Social Media

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Blending Television Ads and Social Media Promotions

One of the best ads on television that I feel does a pretty job of promoting their social outlets is “Ask Me” ads from Tempur-Pedic. The whole idea behind this television ad, do not take Tempur-Pedic’s word for it…ask the community about their products. As you watch, you will see the ad challenging you to ask your friends on Facebook and Twitter about their products…encouraging the community to speak.

As we look around on television, we are starting to see more and more organizations promote their social outlets. Even during the MLB Postseason play, you can see a Twitter hashtag in the background (#POSTSEASON)…encouaging people to use this hashtag when on Twitter talking about postseason play.

We are also seeing many television ads adding the social icons at the end of the spot. If you see below, ESPN’s College Gameday is promoting their website, Twitter, and Facebook channels.

So I have a few questions about this trend…I will use this College Gameday television spot as a part of this analysis. So if you look at this add, this is the last 5 seconds of the 30 second spot. It is asking you to do a few things:

1) Tune in on Saturday’s at 9am
2) Visit the CollegeGameday.com website
3) “Like” their Facebook Page
4) “Follow” their Twitter account

So, let me ask this…how do I find the Facebook page or Twitter account for College Gameday? I guess I can go to the website CollegeGameday.com and it will give me a place to click the link to the Facebook and Twitter accounts. But, we are forcing people to search to find this information…don’t we want to make this as easy as possible.  Why can’t they give me the exact URL to these accounts so I can find these outlets faster?

But here is my bigger question…these are a lot of options to choose from in the last five seconds: tune in, visit the website, Like, and Follow. Ok, which one do I do? I guess I pick the one that is right for me, maybe? This is the same as having all those social outlet buttons on a blog post, so many to choose and not sure which one?

Back to my question, a lot of options to choose from in a short amount of time (5 seconds to be exact). I am sorry, we live in a DVR/YouTube age to rewind. But, as a user or social consumer of information, which outlet is going to give me what? Plainly put, what is difference between each outlet? What is different from the Facebook page that is any better/less important that the Twitter account. Also, why should I go to the website? Which one should I choose and why?

As I look through each online outlet (website, Facebook, and Twitter), I am starting to see some interesting things.

1) The website basically informs the audience where College Gameday will be hosting their show each week during the football season. They also are pulling in their Facebook and Twitter feeds into one spot halfway down the page, below a lot of video content.

2) The Twitter account is a social outlet just for the ESPN Analyst. ESPN is not engaging with their community, they are sharing/chatting/updating between their own sponsored Twitter accounts, yet not engaging with the college football fan community. ESPN is pushing their community as a marketing engine, informing the public of their thoughts and opinions. The @CollegeGameday Twitter account has close to 138,000 followers.

3) The Facebook page is a place to share rich media, specifically video and photos from the weekly stops along with top college football news. Each Facebook post has LOTS of comments from the fans, engaging in conversation about the posted topic. The College Gameday Fan Page has close to 714,000 “Likes” or fans.

So, why am I addressing this issue.

1) Why are we burying social outlets in the last five seconds of a television spot?
2) Why are we not providing direct URL’s for the audience to find these social outlets?
3) Why are we sharing to many outlets to choose from…instead of focusing out marketing efforts on one outlet and what the community will get from this specific outlet?

I want to see these ads explaining to me why should I go find your Facebook page or Twitter account. Why should I take the time and what will I get from this social experience. ESPN does a good job of coming up with creative television spots promoting a topic, show, or initiative. You would think they could show us why to engage in their Facebook page or Twitter account.

We can do so much more than just bury a bunch of social outlet logos at the end of a television spot . We can give our audiences a reason to engage with a community, this might give them more of a reason to search for our social outlet and join our/their conversations.

Here is one of the ESPN College Gameday spots for your enjoyment:

Do you have any examples that you have seen where television ads are putting social channel icons at the end of the spots? I would love to know what you have found or noticed!

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“Social Media Return On Investment” – The Mobile Device Industry

With the iPhone4S to be released tomorrow for millions of Americans…we cannot wait to tap into this new device. As we look through the specs of this new, faster mobile device…we see that has the HSDPA technology built in stating that it can leverage up to 14.4Mbps download speeds. Now, there are many that have tested this feature in large, metro areas stating that these speeds in reality are not half this speed. But there are Android phones like the Droid Bionic that are tapping into the Verizon 4G LTE network with faster download speeds.

