What is EdgeRank?

You may have never heard of EdgeRank before, but chances are you interact with it every day. EdgeRank is the algorithm used by Facebook to determine what shows up on your News Feed and when. With 2,835,000,000 minutes spent on Facebook News Feed PER DAY, it is quite important for brands to understand how to get in front of their fans. Considering 96% of users never return to a brand's page after the initial visit, taking advantage of the News Feed is crucial. The infographic below shows how EdgeRank works and how important it really is.  

-Mike

Common Facebook Mistakes for Graduates

It is that time of the year again, spring is officially here and a new bath of eager youths are about to enter the workforce. The transition from student to adulthood can be a challenging one. Behavior that was once acceptable, and even encouraged, can now get you into hot water fast. It can be hard learning and adjusting to these new, unwritten rules of maturity, especially when it comes to social media. McAfee Internet Security Expert, Robert Siciliano, shared his top 10 list of mistakes that graduates make on Facebook:

1. Don’t deny this fact: You are being judged every second of the day by people who are in a position to hire and fire you.
2. Don’t do that! Learn from other people’s mistakes. When you see someone get in trouble, fired or arrested, don’t do that.
3. Don’t friend people you don’t know.
4. Don’t take or allow others to photograph/video you with alcohol in your hands, drinking, smoking, doing anything illegal, scantily clad (or less), or making those stupid faces. You are an adult now.
5. Don’t like, share, or retweet racist, homophobic or off-color media or comments that make you look like a jerk.
6. Don’t swear. Ever. It’s OK to say flippin’, freakin’, heck, maybe even effing, and shite. But once you start dropping F-bombs, you look like an angry, uncouth juvenile delinquent. And seriously, I swear like a cage match fighter — but not online.
7. Don’t log on while amorous or inebriated. Nothing good can come of that.
8. Don’t ever talk about anyone in authority — your boss, coworkers, teachers, students, the president, or anyone, for that matter — in a negative tone. Seriously. Unless the person is a serial killer or oppressive dictator, play nice.
9. Don’t be so public. Lock down your settings. Most social networks have privacy settings that need to be administered at the highest level. Default settings generally leave your networks wide open to attack.
10. As Howard Stern’s dad used to say to him: “I told you not to be stupid, you moron.” You have been warned.

We have all heard the story of how a friend of a friend was fired because of a Facebook faux pas, but no one ever thinks it is going to happen to them. With so much personal information online today, one can never be too safe. Be sensible online and save yourself potential headaches in the future.

-Mike

Facebook Graph Search Brings New Privacy Concerns

Are you one of the 13 million Facebook users who have not touched their privacy settings? Many people may not be concerned over their privacy settings on Facebook, but with Graph Search rolling out to the masses soon, your personal information security will be at an all time low. If allowing strangers to see your personal information online doesn't scare you, the fact that 91% of employers admit to using social network sites to screen potential employees might. With everything from your vacation pictures to banking information being stored online these days, security is becoming more and more crucial. Be smart and take the time to understand the security settings, not only on Facebook, but all of your other online accounts. The hassle of reading the fine print now is nothing compared to something like identity fraud later. Check out this infographic to learn a little more about the privacy trends on Facebook:

-Mike

The NFL Hits Social Media Hard

With draft day come and gone, the NFL has been all over the headlines the last couple of days. Taking advantage of all this media attention, the NFL has made a huge push into leveraging social media. If you watched the draft,  you may have noticed how on Thursday night, all the potential draftees were ushered in front of an iPad to have their picture taken, which was then sent straight on out Twitter so fans could see what everyone was wearing in what the NFL was calling the #DraftRedCarpet. The NFL also tried to make the behind-the-scenes action much more visible for fans by tweeting all the action.

