Digital Strategy
Public dissatisfaction with the pace at which mainstream media reports the news is once again being highlighted by the recent Boston Marathon tragedy. Twitter users turned the service into a media outlet and was perhaps the first to tell the world that a bombing had occurred near the marathon’s finish line.
Within minutes, the network also thrust Broadcastify into the spotlight – giving users Continue reading “Public rush to Twitter for real-time news of Boston Marathon tragedy”
It has only been 3 years since Klickable TV‘s Founders Roger Wu and Emily Gannett presented their great idea to the world – a user-friendly platform where users can add clickable hotspots to their videos regardless of where they were hosted. Sadly, today Roger Wu sent an email to Klickable’s beta subscribers saying that Klickable TV will soon be no more… unless some else decides to buy the site.
According to Wu –
“We have had offers to purchase the site / technology / users and are open to other offers and proposals from those of you that know the product the best. Therefore, if you are interested in the site and our users, please let me know as soon as possible.”
Klickable’s business model seemed pretty solid – the service was free but ran ads, subscribers can pay-up to run their own ads and more importantly access great analytics about their videos reach and impact to their bottom-line; they even had some big user endorsements from The Rachel Ray Show and Jay-Z’s Rocawear brand.
So what could be contributing to the demise of this little company with a great idea? If YouTube is a part of your social media marketing plan, you should thank Klickable for some of the great features YouTube now offer account holders. The truth is, as Klickable gained traction, market leader YouTube simply applied all of Klickable’s great ideas to their platform. As a result, YouTube account holders can now add captions, ads, and clickable links (that takes viewers from videos to any Website) to the videos they upload.
So why would anyone want to buy Klickable? Well, their application works on pretty much any platform – not just YouTube and let’s face it, you cant click on a link on your TV… at least not exactly.
We certainly hope you’ve been using some of cool features Klickable and YouTube have for marketers. Here’s to wishing the folks at Klickable continued success!
The new layout will be called Timeline and its focus will be you. According to Facebook’s own research, users spend more time looking at their own profile than they do anything else, so Timeline will be geared towards making your profile seem more interesting to it’s primary visitor.
Timeline will be more than just a new design, the layout will provide users with an overview of their life since they joined Facebook – possibly all the way to their birth.
Let’s take a look at a few of the design elements that will frame this experience –
A Biography Cover
The first thing visitors to your profile will see is your feature cover – since every biography has a nice cover, why shouldn’t yours? The cover will appear pretty large (see above) and can be uploaded or chosen from any of your photos. The downside is that it appears so large that finding your info will require a little searching. The upside is that if you click on the cover it retracts. If Facebook implement this type of cover for business Pages it will be a great billboard for advertising products and services!
Activity Log (i.e. Chapters)
You (and other visitors) will be able to scroll through your life and Facebook activities right up to when you were born! If you forgot to add some major life event such as: ‘lost a love one’, ‘acquired a pet’, ‘bought a house’, ‘lost weight’, ‘had surgery’, was ‘diagnosed with an illness’ or ‘changed your beliefs’ – there will be a feature that will allow you to update your timeline with this information. And if you forgot to mention that you were somewhere – your friends can now add that information (and more) to your timeline as well. The downside is that it’s a lot of information. The upside is that you will have access to this information and can remove (and sometimes delete) some of it from the timeline.
Highlighting Important Events
It will be easier for you to control who can see the things you share on your timeline – in just a few clicks you can select the audience for any post or updates you choose to share. The new layout will also allow you to ‘star’ or highlight stories you deem important (allowing them to display differently). The downside is that there will be a lot to learn but its mostly intuitive. The upside is that it will be easier for you to manage what your ‘friends’ see in your timeline going forward.
Happy facebooking!
Steve Jobs, the late chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, left an amazing legacy that has impacted the lives of many across the globe – even those that have never used an Apple product or seen a Pixar film. The announcement of his passing dominated all search engines, news sites and social media networks – including Facebook and YouTube.
Technologists, entrepreneurs and consumers alike turned to the Internet in search of Steve Job’s inspiration and to better understand his life and legacy. Many found it in his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University.
YouTube videos of his speech have become a favorite share on Google+ and Facebook. The video on Stanford’s YouTube channel is currently at 6.5 million views and counting; even though the channel has roughly 1,392 videos, this one video accounts for 25% of the channel’s views.
The video of Steve Job’s 2005 Stanford University commencement speech is also the #4 – Top Favorited Education YouTube video of all time. Watch it to see why and hear the important life lessons Jobs left for us all –
Facebook may be the worlds largest social network, but the platform still needs great ideas to stay competitive . So where are they finding those ideas? Just about everywhere, including Twitter – their semi-competitor.
This week Facebook launched “Ticker”, their real-time activity stream that mirrors Twitter’s user experience. Ticker is located on the right-hand side of Facebook users profiles and displays friends activity in Twitter’s ticker style. When users hover over their friends’ activity, they are presented with the opportunity to view the full story or join a friend’s conversation as it happens.
The company launched this feature to give users a more complete picture of what their friends are doing in real-time. The Ticker includes live stories—things like status updates, friendships, photos, videos, links, likes and comments.
Hopefully this is not a feature users find annoying because you can’t close Ticker. Users can hide the ticker, make it smaller or control the length of the feature – but they can’t close it. They can also hide some stories that appear in the ticker which will be visible when viewing their own profiles, business pages or a friend’s profile.
Is this a great Facebook update for businesses?
This is great if you have a page on the network for promoting your business because every time your supporters interact with your page or apps, their friends will know and hopefully follow suit. Facebook Page Likes, App Share, App usage, and Sponsored Stories are all eligible to appear in Ticker for others to see. For example, if you developed a game app for Facebook to generate interest in your business or ideas, Apps can publish stories to announce that your subscribers are using or playing with your app (Ex: “Joe is playing Farmville”).
There are two valuable takeaways from all of this –
1. You’ve gotta keep innovating to stay relevant and competitive even if you are an industry leader.
2. It’s always okay to copy a good idea — the big guys do it all the time.
Never re-invent a wheel!
How Facebook used the rules of customer engagement to get users to embrace technology once regarded as creepy.
If you upload a series of photos to your Facebook profile, you’ll notice that some of them are pre-tagged with your friends’ names. This is because Facebook now uses face recognition technology and software to help reduce the time users spend tagging their uploaded pictures.
So how was Facebook able to deploy this technology once regarded as “creepy” with minimal outcry? They followed two cardinal rules of customer engagement –
1. Meet your customers’ needs: provide relevant enhancements.
When Facebook redesigned their users’ profile layout earlier this year, the photo gallery that now forms a banner at the top of user profiles made it easier to for users browse their friend’s photos – and encouraged users to upload their own. Face recognition technology became relevant to Facebook users because it simplified the image tagging process for users uploading lots of photos. As users accept or reject Facebook’s recommendations of pre-tagged images, they also help to refine the accuracy of the technology.
2. Honesty: allow customers to choose to engage your product enhancements.
Tricking your customers into using products and services they might otherwise decline is not cool. So Facebook allowed users to opt in – or out of being pre-tagged in their friend’s photos via the company’s face recognition technology*. If you are introducing an enhanced service that might compromise your customers’ privacy or raise damaging concerns, always allow customers to decline or embrace your services and honor their wishes.
Visit us next time to learn how face recognition technology can help boost the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
*Opt out of image pre-tagging via face recognition on Facebook by going to account –> privacy settings –> scroll down to “Things others share” –> Suggest photos of me to friends –> click [Edit Settings] –> Disable.