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Impressive Facebook Statistics, Numbers And Presentation

Niall Harbison — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:46:13 +0000

I was working on some Facebook stats for a client project this evening and as I started to come across more and more of them I thought they would be worth turning in to a quick presentation and sharing here on the blog. I think we sometimes forget just how big Facebook actually is and just how much it is growing in front of our eyes. Most of these are commonly available stats that Facebook themselves share but you only really start to get a true feel for the sheer size of the network and what is involved when you see a combination of stats like this together.Not a bad first five years in business for the world’s biggest social network…

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Why Do People Click 3 Billion Facebook Like Buttons Each Day?

Niall Harbison — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 09:48:35 +0000

First off apologies for writing so much about the like button on Facebook but I really do think it throws up one of the biggest fundamental shifts in the way we use the Internet in the last ten years. The adoption rates have been scary and with 3 billion likes a day it means that on average each one of us 500 million Facebook users are clicking the button 6 times per day either on Facebook itself or on third party sites where the button is popping up. So it’s clear that it is one of the fastest and most successful feature roll outs in history of the Internet but why do we all click that like button? What has made us all embrace the “like” so quickly and will we keep liking long in to the future? Time to look at some of the phycology of the Facebook “like button”.

Why Would You Like Something On Facebook?

I found myself hovering over a Facebook like button this evening about to make that simple click when a question popped in to my head…”why would I want to like on Facebook?”. I was wondering who would benefit and why I should keep doing it. I asked a simple question on Twitter to see what others thought…”A question…When you like something on Facebook why do you do it? So as friends can see? To go back to later? Another reason?”. Here are some of the answers I got…

The Simple Answer

So a lot of deep thinking there and some very good reasons as to why you would click on the like button. I’d say the real reason is a large mixture of all of the above and some personal reasons based on where the button you see is but the one person that summed it up best for me is the following tweet below. I laughed when I first saw the answer but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. People don’t click on the like button for any complicated reason. People click on it because…

We Like To Give Kudos

Humans in general like to praise others. We pat people on the back. We clap performers and leave tips for good service. It’s not unusual that given the opportunity to like people, blogs, websites, products and brands we feel compelled to click that simple little button. The barrier to entry is so low that as soon as we see something that we like a tiny bit we know we can click that tiny little button and show a little virtual kudos.

We Like Because It Is Social

I have discovered lots of music, movies and funny videos on Facebook because my friends have liked them. We know that reccomendations we trust most often come from friends and people we know. The really interesting part is where the like button is headed on third party sites. I’m more likely to hang around on a site if I see that 4 of my friends have liked it. This sort of functionality is only in it’s infancy though and will only improve. The real potential for the like button in my opinion is not within Facebook but on the millions of websites that will eventually support it and integrate it deeper and deeper in to their sites.

We Like Because It is Easy

Clicking that button is the easiest thing you will ever do. We trust it. We instantly know what it does. In a world where we spend our day online getting bombarded by special offers and people promoting their businesses and services we know that there is no financial commitment to clicking that little button. It’s a way to give thanks and praise without having to dip in to our pockets. It’s easy.

Facebook Is The Only Winner In The Liking Game

Every single time any one of us clicks that like button Facebook becomes more valuable. Behind the scenes Facebook record every single action every single user takes on the platform and they are building up the most detailed “social graph” of what we like doing and what our interests are with the obvious intention of selling that information on to advertisers. We have all bought in to their like system so quickly but I feel that Facebook will need to give a little back in some shape or form to keep people liking. I’d personally like to see my own likes displayed more dynamically, some sort of homepage or “likes” page that served me content based on my likes. I know the news feed is already tailored to my interests but if I am to keep clicking the like buttons on news stories for example I’d really like to have a place to go where I could read news based on my previous likes. As the likes keep pouring in though Facebook are laughing all the way to the bank. I think it is very much like the Apple app store in that they thought it was a good idea when it launched, were probably sure it would take off but nobody in their right mind could possibly have predicted the phenomenal impact a simple like button would have on the web.