With over 12 million follower (Twitter - 4.5M, Facebook - 7.1M) the NFL has quite a substantial fan base. With such a huge following, you would probably assume the NFL has a large team managing their social accounts -- but you would be wrong. Duane Munn is the one-man show responsible for managing all the NFL social accounts. Managing account for such a huge entity with so many followers is a titanic undertaking for one man. Duane was quoted saying:

"I tell my Mom that I never wanted to be a doctor, but with the amount of time I spend on my job, I imagine this is what it is like to be one,"

Not only is Duane the sole manager of these accounts, but he tends to stay away from things like scheduling tweets, opting to engage followers on a real-time basis. This allows Duane to stay on top of trending topics and make each post get optimal engagement. Using platfoms like Adobe Social, Duane is able to track online trends and buzz words so he can make relevant posts that really impact his followers. Also, since Duane is posting this content real-time, he is able to coordinate effectively with news and articles the NFL is releasing throughout the day, creating a streamlined and influential presence on social media. Without scheduling tweets, Duane is also able to avoid backlash by limiting the amount of inappropriate posts that go out during times of breaking news. Many large companies were criticized for this in lieu of recent events, like the Boston Marathon bombing.

It seems like the NFL really hit a home run by finding a person who can effectively manage all their social accounts solo. Although community management is not always a 1 man team, it certainly does help cut down on communication errors, while streamlining the whole process exponentially.

- Mike

Instagram Introduces "Photos of You"

Yesterday, Instagram took inspiration from Facebook and introduced a new way of tagging people in images. As easy as adding hashtags, photo tagging will better connect mobile users to the friends they've captured. With the ability to tag any Instagram account in an image, the platform has made it easier to browse photo feeds of people you know and pics that you appear in with a new "Photos of You" section on your profile. When someone tags you in an image, you'll get a notification and the pic will show up in the "Photos of You" area. Worried about privacy? Instagram has that covered with easy to navigate settings to adjust what appears in your profile and what doesn't.

Although Instagram is constantly evolving, there was a large issue of only being able to “discover” photos of yourself by reviewing your "Activity Feed" for a mention of your username in a caption (e.g., “with @samshredder at Fenway!”). Sadly, user/account mentions won't be automatically converted into photo tags, so one will have to go back through every photo to manully tag people.

"Photos of You" will not be visible until May 16th, so everyone has a few weeks to try it out.

Personally, we see this latest improvement as a true positive within the social space and are interested to see how this will further help connect Instagram with Facebook . Not only will it provide a broader connection and engagement between users, but the ability to share personal (and brand) messages will beome easier moving forward as well.

For more info, watch this: http://vimeo.com/65246801

What do you think of the latest addition to Instagram?

xx Samantha

Social Photos No Longer Yours

Facebook and Instagram users in Britain may no longer solely own their photos. As of last week, the U.K.'s Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act, passed the final stages to become law. This new act is basically a change to existing copyright laws, which will allow commercial use of images that do not have any information identifying the owner. Known as "orphan work", companies are now permitted to claim these photos after doing a diligent search to first identify the owner. At the end of the day, if you take a great picture of a sunset, a company can take that picture and advertise with it as their own or even sell it to other companies. All this without giving you any credit or cut in the profit. Apparently your only option to prevent having your photographic work constantly being stolen, is to register every photo you take. If this sounds like more trouble than its work, you are probably right. Currently there is only one registry available, which will make registering all your photos quite tedious.

It seems that an increase in law suits over who owns what on the internet is eminent in the U.K. Whether or not a company did in fact make a diligent search for the owner will be a very grey area, since it is hard to quantify what exactly constitutes as diligent. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out over the pond. We have heard whispers of similar things happening here in the U.S. but after seeing how the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act effects Britain, we should all have a better idea of the correct rout to take.

-Mike

ThingLink Comes to Facebook

Earlier this week, the popular interactive image platform know as ThingLink, officially hit Facebook. ThingLink allows users to enhance images with embedded information, like a video or a text block. Since the additional information is inserted within an image, the person interacting with this image will not have to leave the current screen they are on. This is great for brands and marketers because they can get more information in front of a customer in a shorter amount of time -- a benefit that could increase engagement and eventually, sales. ThingLink also will help Facebook since users will now spend more time on the Timeline and News Feed, not having to link to other websites do obtain more information.

Back in November, ThingLink debuted on Twitter with great results. Since it's launch, major reps have reported seeing more than five times as much engagement on their posts that contained ThingLink images. We believe these new interactive images will quickly become the norm. With online attention spans decreasing by the day, the ability to cram as much information in front of a customer as quickly as possible is paramount.

-Mike