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Most Annoying People on Facebook

Tom Sullivan — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 18:24:02 +0000

Don’t get too excited, I’m not going to reference individuals in this post. Instead I’d like to bring up the most annoying types of people on Facebook. While most places you go to in life require some sort of etiquette, the online world is often a place that people go to speak freely and with relative anonymity. Well, on Facebook there is obviously no anonymity, but people still speak freely (or tag freely or update freely).

Here’s are a few different types of annoying Facebook users (keep in mind when I say “Guy” I’m referring to both men & women):

1) The Check in Everywhere Guy: There’s nothing wrong with checking in once and a while, but when you’re doing it every time you go somewhere outside of your home it’s a little much. Also, a little tip, don’t announce you upcoming vacation dates, it’s an invitation for you to get robbed!

2) The “Re-post This” Guy: You don’t need to tell us to re-post your message. If it were that important we would re-post it on our own.

3) The ‘Tag Everyone’ Guy: This guy likes to get wild with tagging others in photos, even unflattering one’s, and even people who are in the background. If people are sneezing, eating, coughing or doing anything but smiling & looking at the camera, don’t tag them.

4) The Farmville Invite Guy: Not all of us play Facebook games, so it’s a little annoying to have to repeated requests to play Farmville, Mafia World or Zombie Lane. Perhaps more annoying than the invite is the update on your game. I don’t care that you’ve nursed your baby calf back to health!

5) The Facebook Drama Guy: Ok, if you want to remember a lost family member, friend or even animal on the day they past away years ago, I get that. However, no one wants to hear about your relationship troubles, career problems, how you hate your boss, or why you are in a very dark place. That’s why there are psychologists!

6) The Post to Elicit a Response Guy: You know who they are, they say things like, “OMG, I can’t believe that just happened!” Obviously their vagueness is meant to elicit responses such as “OMG, what happened?” and “R U ok? Txt me”…You’ll often notice that Facebook Drama Guy is also Post to Elicit Response Guy.

7) The Nonstop Poster Guy: Last but certainly not least. I don’t need to know what you ate for breakfast, what you did at the gym, how many cups of coffee you drank, or why your mood constantly changes throughout the day. Also, another tip, don’t like your own status update. We know you like what you posted or you wouldn’t have posted it!

Feel free to add to the list…

Latest Facebook Changes

Tom Sullivan — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 17:34:41 +0000

If you haven’t already noticed, the Facebook interface has changed in the past week. The change focuses on the news feed, specifically each users’ individual news feed. Now, stories that Facebook’s algorithms think matter to you will appear at the top of the page from the day before, along with more recent stories.

So how exactly does Facebook determine what story is important to you? According to Facebook’s help page on the topic:

“We determine whether something is a top story based on lots of factors, including your relationship to the person who posted the story, how many comments and likes it got, what type of story it is, etc. For example, a friend’s status update that might not normally be a top story may become a top story after many other friends comment on it.”

It’s worth noting the algorithms don’t always work like they should, or produce the most desirable results. As a result of this recent change, many Facebook users have expressed their displeasure with Facebook determine what constitutes as news. Facebook does allow users some flexibility with the new layout, providing drop down menus to either de-emphasize or hide some feeds.

This latest update comes only one week after several other updates. Facebook launched Smart Lists, which allows you to group and categorize your friends, as well as the addition of the Subscribe buttons for following people that you don’t want to add as friends. In other words, you want to stalk them!

More changes are being announced today, at the f8 conference. One of the big changes expected is the ability to share music with friends. The will be made possible through the integration of Spotify, a Swedish music site run by Sean Parker, the creator of Napster and one of the early visionaries and advisers to Mark Zuckerberg before Facebook’s enormous growth.

Time Spent on Facebook Reaches All-Time High

Tom Sullivan — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:52:31 +0000

Just when you thought Facebook couldn’t get any more popular and that it might even start to lose some of its luster, a new Nielsen study released on Monday announced that Americans spent a total of 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook in the month of May.

To put this into perspective, that’s more time spent on Facebook than any other website- and it wasn’t even close. Yahoo was second with 17.2 billion and Google was third with 12.5 billion minutes. Americans are now spending nearly one-quarter of their overall Internet time on social networks and blogs.

