Hot answers tagged facebook
9
Update: I've expanded this answer into a longer article, Overcoming The Network Effect Barrier.
Even though this answer is for social networks, a lot of this advice could be applied to any business or website as well.
Be The Best At In At Least One Area - Don't be just another clone. There are enough of those. What is your unique selling proposition? ...
9
Using Facebook Connect and now we're seeing more Twitter Connects accompanying the Facebook option is a very good option. The point is take all the barriers to entry away from your potential users.
Easy to remember: Users don't want to have to remember 12 different passwords, one for every site, so giving them the option of quickly logging in with their ...
8
Since everyone has highlighted a lot of the good stuff, I'll play devil's advocate here. I've spent a year developing Facebook apps, so I know a little about this stuff.
Fast Pace
Facebook moves very fast when it comes to making changes and obsoleting things. What works today might not work tomorrow, and most certainly won't work in a year. So, unless ...
6
One approach is to ensure that your product is sufficiently useful even before the network effect kicks in. The network effect is useful marketing tool, but your product should ideally not rely on it completely.
For example, Microsoft Word is useful for creating internal documents. The network effect kicks in when you send documents to other people, but the ...
6
Pros of using Google/FB login (btw OpenId is also there which essentially is a similar thing):
The biggest advantage for a user is that he does not need to create and remember one more password!!
for you one advantage is that you don't need to worry about security of user's passwords (yes, it matters)
you're making users happy by making their registration ...
6
Stay away from those services.
In most cases these are not legitimate businesses. These services usually acquire lots of Facebook fans by scamming people. I blogged about this once and can provide a link if it'll be helpful for you. (Edit: added link below.)
In addition to shady tactics, another downside is that you'll end up with a bunch of unengaged, ...
6
I think, for applications that are not linked, it should be a page per application for the following reasons:
People using the application will be thinking of the app not your company brand name. Until your established eg. Zynga your application will be the reason people contact you.
You want to collect like minded customers together on one topic, not ...
5
My guess is you lose close to none.
Some things to consider though:
Keep the logon process as simple as possible. The user should just click on an authentication method and be redirected to facebook/openid/twitter's page to authenticate.
Provide users with a way to register on one of these alternaives if they haven't got an account. MyOpenId is a good ...
5
I can't provide you with any metrics, but one thing to consider when choosing a provider is accessibility. Facebook is blocked at a lot of work places. If they are blocked and that's the only method of authentication you provide then they can't use your site at work.
So, if you go down this route it's good to provide as many options as possible.
5
Well, first of all I think you're short-changing the B2B marketing benefits. It's quite common for companies to discount Facebook for their B2B marketing because people don't want to see that kind of content on their walls. But done well, it can generate better results than you'd expect - especially internationally.
But I think another aspect that maybe you ...
4
This industry is following the technology adoption lifecycle - where the market/technology has reached the majority portion of it's lifecycle.
Geoffrey Moore has a book on this specific phase, which he calls it "Into the Tornado"
As with all new markets/technology that reaches the masses, they follow the phases
Innovators - SixDegrees.com, Friendster.com, ...
4
You raise an excellent question, one we have asked ourselves.
One of the biggest problems with Facebook pages is that they are not easy to find. Also, I've facilitated a number of seminars on social media and always ask participants how they use Facebook - inevitably it is for personal reasons, occasionally people have 2 personalities, one for business, one ...
4
As I see it, Facebook is a way to cultivate a community around your product/service, so that people can show their support for it and let it spread virally. When someone becomes your company's "Fan," they also let all of their friends know, which can be a great way to spread the word.
As I'm sure you know, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and all the ...
4
I'm curious about this too. I had a similar question here, with some nice answers: http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/12233/has-using-the-facebook-like-button-been-beneficial-for-your-business.
Using my relatively novice experience of the Facebook Like button, here's what I would say:
Advantages:
If someone Likes one of your articles (or any ...
4
Jon's right. Don't write Facebook off.
I work at company that sells B2B software at a much lower price range, but Facebook is one of our primary advertising venues. We find that the majority of our customers are introduced to us through a Facebook click and then come back and purchase days, weeks, or even months down the road. Without a strong Facebook ...
3
You'll want to integrate your Like button something like this...
Note the src attribute of the iframe tag below. You'll set the href query parameter to the encoded URL of the page you want to register as "liked" when the user clicks the Like button. In this example, the URL is http://www.mysite.com/page, so the encoded URL is ...
3
Having developed both, I can say that developing a Facebook connect application gives you more control. If you don't need to show information on people's profiles (boxes) and you really just want to publish feed items - FB Connect is a simple solution. You can do other cool things like see what friends you have on FB are using your application, etc. It's a ...
3
Here is a detailed walkthrough: (i tried to make it as clear as possible)
Create a facebook page here http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php , select a category, page name and sign your name.
Now your page is created and you are taken to the page dashboard. There is a link on the left that says Add Fan Box to your site. Click it or you can follow this ...
3
Another reason to avoid services like these is because of Facebook's EdgeRank. For every update you post, Facebook determines if it appears in each of your fans feeds based on factors like:
how old the post is (newer is better)
what type of update it is (photos are usually weighted the most, links seem to be weighted more than plain-text)
how many people ...
3
One easy but expensive way of doing it is by buying likes and followers... this means buying Facebook ads that are shown to a very targeted Facebook audience... the problem with this is that it can be very expensive.
There is also another way which requires more work but hopefully it has a better return on investment and it is definitely more fun... ...
3
Per Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities Section 4:
You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an advertiser).
Per Facebook Pages Terms Section 7:
Third party advertisements on Pages are prohibited.
Per Facebook Platform Polices Section 3, Sub-section E:
You can only ...
2
The best way to communicate with your fans seem to be wall posts. They used to show on all your fans' feeds, but since the latest facebook redesign, a post has to be engaging enough (as determined by facebook) for the user to show on his feed.
Post engagement for each user is calculated from a couple of factors:
overall popularity of the post
(likes, ...
2
It is likely that facebook will support openid as a provider in the near future.
With that in mind, concentrate on OpenID. When facebook gets around to it, you'll suddenly have all their users, but unless you're launching this minute, you'll waste a lot of time and effort to integrate something that will be obsolete in 6 months.
This site does it well... ...
2
It's going to cost you a lot of money+time to develop+iterate+maintain an app that confers "clout". Then when you find a partner (which you must, because this is your core competency), the partner is going to rewrite it from the ground up.
Your money+time would be better spend rounding out your mock-ups, brainstorming, and networking with potential ...
2
You should look not for a general "web design company", but for a company that specializes in Flash application development. While many companies can design Flash animations, ads, or simple games, it takes more specialized skill to build Flash applications that do more than the basic stuff. Fewer shops & freelancers actually have such advanced Flash ...
2
The "Stored Data" page from the Facebook developers wiki has some more information on what data can be stored indefinitely. You'll have to Google that since I'm a new user and can only post one link... I am not a lawyer, but it seems that anything other than this data must be purged after 24 hours.
According to the "Stored Data" section on this page the ...
2
At a minimum, I would ensure you have a Facebook page for your business (previously known as a fan page). Then, you can add a "Like" button that links to your Facebook page. The advantage is that as you get more people as fans/friends of your page (and thereby your business), you're building your reach.
For an example, you can see how I do it at ...
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