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Facebook Timeline Launches Worldwide

Friday, December 16th, 2011
Facebook Timeline

Facebook Timeline

Back in September of this year, Facebook unveiled the new Timeline function at the F8 event. The Timeline has been summed up to be the story of your life on one page.

The Facebook Timeline feature allows users to create events of their life on their Facebook profile. Do you remember that time you broke a bone in 6th grade? Well, you can create that event for the world to see. What about your senior prank? Go ahead and include any information you want to include — time, description of prank and location. You can now literally tell your life story to your friends and family.

Of course, privacy is still the main concern for many Facebook users. Facebook is still doing great things to uphold the privacy of its members. Users still have an option to hide what they don’t want people to see and limit things to only a certain group of people.

The Facebook Timeline feature will be scrutinized by many users. Thousands of people are already verbally and publicly displaying their disinterest for the feature. However, this is usually the new trend for any new feature of Facebook. Most people will admit that it will just take a little time for the new Facebook Timeline feature to grow on them.

Once people discover how useful and personal the feature is, they are more likely to use it to its fullest capability. Some people do not want their whole life to be on Facebook, but other users see the attraction in telling their story on one single page to people who may not know too much about them.

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Facebook Pages Get Upgrade

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011

This Thursday Facebook will be upgrading the layout of their pages and adding several new features. Some of the changes will be cosmetic and others are long overdue issues with functionality that have bothered many of us. The main updates will include:

  • Notifications when fans interact with your page or posts
  • A place to showcase photos along the top of your page
  • A news feed for your page
  • The ability to Like and post on other pages as your page

Showcase Your Latest Photos

  • The most recent photos that you post to your Wall or photos that you tag your Page in will appear here. This area will not include any photos posted by your fans.
  • To hide a photo, roll over it and click X.
Facebook Changes To Page Photos

Facebook Changes To Page Photos

Navigation Where People Expect It

  • Navigation links are now on the left, just like on people’s profiles.
Facebook Pages Navigation Changes

Facebook Pages Navigation Changes

Show the Top Posts on Your Wall

  • You can choose to show posts only from your page or from everyone. When viewing posts from everyone, people will be able to filter by Top Posts, which puts the most interesting stories first, or by Most Recent, which shows activity in chronological order.
  • To set a default filter for your Wall, go to Edit Page.
Facebook Pages Wall Changes

Facebook Pages Wall Changes

Use Facebook as Your Page

  • You now have the flexibility to interact with the other areas of Facebook as a page.
  • Get notifications when fans interact with your page or posts
  • See activity from the pages you like in your news feed
  • Like other pages and feature them on your page
  • Make comments as your page on other pages
Facebook Pages Admin View

Facebook Pages Admin View

New settings

  • You can set defaults for your email notifications and how you post to your page – as yourself or your page. You can also select which featured pages appear in the left column.
  • To manage your settings for email and posting preferences, go to Edit Page and Your Settings. To select which pages appear in Likes, go to Edit Page and Featured.
Facebook Pages New Settings

Facebook Pages New Settings

Posted in Facebook, Social Media | No Comments »

LinkedIn IPO On The Horizon?

Monday, January 31st, 2011
LinkedIn IPO

On January 27, 2011, LinkedIn officially filed to go public, registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission. JPMorgan, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley are the official underwriters for the offering, with Allen & Co and UBS of Switzerland the secondary managers. LinkedIn will be the first of an expected string of Internet IPOs in the coming months.

The IPO is widely seen as a test of investor’s ambitions that can be applied to other social networking sites such as Facebook, which is also expected to go public this year. Founded in 2002 by PayPal executive Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn launched on May 5, 2003. As of January 2011, the company boasts a network of over ninety million professionals around the world, including professionals from all 2010 Fortune 500 companies.

The company’s phenomenal success has resulted in the investing public eagerly anticipating an IPO. Now that the IPO is official, investors are now awaiting a date. While the company has not officially said what the number of shares will be or the price range of those shares, according to documents filed with the SEC, the IPO is expected to value the company at two billion dollars, with a profit of $175 million for LinkedIn.

This comes amid concerns over the company’s revenue streams. Posted revenues have only turned positive in the last seven quarters, and LinkedIn has stated publicly that it expects revenue growth to slow as the company focuses on private growth. This could impact the precise mechanics of an IPO, with implications for Facebook should it choose to go public, also.

At any rate, LinkedIn performs a valuable service for professionals, and that may carry the company to success with a public offering. The date is expected to be sometime within the next several weeks, as investor hunger cannot be put off forever.

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How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter

Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

Those who have actually delved into all that Twitter can do have found a site that is completely rewriting the future. It’s changing the fact that some people have been unreachable and that some causes too obscure to make any real change. Take the Earth Hour initiative that grew from 88 countries before the twitter boom to 128 countries and countless participants after it. Twitter has made making a difference possible.