During Nielsen’s first-ever State of the Media report, which focused on social networking, they said, “Whether it’s a brand icon inviting consumers to connect with a company on LinkedIn, a news ticker promoting an anchor’s Twitter handle or an advertisement asking a consumer to ‘Like’ a product on Facebook, people are constantly being driven to social media.”

The study also found that 4 out of every 5 US Internet user went to social networking and blogging sites in May. This accounted for 22.5 % of the total amount of minutes spent online in May. Second was online gaming, with 9.8%, and third was email, with 7.6%.

One of the surprising stats in the report was the rise of Tumblr, an up-and-coming blogging platform that finished third in the social networking/ blogging category for unique visitors in May. Facebook was first and Blogger was second. Tumblr even edged out both Twitter and LinkedIn.

The report also provided some statistical evidence to back up some facts that I’m sure no one would challenge. 70% of social network users and blog users shop online and 60% write reviews for products or services. Also, when compared to the average Internet user, social networkers are 26 % more likely to post their political opinions, 33% more likely to say what they like or don’t like on television and 75% more likely to spend heavily on music.

The influence of social networking and blogging on the average Internet user is growing and the reason for this is simply because the difference between a social networking site or blog site and the rest of the Internet is becoming more clouded. The human & peer interactions, reviews and opinions are what drive our society, like it or not.

Yahoo’s Revenue Dropping Despite Online Advertising Increases

Tom Sullivan — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 18:06:49 +0000

On Wednesday Yahoo’s stock fell 8%, only a day after the company announced yet another disappointing financial quarter. CEO Carol Bartz, who is in the final 17 months of her four-year contract, already feeling some heart, is likely feeling even more pressure now that both the stock price and projected online advertising market share are dropping.

Yahoo’s stock dropped to $13.48 a share, and it has been falling for the past two months. Part of the blame for this fall is due to the uncertainty over a key investment Yahoo made in the Chinese internet company Alibaba.

Bartz is was quick to defend herself, saying, “We didn’t have enough salespeople in front of the big clients.” Really? Sounds like a lousy excuse to me.

While the risky investments and drop in the stock price is very concerning to investors, what they really should be focusing on is market share (or lack thereof). Emarketer predicts that Yahoo’s market share in online advertising, which includes both display and banner ads, will drop from 14.4% last year to 13.1% this year.

So is Google cutting into Yahoo’s marketing share yet again? Well yes, but Facebook is also getting in on the action. Facebook’s share of the US online display ad revenue is expected to grow to 17.7% this year, up from 12.2% last year. That’s quite a jump, which is why Yahoo should be very afraid.

Should Google be afraid of Facebook? Some would say that they already are. Google seems to be scrambling to find a solution to the social network behemouth, and it thinks it found the solution in Google+. Time will tell how Google+ evolves, but one thing is for sure, Google is still the top dog. Google’s display ad revenue is expected to top $1 billion for the first time this year, and their market share is expected to grow even more.

Yahoo’s been Google’s little brother for quite some time, and despite changes in management and tactics, they continue to lose the relevance they once possessed back in the late 90s.

Facebook Now Offering Video Calls & Group Chatting

Tom Sullivan — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 17:11:53 +0000

On Wednesday, Facebook unveiled several new tools, with the main feature being video chat. This comes just days after Google announced its latest social networking effort in Google+. Facebook, now claiming to have surpassed the 750 million user mark, also introduced a group chatting feature.

The video chat will be powered by Skype, and in order to use this feature Facebook users will have to have webcam-equipped computers. Facebook users then simply need to select the friends they want to chat with, prompting a chat pop up window, and then clicking on a small blue video icon that brings up the video chat feature. As of now, the video chat is limited to only one-on-one communication. Coincidentally, Google+, which Google announced last week, has a video chat feature as well.

The group chat option is also another feature that Google+ had mentioned last week, and Facebook’s version will work similarly. Once you begin chatting with a friend you can click an icon to add more people to the conversation.

With all the talk about Google+, it’s been a while since Facebook made any major announcements. However, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company is embarking on “launching season” in 2011, and that users can “expect a lot of stuff coming out” in the next couple weeks and months.

In related news, Skype, a new partner of Facebook’s, has agreed to be bought out by Microsoft for $8.5 billion in a deal that is expected to close by the end of the year.

