Have you noticed that your Facebook news feed has come to crawl since the new homepage rolled out? Here's why: in addition to various layout changes, Facebook seems to have altered the Facebook news feed settings for a significant portion of users.
Instead of showcasing updates from your entire network, Facebook has defaulted to showing just 250 friends. It is unclear how those 250 friends are determined - but it is clear, based on my personal usage, that interactions with posts (clicks, likes, comments, etc) have been dramatically affected.
To make sure that you are seeing posts from your entire network, scroll all the way down and click the "Edit Options" button:
You will then get a pop-up that will allow you to increase the "maximum number of friends shown in the live feed" above 250:
Two messages are actively passing through Facebook (just copy and paste into Google or public Facebook search to see!):
HERE'S THE DEAL w/ THE NEW FACEBOOK LIVE FEED: They are blocking all your friends' news feeds except 250 that it chooses. TO UNDO: From HOME page, select MOST RECENT & scroll to the absolute bottom of page, click EDIT OPTIONS. Select NEWS FEED SETTINGS. Reset 250 to 5000 for FB's max friend limit & your feed w...ill work right again! Pass it on!
And
FB is blocking all your friends’ NEWS FEEDS except 250 THEY CHOOSE. TO UNDO BLOCK: Go to your HOME page. Make sure your news feed shows LIVE FEED. Then scroll to the bottom, click “Edit Options”, You will then see your NEWS FEED SETTINGS. Change the 250 to 5000 for Facebook’s friend limit and your feed will work right again. COPY & PASTE THIS & PASS IT ON
Mind you, this is coming from a someone who does not profess to understand Google Wave (after several attempts)...and from someone who believes that Facebook is the bigger than most give it credit for.
Here are seven unsorted reasons Google Buzz matters:
1. Buzz integrates directly into email.
One of the failings of Wave is that I had to repeated return to see new activity... that's asking too much for a new service with still sporadic usage. The email integration gives a large population (Gmail users of course) immediate and continued access to Buzz - all within a setting that is stickier than any other: email.
2. Buzz is familiar.
Combine email, Google Chat, Facebook status updates, Google Reader, etc... and you have Buzz. A familiar combination of web activities. Wave is too complex - this is simple enough to bridge us from email to Wave (or whatever is next).
3. Email contacts are the original - and perhaps most powerful - social network.
The ability for Buzz to connect you with people you already contact on a daily basis is powerful... it also means new users never are lonely.
4. Content is public.
Conversations are defaulted to being public and have their own URLs. In anyone else's hands, this is not revolutionary. But Google has worked hard to integrate blogs and Twitter into search results... it is a powerful way to accelerate Buzz and to reward / incent active users with traffic (much like SEO).
5. It is versatile.
The ability to pivot conversations through Buzz, GChat and Email is slick, simple and powerful because activities can also pivot between public / private and one:one / one:many.
6. It beats CC'ing
The public functionality makes Buzz a powerful tool for group activity and chat. People can jump in and out of threads.
7. ... And it therefore makes sense as a Google Docs Tool
There are clear benefits for team usage and it fits within the Google Docs suite of corporate products.
My Facebook redesign took effect some time early this morning... and the only big 'surprise' (for lack of a better word) was the prominence of "Facebook Credits" in the new header. Three links (Home, Profile and Account) now sit persistently across the upper right of your Facebook experience. When you click "Account", it reveals traditional account links (ie settings, privacy and help) - but it also includes a link to "Credits Balance". Until now, this was relatively buried on Facebook (you had to peck through advertising or birthday gifts, etc). It is as much of a sign of what is a priority (the Facebook Gift Store) and what is coming (Facebook Payments).
Clicking the "Credits Balance" link takes you to your credits homepage... which will invariably look different once Payments is a bigger part of the experience.
