Yahoo News Activity Automatically Shares News With Friends

Social media is now a popular source for communication, employment and sharing news stories. Google is constantly trying to promote its search engine by adding more updates every day. On the other hand,Facebook is adding new features and redefining social networking standards.
Amidst all this, Yahoo seemed to be shutting most of its services and downsizing. However, recently, Yahoo added new features to its search engine. The latest update is about integrating Yahoo news with Facebook social network

Yahoo News Activity Automatically Shares News With Friends

Today, millions of online users access Facebook to share all important events and activities, with their friends and family. It has become the best way to communicate with people online. Now, Yahoo is integrating its U.S edition of the Yahoo News vertical with that of Facebook.

What does this integration of Yahoo News and Facebook mean to an online user? This means that online users can now share interesting Yahoo News stories with friends on Facebook. Moreover, this also allows you to view what your friends are reading on Yahoo News.

You can read archived news articles and stories on Yahoo Facebook activity wall. Interestingly, you can add the ‘featured reader’ setting to control the news stories your share. All you need to do is visit the Yahoo news web page and login with your Facebook username and begin using this feature to share news stories with friends and read archived articles.

Yahoo News Integrating With Facebook

This recent integration with Facebook social network is just another step to increase the visibility and popularity of Yahoo’s News channel. Yahoo aims to attract online audience for more time by integrating with the social network giant- Facebook. Online users can see the stories read by their friends or share someinteresting news with the Facebook connections.

This Facebook feature on Yahoo news is an optional one. This means that users can turn it off if they do not wish to use the Yahoo-Facebook integration. Soon, Yahoo also plans to include its mobile application that will enable users to share television programs with friends on Facebook.

Right now, it is the integration of Yahoo news with Facebook. Soon, we might find other channels like Yahoo media, properties and international markets, to be integrating on Facebook. Users of Yahoo news can now find interesting news articles for their friends or family, and share it with one click of the mouse, on their Facebook profile. This feature has a few prompts and privacy controls that enable users to have full control over sharing the news stories. You may enable or disable these prompts and settings as per your convenience.

Numerous online users are already sharing Yahoo news and other stories with friends on Facebook. Hence, this integration will now make it easier to connect and discuss news stories on this social network.

Download your Facebook Albums in ZIP file

Today a lot of people have smart-phones and many end up uploading photos on Facebook from their phones directly. Facebook often become the single place for all the photos you cherish. Downloading these photos one by one can be tedious when you have a hundred images online.

Facebook2Zip is a nice online tool which allows users to simple download photos from their Facebook account on their computer in a zip file.

Facebook2Zip Features

• Visit Facebook2Zip website and give permission to it to access your Facebook albums.

• Once that is done, it will ask you to select the albums you want to select to download. You can also select all albums in one go.
• Finally hit the download button and wait of the website to create your .zip file with all the photos from the album.

You can unzip .zip file with WinZip or free alternative 7Zip. You can also use these other alternatives.

Try out Facebook2Zip and drop in your comments.

Tagging Non-Friends: Is Facebook Forcing You to Grow Up?

We just saw the facebook launching the status tagging for all friends, pages, groups as well as events. The company has decided that it is going to follow the twitter in order to increase the search functionality through the @Tag.

As a facebook user now, you are going to witness many new features. You will not be able to tag your friends, all forms of pages as well as groups, which show in the status messages. This is quite similar to the photo tagging and a message will be sent to all of them, who are being indicated in the tagged message.

This has been being promised by the Andrew Huang and most of the people use the status updatesin order to tell them about various real world experience that they faces each hour. Thus, he feels that the site is going to be more engaged now. 

The facebook management team has given clear indications that they will be moving one step further to become the twitter like and in fact even further as it will allow you to tag even non-friends inside the comment threads related to all their public posts. Thus, the facebook users are now going to be more idealized, and they are going to be public brand. The facebook subscribe button, which helps you to subscribe to various post are certainly going to be quite great for you all.

The feature of tagging non-friends has arrived with the subscribe button, which will eliminate from your mind to be the member of any other social network in the future. You should remember being an old member that it was previously impossible to tag various users who were not in the friend list and this used to be a big problem.

