Facebook Accounts For 52% Of Sharing
December 14, 2011 at 12:48 pm
I love it when the round-ups of the year come out and this is the first I’ve seen for this year. Interesting points for me are:
- Facebook accounts for 52% of web sharing – they just make it so easy, and we’ve all learned how
- Mobile has exploded. Finally, after years of hype, it has happened.
- Chrome overtook Firefox in November. But lovers of Firefox, read this article about why it’s not doomed!
The Best 60 Second Instruction Guide
September 14, 2011 at 7:57 pm
Loving the pink teddy and the really laid back voice. If you are the owner of that voice, please call me… I’d love to hear it first thing in the morning 
Tags: skitch
Not Liking New Toyota Dylan McGrath App
September 7, 2011 at 9:55 am
I did when I saw it first, really I did. There’s nothing more I”d love than have Mr McGrath come round my house to cook for me… at least that’s what I thought the prize was, #fail1 – the landing tab doesn’t really give much away in the line of prize description:
So I liked, I entered, gave 5 types of permission (which is a lot), and then proceeded to the competition mechanic itself. I’m prompted to create a table (give Toyota my data) and then invite my friends. Now my friends are busy people and unlike me, they don’t spend a whole lot of work time on Facebook, so if I sent them a message from Toyota about this, they might be a bit peeved. Anyway I prefer to choose whether to send an invite or not…
#fail2: if you don’t send the message to your friends, you don’t create your table. It’s a forced viral. That’s where it lost me. I’m not prepared to send messages to 5 people in order to enter a competition. There are other viral options that Facebook offers such as post to wall, which I’d be happy to do, and let’s face it – if I post to my wall, there are way more people will see it than the 5 people I choose to send invites to.
At this stage, I’ve decided not to enter the competition, but am just having a look around to see what else is there, and this bit is just untidy - if you haven’t yet got winners, just don’t display this, or put up some text to say “Your name could soon be here. Come back soon and fine out…”
I don’t know whose work this is and I didn’t intend to set out to diss it. I actually liked the design of the landing tab and the prize idea is a good one. It’s just the execution that lets it down.
Tags: Toyota Facebook Dylan McGrath
Refresh Dublin on Apps
July 21, 2011 at 2:33 pm
Last night I came out of evening event hibernation and headed along to Refresh Dublin’s talk by Dermot Daly on What Makes A Good App? It would probably have been more accurate to call it ‘what makes a good mobile app’ because it in that area that Daly specialises (he’s the Founder of Tapadoo, one of the leading mobile app developers in this country).
I like it when someone is on top of their game that they can impart their knowledge in a way that is Crystal Clear.
He had 4 basic points to make:
- It’s got to be all about the idea. Some things don’t need to be app’ed. I imagine a large part of his time is spent putting exec’s back in their boxes! A good rule of thumb – if a site is worthy of being bookmarked, then it’s possibly app potential. An app is like a tool in your toolbox – something you take out to use occasionally, but when you need it, it’s the only thing that’s suited to the job.
- Less is more. Like on websites. Only to the power of a thousand.
- Make it pretty. Again, like on websites. Design counts and is worth investing in. In the Q&A after he mentioned how Apple say you should allocate about 40-60% of budget on artwork.
- Consider the details. He showed some great examples of apps they’d worked on that were nice, but then they added a little sound here, or a touch of movement there and it adds to the experience. Again much like websites.
There was a lively Q&A afterwards. I asked a question about how to get your app up the charts once you’ve set it out into the wilds of the app store. Success is about chart position. In a small market like ours, you can buy your way into number 1. Takes about 250-300 sales a day to be top of the Apple store chart for Ireland.
He advised getting the app review sites to review your app. Not to go for the dodgy agencies who promise the world for a fee (like SEOland).
Another interesting number was that there are no real economies of scale when it comes to creating apps for other platforms, eg. converting an iphone app to an android costs 90% of the original price. Some developers even charge 110% because of the additional testing, etc. I think that a little unfair because while there’s more testing to be done, there’s no time being spent on concept development which you’d have to do with the first one.
At this point, my iphone for taking notes had died. The scrappy bit of paper I had was full up. And lots more was said. If you want to know more, then why not come to the next one of these events yourself? Next Refresh Dublin date is 18 August. Bookmark it… no way… make an app of it! : )
Tags: app development ireland, mobile apps, refresh dublin
Great Pickup
March 17, 2011 at 5:16 pm
When you read stuff like this after a long hard week that isn’t over yet, it makes it all worthwhile..