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Niall Harbison — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:40:04 +0000

We are big Mailchimp fans here at Simply Zesty and use it for all our own stuff and our clients. As if we didn’t like the service enough we now see that Mailchimp are adding Facebook like buttons to their list of options so as you can make your newsletters truly social. It’s about time something like this came along and made the whole newsletter experience more social. Most newsletters will have some simple way of sharing or passing the newsletter on to friends but those options are mostly ignored and have never been that successful. Introducing the like button though is a stroke of genius because people instantly trust it and will likely click on stuff they like pushing it back to their wall and increasing the amount of traffic/sales/engagement that happen as a result of sending that newsletter out. Here is a little short video that explains how Mailchimp are introducing the like buttons and some of the things that you will be able to do with them…

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New “Facebook Movie” The Social Network Trailer Goes Live

Lauren Fisher — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:24:44 +0000

A couple of weeks ago we were all treated to a new trailer for “The Social Network” – the film about the early days of Facebook. The producers are obviously using social media and sites like Youtube, Facebook and Twitter to hype this film months in advance and really build the online buzz. We’d expect nothing less from a film about a social network!

What’s incredible is that the first two short clips have really not given anything away at all and we are yet to see a single piece of footage from the film. The buzz online is huge and stands it in good stead come release time. It should be an interesting film!

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The Weaknesses Of Facebook According To Google – Presentation

Niall Harbison — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:46:10 +0000

There has been a lot of talk of Google creating some sort of Facebook competitor or as some of the rather foolish authors say…A Facebook killer. There is no doubt that something is brewing as enough people are talking about it and it is clear that Google see Facebook as a real competitor in the future. So it was interesting that this presentation below popped up with what Google thinks (or the Google employee thinks on Google’s behalf) are the apparent weaknesses in Facebook’s defence. What I find surprising is that this has made it on to the web because although there are some great points in this presentation I wouldn’t have thought sharing what you think are your biggest competitors weaknesses in a presentation on slideshare is the smartest thing to do. A PR stunt? Deflecting the attention from their real intentions? Who knows but I think it is a very interesting presentation for anybody involved in the social media space to have a flick through…

View more documents from Paul Adams.

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New Tool Lets You Create Your Own Custom Landing Tabs On Facebook

Niall Harbison — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 07:42:19 +0000

Facebook can be a pain in the ass to customize right? We have our own in house design capabilities here and can use FBML, the custom Facebook mark up language used to make pages look great but for many small businesses and individuals hiring somebody to make their Facebook pages look better is just not an option. Some of the big brands have great dynamic Facebook pages and now for the first time there is a simple tool that will allow you to do the same with your own Facebook page without having to know much about coding. Pagemodo could be the tool you have all been waiting for…

Create and design your own custom landing tabs on Facebook

Now I have played around a little with the tool and I can see how it would be very useful for small businesses who wanted to cobble something together themselves. There are drawbacks though in that the companies logo will appear on the bottom and it won’t do everything you want it to but as far as adding photos, videos and copy it really is a great little tool. It’s still a relatively new tool as well so you can expect pro versions to come soon along with paid options that will allow you to customize things further. I really can’t believe that it has taken so long for somebody to offer this service but the one big worry that I have is that Facebook is notorious for banning apps that mess with the Facebook experience and although this one seems to be running alright for now I’m not 100% sure that it’ll be around forever, I just have a funny feeling it’s the sort of thing Facebook doesn’t like. Anyway try it out as it’s quick to use and it will make your Facebook page start to look a letter better within minutes…

How Pagemodo Works

Pagemodo Pagebuilder – Facebook Pages from Pagemodo Video on Vimeo.

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Facebook : An Increasingly Important Traffic Source For Blogs And Websites

Niall Harbison — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 19:41:30 +0000

I just checked our blog stats for the month of June and a whopping 18.5% of our traffic came from Facebook compared to 60% from Google. I nearly fell off my stool after seeing that and it dawned on me just how important Facebook is going to become to publishers and websites over the coming years in terms of traffic. Now it’s important obviously to remember that we are a social media agency and I’d like to think we know what we are doing when using tools like Facebook so the traffic numbers are not going to be weighted like this for all sites but we all know that social is on the rise so I’d be confident in predicting most sites will follow our own stats in the future. So just how come Facebook is becoming so important when it comes to traffic….

Facebook Is Getting Bigger

Seems pretty obvious this one but as more people join the world’s biggest social network the traffic that it sends to site will only continue to increase. This time last year we got nowhere as much traffic from Facebook as we do today but you only have to look at the graph below to understand how our traffic would increase in tandem. With over 500 million people on Facebook and the likes increasing, the real time nature of the network improving by the day and users inevitably growing the question you have to ask yourself is just how much traffic will Facebook be sending us next year? 30% 40%?

