Facebook's big changes are not only changing the way users
share, read and interact on Facebook, but is changing the way
people share on the web. With all these new interactions, its
collecting new user behavior and data, which provides new ways to
target audiences.
These changes put the power in the users' hands allowing
for higher preference control which inturn affects their
engagement. The final say to all these new updates are in the users
hands, and how the users engage in the new features will determine
how brands engage. The interface and functionality updates lend
themselves to be more relevant to the user, resulting in more
sharing. Initially users are going to need to adapt and use
Facebook smarter -- filtering what the do and don't want to see.
Friends, Friends-of-Friends, People, Pages and Apps will be
providing content at higher levels than ever. With that said,
brands need to be more relevant and not bombard their Fans. In
return this strategy will result in a more qualified, engaged
audience.
If you are already on Facebook, looking to develop new
Facebook initiatives with Apps, or integrating Facebook into your
existing website, we highlighted the latest changes that need to be
reviewed: the three new distribution channels, Open Graph, new
social plugins, and Insights.
News Feed
The News Feed has received a re-work, and is no longer just
information listed in a chronological order, and is broken into a
couple of sections. These sections and the stories that are shown,
not only change based on how long a user has been logged in, and
time since they last visited, but more importantly, shown based on
the value to the user, which is determined off of various criteria.
Having a full understanding of the News Feed changes will help
define strategy of content distribution. Not only is it up to the
user to distinguish between what is relevant and what is not, but
Facebook will need to make adjustments to how it determines what is
important for each user. This would be a learning process based on
how 800 million people filter through their content.
Recent Stories
These stories will get #1 spot in the new News Feed. If users
visits Facebook frequently, or have been visiting for a certain
amount of time, recent stories will be listed in this section.
Top Stories
The Top
Stories are published stories that Facebook thinks
the user will be interested in, based on the relationship you have
with the story publisher, story likes and comments, and the topic
of the story. Facebook gives users control of what they consider to
be Top Stories, by letting users add stories as Top Stories, or by
removing current Top Stories. As a brand, your Page posts can also
be marked or removed as a Top Story.
For brands, what we don't know or see yet, is how Facebook
will include Top Story in the
Page Insights and how, if any this plays
into advertising. One Insight that would be valuable is a Page
Updates Top Story Impressions vs Impressions, as this can give
insights into the quality of your audience.
The Rest
Continuing down the News Feed, is the rest of the users
subscribed friends, people and page updates, mostly chronological,
but if a user has been logged in long enough, Top Stories will find
their way into this area.
These News Feed changes, along with the
recent Friend Lists updates, and the
Subscribe Button, users have more control into
what they read, and ultimately change how users will engage with
your content.
Ticker
The Ticker is another feature added to a users News Feed, and
itself is a news feed callout, but its purpose is to provide
real-time updates and conversations between people and their
friends activity. Much like the News Feed, if a user's friend
engages (likes, comments, shares) with a Page, this activity will
be shown in the Ticker. In addition to Page activity, Open Graph
and App activity are aggregated into the Ticker in real-time as
well, allowing for people to inform, engage, and share with their
friends even quicker.
We don't see Ticker Impressions or Interactions in Page Insights
yet, but one can say that might be in the near future, as Open
Graph Apps (we'll go into these below) include Ticker Impressions
and Referrals.
Timeline
The biggest announcement at Facebook's F8 event, was the
new Timeline
.
Timeline replaces the old Profile pages and shows a
persons entire life while scrolling down to their birth. Of course
for most of us, we have not been using Facebook
that long, so the last few years are in detail.
Facebook does a good job of inserting your birth, when you
graduated college or high school, when a sibling was born, and
other random dates it knows. For the dates pulled in from other
parts of your profile Facebook asks for some details and a photo to
complete the entry. At any other point in the Timeline an entry can
be inserted to slowly complete your life story. We think this is
amazing, and although some may dislike it at first, they will see
how cool this change is. The Facebook Profiles are no longer just a
page of all the facts about you, everything is organized and tells
your story. All of your content is much more personal and it is
easy to scroll through time with a sense of nostalgia.
Open Graph Apps
The other big announcement at the F8 event, was the new Open
Graph, which is currently in beta.
The new Open Graph allows for a custom Actions (the action that
people can perform) and Objects (the objects that people interact
with) within apps, and the actions a user engages with, gets shared
and aggregated throughout Facebook, on all channels. This opens up
more relevant, targeted and engaging interactions that people can
have with either another person, a brand, content, media, or even a
location. It's no longer just "Liking" pages - it's Reading,
Listening, Cooking, Learning, Buying, etc.
Similar to the users Timeline, a user gets a Timeline of their
interactions within the app. These new Open Graph interactions and
their Timeline enable users to engage with a brand or product on a
whole new level, and allow the users to build their own timeline or
experience with the brand.
Using the app Insights (Facebook's analytics) you can now track
all of these actions that users engage with in your app. Insights
will break the impressions into the different channels, Feed,
Ticker, and Timeline. Taking these new Actions one more step, you
can see from which part of Facebook the referrals came from.
For further reading:
Social Plugins
There are two new social plugins that Facebook is adding to its
Social Plugins list, that makes it easy to integrate specific
Facebook features into your website. These are updated to reflect
the new Open Graph and new Timeline, and at the time of this post,
they both are currently in beta. We were hoping to show examples of
these, but unfortunately, at the time of this post, beta means
broken.
Recommendations Bar
The new
Recommendation Bar is a small bar that will
be embedded on you website's pages, like blog articles for example.
When the page is loaded the Recommendations Bar stays mostly hidden
until a Trigger is activated. A Trigger is defined as a certain
amount of time, scrolling a certain percentage down a page, hitting
a certain area on a page, or just triggering by some other action
the user takes. Once triggered, the Recommendations Bar allows
Users to Like and/or Add To Timeline, as well as show if the page
is Recommended by their Friends. This is a powerful tool to Share,
Like, and Recommend the Internet through Facebook.
Add To Timeline
Another new Social Plugin is the
Add To Timeline button. Similar to the Like
button that is now on most pages across the Internet, the Add To
Timeline button acts in a similar manner. Users can click this, and
their action will be recorded in their Timeline view. As this is a
more intimate and personal account of ones life, these actions will
be more closely tied to a User, and the more interactions with the
App will result in a more prominent position in the
Timeline.
Facebook is adding a lot of features for the users which result
in new tactics and strategy for the content providers. Making sure
you understand how to efficiently utilize the new services and
technology will be in your best benefit for exposure and qualified
lead generation. Although it may take the general public some time
to adapt to all of the updates, it is imperative that brands are
ahead of the game and distributing the content in a smart manner
for when the users catch up.
- Finn Digital
Team