Yes…our mobile devices can access the network faster and faster and faster. Reading through the OnQ blog by Qualcomm as they address this explosion of social media technologies:

“With all this expansion, one lingering question on everybody’s mind is ‘will the wireless networks be able to keep up with this growth?’ The obvious answer is a resounding YES. As I have explained in these blogs, 3G/4G networks are well equipped now, and evolving in the future, to address the massive increase in the sheer volume of data growth.”

Nielsen release their 3rd Quarter 2011 Social Media Report with some interesting stats on mobile device usage: “The ability to access social media is a commonly used feature among mobile owners. According to a recent study by NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey Company, nearly 2 in 5 social media users access these services from their mobile phones.”

Here is how social media access ranks against other features offered on their mobile devices (from Nielsen’s 3rd Quarter 2011 Social Media Report):

The above statistics suggest we are access social media outlets on our mobile devices more than access the web. WOW!

In Steven Van Belleghem presentation “Social Media Around the World” on slide 140 states, “56% of smart phone users follow a brand on social media.”

What does all this mean…people are accessing information via smart phones. People are heavily using social media outlets on their smart phones, creating data transfer which demands more bandwidth. The more the usage, the more the demand. This demand is fueling the growth of the mobile network. You think you see a lot of advertisements between the major carriers talking about 4G, 4G LTE, unlimited data, throttling…you need to start researching this information. We are data transfer hogs and connecting to others via our smart phones. This is fueling the growth in our networks, which is leading to large investments in the mobile infrastructure and mobile gadgets like iPhones and Droids.

Prakash Sangam, Senior Manager, Technical Marketing at Qualcomm, continues his explanation on the OnQ blog post:

“As has been very well established by now, smartphones are the key drivers for this increase in data demand. When you take a close look under the hood, interesting facts emerge about smartphone usage behavior and the corresponding network resource utilization.

Unlike the connected laptop or computer, smart phones connect intermittently to the network, and generate very small amounts of extremely bursty traffic. For example, when you check for updates from email programs or from social media apps (e.g., Facebook, Twitter), check weather, use location based services, send presence updates for IMs… and many more activites — often described as “chatty apps.”

Every time these apps get updates, the smartphone has to establish the connection, do the data transfer and tear down the connection, which means lot of signaling. Often that means more signaling than actual data transfers. There have been many studies on this, validating the fact that smartphone-generated signaling overwhelms wireless networks. The trend of vastly popular social media going mobile will only further amplify this effect.”

Our smart phone usage combine with our social media usage via these devices is fueling the growth of these data networks. These major carriers are banking on social media usage, connectivity, and ultimately our desire to continue to want to purchase the newest gadget for the faster speeds.

So, why did Apple release the iPhone 4S instead of the big jump to the iPhone 5? Well, many speculate…but here is an interesting perspective from Business Insider:

“If Apple had launched a radically new iPhone 5, more of the folks who currently own iPhone 4 would have upgraded, so Apple would have sold some more 4S units. As it is, the iPhone 4S is likely to appeal primarily to iPhone 3G and 3GS owners, non-smartphone owners, and non-iPhone owners, most of whom (like me) are presumably stoked to buy the iPhone 4S.”

Here is the game…get more people on faster networks, faster infrastructure, and newer technology. These mobile devices, their speed, their apps, and their access  to faster networks fuels consumers to access social outlets like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social applications. The real social media return on investment is the mobile technology and infrastructure that supports the connectivity.

*Blog header image from Yugatech.com.

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The best long term blogging SEO solution is YouTube!

So here is a video that has been trending on YouTube for a while…right now it has over 8 million views…WOW! There is a lot of Google/YouTube traffic surrounding this video. Imagine leveraging that traffic for your blog. Now you would have to create a video that generates that type of excitement, but the point being…their is a lot of rich opportunities when integrating great video content from YouTube into a blog.