Tags: Ireland Town
Ireland Town Social Game
March 15, 2011 at 9:14 pm
If you’re looking for something fun, interesting, and challenging to get you in the mood for Paddy’s Day, then you might want to check out Ireland Town! It’s a social game on Facebook that I’ve been working on over the past 6 weeks in my role as Social Media Project Manager for Tourism Ireland.
Like all good things, it began on the back of a napkin in Bewleys when Brian conveyed to me his vision for a social game involving key destinations in Ireland. I took that napkin home, wrote it up into the shortest brief ever known to mankind, and shipped it out to a couple of trusty developers. Internally wincing at the turnaround time I was asking for proposals back, and the number of words in the brief, things happened, ideas got created and work began on Ireland Town in early February.
Betapond, who I’ve worked with on a couple of projects before, were the winning development team and they have pulled an amazing rabbit with fluffyness, brains and that can speak 5 languages – out of their hats!
Now we’re at the end of an exciting 6 weeks. You will be able to play Ireland Town yourself from Thursday (St Patricks Day) – but if you’re a fan of one of Tourism Ireland’s Facebook Pages, you will get an early start today.
My Role (as Social Media Project Manager on behalf of the client)
- During the specification process, working on behalf of the client to ensure their best interests are being specc’ed out in the documentation and formal agreements for the project
- Communicating timelines to all parties involved in the project internally
- Sourcing content… while designers design, developers code, and the money people negotiate, someone has to come up with content ideas, and run around sourcing, signing off, and delivering. For this project we have 31 destinations with 9 tasks at each one = a lot of content to come up with. Luckily we also have our copywriters on hand to jazz up the language.
- Wearing my design hat, feeding back client’s views to the developers.
- While development takes place, I turn my attention to preparing all the ancillary content such as creating the Facebook presence, with custom designed tabs, a schedule of content for the first 6 weeks, Twitter skins, etc. Working with our trusty video editor on promo videos for Youtube.
- Communicating progress throughout to the stakeholders within the organisation. Ensuring their questions are answered, ideas are fed through into the development process, and requirements from them are clear.
- Did I mention there are 5 non-English languages?
I Love My Job.
I love the start of projects where it’s all about ideas and ‘What Can Be’. I love the middle of projects where everyone’s working together towards the same thing. I even love the crazy end of projects where days are long, and work is a heady balance of calls to mobiles and landlines, 3, 5, and often 7 way skype chats, emails flying, last minute things being dropped in…
Thank You’s
- To the makers of Basecamp, Dropbox, Skype, and Conceptshare – you are my saviours… Where would we be without you?
- To Aileen, David, & Lisa – thanks for poring over the spreadsheets and injecting fun into them! If you’re going to the Blog Awards this weekend, give them a big cheer – they’re shortlisted for the Best Sports & Recreation Blog.
- And of course, last but definitely not least, to Heidi who always ‘gets it’ and manages to do cutesy but cool at the same time – A Massive Thank You Indeed. If you want beautiful design from someone who knows what you want more than you do – talk to CookieWeb.
Go on – play Ireland Town the newest social game on Facebook. Enjoy. And happy St Patrick’s Day!
Tags: facebook.com/irelandtown, Ireland Town social game, St Patricks Day, St Patricks Day 2011
New Facebook Page Design
February 17, 2011 at 4:12 pm
On 10 February, Facebook introduced its new look for Pages. Designed to bring ‘consistent experiences across profiles and pages’ it will be applied to all pages from 10th March. Between now and then you can view how the new page will look when logged in as an administrator. You can make the switch before 10 March – in research I carried out of one industry more than half of the leading pages have already done that.
Appearance:
- Photos at the top: The most recent photos that you post to the Wall of a Page you admin, or photos you tag your Page in, will appear here.
This area will not include any photos posted by people who like your Page, so you can control this. What you can’t control is the order in which they appear. While you can manage this on personal profiles, on pages it’s random.
- Information box is gone, but you can put information up top, alongside the page name. None of the leading pages in my study are doing this.
- Wall logo has been reduced in size from 200 X 600 to 180 X 540.
- What we were calling tabs are now navigation links on the left hand side. It seems to allow for up to 7 at a glance. Admins will be able to re-order these menu items and they will be able to set a selected one as the default for non-fans.