So the question is ‘How do I put that to work for me?’. It’s simple. You have to understand that Twitter.com is a place to make connections and relationships. It goes so far beyond networking that it hinges on true community. With Twitter you can go beyond mass email marketing and instead speak to people directly and encourage them to care about your business and/or cause.

A few things to remember:

  • First, stay on top of your @ messages but use the search bar. Find out who is talking about you and your company and be ready to offer thanks for praise and solutions for complaints. Consumers love to have the option to reach out and speak directly to a CEO when they have a bad experience (and it doesn’t hurt that complaints are limited to 140 characters!) but some won’t @ you so you have to find them.
  • Remember that most of those using twitter love that it is informal, so be sure that your ‘voice’ is casual and friendly. Phrases commonly used by customer service reps should really be avoided. Just be candid.
  • ReTweet interesting or relevant things you see. People love to have their tweets shared. Offer links to pertinent or even just fun or insightful things you’ve seen, even when those things aren’t on your website.
  • Lastly, and this cannot be stressed enough, DO NOT SPAM. One of the best things about Twitter’s setup is the difficulty to spam people. Don’t be the company who perseveres and gets the spamming out there. No one likes it and it’s against their terms of service.

The bottom line is to have fun while getting your name and information out there. Find people to follow who are interesting and be interesting in return. You don’t have to follow everyone who follows you but be courteous and check things out.

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Posted in Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »

Project Titan: Facebook Challenges Gmail?

Monday, November 29th, 2010

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has announced that he and his team will roll out a new email type feature for the site.

The hype says that a Facebook email client will put Gmail and other email sites completely out of business, however Zuckerberg doesn’t think that will necessarily be the case.

The system will not be exactly the same as the emailing sites you are used to. The project, called Project Titan, will endeavor to keep every type of communication that users are currently taking advantage of and keep them in one place. It will not be a place for lengthy email correspondence.

“If we do a good job, some people will say this is the way the future will work.” Zuckerber has stated, “We don’t think a modern messaging system is going to be email.”

It is well accepted by those who understand the world wide web that in order to be a competitive business you must take advantage of the current social media trend. A big bite of that is Facebook. With the addition of email, in any context, the once college only site may rise above the rest as the platform for everyone.

Although Google and Facebook have long been involved in a constant battle for users, one that has left almost everyone else behind, Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, sees it as a challenge. “More competition is always good because competition makes the market larger. We are all well served by having everybody online.”

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Learn How To Speak Fluent “TweetSpeak”

Friday, November 26th, 2010

So you sign in and see: “I tweeted this RT from @aplusk and my followers freaked. I even got DMs and it was almost a TT! #lamepeopleirritateme”. Brain melting? Don’t worry, it’s not as strange as it looks.

Starting with RT. Quite awhile ago Tony Hawk posted “RT @someone It’s my birthday!” Of course people wished him a happy birthday. Little did they know, RT means ReTweet. This means that the person is resending someone else’s post to spread the word. ReTweeting is actually done often and is a quick way to get the word spread far and wide about anything or anyone. It’s like the old pyramid schemes, if one sells to ten and they each sell to ten and so on.

Next the @ signs. This is only a way to mark that you are using someone’s unique twitter name. @aplusk happens to be Ashton Kutcher. (A plus K get it?) So any time that you see an @ sign just realize it refers to someone. When you use the person’s unique twitter name via the @ that post also appears in a separate page on their profile that they can choose to look at often to see who is talking about them.

DM means Direct Message. This is a bit like an email sent via Twitter with a 140 character limit. You can only send these private messages to someone who is following you. This makes it easier by eliminating an inbox full of spam or otherwise unwanted messages.

The last thing the above message talks about is TT’s, Trending Topics. Along the side of your profile page (or in you menu if you are using a telephone ap) you will see a list of topics. These change frequently and generally refer to whatever is ‘hot’ in the news or entertainment industry. It’s a way to see what ‘everyone is talking about’ as it takes thousands of tweets to start a TT. A way to alert people that you are trying to start a TT is to use a hashtag which is represented by the pound sign ‘#’. Example: If @pink puts out a new album she might tweets something like “My new album just dropped!! Pick up #greatesthitssofar online or at your local store!” This shows that she would like the name of her album to ‘trend’ giving it optimum recognition.

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Posted in Twitter | No Comments »

Facebook To Add Datacenter in Rutherford, NC

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010

Once the home to many textile companies, Rutherford county was a thriving community with a proud history and a bright future. However in the last ten years or more the clothing industry has moved to other countries leaving this area in near dire straights. As with the rest of the country the area has struggled, but with a reported 13.4% unemployment rate (whereas the rest of the state averages 9.6%) the economic decline feels harsher.

However, this month Facebook has announced that it will join other companies, who have reported profitable gain, in bringing a new data center to the area. This is incredibly good news as the project will immediately create jobs for construction companies and workers and continue to provide jobs once the center is complete. The executives have estimated that after approximately 18 months of construction they will need 450 people for ‘high tech’ computer jobs.

