Facebook embedded posts

Facebook has now launched embeddable posts, a feature that, much like Youtube's embed function, allows users to embed content onto their own website via copying over code.

Digital marketing for n00bs

Digital. That word scares most marketers that are still clinging on to the traditional means of marketing. However if you don't adapt to the ever changing lifestyles of your target market, then quite frankly you will sink to the bottom of your market pool. Here is an interesting and easy to read infographic detailing the basic understanding in the world of digital marketing.

-Enna

What is Native Advertising

There is a shift emerging within the digital landscape to move towards, what is commonly referred to as native advertising. The long-lasting, favoured banner ad placements are starting to lose their charm with advertisers looking to communicate their messaging in the least disruptive, content integrated way possible.

But what is native advertising?

There lies the problem; it's difficult to find two people who share the same definition.

Putting that aside, an over-arching way to explain native advertising is when an advertiser attempts to engage the viewer by offering valuable content that is related to the user experience. It's highly comparable to an advetorial.

With native advertising spend estimated to grow by more than 12% in 2013 and statistics stating that 52% of users look at native advertising more frequently than standard banners, it really is a method of delivering content that deserves to be recognised and considered.

If you still are a little confused by what native advertising entails, check out this infographic from Mashable.

-Luke

What you need to know when starting in online advertising

If you are new to online advertising, here is a useful glossary of terms:

Ad Network

Multiple sites that can be advertised across by booking through the ad network. E.g. The Rock, The Edge, George FM all have sites that can be booked through the Mediaworks ad network.

Banner

A general term used to refer to standard online advertising, can also refer to a specific placement which usually sits at the top of a website and is rectangular shaped e.g. 728x90; 760x120. 

CMS à Content Management System

This is the system that you use to operate a site ‘behind the scenes’. These systems are set up to be easy to use so that sites can be self-managed.  

CPC à Cost Per Click

This is a common method for paying for online advertising. In this instance, a price is set for each time a user clicks on your advert.

CPM à Cost Per Thousand

This is a common method for paying for online advertising. In this instance, a price is set for when your advert is viewed 1,000 times.

Creative

The name you use when referring to advertising artwork. E.g. an MRec is creative, a TVC is creative.

CRM à Customer Relationship Management

How a company manages existing and future interactions with their customers.

CTA à Call To Action

The aspect of an advert which acts to drive a response from the user/viewer/listener etc.                             E.g. ‘Click here’; ‘Enter now’; ‘Order now’ etc.

CTR à Click Through Rate

The number of clicks an online ad placement achieves divided by the number of times it has been viewed. A CTR of 0.03% across desktop and 0.09% across mobile is the industry standard.

DM à Direct Mail

Sending a message directly to a customer/fan/follower etc.

Engagement

The number of times your advertisement, post, tweet etc. is liked, shared, commented on etc. 

FB à Facebook

Currently the most widely used social medium.

Flash

The most common format for online adverting. Also referred to as a .swf file.  

Frame(s)

The various parts of a file, can be flash, gif etc.

Frequency Cap

Putting a limit to how many times an online ad will be viewed by a unique browser.

GA à Google Adwords

Google’s main advertising product – the ads that you use within Google Display Network: an ad network that allows for advertising across thousands of sites.

GA à Google Analytics

Google’s widely used platform for running reports, gaining insights and monitoring your site.  

Gif

A series of images grouped together to display a message. As Gifs are widely supported across basically any device, they are commonly used as backup files for flash advertising.

Gutters

A possible element of a homepage takeover, large banners that run down both sides of a web page.

HPTO à Homepage Takeover

An advertising placement where you purchase the homepage of a site or the homepage of a section of a site. E.g. www.stuff.co.nz or www.stuff.co.nz/sport

Impressions

The number of times your advertising has been viewed.

Looping

Refers to an online advertisement that continues playing through its frames.

MREC à Medium Rectangle

A very common online advertising placement, also referred to as 300x250, island etc.

Non Looping

Refers to an online advertisement that stops playing and ends on its last frame.

