Category Archives: Facebook

Facebook Is The New AOL?

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Introduction:

Facebook has won the hearts of many over the years. This does not go without saying that Facebook has seen a fair share of positive as well as negative criticism on the trott. In the modern day, the ‘modern’ man would usually describe Facebook as an internet vicinity where everything and everyone you are interested in is readily available. This really takes us back in time (1990 to be exact) and reminds us of AOL. It is, therefore, no surprise that experts nowadays tend to compare Facebook with AOL a little too often (No wonder; both share quite a lot in common).

As it started to spread its wings and ascended even further towards supremacy, AOL saw success AND controversy. Facebook is no different in this regard. The only difference is, AOL now grimaces all that it had to lose. However, the million dollar question is: will Facebook overcome the odds and prevent history from repeating itself or will it share the same fate as AOL? Let us milk the moment (Let us not get too agricultural here) and ponder over what factors could cage Facebook in the same sort of trap as AOL.

1. Provision of Content and Pipes

Remember how AOL tried to be an all-rounder? Yes, it tried to be a little too many things at the same time and it cost them, dearly (Talk about multi-tasking being hazardous to health). Not only was it an ISP but it also tried its luck as a social network, a TV station AND a media empire! That pretty much explains why Time Warner did not prove to be a very successful bond and its existence came to an end in 2009, only nine years after their engagement.

Facebook has only focused and thus, excelled in pipes so far and let other firms deal with the content. Yes, Facebook is fine as long as it continues this way but in case otherwise, times of worry are about to commence for Facebook.

2. Charging for Everything

One major area where Facebook just can’t afford to be AOL is this. AOL was brilliant alright, but the bulk of AOL’s business relied upon charging users for every little service. This strategy used to worked fine and dandy for AOL, only until early 2000 though. This is when AOL ran into serious problems as people had now gained access to certain free services that AOL was charging a pretty penny for.

Yes, competition matters. AOL was too late in splitting its online services from the ISP and it really cost them, dearly. Speaking of Facebook, yes it has promised not to repeat any such errors. Of course, this comes at the cost of stalking people and their buying behaviours time and time again; however, if Facebook does make the mistake of doing what AOL did it is surely going to be a horrendous one.

3. Annoyances with Behavioural Targetting

Oh, this one can never go unnoticed, can it? Catching the attention of many, Behavioural Targetting has been a policy that Facebook had adopted ever since the very first day of launch. For those of you who really don’t know much about what the rant is about: This is a means of making use of the compiled information on a Facebook, or any other social media network, user’s browsing behaviour which may include pages liked and keywords searched.

Based on these results, the most pertinent advertisements are displayed on the page of the user so as to get maximum clicks and increase their profits, of course. Trouble is, Facebook plays a part in the (occasional?) privacy invasion and then tries to give others the impression that Facebook had no idea about what happened and how it happened. This can cost Facebook, big time.

4. Investment on the Wrong Firms

As aforementioned, AOL wanted to be everything, all at the same time. This also meant that it was heavily spending on its partner firms. It would have been an ok thing for AOL to do as long as it was spending in the right way. Nah, no sarcasm. AOL already found itself in hot waters following the purchase of Bebo, a renowned social network, in 2008 that cost them a mammoth total of 850 dollars and astonishingly, was sold out for merely 10 million dollars in 2010.

Facebook has played its cards, amazingly well in this regard. To date, Facebook has allowed only pure and polished talent to seep through the ranks and has successfully resisted the urge of buying enormous businesses that it has nearly nothing to reap from. By these standards, it is no surprise that Mark Zuckerberg  rightly points out, “we buy companies to get excellent people”.

5. The Internet Hub

There is no denying the fact that AOL used to be the main internet hub in its time of dominance- a service that was hard to resist. Since AOL was achieving burgeoning success and it just couldn’t register the word, ‘loss’ in its own little dictionary, AOL would especially provide incentives to its staff for deliberately  retaining even those customers who wanted to delete their accounts and had even sent cancellation requests. New Facebook changes, anyone?

Facebook hasn’t really shown similar signs so far; however, killing a Facebook account did become quite a bit of a pain in the backside at one point in time. The issue has been resolved, of course. In fact, I have personally witnessed the deletion of atleast a few dozen Facebook accounts (Sorry, Facebook but I couldn’t hold it back).

