A new study by Social Marketer Training states that 27% of all Facebook engagement takes place on the news feed. Furthermore, the study says that users are 40 to 150 times more likely to engage with marketing offers that appear on the news feed than go to the corresponding brands page. Utilizing the news feed can spread your message to a much wider audience than posting offers on your brands page, if done correctly.
Facebook has announced that they have now enabled the use of applications via mobile devices. Moving forward, it will be possible to detect and show a mobile version of a Facebook application on smartphone handsets (including the iPad and tablet devices). With over 350 million people using Facebook on a mobile device each month, these new changes will allow users to interact with various aspects of their platform that were previously inaccessible.
The key to this new mobile accessibility is HTML5. It provides a seamless experience across iOS, Android and other mobile devices. Looking ahead, developers and marketers should no longer just be thinking about their application working across all web browsers, but should also focus and place additional emphasis on making their app work on mobile devices and tablets.
Now that Facebook has brought their social channels to mobile, they’ve helped to encourage and provide a deeper social engagement to users. The social channels currently available through mobile are Bookmarks, Requests, and the almighty News Feed. You can now click on the links provided within these channels and be directed to a mobile version of the application.
Bookmarks on Mobile
Bookmarks are a very important feature of Facebook. The assist in encouraging users to re-visit your application. Once a user has interacted with your app on Facebook, a link to that application will automatically be saved on their main navigation bar for easy access. When users click the bookmarks shown on the navigation menu, they will be shown the mobile version of the application.
Requests Dialogue for Mobile When users invite their friends to an application, they are sent notifications called requests. Previously, users were unable to access these links via their mobile devices. Facebook has changed this, and users are now able to visit the mobile version of the app by simply clicking the link displayed. This is very similar to the bookmark feature where the users can tap the request and be directed to the mobile version of the application.
The Almighty News Feed
Users have previously been able to view all of their news feed stories from their mobile device, including those from applications, but they have not been able to comment or interact with them in any way…until now. Just like links displayed within Bookmarks and Requests, if a user sees a story about a particular application within their news feed, they can now click on the link and view the mobile optimized version of the app.
New Feature: Authenticated Referrals
Along with the opportunity to view applications from your mobile device, Facebook has introduced a new feature called “Authenticated Referrals”. What this means is, if a user is visiting your application for the first time (and has landed on your app through a news feed, or request link) that user will be required to login/authenticate an app, just as they would if they went to the application for the first time on the web. Upon login, they will provide any permissions the app requests. Utilizing this feature enables us to know who is visiting the application and also enhance the app experience. Essentially, this will not only provide great insights as to who is using the app, but also give the opportunity to provide a more personalized experience to users.
Since accessing Facebook Platform apps through mobile devices is still in development, they will slowly be unveiling new features as more knowledge is gained. It’s a technologically driven world we live in and almost everything can be done on a mobile device. Facebook has recognized this need amongst its users and has now provided a solution to help us increase social engagement with our apps!
Part of Facebook’s major rollout is having a news-ticker for lightweight activities on the social network. This is a key component in their overall plan to launch the Facebook timeline, as it adds an enhanced experience for users to see what their friends are doing, in real time, on the social network. As those lightweight/real-time activities start becoming “popular” (as determined by Facebook’s semantic/A.I newsfeed), they’ll start making their way to the top of your newsfeed.
The problem with Facebook’s plan is that there’s been quite a bit of backlash from users who don’t like the news-ticker. Or the new layout for that matter.
An app has been released for Google Chrome where you can hide the news ticker altogether. The numbers are quite surprising and speak for themselves: almost 40,000 people have downloaded and installed the app. That’s extremely impressive given the fact that the app has been available for just under 2 weeks. It could be threatening to Facebook’s plans when the developers behind this app rollout extensions for the other browsers.
We don’t suggest users download it as the news ticker serves a great purpose for a more enhanced experienced with your friends on Facebook: ie. so you and your friends can listen to the same music, watch the same movie, view recommendations and photos that you would have otherwise missed.
Feel free to let us know your thoughts on the news ticker. Cheers!