Gossip and the Evolution of facebook

Why did our ancestors evolve the ability to use language? According to the gossip theory, it was to form group alliances. This contrasts with the more popular theory that language evolved in order to convey information and also with the view that language is just a side-effect of the evolution of more advanced forms of thinking.

Because our evolutionary ancestors were not as adept at getting food in the forests as other animals around at the time, they were forced to move out into the savannahs to find food. Many explanations have been offered for this, including the fact that our ancestors were not able to digest unripe fruit, while their competitors for food did have this ability. This move to the savannah led to greater predation, since they were out in the open and in better view of predators than they would have been in the forests.

To protect from predation, group sizes had to increase, so that more individuals could fight off or scare away the predators. But with greater group sizes there is a greater need to form alliances. At this point in our evolutionary history, though, grooming, which is both labor-intensive and time-consuming, was the primary means through which alliances among individuals were formed.

In setting out the gossip hypothesis, Robin Dunbar theorizes that once the group size increases to approximately 150, grooming is no longer a viable method of alliance-building because it would require that individuals engage in this activity approximately thirty percent of their waking life, a percentage of time not spent grooming by any presently surviving primates. So, spoken natural language, which could be done with multiple individuals, and was less time-consuming, emerged and replaced grooming as a more efficient means of �social networking.�

It may seem strange that human language evolved not to convey information like �There�s a lion over there,� but to form social bonds for mutual support. But conveying information and forming social alliances are not mutually exclusive: Think of how much present communication, involves completely useless or uninteresting information! Consider �Hi, how are you?,� �Nice day out,� and �Goodbye� as examples. In these cases, as in countless others, not much in the way of valuable information is conveyed by these utterances. However, in terms of forming social alliances, they are often useful, and indeed expected. Also, information may be shared not simply for the usefulness of the information, but to bond the sharer of the information with receiver.

Source of Information : Open Court-Facebook and Philosophy 2010

Facebook - The Privacy Virus

How many times have you heard someone (probably someone over forty) say, �Kids these days don�t care about privacy�? Facebook is their Exhibit A: over four hundred million users and growing, telling the world all sorts of scandalously personal details. And it�s not just keg stands, either. There are things federal law considers so private it�s illegal to ask you about them in a job interview. Age. Sex. Birthplace. Religion. They�re all questions on the first page of the Facebook profile form. Yea, verily, privacy is dead and the kids these days killed it.

It�s a neat theory, except for one inconvenient detail: the actual behavior of Facebook users. If �privacy� is on the list of words nobody uses any more, Facebook users didn�t get the memo. College students spend the wee hours of weekend nights untagging photos of themselves on Facebook, removing the evidence of their drunken revels earlier in the evening. A �Facebook stalker� is a creep, not a contradiction in terms.

In fact, as you look closer and closer, the idea that Facebook is privacy�s tombstone becomes stranger and stranger. If over four hundred million users don�t care about privacy, why are they using a site that allows them to reject friend requests? If they wanted to broadcast every last detail about their lives to everyone everywhere, why don�t you ever see credit card numbers on Facebook profiles? And why did hundreds of thousands of users sign petitions protesting Facebook�s decision to introduce real-time news feeds? For people who allegedly don�t care about privacy, Facebook users sure spend a lot of time worrying about it.

Challenge a Facebook skeptic on the lack of evidence for her claim and she�ll usually retreat to one of a few related backups:

1. Actions speak louder than words. Anyone can say they care about privacy, but when it comes time to actually doing something about it, there they are on Facebook, posting incriminating photos and salacious stories.

2. Actions have consequences. Wanting privacy on Facebook is like training for a marathon by drinking gasoline; you�d only try it if you hadn�t thought things through.

3. Youthful indiscretions. Facebook users care about privacy only after they�ve learned their lesson the hard way.

These replies may sound more plausible, but they all have something in common: contempt for Facebook users. If you say you care about privacy but don�t, then you�re a hypocrite. If you don�t reconcile your desire for privacy with the facts of Facebook, then you�re stupid. If you haven�t yet had a bad experience on Facebook, then you�re young, lucky, and foolish. These attitudes� which, to be fair, are rarely stated so baldly and insultingly�all presume that Facebook users simply haven�t seen the truth about privacy that the dismissive skeptic has. She�s right, you�re wrong, end of story.

Actually, it�s the skeptic who has things wrong about privacy on Facebook. Facebook users do care about privacy, and they do try to protect it on Facebook. The skeptic goes wrong when she assumes that �privacy� can only mean something like �keeping things secret.� It doesn�t�privacy is much richer and subtler than that. Privacy is a key component of being free to be yourself, building healthy relationships, and fitting into a community that values you. Facebook users care about contextual privacy: they want others to respect the rules of the social settings they participate in.

Source of Information : Open Court-Facebook and Philosophy 2010

Who Uses facebook and Why?

Since Facebook was founded in 2004, the Social Network Site (SNS) has profoundly altered our lives. Facebook now has over four hundred million active users worldwide, with half of them logging in on a daily basis. With about thirty percent of those users being from the United States, and the US population now about three hundred and eight million people, that means one out of every three Americans�men, women, and children�is a Facebooker.