Google Still Hoping to Challenge Facebook with Google+

Tom Sullivan — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 19:48:49 +0000

If you haven’t yet heard the news, Google is attempting to challenge Facebook. The search giant recently announced several of the major pieces being put into place that will make up Google+. This should come as a shock to no one given Google’s thirst to be at the forefront of everything internet related. Steven Levy, of Wired.com, explained in a recent article he’d been watching this progress for the last year and that hundreds of engineers were involved in the effort.

The Google+ project, developed under the code name ‘Emerald Sea,’ came about from Google’s recognition that the nature of the Internet has started to shift away from the search engine as the central focal point. ”No longer could Google operate without making its products more personal,” Levy wrote, in summarizing the call-to-arms memo issued by Google head of operations Urs Hölzle in March 2010. “The social challenge required decisive and substantial response within Google.”

Many of the details of Google+ have not emerged, but we know that it will be comprised of a significant number of separate launches. A few of the features that Google has announced that sound intriguing are: group video chat; new way of sharing stories, photos and videos from around the Web; and the ability to easily create many small networks, for friends, family and co-workers.

We have yet to see if even the features that have been announced will be fully developed as planned. Google has failed in several attempts to get into social media in the past, but Google+ seems to be the key focus new CEO Larry Page.

What is the best time of day to post to Facebook?

Tom Sullivan — Fri, 06 May 2011 19:26:20 +0000

Let’s assume you’ve built your Fan page up and you have an abundance of Fans and “likes.” You now have an audience to speak to and interact with. So what’s the best time of day, or even the best day of the week, to put out a message?

Any message that you post to your Fans will appear in their news feed. If a Fan has many friends or “likes” a lot of other businesses then it’s likely that their news feed will be much more active and current. Therefore, as a business, it’s ideal to try to reach out to your Fans right before they log on so that your message is “freshest” and appears near the top of their news feed.

According to social media consultant Dan Zarella, weekends are much more popular than weekdays for sharing posts. His reasonings are that many companies block Facebook at work, and most people don’t need to use Facebook for their work. Makes sense.

Based on this assumption it is probably best to post your messages in the evening, when people are off of work. Of course, if you’re a company that serves all of the US then you have a 3 hour time difference in when you post, so you’d probably want to post at 8pm EST or later (when west coast people are getting off work).

The bottom line is that you need to know your audience. What type of people are they? Mostly male, female or a good mix? Where do they live? As you learn more about them you can make better decisions on when to post your messages on Facebook. If you have a really “techy” audience that’s young, or many college-aged Fans, then you’ll probably want to post during the day, because studies show that teenagers and young adults check their Facebook pages many times throughout the day.

If you have any questions about posting on Facebook, or you simply want to learn more about getting a business presence established on Facebook, then contact Turbo Social Media today, or call 877-673-7096 x708.

Groupon Facing Uncertain Future

Tom Sullivan — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 18:00:33 +0000

Over the past year Groupon has grown from 200 employees to 6,500, from 3 million subscribers to 70 million, and it has seen it’s company perceived value rise from $1.4 billion to $25 billion. As we mentioned in a blog post from November, Google was rumored to be interested in buying Groupon; however, Groupon rejected the deal and made plans for an Initial Public Offering. Plans for an IPO remain, but so do challenges.

Expect to see some fierce competition from a number of different companies. Some would say that there is already fierce competition, but if big players like Google and Facebook get into the game then the playing field will certainly start to look different. In fact, Google has already announced that it plans to launch a Groupon competitor soon, and expect Facebook to follow suit. With the barrier to entry low, look for other well known firms to get into this market.

Competition isn’t the only potential issue for Groupon. President and COO Rob Solomon announced his departure from Groupon last week. This leaves a huge void at the company’s #2 position, and filling this position with top Silicon Valley talent may be more difficult given that their company headquarters are in Chicago.

The threat of competition and search for a new COO come at a time when Groupon is frantically trying to evolve their business to stay ahead of competitors. In an attempt to raise the barrier to entry to competitors, Groupon is beta testing a more sophisticated service that offers real-time discounts based on location and desire. Groupon Now, as it will be called, will be rolled on in the next several weeks in cities such as San Francisco and Washington D.C.

While Groupon is trying to patent their new time-location discounts, there is little stopping competitors from completely copying their business model. Groupon will need to rely on great leadership and an evolving business model in order to stay ahead of the competition, especially the big players, Facebook and Google, who have the cash to compete with anyone.

If your business is interested in learning more about how it could benefit from using Groupon then fill out this form, or call us at 877-673-7096 x2.