However, the facebook is now giving birth to the asymmetrical social networking and this is quite the same like the Google + and the Twitter, where it is certainly not important to make sure that the tagged person is your friends or not. Thus, it is going to give birth to the natural progression, which is just awesome.

Thus, as the owner of the post, you can now tag non-friends and you will be getting more response on your comments. However, right now, this facility is available on profiles only and it might be a major breakthrough as we move ahead to the new era as a facebook user. It does means that the facebook is forcing you to grow up.

Startup Guide: How and when to use Facebook Ads

Many a times I have seen web startups saying that Social media ads doesn’t work as effective as Google/Search based ads. We have tried and tested both Social Network ads and Search based ads, and have found that they both are equally efficient depending upon the need.

There are not many forums which actually guide startups how to use such networks to get a good value for their money. Let me give you some of my own examples which would help you in deciding when and how to use Facebook ads to get best results.

First and the foremost, the thing to understand is that Social network ads serve a completely different purpose as against search based ads. People click on search based ads in hope of finding something useful in relation to what they are searching. If they find relevant content they get hooked to the site!

But Facebook is a different platform and it is a place where people go to connect with friends and enjoy their time on various activities like ‘Playing Games’ and engaging over friends’ activities and other page updates. The problem is in making user notice your ad among so many other engaging activities which he/she is already doing on Facebook.

When we (iDubba team) used facebook ads for the first time to promote our special “Australian Open alerts/T-shit give away” feature we faced a bad response. Not in terms of ad not getting clicked but in terms of efficiency. Bounce rate was high and click through rate (CTR) very low.

But when we did the ad for our “IPL alerts/T-shirt giveaway” we got a great response with high CTR, low Avg. CPC and very low bounce rates. [Check the image]

So here are some tips:

When to use Facebook Ads:

1. Do not promote your usual website or stuff with Facebook ads. In other words don’t promote anything from a long term perspective.
2. Always use Facebook when you need to do a short promotion with referral/reward program.
3. If you want to promote your Facebook page related to your website, do use Facebook ads as they can get you some real good customers.
4. When you think that the keywords for a particular area of business are going to be costly, opt for Facebook as against Google.

How to use the Ads:

1. Make it Attractive

Biggest Challenge for any ad maker is to make the ads interesting enough, so that users get attracted even when they are busy doing their regular stuff.

2. Target only the right audience:

Don’t get lured when Facebook says ‘targeting 1 Million users’, instead carefully choose your target audience by searching for correct keywords. As you can see in the image our ad targeted only those people who were interested in Cricket/IPL.

3. Try it first and then put your money:

Start with amounts as small as 2dollars per day, and as you see traffic coming and CPC going down, increase the budget.

4. Keep a check:

If you think the ad is not performing as you expect it to. Pause it and edit it, try to tweak it till the time you get a satisfactory response.

Google Plus: Will Businesses & Brands adopt it?

Google Plus is going to be a hit! Forget the scramble for invites & initial euphoria – Just the fact that it keeps attracting people back to itself (thanks to that black bar) is a reason why Facebook’s & Twitter’s of the world have to start worrying!

I nearly spent better part of the entire day yesterday on it and I am still not done exploring it completely – After Google’s half baked and feeble attempts at Social Networking earlier, Google Plus is a refreshingly fresh & honest attempt at making people’s lives Social.

The biggest factor that Google Plus takes care of – Individual Privacy. It probably has simplest of privacy policies and user can control everything as to what is supposed to be public and what is not. Yes, initially users do have to spend time in creating circles (aka groups of people), but once you are done with that, it becomes far more easier.

Most of the serious users of Facebook & Twitter are already on Google Plus, or are waiting for Google to open up.

But what about brands? Will Google Plus be adopted by Businesses & Brands?

I would say, YES – but adoption may be slow!

Facebook, is a great place for businesses and so is Twitter – It really helps brands to interact and share with their fans & followers. Facebook’s Business & Community pages have made huge positive impact on Businesses world-wide. On the contrary, Google Plus currently looks like it has been purely  targeted at individuals (and it might change as it matures).

FB & Twitter are hit with businesses because self-promotion is an integral part of these platforms. Most of them look at these platforms as Marketing Channels (which they are). Brands brag about “no. of followers” they have and how big they are in Social Media.

