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Facebook has changed: 10 things you need to know

Posted by LBi London September 26th, 2011

It’s been a few days since Facebook’s annual F8 conference where a host of major updates were introduced to the social networking site.  With all this talk of tickers, timelines and verbiage, it may be a confusing time for brands who are trying to establish a Facebook presence and also protect their investment to date.  However, the new-look Facebook also provides marketers with a host of new opportunities both in terms of targeting and consumer engagement.

Here are 10 things you need to know about the new Facebook developments …

1. 800 million users worldwide! — At F8, Facebook announced that the site had officially registered over 800 million users, which was measured as the number of users who had logged in during the past 30 days. This is an astounding increase of around 50 million users since July. (statistics source: Mashable.com). This confirms that as far as reach is concerned Facebook is getting even harder to beat for brand marketers.

2. Open graph – great news for developers and brands — One of the most encouraging updates for brands is the next generation of Open Graph, which enables developers to create apps that allow user content and activity to be shared straight to the real-time Ticker. This is great for brand engagement, as a user will be able to see what their friends are up to on Facebook in real-time - it therefore has huge potential to increase buzz around a brand’s Facebook activity.  Another improvement is the streamlining of the ‘allow permission’ process. Apps now only need to request permission once, rather than every time the app posts.

3. Gestures – not just ‘Likes’ anymore — Facebook’s launch of Gestures means that brands are now able to turn a ‘verb’ into a button. Improving on the limitations of the Like button, brands will be able to create their own buttons within Facebook that allow users to express themselves with far more clarity. Users will be able to express their actions in real-time, for example they will be able to let others know that they are ‘drinking’ a brand of soft drink.  This will looks set to have a major effect on mainstream advertising sensibilities as brands will want to be associated with and have ownership of a particular verb. Expect to see a ‘gold rush’ as brands scramble to bag the words they want.

4. Ticker – consumer news just like the BBC — Facebook’s Ticker keeps a user updated in real-time with what everyone else is up to on Facebook. This means brands will have a very short time to make an impact on consumers. The Ticker is a live feed of all the actions and activity of your friends but more condensed than the main news feed, and visible all the time. Posts from branded pages will appear in the Ticker as soon as they are published, so it is important to space your brand updates to avoid spamming users.

5. Subscriptions – consumers don’t have to ‘ike everything — Just before the F8 conference this year Facebook rolled out Subscriptions which enable the non-reciprocal following of people and pages on Facebook. You are now able to receive updates from a public figure, for example, without having to directly Like them, and without them needing to accept your friend request. With Subscriptions you can filter how much content you receive from someone and also the type of content you receive from someone.  We’re currently working out the implications for measurement.

6. News Feed — The introduction of more control over your News Feed means that users now have the choice to opt out of certain updates from brands. This means that brands will have to make sure that their updates are distributed throughout the day, as not to flood users’ News Feeds, and also in sharing the right type of content for the target audience. The options as to how many updates you receive from a friend or brand are listed below:

• All updates: Everything a friend or brand page posts
• Most updates: The amount you would normally see in your news feed
• Important updates only: Specific highlights categorised by Facebook, such as user’s new job or a brand’s product launch.

7. Timeline – the consumers’ life history on Facebook, brands must wait — Timeline has been introduced as a way to gather all your past activity on Facebook and collate it into a scrapbook for you to easily digest. The app builds up a profile of your Facebook history by choosing the content that it identifies is most important. After your Timeline has been created you are able to edit the information and then publish it to your page. Timeline for brand pages has not been mentioned as of yet, but it’s a feature that could be applied in the same nature to monitor the activity of users who are subscribed to, or are a fan of your page.

8. New Movies and Music Features — Last Thursday Netflix and Facebook announced they would be partnering to give users an integrated video streaming service. The service will allow users to watch video content without having to leave the Facebook site, and so their activity and experience will be easy to share with friends live.

The service will be available in 44 countries but astonishingly not in the Unites States where its largest user base lies, as the 1998 Video Privacy Protection Act prohibits the disclosure of video sales or rentals across the internet. The move marks a significant step towards Facebook becoming an entertainment platform.

After much anticipation it was also finally revealed that Facebook will now be integrated with music platform Spotify. The Spotify app which is only accessible through Facebook will allow users to share the music in their lives with their friends on the social network. The Spotify app opens as its own page but is directly synced to your Facebook page, so your friends will be able to see what music you are currently listen to. It’s a good insight into the potential for future apps to have their own site and also be entirely synced to Facebook.

9. Display Media — The changes announced by Facebook last week mean two things for paid-for display advertising.

Firstly Facebook is creating a second tier internet; with the new app integration there’s now more content available within Facebook’s walled garden than ever before. Apps from Spotify, Netflix, Soundcloud and the Guardian all enable users to engage with and share content without ever leaving the site. This impacts advertising where these properties are ad funded. For example, if you run campaigns with the Guardian and Spotify – moving these properties into Facebook means you now need to consider how your advertising against this content needs to be adjusted for the new environment. These apps bring standard traditional ad formats to Facebook, increasing the creative options beyond Facebook’s own text ads.

The second implication of these changes is that publishers are becoming increasingly integrated with Facebook. This gives publishers a greater understanding of their audience, their audience’s relationships and the broader interests of that audience. Expect publishers to start using this understand to create even more targeted and relevant advertising opportunities.

10. There’s massive online buzz about it — As with all social media spaces, consumer uptake drives the platform so it’s logical to expect consumers to be very vocal about the latest array of changes There’s also lots of buzz across other social networks, and of course the mainstream media, about the new music and movies functionality and the new timeline and ticker features.

We’ve done straw ‘social’ poll of internet discussions so you might like to have these stats to hand.  Interestingly, Google+, which has taken traditional media by storm, is making very little impact compared to Facebook which has been mentioned over 8m times in social media since September 1, 2011.  During this time the overall sentiment level for ‘Facebook’ has been 87% favourable, while the search term ‘Facebook changes’ reveals a drop of 4% to 83% indicating that you can’t please all the people all the time.

Tags: Branded Facebook Pages, display media, f8 conference, Facebook, facebook apps, Facebook Pages, Facebook Platform, Mark Zuckerberg, open graph, timeline

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