Pixels

How online advertising placements are measured. E.g. 160x600 pixels, 300x250 pixels, 728x90 pixels

PV à Page Views

The number of times a page of a website is viewed across a determined period.

RON à Run of Network

Running an advertisement across the sites that make up an ad network.

ROS à Run of Site

Running an advertisement across a sites sections/pages.

Skin/Wallpaper

Usually an element of a homepage takeover, the background of the site.  

Skyscraper

A common online advertising placement, a vertical rectangle measuring 160x600. 

Unique Browser/Visitor

The way of counting the number of unduplicated people that have viewed your advertising.  

To end with, here is a useful chart of common online advertising placements and the name they most commonly are referred to as:

- Luke

Humanising your brand.

This has been a much debated and researched topic. When does a corporate decide to take the next level at engaging in a human manner with their audiences? Before social media, people had to voice their inquiries/complaints either by phone, mail, email or through a company website. What you would be getting back was a generic, corporate response that showed no unique human emotion that related to the brand. Uniformity is good, I believe. Every inquiry gets a response and is shown the same level of acknowledgement without discrimination. That is the supposed theory behind school uniforms, where each student is treated equally and not judged by physical appearances. 

As a consumer, how do you prefer a brand/company to respond back to your feedback? I personally prefer a customised and emotive response- but I understand that they go through thousands of emails a day. That's where social media comes in to play. This innovative movement has changed the way how brands communicate and market their products/services. It is one of the best tools for obtaining insights and listening to consumers feedback directly.

There appears to be 3 types of moderating styles I have noticed from brand pages.

1. The Corporate

These pages are not so much different from a standard response you may get from filling in a contact form on the company website. They reply back with "copy and paste" or templated responses and lack any emotive responses.


2. The Neglect-or

These brands don't bother to reply to the majority of their queries or engage with fans. This is quite common with International corporate giants such as McDonalds (who disabled their wall) and Dr Pepper.


3. One of the bros

These pages have successfully engaged with their fans, and make sure it is a priority to respond to the majority of comments on a human level. You may find this more commonly in smaller businesses who have time to actively engage with their audience.

Humans crave communication amongst other human beings. They don't want to communicate with corporate entity who doesn't share the same idiom/slang/conversational language as the common person. Some people out their have too much time on their hands and all they want to do is to talk to someone. If you actively engage with your fans, chances are they will regularly engage with your brand and talk to your brand as if they were a living entity. Twitter is a very good example of where Tweeters converse with brands on a human level.

So what is my opinion on humanising brands? I say yes- social media platforms enable us to do so, so why not jump at the opportunity to do it?

- Enna

A Facebook fan is worth $174, research says

Research has found that each fan of a Facebook page is worth $174USD, as posted on Mashable. The research also reveals that this is an increase of 28% from 2010. The full study can be downloaded here.

- Luke

A picture says a thousand words

That's right, but on Facebook it's more like a picture that says one word.

There really isn't that much to write about, as these pictures are self explanatory ;-)

-Enna

A basic guide to digital acronyms

In general marketers tend to use a lot of acronyms, from B2B to ROI, KPI to IO and so on. However, the sheer volume of acronyms used in digital marketing takes this to a whole new level. When starting in digital, the ease of recollection and frequency in which acronyms are thrown around can often be intimidating. So, here's a list of the most common acronyms that are used in digital marketing.

AR - Augmented Reality
CMS - Content Management System
CPC - Cost Per Click
CPM - Cost Per Thousand
CR - Conversion Rate
CRM - Customer Relationship Management
CTA - Call To Action
CTR - Click Through Rate
DM - Direct Mail
DMP - Data Management Platform
DR - Direct Response
ESP - Email Service Provider
FB - Facebook
FTP - File Transfer Protocol
GA - Google Analytics
HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language
HTTP - Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
HTTPS - Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure
IP - Internet Protocol
ISP - Internet Service Provider
PV - Page Views
RON - Run Of Network
ROS - Run Of Site
RT - Retweet
SEM - Search Engine Marketing
SEO - Search Engine Optimisation
SMO Social Media Optimisation
SMS - Short Message Service
UGC - User Generated Content
UV - Unique Visitor
VM - Viral Marketing
XML - Extensive Markup Language  

- Luke

Facebook ph-ph-phone?