Google Plus on the other hand does not have this “Fans” or “Followers” concept. Google Plus users don’t have to  follow a brand, business or a person. Users just have to add them to a circle and even if they do not add you to a circle you can still follow their public shares. Its not a compulsion!

So for a Google Plus user, he has a choice as to whether an update should go only to his “circles” or it can be made completely public – and I assume these will get into Google Index sooner rather than later.

Google Plus Adoption by Businesses / Brands

Google Plus adoption for Brands & Businesses might be slow initially, but over a period of time, it will surely catch on. It will be a place where Brands can put up their profiles, their “+ses” and it will be accessible to anyone and everyone without having to actually “follow” the brand.

Having said that, a lot will also depend on how open Google Plus makes itself to developer ecosystem. They need to release the APIs at the earliest to ensure that apps are build around it. And looking at how well Google has put up the Apps Marketplace, I am personally confident we will soon see a large developer ecosystem around Google Plus.

So, Brands & Businesses need to move fast and start making their presence felt on Google Plus. Some are already on it – MTV India is the first Indian Brand on Google plus !

Facebook is Passé. Pt. 2 – Here Comes the Mob(ile) and Those that Do no Evil!

I Say: Facebook is not a mobile network.

You Say: WTF!!? Call yourself a serious blogger – Facebook has 200 million mobile users – roughly 40% of its users access using mobile devices. Also Facebook’s launch of Zero – Facebook’s lite text-centric version – proves it’s serious about the mobile space.

But I am making a different point. A mobile social network to me is different from mobile access of a conventional social network.

The userbase, features, functionalities, and the value proposition are distinct from conventional social networks.

Let’s take a step back and examine fundamental differences in mobile vs. PC/Laptop usage behaviours:

1. Impulse

Mobiles work great for spur of the moment actions. It’s an always on, always with you device – the thought to action cycle is rapid and mostly uninterrupted, unless it’s your boss or significant other who is hollering at you!

2. Convenience

No BIOS sequence, no Windows is updating Registry files…  And shopping or making payments (soon in India) is a breeze compared to if you were doing it on a PC.

3. Synchronicity

A voice call by definition is synchronous; Text messages get uncannily answered way faster than an e-mail or a comment on someone’s Wall. The only time PC/Laptop users are really synchronous is when they are on Chat.

4. Form Factor/UI

Long a bugbear of mobile devices for more complex and immersive experiences, this is now no longer the case.  Especially, if you include an IPad or any tablet in your definition of a mobile device and it’s a whole new ball game!

Now let’s examine some applications and use cases of mobile networks:

• Chat: Before Facebook or Orkut came along wasn’t your default social network Chat – Gtalk/Yahoo/MSN? Those chats were synchronous. One of the most popular mobile networks isMig33 and QQ messenger trumps Facebook in China. Btw, Facebook chat sucks.
• Instant Polling: So it’s a Friday evening, a bunch of friends working in different places across town want to fix a watering hole to meet at. What are you going to do – voice conference people? Use Facebook’s polling option on your Wall and wait for people to indicate preference? Or push out a poll on everyone’s mobile screens and get instant feedback.
• Event-driven Social Networks: Following on from Pt.1 of the post, where I emphasized the fact that it’s not just friends = social networks, people also enter into certain temporary but high focus social networks.

Watch a match at a stadium with 50-60,000 people.  Attend a business conference with 3-  4,000 delegates. Marketers looking to get people to participate and engage at events are  going to want a real-time, always on social network and organizers of such event will value the deeper experience and engagement that participants will be involved in.

Augmented Reality gaming: Just as social games took off once they had the right platform with SNS, better mobile networks and mobile devices will power an augmented reality gaming revolution allowing people to combine real and virtual activities – at parks, zoos, festivals!

Mobile devices and the mobile internet will become the primary rather than secondary way for us to go social, and in a real time synchronous way – Facebook better watch out!

And now to the threat from Google!

Though momentum is currently with Zuckerberg and co., they need to carefully consider the following:

1. Google dwarfs Facebook in ad revenues. This is not Sex Therapy 101. Size Matters.Currently that is approx. $20 billion for Google vs. $2.5 billion for Facebook.

2. Google drives Android – the open source mobile OS. In the context of mobile devices and mobile networks that is a huge advantage. It’s also a revenue stream that will scale rapidly.