I am fascinated why more people do not talk about the value in integrating video into your blogging routine. It has and always will be a no brainer for me. So much conversation talks about the tremendous leverage you get when you share your blog posts via Twitter, Facebook, RSS Readers, Subscribe, and any other distribution platform. But no one is talking about why integrating video from outlets like YouTube really creates long term digital success for blogging.

So let’s take YouTube for a second…here are some stats from YouTube:

Traffic

  • Over 3 billion videos are viewed a day
  • YouTube is localized in 25 countries across 43 languages
  • YouTube’s demographic is broad: 18-54 years old
  • YouTube reached over 700 billion playbacks in 2010

Metrics

  • YouTube mobile gets over 400M views a day (up 3x year/year), representing 13% of our daily views
  • The YouTube player is embedded across tens of millions of websites

Social

  • Nearly 17 million people have connected their YouTube account to at least one social service (Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, Buzz, etc)
  • Over 12 million people are connected and auto-sharing to at least one social network
  • 150 years of YouTube video are watched every day on Facebook (up 2.5x year/year) and every minute more than 500 tweets contain YouTube links (up 3x y/y)
  • 100 million people take a social action on YouTube (likes, shares, comments, etc) every week
  • An auto-shared tweet results in 6 new youtube.com sessions on average, and we see more than 500 tweets per minute containing a YouTube link

So…how does this help your blog when you combine video from YouTube?

“YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world with over 3 billion searches per day. So of course you want to have an optimized YouTube presence. By that, I mean you want to have a well branded YouTube channel with optimized videos,” via SEOinc.com.

Well…let’s get down to the basics.

When you begin creating a blogging strategy over a period of time, you begin mapping out the content you might want to write about. At the same tokin, you can begin thinking about a YouTube strategy. Specifically, mapping out video content you can create that can pair and supplement your written blog posts. As you write each post, you produce each coordinating video. That video is uploaded to your YouTube channel. Your YouTube channel needs to have your information and information about your blog in the about area.

For each video you create, you need to have the following:

  1. Great title that includes the keywords you would use to search for the video.
  2. Great description with keys words about the content of the video. This description should also include a link to your blog, maybe even the actual blog post.
  3. Tags that can be used to search for this video.

Once you write the post, use the embed code from YouTube to embed within your blog post. You have officially linked a specific YouTube video to a specific blog post on your blog. The YouTube video has it’s own unique URL inside your YouTube channel and it is embedded in a blog post with a specific URL inside your blog. You have just connected your blog to the largest search engine inside the Internet. By the way, here is a great post about how to optimize each YouTube video for great SEO…CLICK HERE.

Connecting the DOTS!
Now, think about the stats above. Every time you Tweet, share on Facebook, include this blog post on a newsletter…you have shared two distinct links to two pieces of rich content. This not only helps your audience fing your video via your blog, but also via Google since YouTube is owned by Google. Each time you share, you are sharing exponentially two pieces of rich media creating lots of linkages between your blog, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and any other online outlets. This linkage system begins to rank higher in Google’s algorithm, placing your content in a much more likely position to be found.

Why Connecting YouTube to your blog works!
So, if you can write a blog post, included a specific YouTube video from your channel, and share across all the social outlets…then you are much more likely to be found than just writing a blog post. You have connected the rich descriptions and tags from both the blog post and the embedded YouTube video in world of search engines by simpley sharing on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or any other social media sharing outlet. For every share, you are broadcasting two pieces of media (blog and YouTube video) rather than one. And since YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine, and since Google and YouTube are on in the same, you have immediately connected a Google searching opportunity with your blog…merely by posting a video.

Below is a GREAT infographic surrounding the world of video sharing!

One nation under video
Infographic by: Wistia

Also…here is a great presentation below, how to optimize YouTube videos for rich SEO. If you cannot see the presentation below, CLICK HERE to go directly to the website.

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Finding inspiration for your blog…be yourself!

There was a wonderful discussion on #Blogchat Sunday night surrounding how do we find inspiration to blog when we are faced with writers block. Great discussion and great question. I think this is a bigger question than just blogging…it is a creative writing question.

Blogging is a digital display of  our most passionate thoughts. It is the place to share our ideas, our thoughts, our visions, our business…it is our editorial voice for online ownership. Blogging is very personal.