Say what? When is Facebook going to stop expanding? Never- they have been rumoured to be bringing out a so called "Facebook Phone". Facebook is not actually manufacturing their phone, but more listing HTC as it's supplier and Facebook supplying the software.

Why would you want a phone that is purely built for Facebooking? Isn't that what the Facebook app is designed for on our phones? Well that 5 second wait to logging into your Facebook app takes too long. Basically this "Facebook Phone" is a personalised home page that connects you closer to your fellow friends. Notifications are now on the home page- no need to log on to the app!

Now this will be great for extreme social bunnys, making it quicker for them to reply back to messages and generally more efficient with responses. Facebook is on an never-ending quest to seamlessly integrating themselves into our lives. It seems that the gap between internet immersion and reality are slowly rolling into one. For example "Google Glass" gives users the chance to take "Google" with them on the road. Slowly but surely we are becoming cyborgs.

I'm not against the Facebook Phone, but I'm quite happy with my iPhone. I guess the only great thing about the Facebook Phone is when you are frustratingly trying to load the app and it continues to crash. Now if it is your homepage, no need to keep refreshing!

-Enna

Facebook new feature: the reply button

How many people noticed awhile back that Facebook gave us the ingenious idea to reply back to people's comment individually? Gone were the days of replying back with a tagged name on an never ending thread. Then suddenly, they took away this feature from brand pages but left it on personal profiles (It was a testing phase).

Now it's back for good and they've brought a new feature with it too. The most engaging comments will now be shown at the top- good and bad news.

The good news for marketers is that you can find out what is your most popular comments without scrolling through the hoards of comments. The bad news is that they maybe negative comments.

One annoying thing I find with this is that now all your fan's comments are out of order! Now when I go to check notifications, Facebook doesn't take me directly to the comment but to the thread. I will now miss out on following up on fan's comments because everything is out of order.

- Enna

Social Media Club (Part 2) - Social Media and PR

The second part of Auckland Social Media Club's first monthly seminar of 2013  focused on the use of social media as a avenue for PR. This centred around the recent launch of 'My Food Bag' which, pre-launch, targeted prominent media personalities that were active on Twitter to send samples to.

'My Food Bag' is a new concept targeted to affluent families. Based on the insight that many people tend to recycle the same recipes over and over again, 'My Food Bag' is a pre-packed bag of gourmet ingredients which are delivered to your door with an easy to follow recipe, so that you can avoid the hassle of shopping and also experience creating a new, tasty dish.

The main ideas shared from this campaign were quite common-sense and can be summed up as follows;

1) Target individuals with large followings who you believe will be an advocate of your product - this can apply to Twitter, blogs, Facebook etc.

2) Be open about sampling - do not try to hide or downplay that these individuals have been given free samples to try. Doing so may detract from the overall purpose of sparking conversation around the launch.

3) Don't dictate - it is generally agreed upon that you cannot tell an individual what to say (or not say). However, you can expect and tell them to use a hashtag (for Twitter) or keyword (e.g. product name) so that their review is easily found by others.

4) Don't expect too much - you need to realise that as careful as you are to select individuals for samples, not all of them will feel compelled to actually review it through a blog or social media. Through sampling across multiple campaigns  you can weed out those who do not contribute and keep sampling those who do.

5) The review belongs to the individual - if an individual is being criticised for accepting free product to review, it is generally agreed upon that it is the individual's reputation which is impacted, not the brands. If the individual is not up front about the sample being free, this will also affect the individual.

- Luke      

Social Media Club (Part 1) - Social Media and PR

Last night saw the first 2013 meeting of the Auckland Social Media Club's monthly seminars. Each month tackling a different topic in front of a panel consisting of a mixture of journalists, publishers, communications professionals, artists, amateur media creators, citizen journalists, teachers, students, tool makers, and other interested collaboraters.