The news rocked the county in the best possible way, “This is a game-changer,” Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton said at the site. “It’s a message that Rutherford County and North Carolina are open for business in the 21st century.”

The building to be renovated and eventually used is the Old Maco building located on Old Caroleen road. The site, boasting a whopping 168 acres, is only about an hour from Asheville suggesting that the people living in other counties may also be able to gain employment.

“We always took great pride in the fact that we clothed the world,” said Dalton, who was born here. “Those jobs are now gone with the changing economy, but today shows we’re still a great place to do business.”

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Posted in Facebook | No Comments »

How To Get More #ReTweets

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

With only 140 characters and minimal branding, Twitter can seem like an extremely difficult way to get your message across. Quite often the key to spreading that message is to have others spread that message for you in the form of ReTweets. If done correctly, Tweeting can even be the first step in triggering a viral message. So here are some quick tips for how to get more ReTweets.

(All the heavy lifting has been done by social media researcher, Dan Zarella. The complete report entitled “The Science of Rewteets” can be downloaded here.)


Link Occurrence in ReTweets: Generally, only about 19% of Tweets contain links. On the other hand, about 57% of ReTweets contain links. That’s a whopping 3X difference! By all means…include a link to something worthwhile!

ReTweet Links

URL Shorteners: By far, the bit.ly URL shortening service was the most ReTweeted. It’s also included in many social networking plugins and features some pretty snazzy analytics. If you have an option, use bit.ly for your URL shortener.

Most ReTweeted Words & Phrases: With only 140 characters allowed per Tweet, it’s often difficult to decide exactly what to write. Every word counts! Here is some actionable data to help make that easier. Talk to your followers (not at them), offer something worthwhile, and ASK for a ReTweet.

Time of Day: As with any message, the time of delivery can make a BIG difference. While overall Tweet volume peaks during business hours and in the evening, ReTweeting occurs much more frequently between 3 PM and midnight. If you’re hoping to snag a few ReTweets, post in the afternoon.

Best Time of Day for ReTweets

Day of Week: The day of the week also plays a heavy impact on your chances of getting your original Tweet shared. Relative to non-ReTweets activity, Mondays and Fridays are the best days of the week with Friday seeing the most activity.

ReTweet Day of Week

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More On Twitter And What It Can Do For You

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

So presuming that you have signed up for Twitter in an effort to benefit from it’s unique platform, you are now probably wanting to know exactly what to do with your profile and account.

First, realize that your actual page on the Twitter.com website isn’t extremely important, so making it personalized and visually stimulating, while fun, isn’t an important step for now.

Your primary objective when starting out is to get followers. The best way to do this is to be current, relevant , and interesting. If you understand that people will search certain terms, then you can begin by tweeting about current affairs so that those browsing around will see your tweets.

These tweets should be fun and entertaining. Witty tweets will draw more attention than merely informative ones. Learn to make your 140 characters worth reading.

Find articles and/or story’s that pertain to your area of business and then choose to either summarize the story or comment on it in your own words and add a link for people to follow for the full story.

Another way to begin adding yourself to the Twitter world is to find other companies and people who you are interested in and who may be interested in you. This way they will be notified that you are following them and may choose to follow you.

Once you’ve figured out these steps, it’s time to tweet! Pick a topic, article, story, or thought and type in the 140 characters or less that will let people know you have arrived on the social media scene!

Good luck and happy tweeting!

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Twitter Is Simple And It’s Simply Changing The World

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

For some Twitter is another way to connect with friends and loved ones in a faster and more accessible way, however for a growing number of people Twitter has become an invaluable networking and business tool.

It is not uncommon to see businesses like coffeehouses and even some take out restaurants offering the option to order via Twitter. Tweeting that you are craving a certain flavor of ice cream or maybe that you wanted to see a concert that sold out before you were able to get tickets may often yield a response from a business willing to help.

If you are a business owner Twitter has become a tool that enables you to keep in touch with your customers minute by minute in a way that has previously been nearly impossible. For example; Simon Cooper, President and COO of The Ritz Carlton Hotel Company, recently had a tweet sent to him about a disappointing experience at a Hotel in Florida. Within hours, though he was several states away, he was able to contact his staff who got in touch with the guest and rectified the situation during the same day. The guest was ‘wowed’ immediately instead of waiting for a comment card to take the same affect weeks later.

Why is Twitter so much faster? Mostly because the platform allows you to see who is talking about you and your business via your phone. One can choose to download an application with search options and ‘trending topics’ or receive notifications via text message. This means that, at your convenience, you can read messages intended for you and/or search for words related to what you do.

Another facet of the site is that you are able to accumulate followers whom you can reach with a simple 140 character message that reaches them during their day without spamming. Customers read your tweets to keep updated on what is going on and can help you spread the word by re-posting, or ReTweeting, your information.

With Twitter your business possibilities are endless. For more information or to better understand, the folks behind the phenomenon suggest you simply ‘Hang around the site and watch for your own Aha! moment’.

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