Tag: Facebook

Facebook To Expand Its Messenger App Into Multifaceted Platform

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original article on: TechCrunch

Taking a page straight out of WeChat’s and LINE’s playbooks, Facebook has unveiled its plan to expand its Messenger app into a full-fledged media platform by allowing third-party integration with content, information, and new functionality. Until now, the Messenger App has basically been copying the monotonous messaging experience on Facebook, and it should be interesting to see how it will experiment with new developer capabilities to offer new functions for users and new opportunities for brands.

Facebook To Enable Easy Social Listening For Marketers

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: Re/code

Facebook is looking to help advertisers better understand what people are talking about with a new “Topic Data” social listening tool. It mines Facebook posts for keywords and phrases for insights into how users feel about a particular brand, event, or subject. The social media giant claims that all information used for topic data will be anonymized and aggregated, and it is partnering with DataSift to help develop and scale the topical data.

What Retailers Need to Know about Facebook’s New Ad Tool

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: AdWeek

Facebook is giving Google a run for its ad money by launching a new Dynamic Product Ads platform specifically for retailers. With this new offering, retail brands such as Target will be able to upload their product catalogues and allow the social media giant to generate targeted ads for each item. By harnessing insights from the behavioral and location data of its users for product-specific offers, Facebook might just have a shot at competing with Google AdWords.

Virtual Reality—The Next Big Thing In Social Media?

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: The Verge

Some wondered why Facebook acquired Oculus VR for $2 billion last year, and now it seems like we are getting some answers: Facebook is reportedly building versions of its apps in virtual reality.  No further detail about the VR apps has been released, but sources say that future Facebook users will be able to share their current environment with other users via an app, which could just become a new version of social media sharing in the near future.

Guess Which Major Global Market Is Getting Free Internet From Facebook

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: TechCrunch

Following recent launches in Colombia and several African countries, Facebook’s charitable plan of entering emerging global mobile markets continues, with India becoming the newest country to receive free mobile Internet services provided by Facebook’s Internet.org project. Partnered with local operator Reliance, the service is currently limited to six states, but Facebook states that it is looking to provide Internet access to over one billion unconnected Indian consumers soon.

 

How Facebook Is Using Beacons To Launch Place Tips

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: VentureBeat

Facebook is looking to take on Yelp and Foursquare with a new feature for its mobile app that delivers useful info about your location right into the News Feed. Dubbed “Place Tips”, this new feature will show you things like posts and photos your friends have shared about a certain place or business nearby, should you choose to opt in.

Moreover, the company is planning to test out beacons with small local businesses in order to make its tips as geographically accurate as possible. The pilot program has started for users in New York City, marking Facebook’s first entry into the hyperlocal market, just as our creative director Scott Varland predicted months ago.

How Facebook Is Using Real-time Targeting In Super Bowl Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

Read the original on: AdAge

Brands will be able to buy ads against Facebook’s Super Bowl audience leading up to and during the Super Bowl. The social media giant is live-tracking users’ status updates and comments for keywords related to the Super Bowl as it happens. The anonymized aggregated data will be used to determine the target audience, who will then be served with Super Bowl-related brand content. Such quick turnaround in targeting certainly adds value to event-based marketing efforts.

Facebook Users Prefer Native Videos Over YouTube Links

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: BusinessInsider

For the first time ever, Facebook Page owners uploaded more videos directly to Facebook than they did via sharing from YouTube, according to new data from Socialbakers. Part of that is due to that fact that videos on Facebook automatically play as a user scrolls through the news feed, and Facebook’s algorithm allegedly ranks posts with natively hosted videos higher in news feed.

Meanwhile, YouTube still has much higher volume, and has recently started rewarding bonuses to its video creators for temporary platform exclusivity. So the fight over the leading position of online video distribution is likely to continue.

 

Facebook Buffs Up Its Mobile Search

Posted on by Lab Team

 Read original story on: Re/code

Nearly two year after launching Graph Search on its desktop site, Facebook is finally bringing its powerful search engine to mobile. On Monday, the company unveiled Facebook Search, a rebranded version of Graph Search that lets users search to locate specific Facebook posts and photo captions via keywords, while previously, a keyword search would only return relevant names or pages.

This new search engine is currently only available on its iOS app, with plans to roll out to other platforms in coming week. As mobile search is predicted to surpass desktop search in 2015, Facebook’s shift to focus on mobile search seems quite timely.

Will You Use Facebook At Work?

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: The Guardian 

Not satisfied with merely being the No.1 social media platform in the world, Facebook is now reportedly planning to launch a new enterprise-oriented “Facebook at Work” site (presumably aiming to drag down global productivity even more). The new site will allow users to share and collaborate on documents with colleagues and connect with work contacts via IM chats, which puts it in direct competition with professional networking site LinkedIn and other web-based office tools offered by the likes of Google and Microsoft.

It might seem logical for Facebook to attempt leveraging its huge user base into the enterprise market, but most people choose to compartmentalize their work and personal life. Unless it can come up with services significantly better than what competitors are offering, “Facebook at Work” simply won’t work.