3. Google has a stake in Zynga. How many people would watch a TV channel if all their hit shows went off air. Facebook’s Achilles heel is that its top properties all come from the Zynga stable – a company where Google has made a hush-hush investment.

4. Facebook may be the social network but Google is my internet ecosystem. Browser – Chrome, Instant Messenger – Gtalk, Mobile Phone OS – Android ( and Chrome OS), Youtube, Blogger, Desktop Search etc. etc. – I just have more Google Friends in my computing ecosystem than Facebook.

Twitter Facebook bandwagon joined by Delhi Police – Will give you traffic Updates

Twitter & Facebook are getting mainstream – There is no doubt about that. Now, the latest to join these social networking bandwagon are Delhi Police. Residents of the capital city will now get updates about traffic situation on Twitter & Facebook.

Now, I must say they are both great initiatives – Twitter will be of great help when it comes to doing short updates regarding traffic snarls and accidents, while Facebook can serve as a place where the community has direct conversation with Traffic Authority.

The main reason for doing this is Commonwealth Games, however, if the popularity grows (which I am pretty confident of), this can probably serve as great foundation between Delhi Traffic Police and Delhi-ites.

Check out the latest Twitter timeline of Delhi Traffic Police.

Like on Twitter, Delhi Police have also opened a Facebook Account

Already the Twitter has attracted more than 650 followers , whereas Facebook community has already touched 3363 people. What is heartening to see is that on Facebook, Delhi Police are also answering citizen queries. Here is one such example (although quite funny – I am sure couple of beers should do nobody any harm….wtf)

 

While Twitter updates are only short messages on traffic situation, Facebook discussions are far more interesting. They are all primarily complaints, questions and suggestions.

I think all the other cities should take a cue from this – It will be of great help no doubt for ordinary citizens like you and me. It will surely serve as a public forum where senior officials can keep a tab on regularly.

Facebook’s Project Titan – Gmail killer or just some hype?

Facebook seems to be giving Google one blow after another. Just when you thought Google had the upper hand by banning Gmail users from importing their contacts on Facebook, Facebook comes up with a killer idea. It is planning on revamping its messaging system. Yes the same messaging system, which a few changes here and there aside has been mostly static since its inception.

Dubbed ‘Project Titan’, Facebook is coming up with a full scale webmail client like Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and Gmail for that matter. But then it has already crossed many landmarks such as being the top most social networking website in the world with over 500 million users and being the most visited website on the net. If it were a country today, it would be in the top 5 on the list in terms of population.

So then, why does Facebook need to come up with an email application?

• An average user has more than 130 friends on Facebook. This makes entry into email an interesting option as Facebook already knows the friends a user interacts with most of the time. This can be much better than the recently introduced Priority Inbox by Gmail in filtering messages

• Millions of people log onto Facebook via Facebook Connect and more than 80,000 third party applications. The fact that Facebook Mail is expected to have both POP and IMAP will make it all the more easier for people to login through third party sites

• Facebook has the best products like Facebook Photos, Facebook Events, Places etc. and the fact that this could be shared via Facebook Mail could make it a competitor for Gmail to watch out for. Microsoft is also working with Facebook to integrate the Office Web Apps with Facebook Mail to exchange and share documents.

• Facebook has more than 500 million users which is much more than the most popular webmail client currently – Hotmail with 400 million users. Though all the users may not use it, this definitely could prove to be a turning point in the history of email

Facebook Mail will give users an opportunity to have @facebook.com addresses. From social networking to search to now a webmail client, Facebook is showing Google that it has the ability to constantly innovate and come up with new products. The fact that Google had to recently raised the salaries of their employees by 10% to prevent them being poached speaks volumes of how much they are feeling the heat.

Think about it – Who will not want @facebook.com email IDs? There will be huge rush…there is no doubt about that !

There is a long time to go before Project Titan can be hailed as a Gmail killer. But one thing is clear, Facebook is ready to take on Google, HEAD ON!

Whats your take – Will Facebook Mail be Gmail Killer or not? On a side note, why no body is calling Facebook Mail as Yahoo mail killer or Hotmail Killer….Something to ponder on :)

ZooZoos Facebook Fans crosses 1 Million!