This figure may not seem that much when compared to the number of people that have access to the Internet in the US. According to the most recent report of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, over two thirds of American adults have Internet access, and many of them also report that they have broadband access at home (65 percent White, 46 percent Black, and 68 percent Hispanic).2 However, there�s a big difference in the diffusion timeframe by which the Internet and Facebook have spread among the American population�it took Facebook barely five years to reach these figures and it�s still growing. Additionally, there might be notable differences depending on certain demographic characteristics. For instance, while 46 percent of blacks have access to broadband Internet, about 44 percent of blacks report that they use Facebook or other SNS.

The fact that Facebook�s got the numbers is not a surprise. Today most of us seem to have a Facebook account or an account at another SNS such as Twitter, MySpace, Hi5, or something similar. And if this isn�t the case, it�s very likely that you at least know someone who actually does have an account on Facebook or the SNS of their choice. But, beyond what these numbers �at large� reveal about Facebook, little is known about the impact that its use may have in people�s daily lives. We also don�t know much about the different ways people utilize SNS. What are users really getting out of these Social Networks? Perhaps they simply intend to remain in contact with their friends and family members. Or SNSs may help them stay better informed about what is going on around the world or in their more local communities. It may also be that SNSs are useful tools to engage in activist causes and get mobilized, as well as mobilize others. In any of these instances, it appears that Facebook could open many doors to newer or stronger social connections that may facilitate important communication tasks, whether they relate to friends, sources of information, or political and civic causes.

According to Facebook�s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, the site thrives by giving its users the �power to share and make the world more open and connected.� SNSs such as MySpace and Facebook have become one of the most popular Internet services in the world. As of December 2009, Alexa, a company that tracks web traffic, ranked Facebook as the second most often accessed website in the world�behind only Google. Other SNSs are also highly ranked; MySpace and Twitter rank twelfth and fourteenth, respectively.

Other writers will discuss many issues about what Facebook means to us individually and socially. But before that takes place, we intend to provide an accurate picture of Facebook and social network site users. Knowing who the users are, their demographic composition, their motivations and how they engage in performing different activities within a SNS may be interesting by itself, but it also seems appropriate in order to provide a valuable context.

Source of Information : Open Court-Facebook and Philosophy 2010

Facebook - Building an Internal Community

Facebook provides the opportunity for you to use Groups to form private communities. This is great for companies that may have distributed workers or a growing workforce and wants to have a common area for its team to hang out and engage with one another. Large corporations tend to have private enterprise level communities built for them using a professional community platform. But companies that don�t need a lot of features, or may not have budget for an expensive platform, can turn to Facebook to fill that communications void.

Many corporations have realized that their employees are all on Facebook and already spend a lot of time interacting on the platform. So, instead of forcing them to log in to yet another website, they decide to use Facebook as an internal communications platform for their community.

One of the downsides to using Facebook instead of a private community is that although the Group can be private, you don�t control the data. With that said, heed caution when sharing anything private or proprietary. You don�t control the data and are not privy to decisions that Facebook may make concerning the platform, therefore you wouldn�t want to wake up one day to find out that Facebook decided to make Groups completely public, thus disclosing confidential data that could be detrimental to your company and a benefit to your competition. If you have those needs, you�re best suited to contact one of the many private enterprise-level community platforms.


Using Facebook as a Focus Group
Continuing with the concept of using Facebook as a private community for your company, what about creating a Group as a private focus group for your company, product, or service?

Using a Group, you could invite in a select group of your prospects or customers and use it as a platform to ask for candid feedback, provide demos, and open access to certain groups or individuals within your company or shots of upcoming products or software releases. Again, remember, don�t show anything you�re worried about leaking out. Though, if you�re engaged in any type of blogger or PR relations, that is a risk you always run into when showing early releases of a product or software version.

As Facebook continues to grow at a rapid rate, it becomes one of the most attractive properties on the Internet to form a community. Although the ability to form a community around something such as an interest, hobby, company, or celebrity seems natural, social media, of which Facebook is a major part of, provides us a different type of opportunity.

Source of Information :  Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign

Facebook - Building a Community for Your Company, Product, or Service

Due to the growing size of Facebook,more and more of your prospects and customers are on Facebook; therefore, you should not ignore Facebook as a viable way to form a community. Even if you have created an enterprise-level, private community, you should still ensure that your brand is properly represented on Facebook. You can use Facebook to create a Page or Group around your company, product, or service. This serves as your main presence on Facebook and as another outpost from which you can communicate and connect with your prospects, customers, or fans.

Developing an active community around your company, product, or service on Facebook can be beneficial, especially if you are successful at encouraging conversations. How can this engagement be so successful on Facebook? To start, every time a community member interacts on your Page, either by uploading a photo or video, leaving a Wall post, commenting on a status update, or pressing the Like button, Facebook can filter that interaction to the top of the news feed on the home page for other �fans� of your Page and the specific user�s feed. If there is consistent interaction, you can stay top of mind, at least on Facebook, with your prospects, customers, or fans. If you couple that with regular ads and the addition of new content within Facebook and other areas around the interwebs, you�ll be on your way to developing a strong online brand.