For many, the Super Bowl is more about advertising than football (though last night's game was far better than the ads). Last night was about integrated ad campaigns:
- In real-time, Dockers rain a Facebook premium ad campaign to match their Super Bowl TV spots, "Wear the Pants"
- Volkswagen did the same with their VW PunchDub spot
- ETrade released "Baby Outtakes" from their successful TV spots... and got thousands of "likes" within hours
- Dorritos, one of the largest advertisers, ran their ads from crowd-sourced ads and creatives
The days of using the internet to merely gauge ad popularity are over...
We are now in the days of using the internet (and social networks in particular) to engage beyond the thirty-second spot. Facebook, Twitter and other social mediums are enabling fully integrated, social ad units. In a way, it makes the job of the marketer easier as there is flexibility to move beyond the thirty-second constraint (of course, that does require larger, integrated campaigns and therefore more work).
This also shows the power of Facebook as an advertising platform and the role it is playing within big marketers' budgets / mindsets. Examples below:
While leading natural search strategy at eBay, we had a motto: Content is King. It wasn't a unique tagline - even CKX, Inc (American Idol, Elvis Presley, etc) stands for "Content is King".
While at the Polaris Digital Media Summit in Jackson Hole this past week - several folks (including myself) referred to social media as the "new SEO". When it comes to traffic acquisition and product marketing strategies, Facebook is indeed the new Google - it is top of mind for marketers in much the same way that natural search was a primary focus over the last several years.
And if SEO is driven by content...
Social media is driven by context.
Google :: Facebook
SEO :: SGO
Content :: Context
In fact, context is so critical to social efficacy that it has been billed as SGO: Social Graph Optimization. Meebo founder Seth Sternberg is credited with the term: "Search has been great traffic driver. Now social media drives [traffic] and needs to be optimized."
Much of the conversation at the summit was focused on driving traffic through social media and optimizing content across the social graph. The consensus was that context drives relevancy... and thus virality... and thus efficacy. Consider social sites like Quora and Aardvark as examples: using Facebook Connect and algorithms, questions are delivered contextually based upon your social graph, knowledge and activity.
And as the world of friends / followers, status updates and 'check-ins' grows - context helps stand out among the noise and therefore alleviate users from being overwhelmed.
This is further complicated by Facebook's "News Feed" - which itself is akin to Google's black-box search algorithm. We have a general sense for how it works and what Facebook values: activity (comments, likes, shares) results in content being "news worthy". As it has been described by Alex Shultz before, it is about "interestingness squared":
- content that is considered "interesting" is rewarded (highlighted in newsfeed with better chance to becoming viral)
- and content that is uninteresting (ie irrelevant) is punished (relegated to "live feed") and consequently has difficulty gaining visibility
As you think through social media and optimization, think through how it relates to your brand and product experience... and how the outputted content relates specifically to users (both the publishers and consumers). The more relevant and closed that loop is, the more effective the experience will be and the more likely your users are to engage / share.
Two excellent posts on the current status of geo-location companies by Robert Scoble and Hunter Walk (both bloggers are great and their blogs are must reads). Scoble argues that industry-first Foursquare is being squeezed by Gowalla (best UI) and Booyah's MyTown (best gameplay and my personal favorite!).
Hunter argues that, considering their rapid growth, there is room for Foursquare assuming they move beyond 'utility' and into an experience:
"If they get reduced to being a utility ("publish location") or end up focused on too narrow a group of users, they'll get passed by general purpose geo services or social networks on one side and out innovated by gowalla, mytown, etc on the other. [read more]"
Both Hunter and Scoble are spot-on: Foursquare, Gowalla and others need to build social and/or finding experiences beyond the 'check-in'. Consider that Foursquare has 1,000,000 weekly check-ins. That's significant size and growth. But when Facebook and Twitter turn geo-coding on, they will dominate by volume (and I have written about this before): on Facebook, 40,000,000 users update their status each day.... and 20% of Facebook users are on their mobile platform. "Check-ins", whether passive or active, will be massive. Between Facebook, Twitter, and the development on their platforms - the "check-in" will be commoditized (and that doesn't include Google, Yelp and other big players).
That is why I believe that the gameplay is so critical: it creates an experience beyond the 'check-in' that is part social, part gaming and part finding. Booyah's MyTown is a terrific example: in an interview with Scoble, CEO Keith Lee said that the average MyTown user (and there are 850,000+) spends 50 minutes per day. Clearly there is more to it than 'checking in'... and the Booyah team's background is in traditional gaming: Blizzard, EA, etc.
Another way to think about it: Facebook's power is in the social graph and the experience they have created... not in the 'status update' itself. Surely statuses are a core part of Facebook, but status updates exist on numerous websites and in various forms. The conversation is powerful in part because of where it sits, the network it is in and the responses that it generated. The act of checking-in should be thought of similarly... after all, in its simplest form, it is a status update with a geo-code appended to it.
JibJab is looking for a product and social media guru who is excited about:
- joining the 2nd fastest growing website according to Comscore
- working on the web's best Facebook Connect integration (by my account at least!)
- being part of a terrific, smart and fun team
- and impacting a big, exciting part of their business
Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!
Director, Marketing / Product at JibJab Media
Location: Greater Los Angeles Area
General Business, Distribution, Product Management, Marketing
JibJab is seeking a passionate, entrepreneurial product & marketing maven to lead its most promising everyday greetings vertical: birthdays. The Director will have his or her own P&L and will be responsible for product development, customer acquisition, monetization, and ongoing engagement. This role is equal parts entrepreneur, product manager and quantitative marketing dynamo and you should love being accountable for results.
- Drive results by working directly with engineering staff, analytics personnel, and content team members. You will be accountable for business results and you will have the tools to succeed.
- Create full-cycle marketing plans, from user acquisition through the resulting sale and, ultimately, retention.
- Gather evolving business requirements and define responsive product features and specifications. You will drive specifications through the engineering lifecycle to deployment, iteration, and optimization.
- Research competitive products and others in the space in order to assess, recommend, and implement breakthrough customer acquisition strategies.
- Enhance monetization opportunity in your vertical via established distribution partners and new channels you identify.
Skills
- Must possess tactical experience with Facebook Platform, SEO/SEM and email marketing. Resumes without these qualifications will not be considered.
- Experience in product development for consumer Internet products is essential. You must understand how to work in a startup web organization with folks across the functional spectrum. You love our engineers almost as much as you love our customers.
- Ability to dig into and crunch on imperfect data. You love spreadsheets almost as much as you love hunches and assumptions!
- Ability to work autonomously and to get hands dirty. You are comfortable with ambiguity and you are a proven self-starter happy in a start-up.
- Deep understanding of social networking and search engine marketing. Your thinking needs to be current, but you should have enough experience to know the difference between hot trends and proven strategies.
- Experience with a content-driven, programming-oriented product is a major plus.
Company Description
JibJab is a leading provider of digital greetings and online entertainment. From irreverent viral videos to offbeat eCards and personalized Starring You!® products, JibJab has been at the forefront of innovating online media for over 10 years. In 2009, the company reached new heights with over 180 million visitors, 265 million content views and a thriving direct-to-consumer premium business model thanks to the herculean efforts of 36 artists, technologist and business people passionate about reinventing the traditional media model. JibJab is backed by Polaris Venture Partners, Overbrook Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Congratulations to Dogpatch Labs residents Fanpulse on the launch of their iPhone App - just in time for the Super Bowl. FanPulse allows sports fans to "check in" to sporting games and interact with other fans in real-time.
Congratulations to Vish Prabhakara (formerly Digg), Art Chang (Yardbarker) and Joe Pestro (Yardbarker). We are glad to host them at Dogpatch Labs San Francisco. For more information:
A quick note to announce the move of my Twitter handle to @RyanSpoon (from @berecruited). I am not sure there is a better way to make the username move - but it was creating confusion between my personal account and the beRecruited.com brand, which will soon take the account over.
Please follow me there: @RyanSpoon
You will then get a pop-up that will allow you to increase the "maximum number of friends shown in the live feed" above 250: 