The Like Button

Fast becoming as important on the web as incoming links on Google are to Google. Pages all over the web are getting like buttons and those likes are in turn getting pushed back in to people’s news streams and as a result content is getting pushed around news streams in an entirely new way. As soon as I like something on a 3rd party site that is getting pushed back to my Facebook profile and has the chance to be seen by 100s of my friends and in turn passed on to their friends. It’s still very early days for the like button but as you can imagine this is only set to grow and increase links between publishers and Facebook further over the coming years.

Self Perpetuating

The bigger your site gets the more likes you generate. The more likes you have the more people you have within your community and the more people within your Facebook community the more traffic that will ultimately end up back on your own site. Facebook will become like a drug to publishers because the more that they need to rely on it for traffic and the bigger their community gets the deeper they will integrate it throughout their site.

The Captive Audience

Lots of people find this blog through Google when they are looking for certain subjects but more often than not they come along, read the post and then head off never to be seen again. People who read a post and like us on Facebook are people who hang around for as long as ourselves and Facebook are around. We have over 5000 people who like our page and when we publish a story and link it up on Facebook those 5000 people are going to see that link, can you imagine the power of that? That is something that Google just can’t compete with.

The Shareable Content

Good stories spread around Facebook in a way that they could never spread on Google. Facebook have been very quick and nimble in the way the way they spotted the threat from Twitter in terms of real time content and have integrated the stream and sharing features right at the heart of Facebook. Google is the ultimate destination for users who want specific search terms or products and places etc but the content is static so if and when I do find a great blog or restaurant I can’t share that with my friends and that sharing is the key and what Facebook have down to a fine art.

Real Time Factor

Google have made some changes to their search pages to try and keep up with the real time nature of the web including integrating real time search results but it just doesn’t seem to be working at all for them. If I publish a story here on the blog that is topical and newsworthy it will spread a lot faster on Facebook than it ever will on Google. How do people hear about the news on Google? They don’t, they usually hear about it somewhere else before going to Google to look for it. Facebook sits in the middle where news and interesting stories will often pass through a users stream. If people find my story interesting enough they will like it or even share it passing it on even further through the Facebook ecosystem.

How Do You Benefit From Facebook?

If you have a website, are a publisher or have a blog and are not integrating Facebook with your site I think you would seriously have to start thinking about doing that now. The good news is that it is not too hard and that lots of people are probably already sharing your content via Facebook. The key is to make it even easier for your readers to share by doing simple things like setting up a page and adding share and like buttons to your site. It’s time to start thinking of Facebook as a platform rather than a closed social network. A Platform that has 500 potential readers is too big to ignore as a publisher. The biggest question of all to ask is where could this be heading in a year’s time? In the same way that sites currently rely on incoming links to grow traffic at the moment on Google I firmly believe likes on Facebook will play a similar role in the coming years. If you want to increase your traffic then I would suggest the first place you look is Facebook.

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How Come Everybody Knows Better Than Mark Zuckerberg?

Niall Harbison — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 23:23:20 +0000

I’ve been amazed in recent months as people tear in to Mark Zuckerberg from every angle accusing him of everything from breaching privacy to being incompetent and to not knowing how to run a business. Barely a day goes past where I don’t see a tweet linking to another story from a blogger or journalist who is ripping in to him for one reason or another. It find this very strange because although Facebook has had a couple of privacy issues lately (pretty much in the same way as all big companies have issues) and for some reason Zuckerberg just seems to take the heat all the time. Before we go any further I would like you all to think back to your 26th birthday to see if you remember what you had achieved by that date, I would imagine like myself it was very little. While we all sat around still trying to figure out our lives and the direction they would ultimately take lets have a little look at what Mark Zuckerberg had achieved in his tender 26 years on the planet…

Some Of Mark Zuckerberg’s Achievements By 26

So even though we all seem to know better than young Zuckerberg about how he should run his business lets have a little look at a handful of the headline stats that reflect the work he has done at Facebook as CEO and founder.
Now I could go on and on with that list as long as I wanted. You get the point though right? Zuckerberg is putting food on the tables of 1000s people. Because of his ideas, foresight and brilliance people are having their mortgages paid, health insurance bought etc. Like I said above most of us at the age of 26 would have been very lucky if we were able to make rent on time never mind hire CFOs and set up European HQs yet we all have the balls to sit back here and criticize Zuckerberg for fluffing his words at a speech or wearing sandals to important conferences? I don’t want to seem as if I am going on a moral rant here but sometimes we need to look at ourselves and what we are contributing to the world rather than knocking others down who are doing well. For what it is worth I really think Zuckerberg is doing a pretty good job and is right not to give a toss what any of us have to say about him.