An example of a company that exemplifies the use of Facebook for branding and interaction is HubSpot. HubSpot is a Cambridge, MA-based company that makes an inbound marketing software that helps businesses �get found.� As of November 2009 HubSpot had more 7,500 fans. Although the number alone is impressive, simply having a large number of fans or followers doesn�t mean anything. However, HubSpot doesn�t just have a large following, they have a large and engaged following. HubSpot regularly posts a range of different information to its Facebook Page. On any given status update, HubSpot receives a dozen or more Likes and an equal number of comments. HubSpot also has an active Discussions area and utilizes the Events, Video, and several other features extensively.

To provide consistent and diversified content can become harder and harder as you go along. When you first set up your community on Facebook you�ll think of all kinds of information to share. But, as time goes on, you might find yourself struggling to provide a consistent flow of information.

Source of Information :  Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign

Using Facebook to Develop Communities

At a basic level, Facebook represents one large community. Within that large community a limitless number of subcommunities form. People form communities around their interests, hobbies, events, companies, products, services, celebrities, schools, or even favorite foods. We form and use these communities in the same manner that we would in the physical world. We engage with one another, form bonds, share interesting articles, upload photos and videos, and invite others with similar interests to join our communities.

Although forums are still a popular way for these communities to form, they have graduated into more developed community platforms. Some communities choose to build premium communities.

Although these enterprise level premium communities offer expanded features and more customization, they�re also expensive and more suited for larger companies and organizations. Also, because these premium communities are set up on a different domain or a subdomain of your website, you then have to work harder to bring people to the party.

Facebook serves this purpose perfectly. Facebook has a large pond from which users can fish for others with similar interests or hobbies. You need to decide between a Page or Group when figuring out what features will be needed for your community or what your specific preferences are. But, no matter which you choose, you can quickly and easily set up a community, for free, on Facebook.

When the community is set up, you should search for other similar Pages and Groups and begin engaging there as well. Don�t be spammy about it, but you�ll slowly gain users over into your community the more you engage in the other communities and demonstrate a passion, knowledge, and presence.

Another benefit of using Facebook to set up communities, either using a Page or Group, is that it offers greater reach by breaking down geographic walls. Of course, some physical communities grow large enough that they break into multiple chapters with localized community groups all over the world. But, those groups still remain local, and although some larger organizational bylaws may exist to help guide the local organization, they form their own separate and unique communities as well.

With Facebook it�s not necessary to separate into localized communities, unless the users decide that is what is best for them. Instead, they can all interact and benefit from one another.

As you build your community, you need to decide on who will be your community manager. Ideally, this person should be either you or someone from your team. As the community manager you need to give your community reasons to keep coming back. All of us nowadays have too many things competing for our attention. Those that tend to get our attention will be the items that stay top of mind and that we find interesting, helpful, useful, or otherwise needed. Therefore, to continue to grow an active and growing community on Facebook, you need to engage your community; however, you can�t just engage them by simply updating your Page or Group status every day. You need to provide content in different formats because all members of your community will demand to receive their information and content in different ways. Some of us prefer video whereas others love photos, and some may want thought-provoking links to read.

Let�s explore some of the different types of communities that can be formed on Facebook, how users are utilizing them, and along the way, some tips to help you maximize engagement within your community.

Source of Information :  Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign

The Two Faces of Privacy on Facebook

With Facebook starting out as a personal network, it has been a hard transition for people to become used to it as also a professional network. Most use LinkedIn as a professional network, Facebook as a personal network, and Twitter is a hybrid that people are still trying to figure out. But with the growth rate of Facebook, many have started to turn to it as a personal branding tool and professional network. Marketers have begun turning to Facebook with Facebook Pages, Groups, and advertisements as a way to reach out to their prospects, customers, and fans.

This transition has created a dilemma for many folks because they are resistant to using Facebook as a professional network, yet their colleagues, competition, and companies are becoming active on the network. Also, as we develop friends in our industries, we want to extend that friendship and therefore turn to Facebook. This starts to blur that line even further between work and home. However, as Dawn Foster of WebWorkerDaily points out, we don�t want to confuse �personal� for �private�:

You can actually be professional and personal at the same time in social media without too much effort. When we talk about �being personal� on social media websites, I think that many people confuse �personal� with �private.� The reality is that you get to decide what to share and what not to share, so you can still keep most areas of your private life private.

To deal with this dilemma, individuals typically have three options to choose from:

1. Maintain a single Facebook profile that combines personal and professional.

2. Maintain two different Facebook profiles: one personal and one professional.

3. Keeping Facebook only personal and not mixing work into it.

Each one of these has both upsides and downsides with not one clear answer or best practice, as of yet. Though it might not be clear yet, this will be important for you as a marketer or company.

Source of Information :  Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign

Analyzing Facebook Ad Performance

Facebook provides an excellent reporting tool to gauge the performance of your ad campaign. Analyzing performance is important so that you can make adjustments, not only after your campaign but also during the campaign. By monitoring your performance in real time, or near real time, you can make immediate changes that can turn the tides of a lagging campaign that�s only draining your bank account.

When you head into the analytics area, you�re immediately greeted with a dashboard where you get an immediate glance at your campaign. From here you can edit your campaign, its status, the daily budget, or duration. You can also see a roll-up report of the major key performance indicators of your campaign including

� Status
� Bid
� Type (CPC or CPM)
� Clicks
� Impressions
� CTR % (Click-through rate)
� Avg. CPC
� Avg. CPM
� Amount Spent

You can see this immediate information for all campaigns you may be running or have run in the past.

