Expedia has figured out a clever way to engage their community around the photos they take when travelling the globe. As part of the “Find Yours” campaign, Expedia has developed a Facebook app that leverages Facebook and Instagram images in addition to Google Maps, music and other filters to tell the story of their travels. These travel albums are easily shareable via Twitter and Facebook and engage people around the moments they create.
Tag: Facebook
Ribbon Launches to Make You Spend Money on Facebook
In yet another attempt to improve the often-convoluted process of buying things online, a start-up called Ribbon has launched a new way for merchants to take payments directly from the Facebook News Feed. This unique system is actually cross-platform on social media sites, and can detect where a user is coming from to tailor a one-page purchase experience to make the entire process dangerously simple. For returning Ribbon users, the entire purchase can be performed with one click using saved information, and for first time users, it’s as simple as entering your information on the destination page and clicking “buy now.” As an added bonus, Ribbon generates extremely robust posts to be placed directly on Facebook and other social sites that include photos, pricing, stock information, and a buy now button. Prepare to be broke again soon, thanks to Ribbon.
Pew Study Finds One In Five U.S. Internet Users Has Ditched Facebook, While 27% Of Current Users Plan To Reduce Time In 2013
Facebook currently has a stranglehold on the social networking habits of America: two thirds of those online in the US are on Facebook, as compared to only 20% on LinkedIn and 16% on Twitter. But today, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report titled Coming and going on Facebook that highlights a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction spreading through Facebook users.
Based on telephone surveys of 1,006 American adults, Pew found that one in five online adult Americans who do not currently use Facebook said that they have used it in the past, suggesting that they’ve given up on the service. They also found that two-thirds of current Facebook users said that in some time in the past they have taken a voluntary break from the site for several weeks or longer.
The (relative) bad news is that a relatively large proportion of users is evidently finding Facebook time-draining, boring or annoying enough to have given it up for weeks at a time — still, despite a sense of dissatisfaction, these people ended up going back for more. But the most worrying statistic is that 27% of current Facebook users say that, in the future, they plan to spend less time on the site, and just 3% said they want to spend more time there. This is all part
of the population struggling to come to terms with an increasingly social landscape, but these trends will be important to watch for advertisers and tech startups alike.
Publishers Looking Beyond Facebook
Building equity in someone else’s platform has never been the most secure means of operating, so it’s no surprise that some publishers are shying away from putting significant resources into developing fan bases on Facebook. Now that Facebook’s new algorithm limits a social post’s reach to 20 percent of a brand page’s audience, the cooling effect is accelerating. As digital and social media managers begin to understand the effect Facebook fans have on their brands, and what it takes to gain and retain them, many are looking other places for organic fan interaction and brand promotion. This could be the beginning of the end of the “like” era.
Facebook Adopts AdChoices Regulation
The advertising industry’s AdChoices self-regulatory program is coming to Facebook in the next quarter. The small blue triangles that currently appear in trillions of online ad impressions to allow users to opt-out of behaviorally targeted ads lack a great deal of recognition in spite of their ubiquity, and their adoption on Facebook’s ad platform is lauded as a boost for the icon’s recognition. They will, however appear more subtly within the Facebook interface than they do in most others.
Facebook Card Could Swipe the Online Gift Market
Facebook Gifts had quite the lack luster showing in the past, as the company’s minor experiments with the platform mostly fizzled out, but today’s announcement of the Facebook Card may change things. Facebook Card functions like a conventional gift card, with all balances applied from within Facebook from a range of retailers, but they are unique in that they are reusable, and can carry balances from multiple stores simultaneously. This could be Facebook’s most successful bridge yet into the physical world, and may innovate online gifting on a much larger scale.
Battelle: Optimizing For Graph Search
Federated Media’s John Battelle released a thoughtful piece on the implications of Facebook’s Graph Search for user engagement and advertising. One of his most salient points is that Graph Search will change the type of data users share about themselves as they optimize for search in the same way companies did when Google Search picked up steam. This means more information shared, higher engagement and more valuable user data for marketers trying to reach audiences on the platform.
Facebook Announces Graph Search
Facebook announced Graph Search at today’s press conference which will allows users to search their open graph across people, photos, interests and places. Unlike prior search functionality, Facebook’s new service allows you to combine “phrases” like querying friends in San Francisco who like coffee shops. The new feature will certainly change the discovery process, allowing people to more proactively seek information instead of waiting for posts in their newsfeed. It also provides another opportunity for users to uncover brands in Graph Search, particularly for brick and mortar locations (think “shoe stores friends have liked near Chicago”). Stay tuned for some of the ad opportunities for the new offering.
Mobile Accounts For 1/5 Facebook Ad Sales
It looks like Facebook is having more success monetizing mobile according to some figures from Kenshoo Social. According to the report, 1 in 5 dollars in ad spend goes toward mobile with a more costly CPC as well. Spend is predominantly on iOS tablets but Android dominates the smartphone market. Mobile display will satiate most brands for the time being, but expect the social Giant to deliver more mobile-specific ad products in the future. Check the one pager for the full results.
Facebook Tests “Self-Destructible” Messages
Have you ever wanted to send lewd pics on Facebook, but worry about them getting into the wrong hands? Now your fears may be over as Facebook has begun testing a messaging app that supports impermanent photo sharing. Similar to popular mobile app, Snapchat, the photo messages will automatically delete in a matter of seconds. Facebook’s latest experiment represents a move toward more intimate one-to-one communications that’s definitely got our attention.