The team handling Facebook strategy should be given huge kudos – They have crossed 1 Million Facebook likes for their Facebook Page. In the process they also become the first Indian brand to reach this milestone [Top Indian Brands on Social Media].

Yes, they had a hugely popular brand of Zoozoos to start with, but that is not the only reason why Zoozoos has reached this milestone. Once look at their Facebook page and you will know that the people behind the scenes are very active and respond to their fans on regular basis. Not only that, they have kept the community active by constantly coming up with New Contests.

Although, memories of common people is short when it comes to brands like Zoozoo’s, they have done an admirable job of ensuring that people are reminded of ZooZoos brand though various channels. Online as well as offline.

It all started with their ads, but they have capitalized on the brand which was build – I am sure Vodafone would not have imagined that ZooZoo’s would be so big and so popular.

Facebook- “Don’t be Evil”? [Media Monday]

The growth of Facebook has taken whole of the world by storm- Any Doubt?

To me it seems like a giant growing fast, feeding on what people give him as he promises to entertain them, but may eventually turn out a real giant who will feed on these people! I say so because the hunger of Facebook is increasing by the day (or feature-by-feature you can say). Being a private company, they grew from $700 Mn revenues (2009) to $2 Bn in just one year (ridiculous isn’t?).

I’m also worried about the monopoly thing now, the much talked about Google Me’s launch isgetting delayed and I wonder whether they will launch it at the first place or not (fear of failing)!

So many things are being said against Facebook that we have a full wiki page for same (LOL isn’t?).

Enough said, let me confess- “I’m a big FAN of Facebook :)!”

Facebook was actually able to pull the effect of social media by enabling brands/people to advertise and engage users by launching the amazing concept- “Page” and also by opening up API’s so that millions of people can waste their time building “villes” and buying fake currencies in exchange of real one’s. 
Before this everyone was plainly talking about monetizing social media but no one got even sightliest closer to what Facebook has been able to do!

But still, I would love to see Facebook not getting Evil…

My concerns are because of some recent developments, I have analyzed personally-

Very recently, Facebook said they will share user’s personal data with App Developers just to give them better reasons to use Facebook API. This would mean sharing your contact details, i.e. mobile number and address with every developer whose App you are using.

This news created a backlash (obviously) and Facebook first said there is no need to fear as developers could only access information when users explicitly give them permission, but later on suspended this activity temporarily.

Facebook has this notorious habit of enabling things first and then backing out seeing the backlash.

The other thing which I realized lately, analysing our own page on Facebook is that it’s going to create a web-link for every status in world which is worth selling.

Here is why- when we put a status message on a page there are various actions which can be taken viz. like, comment, share and PROMOTE. I have analyzed that depending on whether the status update is supported by a link / image / video or not Facebook populates either “Share” or “Promote”.

I didn’t realize it until I tried to figure out why my plain status messages (without any links/images) were getting less impressions than those with links/images. 
What I understood was that for any status message without links/images there is no option to “share” but only to “promote”.

When I clicked on “promote” it opened the “Create an Ad” page, which simply created my page’s ad with my status message as the content. This should be an early indicator of what they have in mind- To sell every darn status possible!

In other news Facebook said they are going to launch new ad-platform “sponsored stories using users’ data”. It said “The social networking site is debuting Sponsored Stories, a new advertising format that will use your friends’ actions and turn them into advertised material.” Can u deduce anything by this. Well it took me 2-3 reads and then a status update from a friend to actually connect what they are trying to do.

Here is an excerpt of same –

FB has partnered with companies like Bing, Trip Advisor, Levi’s, Coke etc and they are doing “Instant personalization” for them. What this means is that yours and your friends’ data is by default shared with these companies so that they can make their advertisements more effective ‘automatically’. This may not affect any personal data directly, but in an indirect and confusing way.

Tip: If you don’t want this you will need to manually “disable” it by going to Accounts-> Privacy Settings-> Edit settings for Apps and Website (bottom of the page)-> Edit Settings for Instant Personalization-> Uncheck the check box.. [woof... you’d ram your head hundred times before finding this]

Crux of the matter- “Facebook is making privacy settings and personalization so complex that it will go beyond the understanding of normal human beings like me and you”. Or, possibly there will be a course in B-Schools to just understand what FB Privacy settings are?