You can also view a few different graphs for a campaign based on either clicks, impressions, or CTR. Both the dashboard and graphs are a great way to receive an immediate overview of how the campaign is going, and it can help to raise any red flags that may need deeper attention.


Additionally, Facebook provides three campaign reports:

� Advertising Performance: This is the same data provided on the dashboard, but it allows you to apply a few filters and export the data.

� Responder Demographics: This report provides demographic data thus allowing you to see who is actually clicking on your ads. This allows you to adjust targets or optimize text or to understand who is attracted to your ads. Again, this information can be filtered and exported.

� Responder Profiles: This report, according to Facebook, �provides information about the types of users who see or click on your ads based on interests that they have listed in their personal Facebook profiles.�

Through the use of the three reports that Facebook provides and the main dashboard, you can measure and adjust your campaigns on-the-fly, thus making better use of the money that you invest and allowing you to hit your target audiences in a more effective manner.

Source of Information : Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign

Common Reasons for an Ad on Facebook to be Rejected

Before we creating a Facebook ad, it is useful to consider the common reasons that your ad could be rejected. Make sure that you don�t use any of these tactics and your ad should pass with flying colors. According to Facebook, the following are the 12 most common reasons for an ad to be rejected:

1. Capitalization of every word: Capitalizing every word can give you an unfair advantage over the ads that are running. Also, it is not proper grammar.

2. Capitalization of entire words: One of the easiest ways to scream �SPAM� to your target audience is with the capitalization of entire words. We�ve all seen these messages before. Admit it; you�re usually, if not always, turned off by messages such as LEARN HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR SALARY. Even if the message is useful to you, the capitalization of every word makes it appears spammy.

3. Incorrect grammar, spelling, and slang: Do yourself a favor and use proper grammar and spelling. Don�t use slang. You and your company will not be viewed as professional if you�re not using proper grammar and spelling. Take time to proofread your ad before submitting it to Facebook for review.

4. Inaccurate ad text: Facebook is likely to reject ads that do not clearly state the company name, product, or offer.

5. Deceptive discounts and offers: This should fall under the �don�t be dumb� rule, but unfortunately there are people who try to deceive by making one offer that attracts users, and then giving them something totally different when they click it. This will surely get your ad tossed by Facebook and it will also damage your online reputation.

6. Irrelevant or inappropriate images: Only use images that are relevant to your ad. Also, make sure your images are clean. Similar to deceptive discounts, don�t be dumb. Help to ensure Facebook is a safe and fun place for people to hang out.

7. Inappropriate targeting: Why would you want to spend money targeting one group while speaking to another? Target those that you want your ad to reach. Bottom line.

8. Destination: Facebook has developed some particular guidelines when it comes to where you can send your audience. Per Facebook: �All users must be sent to the same landing page when the ad is clicked. The destination may not include fake close behavior, pop-ups. Ads may only be directed to a website or iTunes. When linking to iTunes, the text must explicitly say so. Ads may not be directed to any other download such as PDF, PowerPoint, or Word documents.�

9. Sentence structure: Simple enough: Use complete sentences. Proper grammar, spelling, and sentence structure will make your ad, and therefore your company, appear unprofessional.
10. Unacceptable language choice: Language can�t be degrading, derogatory, inappropriate, sexual, or profane in any nature.

11. Incorrect punctuation: Similar to other areas that we�ve talked about, this is yet another reason that your ad will make your company appear unprofessional. Ensure that someone proofreads your ads before sending them to Facebook for review.

12. Symbols and numbers in place of words: The sublanguage of speaking in 140 characters (for both text and now Twitter) has changed how many people word a sentence. Instead of full words such as �for,� many now replace it with the number 4 instead. This is cause for rejection by Facebook. Don�t substitute symbols or numbers for words.

Source of Information :  Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign

The Power and Reach of Facebook Connect

Although 400+ million people is a lot, it still isn�t everyone. Therefore, Facebook must continually come up with new ways to find users. Also, as it�s out searching for new users, it also wants to ensure that it entices back its current user base as often as possible. This provides more opportunities for you, as a marketer, because it increases the possibility for you to connect with new prospects, current customers, and fans of your brand.

To accomplish all these goals, Facebook created Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect was released in December 2008. After approximately only one year, Facebook Connect had been integrated, in one form or another, on more than 80,000 websites. On those 80,000 websites, approximately 60 million users have engaged with Facebook Connect. That means that, as of this writing, approximately 20 percent of all Facebook users utilize Facebook Connect on websites that they visit other than Facebook. It�s no surprise that many of the largest websites have turned to integrating Facebook Connect to help drive more visitors and then translate those visitors into repeat traffic and increased engagement. According to Facebook, two-thirds of the top 100 websites in the United States and 50 percent of the world�s top 100 websites have implemented Facebook Connect.

Facebook Connect is a lot more than just a blue �Connect with Facebook� box that lets you sign in with your Facebook credentials instead of registering for the site. Facebook gives a basic and geeky definition of Facebook Connect, calling it: �a powerful set of APIs for developers that lets users bring their identity and connections everywhere.� Facebook Connect is a powerful tool with a complex set of features that can be integrated into websites. For marketers, integrating Facebook Connect helps to bring more eyes to your website thus giving you more opportunities to connect and convert as well as giving you the ability to implement other features available within Facebook Connect. Additionally, it provides more resources to the user who visits your website and doesn�t need to create a new log in just to leave a comment or interact with your website in some other way.