Zuckerberg Is No Idiot

This video is short and to the point and probably explains best why Mark Zuckerberg is as short and talented as he is. He knows when to leave the managing of the company to others while leading the vision.

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Why Google Is Sh**ting Itself About Facebook

Niall Harbison — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:30:18 +0000

There is a titanic battle brewing between Facebook and Google that will probably start to become public over the next year. It started by Facebook getting a lot of attention over surpassing Google in terms of traffic but has increased this weekend with the news that Google seems to be working on an exact clone of the Facebook platform. It started off with Kevin Rose tweeting about it on Saturday (he was immediately forced to take down that tweet so that tells you that this is very much a reality) and was followed up by confirmation by former Facebook CTO and a post by Michael Arrington on Techcrunch (although he is clearly under pressure not to reveal too much as the post is largely cryptic and doesn’t spell out too much information). So lets say that this Facebook clone is a reality and Google do launch it within the next few months. Would it work? Can Google steal the traction back and just how did we get to this battle between the world’s largest search engine and world’s largest social network?

Google Me Tweet from Kevin Rose

The Like Button Started It All

Google were always worried about social, their attempts with tools like Orkut, Google Wave and Google Buzz show that they are keen to move in to this space. Their urgency to get in to this market though recently is not because they want to compete with social networks but because they see Facebook as a direct competitor to their own business…search. The biggest single threat that Google faces to 97% of it’s business (the amount of revenue Google generates via search ads) is the Facebook “like” button. For those of you familiar with search you will know that the Page Rank algorithm has been at the heart of Google’s success. A large part of that algorithm is the amount of incoming links a site has but the problem with those links is that they are all coming from websites and people who know how to build links (small proportion of the population). What Facebook have done with their like button is have something that is already spreading on to thousands of websites and users are embracing immediately as they know and trust Facebook. This one simple button is allowing Facebook to gather the most incredible and accurate information on users and their personal likes. It is also allowing Facebook to serve pages, websites and crucially adverts to people in a hyper targeted way that even Google can’t do as well. Facebook’s search to date is pretty poor but make no mistake the search of the future is far more social and based on friends recommendations and Facebook will be very much at the fore of that race.

Google Are Engineers

Google are brilliant at sorting information and making things work. They deliver fantastic mail clients, great collaborative tools and the best most effective search today. Their efforts at building something social though have not worked to date. Buzz was a spectacular failure and they just never seem to have understood the social space. They seem to think like engineers and nothing they have built really works well socially or looks beautiful. They need to make something that looks more stylish than what they currently offer so as it can appeal to the masses. It’s one thing getting all us industry people and geeks on to social networks but Google needs to be focusing in on building something that appeals to the 500 million regular Joe’s who are on Facebook to connect with their friends and family and know nothing about technology. I’m just not sure that Google as a company knows how to think socially like this, just look at Google Wave which was full of amazing technology but just ended up confusing us all.

The Android Element Gives It A Chance

The one big factor that Google has at its advantage is the fact that they own one of the largest mobile platforms out there, Android. Out of the 500 Million users Facebook has over a quarter already use Facebook via their mobile device. As smart phones get better there is no doubt that we are all accessing social networks, taking photos, recording video and sharing our location while on the go. Latest reports show that Google are selling 5 million android phones per month which is a huge advantage for them if they did ever have a semi decent social network that they could pre-load on to their operating system. Hopefully Google will be smart enough to see that mobile is their one big advantage here and will make that a key part of their new offering.

Privacy Issues A Good Time To Pounce?

Facebook have a big problem with users at the moment who always seem to be up in arms about privacy. The big issue here is that Facebook started as a closed network focused on privacy but has slowly moved to a more open network to please advertisers and maximise the potential of things like social search. The service is in effect changing in front of our eyes from a very private network to a social network where the settings are defaulted to public. The opportunity for Google is to come in and offer a secure platform where users’ information being kept private is the number one priority. The balance that Google will need to try and strike though is to keep some information public to help their search results while offering the privacy that Facebook users used to have and currently crave.