After initial introductions the evening turned to an overview of the key digital highlights from the recent South by Southwest festival, highlights of digital spurred advertising techniques which look to be used increasingly more include:

Big Data - Big data usually includes data sets with sizes beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, curate, manage, and process the data within a tolerable elapsed time. Big data sizes are a constantly moving target, as of 2012 ranging from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data set. Marketers look to increasingly utilise big data in order to tailor advertising solutions to individuals.  

Recommendation Engines - Recommendation engines are systems that seek to predict preferences based on previous behaviour (e.g. suggesting movies based on movies that an individual has previously viewed and enjoyed). These are already in place to some capacity through sites such as Facebook who recommend friends based on existing friends. Expect more sites and digital platforms to utilise this technology moving forward.  

'The internet of things' - This refers to uniquely identifiable objects and their virtual representations in an Internet-like structure. The general idea is that equipping all objects in the world with minuscule identifying devices could be transformative of daily life. For instance, business may no longer run out of stock or generate waste products, as involved parties would know which products are required and consumed. One's ability to interact with objects could be altered remotely based on immediate or present needs, in accordance with existing end-user agreements.

Native advertising - This is focusing on advertising to individuals who will have an interest or find your advertising informative in some way. Current examples include Facebook's sponsored stories and Youtube's Trueview.  

While each of these started as ideas for specific platforms, they have proven so successful that they now look to be used more widely across marketing Initiatives. 

- Luke

Qloo

Sometimes it's difficult to find out new things without the "word of mouth" from friends and family. Or maybe you just don't have to time to go and search for new things? Here's one word that will solve your problems: Qloo.

What is Qloo? At first impression, I thought it was somewhat related to Glee (They share a VERY similar logo/font). Actually this platform is designed to put together recommendations/suggestions of music/clothing/restaurants/bars etc based on your current interests. This will be very handy if you've recently moved into a city/town and are having trouble finding places that cater to your interests.

I visited the gloo.com, but it is still in its final stages of beta. I've registered my "invitation", and hoping they will grant me access because I'm very interested in testing this out. Recently I've struggled to open myself up to new music and clothing lines. I found myself feeling comfortable to sticking to what I know, while being incomprehensible of how my friends are discovering new things. Qloo to me, is a way to make people become more cultured and it will definitely be good for businesses in the area.

- Qloo can suggest new films to entertain you.

-UI design is aesthetically pleasing.

What I'm looking forward to about Qloo is new music suggestions(I joined Spotify because I lacked the ability to discover new music now) and clothing labels... (I'm so sick of buying at Asos/Topshop/mid-class labels #becausetheyaretheonlyonesiknowonlinethatshipquicklytoNZ).

-Enna

Apple iWatch

Aren't we excited about the Google Glass (see post below)? I just wanted to add my two cents to this latest buzz around Google Glass. 

Now you know about the Google Glass, but what do you know about the iWatch? Who wears a watch nowaways? I certainly don't anymore- I rely 100% completely on my iPhone (yes, I had to name my phone as the iPhone itself has become a commodity. The need for smartphones has eliminated the need to use a watch to check our time. Our smartphones have been an extension of ourselves: we just can't leave without it or leave it alone. 

This sleek wristwatch is Siri-enabled and can take voice commands and keep you updated about emails, faccebook status updates and tweets while being wirelessly connected with your phone. However, this is all speculation and we don't know exactly what Apple are planning. I really do hope they can make a game changer as Samsung has released their Galaxy s4 which has generated much hype for Samsung. People are now awaiting Apple to bring out more innovative products as their iPhone5 was not too much different from its predecessors. On an interesting note, here is what Apple released to protect their iPhone5 against Samsung's new Galaxy.

- Mock up designs for the iWatch.

If this proves to be successful, this could be dangerous: our lives will be more completely immersed with technology. We would be eliminating the need to take our phone out to message because everything we need is now on our wrist. There are pros to this is that we won't lose our phones so easily! I unfortunately belong to the #Mybaghastoomanythingsinitandifreakoutwhenicantfindmyphone group. I'm all for Apple's iWatch idea and I think it's another solution to "hands-free" technology for driving. 