So how do we take something so personal and put it to paper, as the old cliche goes. What makes us sit down and type away, and share our thoughts with a mass audience. It comes from inspiration…it is the connection between our ideas and how we articulate these ideas in a digital paradigm. Most people think blogging is just about writing. Some of the best blogs are more that just words, they are pictures, videos, podcasts…they are the visual representation of our thoughts.

In order to understand the question how to find inspiration to blog or write…we must figure out what inspires us. Inspiration comes from connection…how we are able to connect with our ideas and articulate those ideas in a way for others to consume. How, when, where do I find inspiration? It is about trust and listening. We have to trust our instincts and listen to the little creative bug that says, “that is a great idea…so you better write it down.”

Blogging is more than just inspiration. Inspiration comes at the oddest times for me. It might come at 4am when I am laying awake in the bed. It might be standing in the shower. It might be when I am riding down the road. But when a creative thought comes across my mind…I know I must find a way to document and articulate that thought. If I am driving, I might try to record some audio of my thoughts. If it is in the middle of the night…I might pick-up my iPad and jot down some notes. If it is a visual image infront of me, I might pull out my camera and snap a picture.

Blogging is more than just writing…it is capturing and articulating media. So many people preach that we must use pictures, video, and other digital mediums to grab interest or even leverage SEO. Yeah…those are great thoughts. But as a documentary storyteller, I think we should use those mediums to articulate our thoughts. We should use video when video explains our thoughts better than the written word. We should use images or pictures when reinforcing our written argument. We should use audio from a podcast or MP3 when sounds bring meaning and depth to our explanations.

Blogging is more than just communication…it is illustrating our digital thoughts in a way so the visual world can see our world view. Blogging is the one time we can combine all the visual and digital means to share our thoughts. We have the ability to help our audiences navigate through our story.

So where do we find inspiration…make sure we are truly connected to why we write, why we blog, why we share. Trust that if we are not inspired to write, blog, or even share…to trust that inspiration will present itself again. We just have to be willing to listen to our creative inspiration…and share those thoughts.

***Image is from Christina Berry’s Blog: http://christinaberry.me/inspiration/

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Flu Season – Is it too late to create a Physician Practice Facebook page?

I have met with more physician practices and pediatrician groups who want to start a Facebook page specifically for flu season. They explain the main reason is to share information about flu season with their patientes. So…is this really the right reason to start a page, or even the right time?

Based on the CDC’s website: “In the Northern hemisphere, winter is the time for flu, but the exact timing and duration of flu seasons vary. While flu outbreaks can happen as early as October, most of the time flu activity peaks in January or later.” Given this information, we have entered into flu season with it potentially peaking during the winter months, more specifically peaking in February.

So, should you use this as an opportunity to start a Facebook Page for your practice for flu season? Well, here are some things to think through:

  1. Are you going to use this Facebook page for more than information about flu season?
  2. Do you think you have enough time to get all your patients to “Like” the page so they can receive information about 2011-2012 flu season.
  3. Exactly what are you going to share about flu season on a weekly basis, information that people are willing to have this show up on their personal Facebook newsfeed?
  4. How else is your practice communicating information about flu season and what tools are you using? (website, newsletter, brochures, in-office communication)
  5. How are you going to use Facebook to build a social community around your practice outside of flu season?
  6. Do you have time to commit to maintaining the Facebook page, to specifically connect with your patients?
  7. Is your practice a part of a hospital system? If so, can you leverage their Facebook community to share information about flu season?

Bottomline…it is never “too late” to start a Facebook page. But, you have to think through how you want to use this social outlet beyond flu season and if you have the time and resources to connect with your patients using this social outlet.

Here are some great links about about flu season from the CDC’s wesbite:

  • What to expect from the 2011-2012 Flu Season: CLICK HERE
  • Information about the flu vaccine from FLU.gov: CLICK HERE
  • CDC’s information about the flu vaccine: CLICK HERE
  • CDC’s Twitter account dedicated to the flu season: @CDCFlu
  • How-to set-up a Facebook page by Mashable.com: CLICK HERE
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What fatherhood has taught me about the social space?