However, these implementations don�t even begin to touch on the capabilities of Facebook Connect. Let�s take a little time to walk through some of the features of Facebook Connect along with a couple examples. From that you should have a few ideas on how you may want to integrate Facebook Connect with your website or blog.

Source of Information : Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign

Creating a Personalized Experience with Facebook Connect

The capability of Facebook Connect to create a personalized experience is something that we�ve only seen the tip of so far. Facebook Connect has the capability to use some of your information such as age, gender, location, or content that you�ve uploaded to Facebook to help create a story that has been created just for you.

To fully understand what creating a personalized experience with Facebook Connect actually means, it is easiest to learn about how some have chosen to use this feature.

During Shark Week, the Discovery Channel sought to find ways to pull people in to watch the programming that it had for Shark Week. The Discovery Channel realized that one of the ways to pull people in would be to reach out into the communities where they�re already hanging out. Instead of hoping that they tune in and watch commercials related to Shark Week, the Discovery Channel, with the assistance of C.C. Chapman and his team at Campfire (previously known as The Advance Guard), decided to use Facebook as a digital channel to find potential viewers.

The easy way out would be to just use a Facebook Ad that had a slick call-to-action. No, that would be too simple. What if you could make users feel as though they were in a boat being attacked by a shark? What if you could make their heart race and make it really real for them? That would be cool, right? That is exactly what an application called Frenzied Waters created using Facebook Connect for Shark Week did. By using information that you�ve already made available to Facebook such as biographical information and photos, the Frenzied Waters application created an experience that made you feel as though you were part of the shark attack.

Another slick use of Facebook Connect was for the launch of the 10th anniversary of Fight Club, a movie featuring Brad Pitt. When you visit WelcomeToFC.com, you�re prompted to enter your Facebook credentials. After you enter your credentials, the website (actually Facebook Connect) grabs data from your Facebook account such as your name, favorite movies, job information, and photos and uses it to build a story from Fight Club around you. At the end of the experience, it then encourages you to purchase the Fight Club DVD.

What both of these applications accomplish is invoking emotion and bringing you into the experience. This tends to hook you and makes you want to run around and share it with your friends because of how cool it is. This word-of-mouth marketing is the best type of marketing that any brand or product could ask for.

Source of Information :  Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign

Using Facebook Connect as a Single Sign On

The concept of single sign on is something that has continued to float around the Internet as users become increasingly frustrated with how many different websites they have to be signed up for to access content. Such concepts as OpenID have attempted to create a single sign on that people would use on all the websites they visit. The problem with OpenID though is that it requires website administrators to add OpenID functionality to their website. During the middle of this debate over single sign on, Facebook implemented Facebook Connect and instantly enabled 400+ million users to have a single sign on. Yes, just like with OpenID, website administrators need to add additional code to their websites; however, unlike OpenID Facebook Connect also gives you access to the many other features that have been covered. Facebook Connect also moves ahead of OpenID and other single sign-on concepts because of Facebook�s brand recognition.

By becoming a single sign-on resource, Facebook also benefits because users become more reliant on the social network. Because you have the ability to use Facebook to sign in to all your favorite websites, you�re more likely to interact with Facebook more often. Even though you cannot access features of your Facebook account, and it wouldn�t necessarily make sense for you to have the ability to, it does increase the amount that you interact with Facebook, increasing the likelihood that you�ll actually head over to the social network and hang out over there as well.

Another beneficial feature of using Facebook Connect as a single sign on is that when you log in to Facebook either directly or connect with any site that uses Facebook Connect, Facebook signs you in to all the websites that you use Connect with. This means that if you visit five sites that use Facebook Connect, you will not be required to re-enter your login credentials multiple times. Also, that means that when you sign out of any one site, Facebook will sign you out of all websites. This can be helpful if you use a public computer so that you don�t have to remember to log in and out of all the websites that you may visit during a browsing session.

As Facebook continues to grow, the concept of single sign on using Facebook Connect will become one of the, if not the, most popular feature of Facebook Connect.

Source of Information :  Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign

Sharing Stories into Your Stream with Facebook Connect

The ability to share stories into your stream is a feature of some more socially forward websites such as Yelp. On Yelp, once you rate a restaurant, you�re able to push that review and restaurant information to your Wall as a status update. Where this differs from the Share functionality is that with the Share feature, you�re sharing an article from a website or blog. With the ability to stream stories, you�re able to automatically push information to your Facebook Wall while you�re interacting on other websites. This is beneficial to the websites that are able to integrate it because the stream story usually carries some of the branding from the website such as a logo thus bringing increased brand awareness.

Several websites allow you the option of publishing your activity to Facebook. You�ll typically see this option with social networks and games that rely on users spreading information to bring awareness of their services. If you use popular social bookmarking website Delicious, you�re able to use Facebook Connect to authorize Delicious to post the websites that you save to their service on your Facebook Wall. You can also add a Delicious box to your home page that will automatically update as you run around the web bookmarking websites.