-Enna

Google Glass is coming

Google Glass is fast approaching with selected early adopters already being used to test the augmented reality  wearable computer. A retail ready option may be ready as soon as this year.

Google Glass promises to change how users conduct their day-to-day activities, this is perhaps best shown in the How it feels section of their site which shows individuals taking videos, pictures, using Google Search, skyping, translating, chatting and using Google Maps seamlessly in their lives. 

If Google Glass can work as fluidly as their teaser video suggests, then its potential is limitless. Of course, whether this actually happens is a big if. 

Person-to-device issues arise across multiple platforms. Look no further than iphone's Siri which often has problems with accents and tones.     

"Unless Google has made a quantum leap in voice recognition, I hope [it] is going to provide a back-up way to control their glasses," Cass said. "Via an Android phone for example, because otherwise people are going to run into problems ...  if they have a bad network connection — or even just a strong accent." - Stephen Cass    

- Luke

New Facebook Timeline...Again?!

-I'm sure that's how we are all feeling.

- Facebook's new design.

Facebook is constantly changing and redesigning the layout of it's page and timeline- now this is a real game changer (*cough eat your heart out Dominos Pizza NZ): different newsfeeds that is customised to your interests and larger real estate for pictures and updates.

- Consistent feel between the two platforms.

For example, the right side of the page allows you to select different categorised newsfeed. If you are only interested in what your friends are saying, then you can select that category and don't have to really worry about anything else. So what does this mean? GREAT NEWS for all the grumps who dislike seeing "spam" and "advertising", as they can now selectively choose what they want to read and from whom. BAD NEWS is for marketers. "Now how are we going to reach more people so they can like our page?"- We've relied quite heavily on Facebook's advertising features to reach out to different demographics. The current Facebook design features one newsfeed which does get clogged up with sponsored stories and advertisement (which unfortunately does not appeal to parts of the demographic). I personally don't mind advertisement/sponsored stories because it's another way to discover things (coming from an online shopaholic). The redesign was kept in mind to deliver a consistent platform between mobile and desktop versions.

- Mark Zuckerberg delivering the new features.

Marketers- this is not the end when you see a drop in engagement/likes etc. I see it as "quality control"- sentiment will rise rest assure. You will only have fans that actively like your brand and the possibility of "trolls" or non-fans making nasty comments will drop. Ever since Facebook took away the "fan gate" ability to comment on brand pages, anyone could comment without being a fan. This meant your page was open to all sorts of spam and complaints which defeats the whole purpose of a "Fan page". Now with the redesign, the engagement you will receive will be purely from Fans who are actively seeking to engage with you. Now the question is... How do I make my posts stand out from everyone else's????

Personally, yes I am looking very much for this. This is a change that I'm actually looking forward to as it looks uncluttered, clean and simple. I was always against the changes that Facebook made - I resisted the timeline change to the absolute end where I was forced to change. I accept the fact that technology is always changing, and in order to evolve ourselves we have to accept change. So I welcome you "New Facebook" with open arms.

-Enna

Facebook's no longer down with the kids

While Facebook has always had its detractors, anecdotal evidence points to a recent surge driven by younger demos towards navigating away from Facebook and finding a new social medium in which to interact with friends and document their lives. The main reasons for this active search for the next social medium in most cases comes down to issues around Facebook's privacy and the steps the platform has taken away from its original simple design.

Once troubled by a clear skew towards teenagers,  Facebook now has over 1 billion users worldwide and appears to have shaken its 'cool' persona in the process of such growth. Along with this growth a number of changes to privacy have irked the public, such as providing brand pages with personal data and turning users into marketing tools to endorse their brand. In addition to privacy issues, Facebook has changed its look and feel so much that many tweens and teenagers have begun searching for a more simple, straight-forward solution.

Leading the charge for a new social medium to represent teenagers is Instagram. Initially dismissed as just an app in which to catalogue photos, it was the younger audiences that first recognised Instagram as a social platform. Utilising the tried and tested formula of gaining 'likes' (which most demographics, let alone teenagers find addictive), Instagram provides a simplistic environment in which to interact with friends, strangers and celebrities. With 100 million users, Instagram has a swelling user base.  

