Video • Creative • Brand Development
My first experience with Facebook places has been a bit of a bust. Since its release I have tried to use it, but to no avail. I’ve tried using it in Vancouver and in the Okanagan, but nothing.
I just get the message about Places not being available in my area.
Apparently Facebook Places is a bit short on places.
Update – Sept 25: Facebook Places is now in my area. It’s about bloody time!
Perhaps I’ve developed the same voyeuristic tendencies that everyone else in this social media generation has. Peeping away at the lives of others from behind the veil of the computer.
While I may sound a bit cynical, I actually believe that Facebook has been a good thing for the world. We are connected now in ways that we never have been before, and like it or not, the impact that Facebook has had on modern relationships, communication, and media is undeniable.
So, what happens after something changes the world? Someone makes a movie about it of course. In this case two brilliant filmmakers have come together: director David Fincher of Seven and Fight Club notoriety, and writer Aaron Sorkin who penned The West Wing and A Few Good Men amongst others.
From this trailer with its creepy choir version of Radiohead’s emo hit song Creep, it looks a like the film is a slightly haunting version of Gossip Girl for computer geeks that tells the tale of a college age Mark Zuckerberg’s life, but for whatever reason I want to see it.
Facebook is without a doubt one of the great influencers of this generation, and it’s not likely that many people know the story behind it. What better way to find out than to go see the “Hollywoodization” of it on the silver screen.
My recent post on the Nissan Leaf electric car went mini-viral quite quickly, and it led to some interesting data in terms of Facebook referral to Google AdSense click conversion.
My post fit into a relatively longtail niche about Steve Jobs actually ordering a Leaf on his iPhone 4 at the Apple WWDC. What ensued was a post by Nissan on their Nissan Leaf Facebook page which mentioned my post and linked back to my blog. With a growing number of fans of this car, my site seems to be reaping the benefit of this increased traffic, but something else happened to — my CTR (click-through-rate) for AdSense increased from a meager 0.35%-ish range to somewhere right around 1%.
I have had significant bumps in traffic from search before, but have never seen this. Some further testing is required, but after a solid week of this I’m starting to think that users coming from Facebook fan pages, or “like” pages as they seem to be called now, have a higher click engagement. Perhaps this type of internet browser is already in a click/information hungry state of mind if they are redirected from a product based page on Facebook.
Through this increase in web traffic I have also noticed that a good number of users seem to have adopted the web content based Facebook “Like/Recommend” button as there have also been a good number of “likes” on my post, which in turn has a snowball effect for increasing site visits.
It appears that generating traffic through Facebook in this way is highly actionable and brings a captive and highly engaged audience which ultimately leads to higher ad revenue and ad click conversion.
Facebook has had a number of security flubs lately, but today TechCrunch.com’s Steve O’Hear reported that the latest security flaw involves the ability to see other people’s pending friend requests and live chat messages. Ironically, the way to exploit the system is to use the “Preview my Profile” feature in the recently updated privacy settings menu.
Facebook has taken steps to address this, but it may be wise to look under the privacy settings of your own profile to be sure that yours are up to snuff.
A recent change in the Facebook system has also exposed many people’s profile pictures and in some cases photo albums, walls, and other private features. To see how your Facebook profile looks to others you can use the “Preview my Profile” option in privacy settings, or you can team up with a friend, delete each other as friends, and then go from there.
See more at TechCrunch
Poor Stephen Harper. He is the leader of our humble nation Canada, but it is with particular zeal that young Canadians seem to detest him. I’m not sure how much the average young Canadian person understands the issues that are bringing on his demise because I certainly don’t, but what does seem clear is that many people don’t like him.
In fact, they dislike Mr. Harper to the point of staging a Facebook competition to see who can get more Facebook fans — Prime Minister Harper, or an onion ring. So far the onion ring seems to be doing quite well, but will it overtake Harper in the opinion polls? I also don’t know. What I do know is that our generation is particularly pathetic given that we spend time thinking about such things. We clearly have nothing better to do. Our lives really are becoming more and more like a Wes Anderson movie.
This week on Facebook started as Doppelganger Week where you are supposed to change your profile picture to that of a celebrity that you closely resemble, or have been told that you closely remember. The oddly semi-narcissistic trend swept Facebook with people posting all kinds of interesting doppelganger choices.
Facebook being what it is though, by mid-week this trend had been replaced with Urban Dictionary week. Go to their website, type in your first name, and it will tell you the meaning of your first name. Urbandictionary.com has clearly recognized the North American penchant for entertaining, but extremely useless entertainment.
While I think both trends are fun, I didn’t participate for a small handful of reasons. Firstly, I don’t like some of my doppelgangers. I can’t post a picture of Mickey Dolenz on my profile without a small part of my ego dying, and my other doppelganger, Colin Farrell, is a bit too arrogant of a choice. If people get wind that I actually believe I resemble him (I don’t — for the record), I will never live it down. Either way I don’t want to deal with the fallout. As for the meaning of my first name? I honestly don’t really care.
I do, however, think that the first name meaning trend is a genius stroke of traffic boosting on the part of Urban Dictionary. The Doppelganger trend probably benefited nobody in particular, but I would say that there has been a significant increase in the number of people who now know what a doppelganger is.
Time to find a new word.