Rose is a month old, yes! Today, she is now a month old…she was born on September 6th and from the very moment she came into our lives, I have seen life through a new set of eyes. Now I am starting to  understand the statement my mother has preached to me over the years…a parent’s love is like no other.

One of the things that Sarah and I agreed upon when Rose was born, we wanted to document the whole experience. Yes, we believe in photography and we also believe in sharing our joy with our close friends and family. Sarah and I actually spent the good portion of our wedding budget on photography, hiring a wonderful portrait photographer and photojournalist. So when Rose was on the way, we knew we had to capture the event.

Given this statement, our family members are social creatures as well and they all are aspiring shutterbugs. The first moment we knew we had a social media situation on our hands…when the family met Rose for the first time and they were taking pictures with their smart-phones. Sarah and I had been up all night…Rose was no more than an hour old. We had to put the kibosh on uploading pictures to Facebook. Now this seems weird, but we did not want someone else, other than Rose’s parents, sharing the first pictures of Rose with the world.

As I was standing behind a glass wall giving Rose her first bath, my sister-in-law was snapping pictures with her iPhone. As I looked up, I could see the reflection of Facebook. I had to stop the nurse, hand Rose over, walk over and bang on the window. I had to tell Sarah’s sister…no uploading pictures to Facebook until Sarah and I could hold Rose together and share our own pictures. Sounds a bit selfish, but I am sure you understand.

But this was only the beginning, friends and family visited the hospital room over the next few days. Sarah was recovering and I was trying to enjoy the moments. People taking pictures with Blackberry’s, iPhones, and Droids. Before we knew it…photos of Rose were being uploaded. Sarah and I were all over Facebook after a long night in the hospital. Sarah was still recovering from just giving birth…she was tired and probably not happy with her appearance.

Over the last month, we have been trying to filter through the wonderful images uploaded and some that just did not needed to be shared online. The tremendous reach of Facebook’s Photo Albums are tremendous. Many large and small organizations have built tremendous followings with just sharing images including Children’s Hospital Boston with over 650K “Likes”. We have become a part of a public newsfeed. This former journalist who was not afraid to plaster someone’s daily rituals on the six o’clock news now had his most private, yet exciting moment shared all over Facebook…and did not even realize it.

If you are like me…your Facebook account might be a combination of personal friends and professional acquaintances. You might even have clients and business relationships inside your Facebook account. Each person might have the ability to see each picture uploaded each time your name is tagged on an image. The reach of a photo is tremendous.

How have we succumb to this point in our social space. We want to share so fast we do not even think about the potential ramifications of an image. Someone’s excitement might be someone else’s most private moment. Are we even prepared to write social media policies for our friends and families…I thought that was for the corporate world.

As I look back over the past month with my new little girl…there is an upside to the Facebook sharing madness. The whole event has been well documented. It has also been well shared. Believe me…I have had people I did not even know walk up to me in a restaurant congratulating me on my beautiful girl.  Thank you Facebook for providing the platform.

But here is food for thought…when you share, are you sharing with the best intentions. Have you sat back and considered what you are sharing might be a private moment for another? Or has the expectation of privacy been long thrown out the door with this social sharing revolution?

*** Images by Tiffiney Addis of TiffineyPhotography.com. She is wonderful and we are blessed to be working with her over the next year!

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Time suckers…yes they are…the Facebook addiction! We are trapped!

It was just this past week while I was working with a group of physicians, one pediatrician asked me why they should care about Facebook. I answered to this 25 year veteran of children’s medicine…look at the numbers. The gate keeper to medical decisions in families are women from the ages of 25-44 and these women are the main audiences on Facebook. The pediatrician looked at me and he understood…but I could tell something was bothering him. It is the same thing that is bothering me…time management. How do we squeeze this into their ever busy lives.