By linking together the various places you enjoy hanging out around the Internet, you�re able to use Facebook as a lifestream to show your community on Facebook what you�re interested in. But, with that comes some cautionary advice: Ensure that the information that you�re allowing to flow into Facebook doesn�t overwhelm your community and is actually useful to them. If not then they�ll begin hiding your status updates, ignoring you, de-fanning your Page, or at worse, unfriending you. If any of that happens then you close the door on everything that you�ve been working through this book to accomplish.

To help avoid flooding your community and understand how and where your activity on the Internet is used, it is helpful to create, what Louis Gray termed, a social media data flow.

Essentially, by working through this process you create a visual map of where the data that you input into various social networks ends up. This can help you get a grip on whether you may be overwhelming your community because it can happen easily as the habit of using Facebook Connect all over the web can become customary.

Source of Information : Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign

Integrating Chat Using the Live Feed

The Live Feed option enables users to chat live side-by-side with either streaming or static content on your website. Users access their Facebook accounts and use the status update feature to carry on conversations.

The Live Feed was first implemented and made uber famous during the Presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama (see Figure 4.7). During the Inauguration, CNN streamed the events live on CNN.com and, using Facebook Connect, allowed you to chat with your friends who were also watching on CNN.com.

No one could have ever expected how many people would decide to take to CNN.com and start chatting away, sharing this once-in-a-lifetime experience, with their friends. According to Mashable.com

� CNN generated more than 136 million page views.

� More than 600,000 status updates posted through CNN.com to Facebook.

� During the broadcast more than 4,000 status updates occurred per minute being sent to Facebook from CNN.com.

� During the first minute of President Obama�s inaugural speech, 8,500 status updates from CNN.com occurred.

This mind-blowing success led other event planners to turn to Facebook to enable conversations around their event. So far, the Live Feed has been used for the NBA All-Star game, the Michael Jackson Memorial, and a live viewing party of the finale of Bravo�s �Real Housewives of New York City� among others.

In the future we will see many more large events integrate the Facebook Live Feed into their websites. Imagine watching the Olympics, attending a concert, watching the World Series, or watching a movie and chatting LIVE with all your friends who are also enjoying that same experience.

Whether you realize it, the Live Feed is similar to the Personalized Experience feature because it draws out emotion and connects us to something we can relate to. For the Personalized Experience, the tool creates an experience using information about ourselves to pull us into the application. The Live Feed connects us with our friends during a major event. By enabling this feature, the network hopes that we�ll stay on their website longer, and Facebook ensures that we�ll interact with their platform more. It also has the spin-off effect, much like Twitter hashtags around events, in that the rest of your network can see your status updates, wonder what you�re up to, and hopefully join in on the fun.

Source of Information : Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign

Extending Facebook into the Interwebs

Although 400+ million people is a lot, it still isn�t everyone. Therefore, Facebook must continually come up with new ways to find users. Also, as it�s out searching for new users, it also wants to ensure that it entices back its current user base as often as possible.

This provides more opportunities for you, as a marketer, because it increases the possibility for you to connect with new prospects, current customers, and fans of your brand.

To accomplish all these goals, Facebook created Facebook Connect, which was released in December 2008. If you�ve visited practically any major website or even most top blogs, you�ve inevitably seen an implementation of Facebook Connect, even if you didn�t realize it. Facebook Connect has been implemented on over 80,000 websites with more than 60 million users on a monthly basis. That means its more widespread than you ever notice. Facebook Connect is a lot more than just a blue �Connect with Facebook� box that lets you sign in with your Facebook credentials instead of registering for the site.

Facebook gives a basic and geeky definition of Facebook Connect, calling it: �a powerful set of APIs for developers that lets users bring their identity and connections everywhere.� Facebook Connect is a powerful tool with a complex set of features that can be integrated into websites. For marketers, integrating Facebook Connect helps to bring more eyes to your website thus giving you more opportunities to connect and convert as well as giving you the ability to implement other features available within Facebook Connect. Additionally, it provides more resources to the user who visits your website and doesn�t need to create a new log in just to leave a comment or interact with your website in some other way.

However, these implementations don�t even begin to touch on the capabilities of Facebook Connect. Let�s take a little time to walk through some of the features of Facebook Connect along with a couple examples. From that you should have a few ideas on how you may want to integrate Facebook Connect with your website or blog.

Source of Information :  Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign

Should You Police Your Community?

The issue of negative comments is one that every brand who signs up for a Facebook Page has to deal with. Although this could be an issue within a Group, especially if it is around an industry topic that might cause some level of debate, you will more likely feel this concern around Facebook Pages. The reason being, of course, that the comments or content is public. It can be seen by all.

Of course, with the hundreds of millions of users, some people have probably had a bad experience with your company. Although in an ideal world only positive information would be talked about publicly by others, this certainly is not the case. Many corporations when I meet with them for the first time are weary of knowing what people are saying about them. What you don�t know can�t hurt you. Right? Wrong. These conversations are taking place 24 hours per day, and your ability to find them and respond is critical.

So, someone posts something negative on your Wall, what do you do? Easy, right? Just delete it and move on. You want only the positive and fun content around your community. Makes perfect sense. Except if you do this, you�ll be committing a cardinal sin of online brand engagement.

