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Changes to Facebook profiles and security settings
Facebook announced some changes and improvements to “make it easier to share posts, photos, tags and other content with exactly the people you want.”
For the users who have tried out Google+, you’ll see some familiar things – different profile settings (the “Everyone” setting will now be called “Public” for example) which are available in the page, as opposed to having to navigate through complicated profile menus.
Also included is more control over being tagged in photos – which will allow a user to approve or reject all tags before they are applied to a photo for visibility on your profile.
As with most changes on Facebook, this will likely be rolled out to groups of users over the next few days or so so. Take a look at the original articles, and keep an eye out for the changes to appear in your Facebook pages sometime soon.
Original Articles
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“Thinking beyond the ‘Like’”
Social media is a great way to get your audience more involved in the message you are communicating, by offering a chance to support that message with “real time” interactions. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare… the tools that you choose aren’t necessarily as important as making sure to use them well.
Think about how you advertise your social media presence – a link at the bottom of your emails, a line on your business cards, a URL in the credits of a video, a mention through another social media channel; we’ll use Facebook as our example. There are many ways to bring visitors to your Facebook page, but how do you get them to click that “Like” button, and then come back for future visits?
Take a step back, and ask yourself, “Would I hit that Like button? What does this page offer? Why would someone choose to Like it?” And then ask yourself, “What do I want to be the reason they click Like? What do I want them to perceive as my value?” Lastly… decide how you’re going to communicate it! Here are some tips.
Know what you’re going to be posting about, and when. Make a calendar and plan ahead, so that your content comes to your fans in a steady stream. Nothing loses participation more quickly than silence.
Interact with your fans. Post period welcomes to new members. Ask questions, and then use that “Like” button to show that you’ve read and appreciate the responses. Use the Facebook Questions feature to get a conversation started, and make sure that you participate!
Do not allow yourself to become a brand robot. This ties in very neatly with the above point – you have to interact with your fans in order to seem more personable and “likeable”. Don’t just spend all of your time reposting your news stories and ad campaigns – post some historical pictures to start discussion, post about the community service day, show the more personal side of your group.
Promote participation. Ask your fans to share their own pictures and stories. Allow them to add to your photo albums. This goes a long way toward promoting engagement and involvement, particularly with the Facebook page associated with a once-a-year event. A month later, solicit people to upload and comment on their memory photos. Two months later, show off historical photos and ask others to post theirs. Sharing promotes involvement, which keeps your fans returning to the page.
Show them what you offer. When you’ve got a sale, promotion, or special event, let your fans know about it. If you can, offer a “fan exclusive” – a discount, a sneak peek, a “fans only” event – something to add value to being a Facebook fan of your group.
Don’t go overboard. You see, your fans are human too, and if you fill up their feed with 20 posts a day about your event, they will eventually reach overload and either “unlike” or hide your posts. Twice a day is adequate for anything that you’re not live-covering, but always gauge your audience, and remember that responding to questions/comments is never a part of that “overboard” quota!
With the plug ins that the Web Team has to import your social media feeds into your site, you have a great set of tools to engage your visitors, if the content is interesting, relevant, and timely.
These tips are remarkably similar to the Twitter Tips that are posted on the Social Media Handbook site – good advice on one platform often translates to other social media tools.
Original ClickZ article can be found here.
Skidmore’s social media handbook can be found here.
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Facebook Places
Introduced yesterday, and rolling out gradually to users, Facebook Places allows you to tag yourself with a location in your Facebook posts. It’s similar to FourSquare and other Twitter-location applications, which are highly popular. However, there’s a twist — others can tag you as being at a location too, whether you’re there or not!
To adjust your Places privacy settings, click on the Account tab at the top right of your Facebook screen, and click Privacy Settings. Select the little blue “customize settings” link towards the bottom of the screen that appears.
- You’ll see a list of privacy options. Under the Things Others Share category, disable “Friends can check me in to Places.” Now, only you can broadcast your location.
- You can also choose who can see your check-ins. Click the “Places I check in” pulldown under the Things I Share category. The default is “friends only.” Selecting “Customize” brings up a pop-up where you can exclude entire networks, individual people, or everyone.
- Finally, you may want to disable the “People Here Now” feature under the Things I Share category . “People Here Now” allows any user checked in at a location to see who else is checked in there—even if they’re not friends. Make sure the box is unchecked next to “Include me in ‘People Here Now’ after I check in.”
(Original news story and directions from Gawker.com.)
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No Dislike Buttons!
Facebook does not have a dislike button at this time. There is, however, a dislike button out there that is a scam. Do not install a dislike button.
Don’t believe me? Check out some links on the topic:
According to Graham Cluley in a post in the Sophos blog,
“If you do give the app permission to run, it silently updates your Facebook status to promote the link that tricked you in the first place, thus spreading the message virally to your Facebook friends and online contacts.”
He goes on to say,
“But you still haven’t at this point been given a “Dislike” Facebook button, and the rogue application requires you to complete an online survey (which makes money for the scammers) before ultimately pointing you to a Firefox browser add-on for a Facebook dislike button developed by FaceMod.”
Be careful what you click in Facebook, it has scams just like the rest of the web.
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More on facebook
The New York Times has some interesting visuals on Facebook’s security. Especially interesting is the privacy policy word count through the years at the bottom of the page.
PC Weekly Article
Facebook announced changes to their system that will make your information a lot less private to other sites and it’s causing an uproar. PC Weekly wrote a great article outlining breaking down changes. Some of the new features are very interesting and the integration between Facebook and external sites is exciting in a geeky, I have the online world at my fingertips, sort of way. I can have Pandora pull in my favorite songs from Facebook automatically or have Yelp show content from my Facebook friends.
The question is, with all this great interactivity between Facebook and third-party sites, what personal information is being made public and how do I stop it? The article does cover how you can turn off some of the settings and how it will work long-term which you probably haven’t seen highlighted much on Facebook. I highly recommend you take a look if you haven’t heard or don’t understand how the changes will affect your online security.
Some interesting highlights:
“Facebook’s new features are making it easier to build your Facebook profile and share online articles and other items with your friends. But like anything Facebook-related there are some serious privacy implications to consider.” – Ian Paul
“Before this week’s announcements, whenever you signed in to a third-party Website such as Colbert Nation or NBC.com using your Facebook login credentials, those external Websites were allowed to store your Facebook data for only 24 hours. Facebook recently changed that requirement, and now those Websites can store your Facebook data indefinitely.” – Ian Paul
“At first glance, most of this customization sounds similar to the new plugins Facebook offers, but the difference is that sites using Instant Personalization will also have access to your publicly available Facebook information the moment you land on their Webpages, while signed in to Faceboo [sic]. So when you go to Yelp or Pandora, for example, these sites can access your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, friend list, likes and interests, and your fan pages.” – Ian Paul
“It’s also important to note that opting out of Instant Personalization will not completely stop Instant Personalization sites from accessing your information. If any of your Facebook friends visit these sites, the Instant Personalization feature can access that person’s friend list and all the publicly available information for each friend. So if you’re Facebook friend Suzy visits Yelp, even if you’ve opted out of Instant Personalization, your publicly available information will be shared with Yelp simply because you are on Suzy’s friend list.” – Ian Paul
What do you think about these changes?