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Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook to bring back option to invite all group members to events

Posted: 12 Apr 2012 12:04 PM PDT

Users will once again be able to send event invites to all members of a group, a Facebook spokesperson tells us.

Sometime in the past few weeks, the social network removed the option to directly invite an entire group to an event. Users could only send invitations to users they were connected to as friends. Facebook tells us the reasoning was that creating an event within the group environment generates a notification for users who have group notifications enabled. However, many users were frustrated with the change because their events were no longer getting the same amount of traction among group members.

Facebook says it decided to bring back the feature for all groups as a result of the feedback. The change is expected to go live later today.

People who use Facebook groups for promoting events are likely to appreciate the return in functionality, but they should be mindful of sending invites that members might perceive as spam. The social network often removes features that are abused in this way. For example, Facebook pages can no longer send updates or event invites to fans’ inboxes.

The Facebook Marketing Bible April 2012 Edition Is Now Available

Posted: 12 Apr 2012 10:30 AM PDT

The new Timeline format for Facebook pages brings new opportunities for marketers and advertisers on the platform. Optimize your Facebook page for the new format with the April 2012 edition of the Facebook Marketing Bible: The Leading Resource for Marketing and Advertising on Facebook.

In the April 2012 edition we cover new and emerging topics for marketers and advertisers, including Timeline for pages, the upcoming Recommendations Bar Social Plugin, and an analysis of the fluctuations of Facebook advertising rates.

In addition, this month we’ve launched a brand new website and content structure so you can find what you’re looking for faster. It’s mobile-friendly too, so you can read it on any smartphone or mobile device.

About the Facebook Marketing Bible

The Facebook Marketing Bible has enabled thousands of brands, app developers, content publishers and businesses of all sizes to do more with Facebook, from the basics of creating a successful fan page, to the complexities of social plugin integration on an off-Facebook website.

The Facebook Marketing Bible includes hundreds of pages of strategies, comprehensive how-to guides and case studies analyzing today's most successful marketing and advertising campaigns on Facebook. Take a tour of the Facebook Marketing Bible.

Recent Additions to the Facebook Marketing Bible:

Ready to take your marketing and advertising campaigns to the next level? Subscribe to the Facebook Marketing Bible today.

Facebook allows users to download expanded archive of their information

Posted: 12 Apr 2012 09:45 AM PDT

Facebook has increased the amount of data it provides to users when they download a copy of their information from the site, according to a post on Facebook Public Policy Europe page.

The "Download Your Information" feature now includes catalogues of friend requests a users make, IP addresses they've logged in from and any previous names they've used, among other Facebook actions. This is in addition to the copy of photos, posts, messages, chat conversations, friend lists and other information that Facebook first made available for download in 2010.

The changes, which begin rolling out to users today, are part of an agreement with the Data Protection Commissioner  – an Irish agency responsible for the enforcement and monitoring of compliance with data protection legislation. Since Facebook’s international headquarters are located in Dublin, the company is responsible to the Irish commissioner. The commissioner conducted a three-month audit of Facebook following a formal complaint suggesting the social network was creating "shadow profiles" of non-users. The commissioner found the company compliant with Irish and European Union law, but had Facebook agree to gives users even more control over their data and privacy within six months.

When users download their information from Facebook, they get a zip file containing html files of their profile, wall, events, messages, notes and friend lists; jpegs of their photos; mp4s of their videos; and an index file for navigating the content. The data can be used as a keepsake or to replace lost media files, but not to easily switch to a different social network.

The following is a table from the commissioner's report showing what was previously available in the "Download Your Information" tool and what Facebook promised to add. The company did not list all of the changes it made today, but it says more categories of information will be available in the future. Users can download their information here.

Videos, events now featured in publisher tool for pages; Questions demoted to drop-down menu

Posted: 12 Apr 2012 09:09 AM PDT

Facebook appears to be testing a consolidated content publisher on pages, giving new prominence to videos and events while hiding the Questions feature behind a drop-down menu.

The publisher is the area from which page owners make posts to their fans. With the initial rollout of Timeline for pages, the publisher included options to post a status, photo, question or milestone. Milestones are posts that get larger placement on Timeline to commemorate important events or achievements. One problem with the old publisher was that it wasn't clear that to upload a video, page owners had to click "photo." See below.

Now the publisher features three sections: status, photo/video and event/milestone+. When page owners click event/milestone, they will see options to create an event, share a milestone or ask a question. (See below.) This makes event creation much simpler than before, when it could take several clicks to add a new event, but it makes the Questions feature much less noticeable. It's unclear whether Facebook is trying to discourage page owners from using Questions, but its placement suggests it’s a lower priority for the company.

Although only certain partners have access to Facebook offers for now, we are told the ability to create an offer will soon be available from the publisher. We do not know how much prominence the feature will get when it rolls out.

The Facebook publisher has gone through a number of iterations both for users and for pages over the years. The social network seems to go back and forth between offering more or fewer options in the space. At one point the tool included third-party apps under a drop-down menu, but then Facebook eliminated the feature citing low usage. Events were added to the publisher in 2009, but removed a year later. We can likely expect more tinkering with the publisher this year as Facebook tries to find a balance between streamlining the user interface and making people aware of all the options available to them.

It’s worth noting that when page owners choose the "use Facebook as a page" feature, they see an older version of the homepage publisher, which includes separate options for links and videos. Some time in the past few months, the social network grouped photos and videos together, as well as status and links, but it did not update this less frequently used aspect of the site seen below.

Hat tip to AllFacebook for first making us aware of the change.

fredag den 13. april 2012 at 07.36