There are going to be people, both online and offline, who are not happy with your brand, product, or service for one reason or another. Online they can leave comments within your various online outposts, such as your Facebook Page or Group. If the comment isn�t violent, overly disruptive, or continual, leave the comment alone. You then have to make the decision whether to respond to the comment. Both decisions have positives and negatives. On one hand, if you do respond, it could spark a never-ending back and forth that might only add lighter fluid to a smoldering fire that would have otherwise put itself out. However, on the other side of the coin, if you don�t respond, you appear as though you�re ignoring the person or complaint she is bringing to your attention. This could also have an adverse effect. The bestadvice is to judge each comment on a case-by-case basis. Some you�ll respond to whereas others you�re going to make the decision that it�s best to leave it alone.

To monitor and respond to any comments about your executives, company, industry, or competitors, plenty of professional grade tools, such as Radian6 (www.radian6.com), are available. Radian6 enables you to actively measure mainstream news, blogs, blog comments, forums, forum replies, and, currently, micromedia sites that include Twitter and FriendFeed. One of the downfalls of Facebook being a closed platform is that tools such as Radian6 can�t �see� behind the walls to monitor the conversations that are taking place. However, it will be interesting to see how Facebook continues to extend its new search feature and how it decides to integrate FriendFeed. FriendFeed is currently one of the sites that tools such as Radian6 can measure. The other issue is that you can�t grab an RSS feed or set up an email alert to trigger based on criteria that you plug into Facebook. This is bound to happen now that Facebook is going through the process of integrating FriendFeed in and making lots of other platform enhancements, I think we�ll see the search capabilities extend to RSS or email alerts.

While we wait for some type of RSS or alert capabilities arrive to the Facebook platform, you should run searches from time to time. Run searches for your company, executives, products, services, and industry. This can give you an idea of what, if anything, is said within the Walls of Facebook. Though not perfect, it is a start to monitoring the conversations taking place around you on Facebook. For everything else, I�d strongly consider setting up a listening and monitoring tool such as Radian6. If you just want to dip your feet in, you could start by setting up Google Alerts and custom Twitter Searches around the terms that matter to you.

Source of Information : Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign

Facebook Page or Group: Which One?

It might be a bit confused trying to figure out how to properly brand your company on Facebook and start engaging with your prospects, customers, employees, and fans. Both the Pages and Groups features within Facebook have many benefits. Which one should you choose and why?

Generally, if you�re a brand, organization, celebrity, politician, or other public figure, and you want to engage with your prospects, customers, and fans, you want to set up a Facebook Page. Pages are public. That means that all features of the Page can be seen without having to become a fan of it. Everyone can join your Page and can promote it into their news feed. Furthermore, the available features and level of customization is unparalleled when comparing it with the capabilities of Groups. This isn�t because Facebook has decided to neglect Groups. Facebook Pages are designed for brands, celebrities, and other public figures to be encouraged to set up public presences on the network. This is why in March 2009, Facebook made the decision to convert Pages into having a similar look, feel, and functionality of personal profiles. Facebook wants this to be another place for your brand besides your company website. For those that choose to embrace this, it can prove to be beneficial. In fact, a paidContent.org post in May 2009 states that Facebook has overtaken Google as the top referrer to large websites.

For all intents and purposes, a brand is equivalent to a person in Facebook. Also, because Pages are public, they�re also visible to search engines.

Groups are private and you must request access to join the group. This feature is good if you want to have private discussions with a select group of people. A group is good for brands that might want to set up a private community but lack funds to have an enterprise-level community developed. A group is also good for companies that want a quick, private community for their team or a select group of customers. Although I�d be careful of sharing sensitive data on Facebook because you don�t control what happens with that information, it is an easy way to set up a private community quickly. You might start a Group that you invite select customers into for feedback purposes and discussion around an upcoming product or release, or allow direct access to particular individuals within your organization. If you choose to set one up for your employees, it is an easy way to communicate with your them.

Source of Information : Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign

Developing a Corporate Facebook Presence

Besides the individual choice of whether to join Facebook and blend your personal and professional lives, the reason why, as a brand, you want to consider establishing a presence on Facebook is because it helps to humanize your brand. Facebook is a very personal social network. It provides the perfect opportunity to help humanize your brand. Through the types of content that you can choose to share on a Facebook Page or Group, you can show that your company is a lot more than just a logo. You can peel back that logo to expose all the great personalities that make up your company.

Facebook is a thriving community, in which there are sure to be fans of your company, executives, product, or service. If you�re shaking your head left and right yelling loudly that you don�t have any fans, realize that your prospects, customers, and future fans are hanging out on Facebook. Developing a presence on Facebook provides you the opportunity to bubble up these fans and activate them by providing them with a community in which they can interact with one another and with your company. You need to realize that the days of forcing your prospects, customers, and fans of your brand to go to a website of your choosing is gone. Sure, you can still drive traffic to your website and convert people through a contact or informational form. There is still a lot of value in corporate websites. But, nowadays, you have to go where your prospects, customers, and fans hang out and build communities with them there. This, in turn, can turn toward visiting your corporate website and engaging with you on your turf. If you ignore that, you are missing valuable opportunities to develop a stronger community. For instance, if I only hang out on Facebook and you only hang out on MySpace or Twitter, you�re missing an opportunity to engage with me, even though I could be speaking your praises or running your name through the mud on Facebook.