- New page design is preset to display page owners on bottom left. Remove that by clicking edit page/featured/page owners. While this could be a good way of adding personality to the page, I think it’s safer to continue to add personality through the wall posts and not display pics. It could potentially be a minefield – what if fans friend request the admins? Should they accept? What if your page has a high turnover of staff and the faces keep changing? And what if your admin forgets she’s also visible on your page and changes her profile pic to something wildly inappropriate.
- Mutual connections: on the right hand side, it shows how many of your friends like this page. It also shows other liked pages the brand and you share. It’s a good idea now to think about your strategy for which pages you will like that you wish to associate with.
- Wall Filters: fans can now view wall posts by ‘everyone’ or just us. If they choose ‘everyone’, they will see all posts with the most liked/commented ones first. This has not gone down well and many people are demanding the chronological order to be brought back in place. The posts by brand filter will display only brand posts in the order they were posted. The new pages can also filter out wall posts in a language you don’t speak.
Administration:
- It’s great news that Admins can now like and post on other pages as the fan page. It overcomes the problem we’d been facing of when you want to interact with fans off the page, how to do it? Not as your personal profile, now you can do it as your page. To do this, simply click on Account in top right corner/use Facebook as page and there you can select the page you want to administer.
- Manage permissions – you can add keywords to a moderation list. When users include blacklisted keywords in a post and or a comment on your Page, the content will be automatically marked as spam. Comments will appear in grey to admins, but will not appear to the public. Or you can set the Profanity Blocklist to medium or strong. In these cases, Facebook will block the most commonly reported words and phrases marked as offensive by the broader community.
- Email notifications – you can opt to receive email notifications whenever someone posts or comments on your page. Probably more useful for sleepy pages, or if you’re managing a whole load of pages on behalf of a number of clients. With this feature, there’s now no excuse for a delay in replying to questions or comments from the wall.
Apps:
According to Facebook:
We are now ready to move forward with our previously announced plans to deprecate FBML and FBJS as a primary technology for building apps on Facebook. On March 11, 2011, you will no longer be able to create new FBML apps and Pages will no longer be able to add the Static FBML app.
• If you have apps installed that are built in FBML, they will continue to work but you will not be able to add any new instances after 10th March. If you’re getting new apps, make sure they are developed in an iframe format.
What To Do Now
- Rethink your profile picture as the size change may affect it.
- Check your ‘page category’ is correct as this will now be displayed.
- If you previously posted important links in the information box, ie. your phone number or twitter link, make sure they are included in the about us section.
- Very important to consider the 5 images that will display at the top of the page. Upload 5 images that you wish to set as your default, but do not rely on the order in which they are presented.
- Remove the page owners and page admins.
- Consider carefully what pages you like as the top 30 of these will now be displayed.
- Uncheck the email notification settings (edit page/your settings).
Sources:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/02/11/facebook.page.redesign.mashable/
http://blog.neworld.com/?p=886
http://www.hyperarts.com/blog/facebooks-new-fan-page-design-reduced-tab-width/
How Large Is Your Twitter Vocabulary?
February 8, 2011 at 2:44 pm
Lovely little app from The Times in which they analyse the language of your tweets and classify you… I’m delighted to see I’m a Word Nerd.
How do they calculate this?
It works by scanning your last 100 tweets, and comparing the words you have used with those stored in Google’s immense NGram¹ database – a collection of several hundreds of thousands of words Google has gathered from its Books project.
Foreign words, non-words (like ‘Lolz!’), and ‘stop words’ – words like ‘the’ and ‘and’ that are used so frequently by everyone as to be irrelevant – are first removed from the list.
A custom algorithm then calculates the distinctiveness of the words you’ve used by examining how frequently each appears across the books from which Google’s NGram database is derived. (A word that appears more frequently scores lower, and vice versa.)
You are given an ‘overall score’ based on the distinctiveness of each individual word in your tweets, and ranked in one of four ‘performance quartiles’.
Visit The Times Word Nerd calculator.
Decembeard
December 8, 2010 at 10:25 am
Because Movember is so last month! Check out this fun little app from IdeaWorks in Australia: Decembeard. And for every beardy pic created, they donate $5 to charity.
Here’s me:
Tags: decembeard
Gorgeous Little Spending App
May 13, 2010 at 9:18 am
Well done to iQ Content who created this tidy little personal budgeting app that makes coming to terms with your spending habits actually kind of fun. It hits the right notes design wise and of course it works well. I was thinking mid way through it ‘hmm how much more?’… all I had to do was glance up and I could track my progress.
Here’s a post about the thinking that went into it.
And here’s the Spendometer app.
Tags: spendometer app
