Facebook, Social Media News & Practices

At the huge Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain today, Facebook CTO Bret Taylor took the stage announcing the social web giant is backing initiatives to "standardize" mobile web browsers to help deal with what Taylor characterized as "...rampant technology fragmentation across mobile browsers." 

If you have been thinking, “What I would really like to see on Facebook is more obvious advertising,” your wish is about to be granted. Rumors have been swirling that Facebook is on the verge of rolling out big changes in its advertising system. Reports suggest the changes will be implemented on February 29, but there are signs that the new advertising features may appear sooner than anyone expected.

Most apps on Facebook are about ongoing commitment; they are driven by a need to maintain attention and bringing back visitors. ShortStack, an increasingly popular Facebook App, takes such factors into consideration, but also places emphasis on getting people there in the first place. A visual enhancement and marketing tool, ShortStack helps you build campaigns and design Facebook pages, assembling just the right colors, images, and catch-phrases to draw in customers and turn them onto your playing field. Let’s take a look.

With social networks spiraling into massive virtual communities, emails are almost being circumvented by inter-network messaging via Facebook, Twitter and the others. This presents yet a new problem when it comes to information management, so this week, a platform called Engag.io sets out to offer a solution. This “Gmail-like productivity tool” aims to be your new Inbox, storing the scope of conversations into one hub for easy access and reply chains. Is this just another way of saying email or could it be even more?

This week, OpenText releases a capture solution that provides easier retrieval of content in SharePoint, DocuWare provides better email compliance management and Guidance announces that it is buying CaseCentral, while SAI outlines GRC predictions for healthcare.

Nimble, the CRM app that brings together collaboration, contacts, communication and social networking into one interface, has released version 2.0. The update introduces a cleaner interface, and a host of features that make it easier to manage contacts and engage with one's network.

Marketers constantly create online schemes cleverly employed to trick people into giving up their details, but with the new Sweepstakes app on Facebook, at least this time we get something in return. At first glance, the new giveaway forum would appear to be the ultimate destination for anyone looking to win trips to foreign countries or get  hooked up on all sorts of free goods. The real winner in this game, however, is the contests itself.

For Christmas, I ordered some LEGO Star Wars from an online retailer for my son -- absolutely for my seven-year old, not for me in the slightest, you understand. Now, a couple of times a week I get the usual "Recommended for you" email, but plastered with LEGO. This personal snapshot defines recommendations as still a marketing technique practically in diapers, but helps point to where they should be going.

It took a minute, but, at last, most of us have mastered the art of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and maybe even Google+ if you really care. The next step then is to supervise these various platforms and put them to good uses (other than poking people and crafting snarky captions on photos). There are many ways of exploiting networks, and predictions over the coming year suggest that management marks the latest stage in the evolution of social media. If cleverly employed, it looks like we, the great wide public, are the Internet’s contemporary innovators. 

In its plan to connect every single person in the world, Facebook drew attention last September when the network announced it would upgrade to a new and improved timeline structure, and subsequently release a series of “frictionless apps,” to enhance overall sharing experience for its club of 800 million. These specialized apps are hybrid tools created specifically for your profile page, enabling unique ways of exposing even more about yourself. From what you eat, where you travel, what you listen to, and where you shop, Facebook has invented an efficient way to broadcast everything to your personal globe, so that at any given moment, you can be tracked. Now that the company maintains no privacy, apparently the rest of us must follow suit.

First it was Apple iAds, then Promoted Tweets. Soon, it will be Facebook mobile ads. Whether this was part of the plan all along or due to a sudden need to monetize its growing mobile base in light of its recent IPO, Facebook ads are rumored to start showing sometime next month. Like anything Facebook does, speculation about what mobile ads means for users, stakeholders and prospective investors abound.

With all the news of Facebook's IPO this week, Google's still-fledgling social service marched over another user milestone as the improvements and other changes in the Google ecosystem keep on coming.

Not sure if you heard, but Facebook went public yesterday. The news, while no surprise to most, quickly became the subject of widespread debate, with everyone from Wall Street analysts to Silicon Valley Porsche dealers considering the financial impact of the decision. Will it be the investment of a lifetime or one to pass over, and furthermore, how much are those fortunate little staff members going to inherit from the trade?

Bringing the live experience even closer to home, MediaPlatform today further broadens its WebCaster software to facilitate for the streaming of live or pre-recorded webcasts on Facebook Fan Pages and SharePoint collaboration sites. For corporations, brands and maybe even random YouTube sensations, the possibilities are endless.

Investors can barely contain their excitement about the latest rumors that Facebook, Inc. might be filing its initial public offering (IPO) as early as this week.  Tech IPOs happen almost every day, so why all the excitement about this one? Facebook’s IPO will be one of the largest in history. It will generate thousands of millionaires from those lucky enough to purchase the stock.