Facebook Will No Longer Allow FBML Pages

Tom Sullivan — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 20:48:53 +0000

Beginning on March 11, Facebook will no longer allow developers to use FBML to create custom “welcome” pages. FBML, which stands for Facebook Markup Language, has been one of the main scripts businesses have used when creating their welcome pages in the past.

Many third party companies have offered applications that made it very easy for amateurish developers to use their often free software to build out their FBML pages. Users have simply had to copy and paste the content into the static FBML box. Now you will have to either use an iFrame or a custom application. This requires significantly more programing knowledge, including:

downloading and uploading files via FTP
working with and troubleshooting an HTML ifame code

So what does this all mean? For starters, all the Facebook FBML “Entrepreneurs” who have created custom Fan pages in the past will have to step their game up and quickly adapt. Learning code is a skill that can take years to master, so these individuals will have to evolve their business. For businesses that have developed FBML pages before the changeover, the move will still support their old pages.

If you’re a small business this could potentially make it more expensive to get set up with a nice, custom branded Fan page. However, we at Turbo Social Media will not be changing our pricing. We will continue to offer amazingly constructed, yet competitively priced Facebook custom welcome pages. If you would like to learn more please contact Turbo today, or call 877-673-7096 x2.

Social Media is Not Just Limited to Facebook!

Tom Sullivan — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 20:41:55 +0000

It seems like somewhere along the way people began to simply equate “social media” with Facebook. It makes sense given that Facebook is the largest social network online, but it overlooks the meaning of the term “social media.” Social media is a broad term that refers to the use of web-based or internet-based applications that allow for the creation and exchange of user-generated content. This means everything from blogs and forums to text message marketing to review sites to social networks.

The purpose of this article is to discuss how social media can help every business, regardless of whether they’re using Facebook or not. Obviously the first thing you need to research is where your target market is, and where they are looking for answers to their questions. One notable network that has proven the most valuable for connecting with executives is LinkedIn. There are two key ways to connect with people on LinkedIn, without having any prior relationship with them. The first is to join an established group. The second is to get involved in LinkedIn advertising. The latter is a new feature of LinkedIn, but like Facebook, allows you to selectively target who sees your ads.

If you are a cosmetic physician then you want to go where your patients might be. Unfortunately, your potential patients likely do not have Facebook or LinkedIn profiles that express their desire for or interest in plastic surgery, so advertising on these networks is fruitless. Instead, focus on user-generated forums such as Real Self and Make Me Heal. This is where patients go to ask questions when they’re in the research phase.

If you are a freelance copywriter looking for work then there are several networks that you should look into. The first is Craigslist. Typically companies looking for a consultant, independent contractor or part-time freelancer will use the “gigs” section of Craigslist to post what they need. Another option would be Elance. The only problem with Elance is that you will likely be competing with many foreigners who will do the job for much less than you. Fortunately, if you’re a copywriter this is a good thing, as your writing should be more advanced than a foreigner’s.

Facebook may be the right social network for specific professionals to focus on. If you are a photographer, then Facebook would be a great network to put up ads. Why? Because you can specifically target and advertise to the types of clients that you want to find. Most photographers want clients that they can establish a relationship with. This means shooting photos of their engagement, then their wedding, then their pregnancy, and eventually the birth of their children. Not only does Facebook allow you to target geographically, but you can also target by relationship status. Since almost every 18-35 year old engaged woman has announced this status on Facebook, so if you’re a photographer you should market to them!

Obviosuly I can’t give an example for where every professional should turn to in order to find their ideal partners or clients, but no matter what your area of expertise is, you can find where your potential clients are looking. When all else fails, do a search on Google for your profession followed by “reviews.” If, for instance, you are a general contractor you’ll see this brings up Angieslist. If you’re a dentist this brings up DoctorOogle, among others. If you’re a chiropractor this brings up ChiroHub, among others. Get listed in these directories and review sites.

If you’re looking to connect with potential clients, find partners, and increase your businesses’ exposure online, Facebook may not be the best place for you to be spending your time (at least to start). Instead focus on review sites, forums, blogs and directories where your target market is researching and asking questions. Focus on websites where visitors are making comments. These are the types of social media sites that you need to be involved with.

If you have any questions about how you can grow your business online contact Turbo Social Media today or call 877-673-7096 x708.