Tag: Facebook

Why Twitter Tweaked Your Timeline

Posted on by Lab Team

Compared to Facebook’s ever-evolving algorithm-curated newfeed, Twitter’s timeline has been simple and linear: only tweets and retweets from the accounts you follow, organized in a strict reverse-chronological order. This distinction has become quite obvious in the current news cycle, with Ferguson news dominating Twitter chatter and ALS Ice Bucket Challenge taking over Facebook.

This difference is about to be erased with Twitter indicating it will add “popular or relevant content” to the constitution of timeline. This marks Twitter’s aim to gain more control on the content flow. While users may remain skeptical of such a shake-up, advertisers would no doubt welcome Twitter’s newest tweak, as it offers more freedom for branded tweets to filter through.

What Happens When You “Like” Everything You See On Facebook

Posted on by Lab Team

Facebook recently received a considerable amount of flak for conducting experiments on its users, so it is only fair that Mat Honan from Wired ran an experiment on Facebook by indiscriminatingly “liking” everything that the platform served up. The result reveals just how much Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes branded content, especially so on the mobile app, while implicitly underscoring how greatly its business model depends on it.

The number of “Likes” on Facebook and Instagram, along with their counterpart “Favorites” on Twitter and Tumblr, has long served as a fundamental metric in measuring the success of brand campaigns on social media. It offers a direct and frictionless way for the audience to express their sentiments and an easy and quantified measurement for marketers. By messing with the data acquisition, this experiment rendered Facebook’s algorithm useless and raises concerns on the dependency of this easily manipulated metric.

Why Facebook Is Talking With Hollywood About Oculus

Posted on by Lab Team

Facebook is reportedly in talks with Hollywood executives and directors about creating content specifically for Oculus Rift. Given that most virtual reality headsets are currently developed for immersive gameplay, it is understandable that Facebook would want to explore its potential in providing a new breed of entertainment experiences. Imaginative genres like fantasy, horror, or sci-fi could potentially benefit greatly with the help of virtual reality technology, and new marketing opportunities can be expected to open up accordingly as well.

How To Cope With Facebook’s New Ban On Incentives

Posted on by Lab Team

In its most recent update of platform policies, Facebook is putting an end to the widespread practice of offering reward or access to content to coax consumers into liking a Facebook page. Facebook is hoping this ban will ensure quality connections and further legitimize the number of “likes” as a metric in ad buying. For marketers, however, this regulation poses new challenges in gaining engagement organically and building a genuine relationship with their audience on Facebook. Only by creating quality content of true value to consumers can brands truly earn their “likes”.

Tumblr: Better for Brands Than Facebook or Twitter?

Posted on by Lab Team

Facebook and Twitter are the go-to channels that emarketers usually choose for social media marketing, but Tumblr says it just might have certain advantages over those two when it comes to brand engagement.

In comparison to Facebook and Twitter, branded content, especially the creative ones, enjoys a significantly longer shelf-life on Tumblr. As a result, this allows for greater earned engagement long after the content would have expired on other platforms. Furthermore, Tumblr offers a mix of video, text, and image-sharing tools that brands are utilizing to better engage with their audience. 

Facebook Is Now Worth $190 Billion Thanks To Mobile Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

Following the glowing earnings report released yesterday, major news outlets are now reporting on Facebook’s record high market capitalization, which is estimated at around $190 billion, putting it ahead of Amazon’s $165 billion. And its performance on mobile is being cited as the major force behind its recent commercial success. Given that nearly 400 million users access Facebook only via mobile devices, it is not surprising to find that mobile ads now account for 62 percent of Facebook’s overall ad revenue, which is up by two-thirds compared to the same time last year. The social media giant’s remarkable success since going public could be largely credited to their smooth transition into the mobile world, and all web-based-only digital marketers need to take notes.

The Problematic Canvas Fingerprinting, A New Tracking Technology

Posted on by Lab Team

Another day, another new technology to track people on the internet. Forbes reports that a new tracking technology called Canvas Fingerprinting that can tracks internet surfers’ web behaviors even with anti-tracking tools or strict privacy settings in place.

Here’s how it works. By employing Canvas Fingerprinting, websites can secretively send your web browser a request to generate a hidden image consisting of some text, and then assigns a “fingerprint” for each computer based on the image produced. Because of the slight setting variations in font, browser, or graphic rendering between each end device, the generated fingerprint would be unique and therefore be employed for tracking. Different websites utilizing this same tracking system can track a user from site to site, with currently no way for users to opt-out.

As with the recent Facebook experiment debacle, we here at the IPG Media Lab highly value privacy and strictly follow the rule of “informed consent first” in our conduct. By design, Canvas Fingerprinting is inherently sneaky and secretive, and therefore problematic without proper legislation.

Facebook Starts Testing “Buy Button” In News Feed Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

In a predicable yet still interesting move, Facebook has started testing a new feature on its news feed ads and page posts: a native “Buy” button designed for enabling one-click purchase without leaving the site. Diving deeper into e-commerce integration, the social giant is working with some select small business partners in the US to try out this new direct purchase function, aiming for further roll-out if the trial proves successful. With Facebook taking the lead, we expect to see more and more digital platforms joining in the trend of build-in e-commerce infrastructure.

Facebook Launches “Out-App Purchase” Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

 

Instead of incarcerating in-app purchases inside the apps, Facebook has decided to break them out of that namesake prison by allowing its desktop games to sell virtual goods straight from ads in the News Feed or sidebar, with the intention to bring this feature to its mobile app in the near future. The move towards mobile, however, could turn out to be challenging, as both iOS and Android forbid in-app purchases to happen outside of their respective app stores, so as to protect their usual 30 percent cut on mobile purchases. Essentially, these would be Facebook’s existing re-engagement ads re-framed for driving immediate purchases, and how they could move over the hurdles to bring this to mobile would be an interesting development to follow.

Facebook Launches Messager App On iPad

Posted on by Lab Team

After launching a separate app for messaging all your Facebook friends on smartphones several months back, Facebook is finally bringing the update to iPad, with all functionality in tact. As the social media conglomerate continues to solidify its presence in the fast-growing market of mobile messaging apps, it seems fit to disintegrate its messaging app from its flagship social media app, as its number of active users keeps declining. It is also a smart move for Facebook to start establishing itself on the tablet devices, since there’s no official iPad version of WhatsApp, another messaging app that Facebook owns, currently available for iPad. The bottom line is, Facebook is taking messaging apps seriously, and they are implementing it across all mobile platforms.