Other social mediums receiving a lot of buzz at the moment are still in the early stages of their existence to be considered an immediate threat to Facebook's throne for the teenager demographic.

Vine launched at the beginning of this year to little fanfare and there saw a ground swell of excitement. Taking pre-existing technology and presenting it with an interesting new take, Vine fosters creative competition through creating users vying for the most engaging six seconds of video. It's appeal over Instagram can be summarised by the following gif:

     Pheed is another social platform receiving strong interest from teenagers. Launched late last year, Pheed allows users to share text, photos, video and audio (sounds like a slight extension on Facebook doesn't it?). With the user base made predominantly by 14 - 25 year olds (81%) and a landing page (as seen in the image above) that is clearly targeted towards younger demographics, Pheed is already being predicted as the next social craze.

Another thing that Vine and Pheed have over Facebook? They are both still fairly underground - a sure-fire way to attract teenagers.

- Luke

Clean up your Facebook page

Concerned that your Facebook page may have some content on it that you don't want your friends to see? SimpleWash is the answer.

A new app that links with your Facebook account, SimpleWash will check for any profanity or otherwise potentially offensive language on your page. It takes mere moments to check and will search your entire page.

Here's what NOT to do when things go wrong on Facebook

The Original California Burrito Company. Recently been in light of a scandal involving the labeling of their products involved in their Vegetarian/Vegan burritos.

There has been many angry comments targeted towards the Moderator as they claimed they have deleted comments and had been hypocritical on their responses. Read here to view the comments they deleted.
The moral of the story is:
1. Don't take comments personally- but you are allowed to defend the brand if customers are making false claims.
2. Don't delete posts! Thankfully Facebook has a filter spam that hides comments from the public- but only making it visible to the person who made the comment and their friends. Unfortunately California Burrito did not have a spam filter as they still commented on people's posts that contained profanity.

-Enna

Twitter advertising coming to New Zelaand

While Twitter has not seen the pick-up in New Zealand that it has from other countries, it has still proven itself as a useful social media for brands to reach their customers. Brands such as Burger Fuel twitter.com/BurgerFuel and Hell Pizza twitter.com/HELLpizza666 have built loyal followings that outnumber the likes of McDonalds and KFC.

But as a brand, how do you build a loyal following? The nature of a Twitter means that a tweet has a very short life span, much shorter than a facebook post, making it difficult to organically grow followers. Engaging tweets and competitions definitely does help, however can be a tough slog when it comes to acquiring new followers.

Another solution will soon be here. After being available in countries such as North America, UK and Japan, New Zealand will soon be able to advertise on Twitter, through promotion advertising.

Promoted accounts focuses on growing your following, much the same way that a Facebook sponsored brand story works; by advertising your brand page/account.

 
Promoted trends encourages users to tweet about your topic as it appears on their home page e.g. a brand that wants to create a lot of talkability around a new product may choose to do this to drive discussion.

Promoted tweets works in conjunction with an organic tweet to ensure the tweet is seen by a larger audience, therefore increasing awareness.

While still to go live, these advertising options look to open up Twitter a lot more in New Zealand for brands.

-Luke

New IAB Aus report shows strong mobile and video growth

The Australian Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) recently released its annual online report which confirmed that mobile and video are quickly becoming the new superstars of digital.

With $3.3 billion being spent on digital in 2012, market expectations were exceeded by 18%.

Mobile advertising grew by a staggering 220% compared to standard advertising (flash ads etc.) which grew by 10%.

Standard advertising is still dominated by motor vehicles, finance and real estate however, the biggest increases in expenditure came from retail and FMCG as they switch to more of an online focus.

- Luke

Facebook ads will soon target based on your offline shopping habits

As a result of some key partnerships that Facebook announced on Wednesday of this week, they will soon be able to target their ads based on a person's offline shopping habits. 