Nielsen released social networking stats showing that women from the ages of 18-34 are the most active on social networks. 53.5% of all U.S. social network users spend the most time on Facebook. Last week, Facebook shared that 500 Million people have been on Facebook on any given day. According to Facebook, the new profile will be your story, revealing your life in one single page. That is scary when you think about it…our life charted out in one single page. Are we addicted? You would think that the top addictions in the US might be smoking and gambling, nope. Here is a list of America’s Top 5 Addictions according to best selling author of Addict Nation, Jane Velez-Mitchell:

1. Prescription Pill Addiction
2. Food Addiction
3. Addiction to Crime and Punishment
4. Addiction to Shopping
5. Addiction to Technology
Jane Velez-Mitchell’s book Addict Nation suggests “Cyber addiction is perhaps the most complex societal contagion America is facing today because the nature of the Internet is all encompassing. There is email, texting, Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, Skype, Google, Yahoo, iTunes, and innumerable chat rooms. The Internet also acts as a porthole for other addictions like online gambling and porn, making it easy to score with a simple ‘click.'”

There is even a new disorder call the Facebook Addiction Disorder or FAD. Yes, I kid you not! FAD, or Facebook Addiction Disorder, is “a condition that is defined by hours spent on Facebook, so much time in fact that the healthy balance of the individual’s life is affected. It has been said that approximately 350 million people are suffering from the disorder that is detected through a simple set of six-criteria. People who are victims of the condition must have at least 2-3 of the following criteria during a 6-8 month time period.” Click here to read more about Facebook Addiction Disorder and The 6 Symptoms of FAD.

It is no surprise that social media outlets are time suckers. More and more organizations are questioning whether they should let employees interact on social networks while in the workplace. But here is a new part of that equation. The more time we spend, the larger the network grows…but the new variable are the changes made to outlets like Facebook. The more changes made, the more time we spend trying to figure out the changes, the more the community grows, the more we are not willing to vacate our investment.

Yes…Facebook has been making changes and as the largest social network, community members find it hard to vacate the experience. So many pictures are uploaded, so many friends online, so much time we engage and share our precious information.

I have to admit, I logged on this afternoon and I felt a bit overwhelmed. I sat an wondered, how much of my information is private? How much time is it going to take to figure out the changes? How much more am I going to have to worry about who sees what, what is shared, and what is shared with who. With the increasing amount of privacy settings (offered by Facebook including the ability to segment our updates via lists, public statuses, and now the subscribe option), these options continue to create so many segmented channels, we are having to increasingly spend more time thinking who we are sharing “what” information.

These options, yes all these new privacy options we highly requested as community members. As we received more and more friend invitations, we were noticing that more and more people were creeping into our lives. We began accepting invitations from people we might have met once, yet felt obliged to accept. Admit it…so many times you selected accept because you knew they knew someone you see daily or they sit in the cubicle next to you. This obligation has been causing the amount of people we are friends with in Facebook to increase to a point where it is just getting out of control. This increase caused our concerns of privacy which led to mass audiences requesting more options to segment information…and here we stand. Trying to figure out how to manage all these options…we are trapped.

We are now trapped in a predicament whether to thin out our friends on Facebook or submit to the multitude of options when it comes to how we share, let’s say, the pictures of children. Yes…we uploaded that new picture and for a brief second…we wondered, who needs to see this and how will I manage who tags the picture and which list it should be posted. Yes…these options have created a decision pattern that is beginning to detract from the main reason we joined Facebook…to share.

This culture of choosing is trickling down into our daily lives, this idea of who is a part of of our Facebook friends list is dictating who we are taking to during lunch or our business relationships. I have heard more and more conversations in businesses describing or sharing a story as they are wondering why they were de-friended or even blocked. This offline exchange is creating the barometer for which we are choosing our in-person relationships.

Family relationships are learning their status in the family when they notice a brother-in-law, sister-in-law, or even maternal relationships change online. The family dinners are surrounded by the uncomfortable lack of conversation as each person wonders why they are no longer receiving status updates from the loved one sitting beside them.  This Facebook culture is beginning to shape our in-person lives, creating larger divisions just because we tagged someone in a picture they did not feel they looked their best. Admit it…you have been mad at mom or dad when they captured a picture of you not looking your best, then uploaded to Facebook, tagged your name, which put’s that no so good image out there for your circle of online friends to see. Better shave everyday.

We created these options…we wanted the ability to only share a picture, a status update, a piece of life-like information only with certain people. These options we requested and now, we have bought into these options with same hard distinctions as the high school party invitations. This thing we call Facebook has now infiltrated our every move, with hours of investment that we have a hard time living without. We have so much time invested…stopping for a week is just like giving up cigarettes. This addiction is shaping our culture. It is a time sucker and we created this Facebook. They gave us what we wanted.

So…my thesis is ths: The more time we spend on Facebook, the larger the community grows, the more Facebook will continue to make changes!

*** Image credit http://mytechquest.com/facebook/22-cool-desktop-wallpapers-for-facebook-lovers/

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I am rolling! The ironic public outcry about Facebook, using Facebook.

I think it is so freaking funny and flat out ironic the vast public out-cry surrounding the changes on Facebook today. Here I list the reasons…

1) Facebook is a free outlet that allows people to connect…AT NO COST! ***But this is not the reason for this post. We know it is free, so what.
2) This public outcry is happening on Facebook. Ok…think for a second. People are complaining about the changes made on the Facebook interface, using Facebook to publish their complaints, connect with others with similar feelings about how much they hate the changes on Facebook, connect with new people in comment areas making new friends where people are complaining about the changes in Facebook, creating a PR machine online so people can search how to deal with the changes on Facebook. This is so brilliant!

Ok…as of July 2011 Facebook is the number one visited web property internationally! Yes…check it out here:
http://www.google.com/adplanner/static/top1000/

So what has changed…well, let us look for a second. Not much…just more traffic and PR maybe?

Well, another brilliant PR effort for Facebook today. All it took is for Facebook to publish the changes last night, and in the last twenty-four hours more online news outlets have written about the changes including CNET, Baltimore Sun, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Mashable, even the Christian Science Monitor. Yes, just by making a few user-experience changes, a public outcry turned into a media circus providing tons of coverage about the complaints and how it really effects the end-user. All of the reactions, write-ups, and blog posts led to interpretations of how to deal with the changes.

What is so great about this…the absolute irony, so many business and individuals depend on Facebook for daily communication. Companies invest tons of money on their Facebook pages, consultants, campaigns, all to capitalize from the rich traffic and communities based in this online community portal. Since Facebook is so rich in human capital…average users which are Facebook’s human capital…any changes create the feedback loop for Facebook, communicating how the changes effect the user base. FREE RESEARCH!

So a few changes have yielded free PR, free research, and a massive uprising that is really a bunch of petty complaints because you can’t find someone’s pictures fast enough. And then you fuss about it on the mere social network that made you mad. This circle…this feedback loop is the mere reason why Facebook is the number one social network in 2011. If it really made you mad, and you really did not like the updates, and you really want to make a statement…then do what you did with MySpace – QUIT USING IT. Then Facebook will get the message. But, complaining about small changes socially on a social network only reinforces what they do so well…connect people with a common cause. It just so happened to be Facebook today.

***Image from SomeEcard.com

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The Facebook Update…more changes

OK…there are bunches of changes! I am not going to type all of them out, because there are so many other smart people that have done this!

If you want to watch the above video in HD, here is the link:
https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10100658170103643

Official Facebook Blog Post on the recent changes:
https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150286921207131

This is what is included as an explanation in this post:
1. News Feed: See What Matters at the Top
2. Ticker: Join Friends in Real-Time

Here is where to learn more about the subscribe button on Facebook’s Blog:
https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150280039742131

Here is where to learn more about Friend Lists:
https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150278932602131

Here is a great blog post called New Facebook: 6 Things you Need to Know:
http://blog.lujure.com/2011/09/21/newfacebookchanges/

Here is what is discussed in New Facebook: 6 Things you Need to Know:
1. Top Stories and Most Recent now in one News Feed
2. Ticker becomes official
3. The Subscribe Button
4. The New Friend Button with Smart Lists
5. “Profile” disappears
6. Last but not least…
– Business pages do not need 25 Likes for a custom URL.
– More emails from Facebook
– The “Translate” button
– Links to track the path of a shared post

Finally, here is a great video by Brad Panovich giving a hands on tour exactly how Facebook has changed!
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1989051093764

Finally, a great post by Mashable.com that covers all the changes with images and explanations.
http://mashable.com/2011/09/20/facebook-news-feed-revamp/