I’d Rather My Information Was On Google

I’ve had lots of private information on Google for years. I have whole business plans stored on their servers, financial projections in their spreadsheets, confidential emails and personal photos all stored on their servers and as far as I know that information has never been exposed to anybody. Google has no interest in sharing that information, they have earned my trust. On the other hand although I use Facebook and see it as a phenomenal platform for clients I can see what Facebook are up to. They want to know every single little thing about us and what we do socially. They want to plot our social graph as they say themselves. As a user if Google did offer a more private solution and offered all the same functionality then that is something that I might have to consider looking at very seriously.

Will Google Facebook Clone Be A Success?

In a word…No. Just like Wave and Buzz this will generate an insane amount of hype when it is officially announced but Facebook have such a huge lead that it is going to be tough. Google do have advantages like Android and Facebook’s privacy weakness that they can pounce on but getting 500 million users from scratch is going to be tough. Google are very aware of Facebook’s rising power and they have to be admired for trying to counter it with a new product of their own but I just don’t think that Google have the ability to build great social products. It’s just not what they do well! Some of the key techie influencers might start moving over to a more trusted Google platform but getting the mums and dads who have just arrived on Facebook and are perfectly happy with their social network and have no idea this stuff is going on is going to be the hard thing to do. Facebook are in my opinion just way too far out in front to be caught and will start to cause Google some pretty major problems in their own core business of search very soon!

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The unofficial guide to Facebook’s terms and conditions

Lauren Fisher — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:42:25 +0000

Facebook changed their rules on promotions a while ago now, but I still get lots of questions (and ask plenty myself!) about what you can and can’t do, according to Facebook’s terms and conditions. Having had a fair amount of back and forth with Facebook on this, I thought I’d provide a quick guide that clarifies their guidelines around promoting competitions, and a few other things you might come across in your Facebook activity. (Please note that this information is coming from me, based on my knowledge of their rules and guidelines)

You can’t run a competition on the wall

This changed a good few months ago, but you still see people doing it. It’s against Facebook’s guidelines to run a competition that requires entry through a wall post. I.e. you can’t ask people to comment on a post, answer a question etc.. in order to enter. It’s the most annoying one as it takes away a very nice way to run a competition, that also has a viral element, but them’s the rules unfortunately!

Competitions must be run through an application

If you’re going to run any sort of competition, this has to be run as an application, on the Facebook platform. You also have to adhere to their rules about where entry can take place. Facebook competition applications must sit either on the canvas page of the application itself, or sit in a separate tab of an application page.

You must get permission

Image courtesy of What What

If you’re planning on running any promotion or competition in Facebook, you have to get their approval first! Experience has taught me that you should leave about 2 weeks for this, to be safe. You’ll need to submit your full designs and working application to Facebook. Approval must be sought from a Facebook account executive. If you don’t have a day to day contact there, they recommend that you use this contact form to get one.

Competitions can’t use a Facebook mechanic

This really does restrict you further, but the guidelines state that you can’t use a native Facebook action to facilitate entry to a competition. I.e. you can’t ask someone to like a page, upload a photo/video, comment on a post, promote a post to friends. If you want to run a competition that involves one of these, such as entering a photo, then this has to be administered through a third party application.

You can restrict competitions to fans

While the rules state that you can’t run a competition that people enter automatically by becoming a fan, you are permitted to restrict a competition (for example through a tab) only to people that Like your page. I recommend that you make this as clear as possible to the user, so they are aware of the mechanics by which they can enter.

Contacting the winner

If you’re running a competition, pretty much the only way you have of notifying the winner, is by email. You’re not permitted to notify winners through a wall post on your page, or contact individuals by private message. Collecting the email address of the winner is an easy way to notify them. This can be frustrating at times as you may not want to restrict access by requiring an email address, but unfortunately there isn’t really a way around this. (I’ve tried). You could also ask for mobile number, but you’re even less likely to get this from the user.

You can’t rename a page

Only in very exceptional circumstances can you get the name of your page changed, and you need to have a good contact in Facebook in order to do this. Facebook have to think of their users here – if you’ve become a fan/Liked a particular campaign for example, you can’t then assume that they’re happy to Like the page that’s changed to your generic brand term.

Advertising Alcohol

Image courtesy of bunch of pants

If you have an alcohol brand, ads must be targeted at 21+ in the U.S and 18+ in the UK & Ireland. Regardless of the country you’re in, your Facebook page for an alcohol product must be restricted to 21+
It’s also against the guidelines to offer alcohol as a prize in a competition, nor can you feature an ad that offers a prize in return for purchasing an alcohol product.

Groups into pages

If you’re a business, then you’re only permitted to run an official Facebook business page, not a group or a personal profile. Unfortunately, they won’t let you migrate a group into a page. If you’ve set up a group and now want a page instead, the best thing that you can do is to let your members know where they can find you now!

Hopefully this guide has helped you understand what you can/can’t do. Obviously everything should be run through your Account Executive there, to be approved. A full set of guidelines on competitions can be found here.

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On Openbook

Lauren Fisher — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:33:26 +0000

I first heard about Openbook a few weeks ago. Having seen a few blog posts on it recently, I thought it was time to put my thoughts out there, on the search engine that allows you to search through status updates on Facebook.

Firstly, the very concept of the site is nothing new in itself. It appears as if blowing the lid on Facebook by showing that you can search through updates from people, if they don’t have the necessary privacy options in place that prevent them from showing up. But this is something that Facebook has offered for quite a while now. Through their option to display posts ‘by everyone’ in their own search function.

Obviously, the key differentiator is that you don’t need a Facebook account to use Openbook, whereas you do to use Facebook’s own search function. I don’t think that this is really enough of a difference though – the searches performed in both for random search terms are returning roughly the same results. It’s not really exposing a huge security flaw, when it’s a search option that Facebook are themselves promoting and making easily accessible. And I’m surprised that more people haven’t mentioned this in their write-ups of the site.

And let’s not forget either, that Twitter allows you to search people’s public updates right from within their own homepage, whether you have an account or not!

Backfiring

I may be completely not seeing the wood for the trees here, but I’m not sure I understand the point that Openbook is trying to prove, by providing the service so readily. It’s one thing to show that you can access Facebook’s API to expose status updates, but to keep the search engine up there, for anyone to use? It kind of defeats the purpose, when we see blog posts like this, that may well keep names hidden, but quite happily keep picture up. For having been developed by 3 users that are personally peeved with Facebook’s privacy settings, this seems completely illogical to me. Prove you can do it – fine, but no need to keep it up there if you have a genuine concern about privacy.

I don’t doubt that the 3 behind this have a good campaign at heart – their desire for a clear privacy policy by Facebook is hardly an outrageous demand but I just don’t think they’ve gone about it in the right way. It does get to the crux of the wider issue around Facebook’s privacy control and options. But I prefer to go along the line of – if you want to use Facebook, then go by their rules. We’re not paying for the service, so the least Facebook can expect is that you adhere to the guidelines they set, on, what is actually their own site. If it’s not for you, then don’t use it. I take it as a given that if it’s okay for me to put on Facebook, then I’m pretty much accepting that it’s okay to go on the internet. And accept that it will invariably find its way there.

Initiatives like Quit Facebook Day are great if you want to create a bit of a stir, but I can’t see why there needs to be such a fanfare about it. It just turns out that Facebook may not be for you, after all. I’m sure there will be many that disagree with me. And you can certainly argue that Facebook have changed the rules since it first started, so it’s not what people signed up for. But you enjoy the service for free, so accept that it will change, and get out if you don’t like it!

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The Full Facebook Story : An Interview With Mark Zuckerberg

Niall Harbison — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 07:04:49 +0000

So there was a good bit of talk around this interview last week and some of the mistakes Mark Zuckerberg made and how uncomfortable he was on stage. I wanted to share the video here because for those of you interested in social media and doing this professionally for you business or brand I think there are some great insights here in to where Facebook is heading as a platform over the next few years. Mark Zuckerberg does address he privacy concerns but of far more interest is how he thinks the open social graph will develop. It’s a long video but well worth a watch for anybody who uses Facebook on a daily basis for either work or pleasure…

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Does Advertising Your Facebook URL Actually Work?

Niall Harbison — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:11:50 +0000

We work in the suburbs of Ireland and across the road there is a local pub that does a great roast lunch and has about four or five old men sitting around the bar drinking whiskey all day. I recently noticed when browsing through the menu that they had added some Facebook logos with their address and I remember thinking at the time how innovative that was for a small local pub. Imagine my surprise when I walked down for my lunch yesterday and saw that they had repainted the pub to include their Facebook URL covering half the facade of their pub. I pretty much nearly fell over with shock after seeing it for the first time. Now the first thing that I would say is that they have some issues with the actual text and spacing of the URL but it got me to thinking about placing Facebook URLs on your marketing material in general. Does it actually work?

Do People Actually Click Through?

I would say from our experience here as a company and from my own personal experience people don’t always click through to the Facebook page URL. Most people will generally notice the URL and think “wow that is cool must check it out later” but the truth is that by the time you get back to your computer the thought has long left your head. Now you could of course be one of the increasing amount of people to access Facebook through your mobile in which case you could like the page instantly. I’ve seen brands and businesses spend huge amounts of money in ad campaigns that blast their URL (either Facebook or microsites) out to millions of people but I have to say by in large the take up is incredibly poor. I’d be more inclined to spend the money online if all you want to do is get people to your page or website because the conversion rates will be far higher.

What Is It Doing To Your Brand?

I see examples every single day of the week where brands and businesses are using Facebook because they have heard that they have to and not because they should be and actually have a good business use for it. This particular pub in question might be using Facebook really well but is there maybe a more subtle and effective way of letting it’s patrons know about Facebook? What happens if Facebook turns in to the next Bebo? The painters will have to be called in again pretty quickly. I also see brands advertising Facebook pages where there is little or no interaction on the page and no reason to be sending people to Facebook. At the end of the day Facebook is just a platform in the same way that Google is. Don’t be caught up in trying to be cool and telling the whole world that you are on Facebook just for the sake of it. By the way for what it is worth the pub across the road are actually doing a decent job with their own Facebook page. I am off to paint the front of our own offices now as I can’t have them stealing all our likes on this street

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Some Facebook Facts You Probably Didn’t Know

Niall Harbison — Wed, 26 May 2010 20:52:32 +0000

I’ve written a couple of times about these simple diagrams that have lots of great content on them and the guys over in onlinemba just sent me this neat little one with lots of numbers about Facebook that you may not have known. At least there are some good stats on this as well that will get people excited about Facebook because we thought it was about time we all heard some good news about the world’s biggest social network instead of all the fuss around the privacy concerns. Some impressive numbers here…

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Facebook Cover Of Time Magazine : A Defining Moment?

Niall Harbison — Thu, 20 May 2010 22:56:28 +0000

There is a movie about Facebook in production at the moment and coming out at the end of the year featuring among others singer Justin Timberlake and it will tell the story of Facebook in the early days. If truth be told they should have waited a while because there is some great drama happening at the moment around Facebook and their privacy issues. There are always concerns over Facebook privacy but this time things are a lot more serious, you know when you are on the front cover of Time magazine for the wrong reasons then something has gone wrong in terms of PR. So just how serious are things forFacebook at the moment….

Where Did It All Go Wrong?

Many would say the announcements a couple of weeks ago about the open graph but the real trouble started a year ago when Facebook introduced Fan pages and actively encouraged brands and businesses to engage on the platform. Business and pleasure don’t mix right? The problem is that Facebook was once a great secure and private network where you could catch up with friends knowing that you wouldn’t get spammed. Facebook then needed to start making money by switching on hyper targeted advertising and the platform started changing massively in it’s very nature. You can’t store people’s photos and private data promising them a secure network only to open it up for anybody to see at a later date and that is why there is so much anger at the moment in the online community.

Crossroads Moment

It’s not all bad for Facebook because they are just about to announce 500 Million users (yes that is half a billion) but you do get the feeling that this is very much a crossroads moment for the company. Does it kick on now and go on to be the first social network to reach 1 billion users and continue to be a central and more important part of our life or is this the pinnacle of Facebook’s success and do they take the same route as Myspace and get replaced but something new and more private? I would personally say that they will kick on from this but it just serves to remind us all that no matter how big a company or service gets it can still go wrong very very quickly.

The Catch 22 Situation

So how do Facebook go about fixing this mess? Well the big problem is that if they back down and say that they pushed the limits too far then there is a clear admission of guilt, do that and Facebook faces more backlash, a case of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. The other side of the coin is to do nothing and keep their head in the sand and not listen to the public outcry but the the outcry has been going on for a couple of weeks now and if anything seems to be getting even louder. If I was Facebook I’d be working pretty hard on PR at the moment and trying to get a solution to their problems because they are losing a lot of trust in their brand. Facebook is still by far the biggest social network but they need to get this sorted fast.

What Do You Think?

I thought a quick poll here would give us a good idea as to what people think about the current privacy settings on Facebook and if it is changing the way you use the platform?

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