Data mining firms such as Datalogix, Acxiom and Epsilon have signed a deal with the social media giant which will see them sharing their records about customer's offline purchases to Facebook's Custom Audiences product. In addition, Facebook is also working with BlueKai "as a marketing data platform to bring a brand's first party site data to use for targeting on Facebook". Facebook Custom Audiences saw a release in August 2012 and lets advertisers identify users by their Facebook ID, phone number or email address (for example, Pizza Hut online customers could be found and targeted).

While Facebook advertising continues to blur the lines between being a monetary source for the company and removing the privacy of their users, Facebook were quick to elaborate that only pre-defined targeting categories will be available such as “soda drinkers” or “auto-intenders”.

“For example, an auto dealer may want to customize an offer to people who are looking to buy a new car. To do this today, many businesses work with third parties to better understand how to identity and reach that audience. With today's updates businesses can now do this same thing by showing ads to people on Facebook who may be in the market for a new car.”

Facebook also stated that they will not be sharing personal information about users with marketers and the option is always there, as with all other Facebook ads, to opt out at any time.    

- Luke

Facebook's Graph Search

It has been just over one month since Facebook made the announcement that Graph Search would be coming. Originally speculated as being Facebook's answer to a search engine, these rumours were quickly put to rest by Facebook co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg himself.

“Graph search is not web search, it’s about graphing our part of the web.”                  - Mark Zuckerberg   

In demonstrations, Zuckerberg and the tool’s creators showed how you can use ‘Graph Search’ to dig through the massive amounts of information on the site to find exactly who or what you want to find. The tool essentially allows you to put natural queries into a search engine to make it easier to dig information out of the site. The searches will initially be limited to people, places, interests and photos, but posts and status messages will be searchable this way as well at some point in the future.

But how will Facebook Graph Search affect businesses? 

Thanks to the roll-out of a beta test we are able to find out. After spending several weeks on the waiting list, my account was granted access. After logging into Facebook one morning, I noticed that Graph Search had replaced the previous search function that appears in each accounts news feed.

By clicking within the search area, the user is met with various suggestions on how to begin their search.  

As a user, the first thing you notice is the ease in which the search algorithm guides you through what you are wanting to find. For instance, a search for 'People who are fans of KFC NZ' is text-predictive and quickly takes you to an analysis of the KFC NZ fan base. 

From here the user is able to further delve into the KFC NZ fan base through the 'Refine this search' and 'Extend this search' functions, as shown to the right in the image above. By going to 'More pages they like' the user can then see pages which have the highest crossover with KFC NZ.

It doesn't take very long to get familiar with how to use the search function and from here the user is able to go as in-depth as they wish. Searching the KFC NZ fan base for fans based in New Zealand can be used across a variety of categories, such as the below image which shows the top two athletes that are liked by KFC NZ fans. 

In addition to searching these categories, direct searches can also be done. This means that a Marketing Manager can use Facebook to see if there is a strong correlation between customers (Facebook fans) and an upcoming promotional opportunity (e.g. movie releases, sports teams, concerts etc.). Although early days yet, Graph Search does have benefits for businesses, albeit it is best suited to act as a guide to get to better know your customer base and should be considered an indicator for finding possible correlations as opposed to hard fact.          

- Luke

Imagine if you could eat yourself....

Stumbled upon this: Imagine being able to create a your own gummi doppleganger. The model in the middle looks a bit awkward in that Gummi Bear dress... I think there's going to be lots of sore tummies around if we were to hoard this gummie bear around...(like Homer and his sandwich)

- Enna

Harlem Shake??

As you may or may not have heard: We have/had been hit with the viral case of the "Harlem Shake". What is the "Harlem Shake"? It has nothing to do with the district of Harlem, NY but is a meme created by some teens in Queensland, Australia. These teens happen to choose a song named "Harlem Shake" for their meme. It starts out with someone dressed with a helmet/obscene costume dancing in gyrating pelvic thrusting movements for 15 seconds (while everyone is mind their own business). Then when the bass line drops, everyone dances crazily and often with weird props or costumes.

Corporations have also caught onto this "Harlem" bug.... Carl's Jr US has submitted their Facebook a fan version, and KFC US has their "Harland Shake".

I wonder if this fad will last as long as Kony 2012?

- Enna