your Area” that offers photos, videos, and events based on your region. The site is built entirely in Flash and isn’t all that interactive, but it offers a rich media experience without ever leaving the boundaries of Facebook.

Dell’s Design Studio page is another example of a full-tilt Flash site inside Facebook. This one lets you browse and tweak custom artwork for your new laptop before linking you over to the corporate site to complete the purchase. You can also share your design choices with friends, all without connecting a single Facebook app to your account.

Deals!

The key to Facebook, and any social network, is to keep pushing out content that your fans are interested in. Many businesses do a great job keeping their fans apprised of deals and discounts through status updates.

Another great way to keep content fresh and visual within Facebook is to promote special offers on a custom tab. This may be something new visitors see when they land on your Fan Page, or a rich destination you can link back to in a post.

Walgreens does it very simply. Their landing page is a nice branded splash image that simply touts their “Exclusive Offers for Our Facebook Fans.” Their promotions are in their updates, but this simple, static custom page encourages users to become fans without any bells or whistles. They leave the deals to the built-in functionality of Facebook, and your business can too.

By simply changing the image on your custom page, you can call attention to a new product or promotion that your fans will see whenever they land there. It’s an easy way to keep your page looking fresh, in addition to regular updates.

Conclusion

These examples have been built for large companies that probably have more web development resources than the average small business. But if you’re serious about your commitment to Facebook engagement, consider taking some inspiration from these examples and exploring the possibilities that custom pages and apps can offer your business.

Greek FB page grows to 10K members in 3 days in wake of girl's dismissal!

Minister reacts to Facebook expulsion

Education Minister Anna Diamantopoulou attempted yesterday to defuse a row that has broken out over the expulsion of a junior high school pupil who criticized her principal on the Internet, although the government official accepted that Greece needs to update its laws to deal with such incidents.

Diamantopoulou issued a statement after the girl, who was not named, was forced to leave her school in Hania, Crete, after starting a page on the Facebook social networking site under the title “I hate the principal at Chrysopigi [high school].”

“The need for young people to express themselves and to vent their feelings is not only a given but is something that should be encouraged,” said Diamantopoulou. “But this should happen within a framework of respect for people and the smooth running of schools.”

The minister chose her words carefully after an apparent groundswell of support for the expelled teenager both in the media and on the Internet. Following the announcement of the girl’s dismissal on Thursday, another Facebook page was launched, this time demanding that she be readmitted to Chrysopigi school. By last night, the page had close to 10,000 members.

This came after the Hania school inspector, Nikos Vestakis, said that the school should have invited the pupil and her parents for talks and not expelled her.

Diamantopoulou did not indicate whether she thought the school was right to dismiss the teenager but made it clear that Greece needs to update its laws to keep up with technology. “The rapid developments in technology and in communication and the need to modernize our rules mean that we have to approach new challenges with seriousness and responsibility.”

(source)

Marian Salzman: 'Local will be the new global'

Marian Salzman travels the world spotting media trends. The top futurologist gives her predictions on how we’ll live and work in 2010.

By Ian Burrell

You have to hand it to Marian Salzman. For someone known internationally as a media futurist it takes some self-confidence to confess that you thought Facebook was just a pointless student fad, and that your initial reaction to Twitter was that it was “a ridiculous thing”.

But Salzman, writer, advertising executive, global public relations guru, has every faith in her judgement, having spent her career spotting trends invisible to most of us until she gave them a name. She is the author of books with titles such as Next, Now and Buzz and The Future of Men and has championed such new breeds as the “Wigger” (suburban whites infatuated with black urban culture) and the “Metrosexual” (the sensitive, city-dwelling modern male).

(read more)

Social Media Use Up 82% from one year ago

Despite Facebook privacy changes and serious cases of Twitter Fail Whale, social media use has increased astronomically since this time last year: During December 2009, global users spent an average of five hours on social networking sites, up from three hours in December 2008. That’s an 82% increase.

Nielsen just released a report on its blog detailing increased social media use, and the results are impressive, while not exactly shocking. Some highlights:

– Social networking sites are the most popular online destinations globally (based on the amount of time people spent there in December), with games and instant messaging coming in second and third, respectively. (Side note: As gaming becomes more popular on sites like Facebook, it will be interesting to see how this affects time spent.) (read more)