With Facebook continuing to grow more and more in popularity, it makes sense to develop a corporate presence. At the very least, establishing even a basic presence on Facebook can make it more difficult for others to claim your brand on Facebook. If you need even more convincing, realize that Facebook is now the top driver of traffic, over Google, to large sites.

Source of Information : Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign

Facebook: Personal or Professional?

Facebook has, for most of its history, been seen as a personal social network. On Facebook you can let your hair down a little and interact with your college buddies, family, and close friends. You share pictures and videos from recent vacations or of your baby�s first steps. You post your personal opinions on random topics such as your favorite pizza toppings or who/what is annoying you today. If you want to do any business networking, there is LinkedIn. On LinkedIn you can input your resume, get recommendations, and set up a Group around your company, product, service, or industry and several other business-related activities. The problem here, as is the case with every other social network currently, is that Facebook is growing at such a fast pace that you can�t ignore it. Facebook is currently growing at the rate of a completely new LinkedIn user base every 4 weeks or so.

What has been interesting when comparing personal versus professional networks has been the move by some companies to allow access to LinkedIn but deny access to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or other social networks.

Right now you�re probably wondering why we�re even talking about personal versus professional personas. Everyone has both personal and professional lives that they separate. You�re a different person on the weekends around your family and friends than you are when sitting across the boardroom from your boss, customers, or vendors. Right?

Surely, I understand the hesitation between whether you should blend your personal and professional lives. Some people, myself included, have decided that everything we do is our life. We don�t distinguish, for the most part, between a personal and professional life. I want business partners to know my personal interests in the Red Sox, Jay-Z, gadgets, and everything else that I am a fan of or have an interest in. People from both my personal and professional lives can see pictures from my wedding or my recent vacation. For me, it translates into a lot of business.

People can establish a 360-degree view of who I am. They can get to know me as an individual before we ever meet at a networking event or have a conference call about a potential partnership. We can interact on a personal level that might lead to establishing a professional relationship. After all, at our professional core, we prefer to do business with friends. We trust our friends and hope that our friends trust us. We would never want to do anything against our friends that might disappoint them, put them into a precarious position, or hurt them. Therefore, we tend to work harder when we do business with friends. It is usually more enjoyable and easier as well. Facebook provides the perfect opportunity for this to occur.

This blending of personal and professional also helps to develop a strong community, real friends, and interesting conversations. However, not everyone feels comfortable with, or has the ability, to make that melding between their personal and professional lives. But, even if you don�t want to cross these two areas of your lifestyle with one another, and you prefer to keep Facebook personal and LinkedIn professional, you still should consider establishing a corporate presence.

Source of Information :  Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign

Facebook�s Privacy Policy

As with any large social network, Facebook has developed, and continues to iterate, a set of policies that are the guiding rules of the network. The privacy policies and terms of services are put into place as a way to govern the large social network.

When Facebook originally started out, the network was private. Essentially all information was opt-in only. To view any information other than some basic data points and a bio picture, you had to be �friended� by the individual to see other information. But, over time, Facebook tweaked the platform and eventually moved toward a more open network. Information was still all opt-in, but these updates allowed users the option of whether they wanted to expose some, or all, of their information to Facebook search results and external search engines. In a January 2010 interview, CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg talked about the battle between openness and privacy. During a speech at the Crunchie awards, Zuckerberg stated:

�People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time...in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way, and just all these different services that have people sharing all this information.�

Although a lot of controversy over this speech occurred, you need to not lose sight of what Zuckerberg and his executive team deal with at Facebook. Facebook, in terms of population, is one of the largest countries in the world. Therefore, Zuckerberg and his team need to implement strategies and policies that they think will be best for all the citizens of Facebook. Sometimes these aren�t the popular decisions, but most of the time, they are done to help better the entire network. That will cause some percentage of people to become upset. This is the same thing that happens in any country when new laws are passed or existing laws are updated.

One example of trying to do the right thing for the entire community was during a major round of updates to the privacy policy during December 2009 when Facebook released a major update and change to its privacy policies. The goal was to give users more granular control over their privacy settings by, among other updates, allowing them to select, on a per-post basis, who can see content posted to their Facebook profile. Also, Facebook announced that it was removing regional networks. When Facebook was originally created, it included having to choose a network, such as a country, state, city, college, work, or other related groups. The concept behind this was that it would make it easier to connect with people in that group, and also only those within the group could see your profile without being friends with you. This had the reverse effect when Facebook began growing at exponential rates. People became part of large networks, sometimes into the millions. This, of course, made privacy a mute point. So, in this December 2009 update, Facebook tried to change these issues. To help even further, Facebook provided a suggested privacy level for you that you could accept or tweak.

In an open letter to the entire network, Zuckerberg explained:

�We�re adding something that many of you have asked for�the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload.... We�ve worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone�s needs are different. We�ll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy....�

Immediately after this open letter was posted and the updates flowed in, revolt from the community started. The claim was that by creating these updates, though you could restrict your activities more, it actually tended to lend people to sharing more. Eventually, this calmed down, and people adapted to the new privacy policies and options.

Again, as with a large country, decisions are made and laws or guidelines are created that are put into place for the overall benefit or protection of the community. Not everyone will like these changes, and for some, it could, occasionally, restrict what they�re doing.

Source of Information : Facebook Marketing Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign