Facebook

Zuck and the Facebook crew have been tinkering again.  This time the Facebook news feed has been placed under the spotlight with a complete redesign.  The reason?  Clutter, and being honest the news feed was a pretty horrible experience.  I never once managed to get my head around why I was expected read stories, top stories and real time stories.  Surely the premise of having 3 separate news feeds bundled together in one was counter intuitive to what Facebook was striving to achieve with its ranking algorithm in putting the most valuable content front and center.  Anyway, the design changes look pretty strong in my opinion, the clutter is gone, the content pops off the page and I’m sure from a user perspective people will begin to enjoy the more streamlined experience.

But what if you are a brand who has spent big coin building out a brand page?  Well on the surface it appears you are f*cked!  Sorry, let me rephrase, your f*cked if you don’t have a big marketing budget ready to spend on pushing you ‘advercontent’ out through the news feed on a daily basis.  This actually feels a little backward, remember when Yahoo! was focusing on monitising the biggest brands via there search engine?  Then Google came along and monitised the long tail and the rest is history.  This feels very similar.  The big brands will invest, the 1000′s of smaller brands most probably won’t. What are your thoughts?  For a publicly listed organisation Facebook certainly likes to keep fussing with its core revenue stream!

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Who doesn’t love to poke fun at a few Facebook stereotypes now and then?  We all do, don’t we!  Well now thanks to Soap Creative we have a handbook of the little cretins to track down and laugh at!  Go forth and poke!

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It didn’t take long did it!  That ever so annoying, high and mighty, we are the reason you are you Facebook ad has been spoofed by creative content agency, Evidently.  This time around Facebook is like biscuits, jackets, pens and Chlamydia.  All wonderful things that can be shared with others just like if you were using Facebook.

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Remember when you could send virtual teddies, flowers, lollipops and all kinds of other rubbish on Facebook?  Well those days are here again, but this time backed up by real physical Facebook gifts, not virtual empty gestures.  It’s an interesting play by Facebook, they obviously hold a wealth of relevant data, birthdays, anniversaries etc and are in need of more diversified revenue streams, so why not.  After all the flower and greetings card market is worth billions so a clever disruption of that industry could result in a nice bottom line win.  The premise is pretty simple, just click on the gift icon, select the trinket you want sent and then either send virtually and publicly or have it delivered on the sly.

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This is a fun little hack that creates a live-esq Facebook cover photo. Although the actual mechanic looks to be manual, upload a new photo every 60 seconds, the end result is a cool visual timeline displayed across the most prominent space on a Facebook Page.

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This is uber cool.  RedPepper Labs have created an awesome piece of kit built on passive facial recognition software and tied directly to you Facebook profile, interests and details.  Simply register with facedeals and walk into any participating venue.  If your face is positively matched then you’ll automatically be checked into the location and a custom deal will be texted to your mobile!

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Everything in life is better in 3D right?  Well life is in 3D…but thats what LG want you to believe anyway.  To bring this idea to life they turned one of the more flat digital events…the Facebook newsfeed, into a multi-dimensional, responsive experience.  Great illustration of life in 3D but definitely tips the scales on the side of form over function.

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Know your Beatles from your Passats, your Golfs from your Sciroccos, your Camper Vans from your Touaregs, and just happen to live in South Africa?  Then this is for your.  Volkswagen Street Quest is a new Google Street View powered scavenger hunt which challenges participants to find and ‘Pin’ as many Volkswagens on South African roads as possible.  Interested?  Then head over to their Facebook page to begin.

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This is a nice content driven Facebook promotion.  Belgium Bank AXA decided to send a guy called Cedric to ‘Like Place’, a small street in Hawaii, a 7,500 mile trip from Brussels.  The only catch, his credit card had to be powered by likes.  For each Facebook like he received a dollar was added to his cards balance!

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The question that has blighted the world of social media especially two of its biggest players, Facebook and Twitter, for years.  What exactly is the ROI of all the community management, content production and conversation?  The following infographic try’s to solve that puzzle and has a few interesting examples to demonstrate the value of social engagement for brands.

The ROI Of Facebook & Twitter

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