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Some Useful Facebook Apps

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With around 1800 apps on Facebook, it’s often difficult to select the best and the real (lots of duplicates) from this pool. Only for bookkeeping, there are almost 10apps with the same name and all of them try to reach over 46million users of Facebook claiming to be the best. After doing Best Facebook Games, we’re revisiting some more nice Facebook game play apps that we thought, might interest you. We encourage you to give us feedback and tell us about your favorite Facebook applications so that we could add them up in our posts too.

RockYou Games

Rock you

Flash Facebook game apps from RockYou are a sure shot for the flash game lovers. RockYou flash games integrate with Facebook like no other game.

Bookshelf

There are many Facebook game apps to rate and review your book collection. Bookshelf isn’t an actual game app as the name suggests. But for bibliophiles sorting out book and rating, reviewing them is the ‘actual’ game so we thought to add one for book-lovers too. You can browse collections of your friends and those in your network. Bookshelf supports collection of books, games, music and DVDs. It also gives you pretty accurate suggestions based on your Facebook profile before even adding anything.

Food Fight

Food Fight is surely one silly Facebook Game app, but has attracted millions of users already. It’s a pretty simple game, You earn money daily and buy food from that money. But wait! You don’t have to eat it, but will toss at your friends! Sounds fun? Join Food Fight and party with hitting food.

Facebook game appScrabulous

Ok logophiles, if you find laying out the board and setting up random letter tile distribution then Scrabulous is just for you. It’s not real time but actually real-time is not necessary as you Scrabble can be played one turn at a time.

Scrabulous appQuizzes

With Quizzes, create quizzes about yourself and get to know what your friends know about you: your nicknames, favorite pets, your high school crush name and much more. Enjoy making quizzes and try your friends’ ones.

BandTracker

This one is very useful Facebook play app to let yourself up to date with all your favorite bands. You can track down over 200,00 different bands that when they’re coming to play in your area and what will they play. With BandTracker Facebook app you can also search out for some new music as it lets you see who your friends are tracking.

 

BandTracker from Oodle

 

Do let us in the comments about the apps you think we have been missing in our Facebook App posts.

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Get The Facebook for Android App and Enjoy

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The official Facebook app for Android has been launched now and like most of the official things, Facebook for Android works the best too. It’s undoubtedly the best app for using Facebook on your Android phone. Android app for Facebook resembles quite much with the iPhone app interface. It gives you icons for your news feed, profile, photos, inbox, pending friends’ requests, chats, places, events and friends.

Facebook for Android app

Below the icons is a photo reel showing you the recently uploaded photos of your friends. The photos won’t show any other details unless you don’t click it for more information or to zoom it in. Below the photo reel, at the bottom is a notification bar that shows slides to share the latest news and feeds.

Best Facebook app for Android

There are also small shortcut icons to update your status or search for people over Facebook including your friends. The recent update has refined Facebook for Android to a greater extent. Included updates were:

  • Easier to share with whoever you want to
  • New and improved design for Profile and group walls.
  • Privacy control on posts for sharing added. It will also match the settings on web site
  • Can now tag friends and places from phones using Facebook for Android

Some bugs that were found in earlier versions were also fixed, making Facebook for Android a must to have app on Android phones. Tweaks and fixes include:

  • Tagging friends wasn’t (and still isn’t in most of the other apps) possible but this update added the ability to tag friends in the photos.
  • Smooth and much improved photo browsing with swiping
  • Some tweaks have improved Messages and Notifications
  • This update has fixed a number of crashes and performance issues found in previous versions.

Facebook for Android app also lets you send SMS (not for free) and use GPS to access the location.

Some users have complaint of wasting too much data for this app as this app runs in the background. You just need to do proper setting for the Facebook for Android app and your own Facebook account. Once you get a good app for your phone, it’s time to check some best Facebook games and best Facebook business apps to pass your time or do your business with this highly powerful social media site. Happy Facebooking, fellow Droiders!

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Best Business Apps on Facebook

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Facebook is a proven ground for business promotion and is rapidly becoming an essential destination for businesses, professionals and consumers alike. Where you can pass your time with best Facebook games, it also provides you with an enormous pool of business apps. Here are some best business apps on Facebook to help you promote your products, communicate with your customers and collaborate with other businesses thus accomplishing from social media more than the traditional marketing tools. Choose the ones that can help you get the best business outcomes according to your own needs.

Business / Self Promotion

Networked Blogs app: Networked Blogs app shows up in your boxes tab or on your profile displaying your own blogs and the ones you read. It’s pretty easier way to promote yourself and your friends’ blogs.Networked app

Notes (Default): It’s an RSS feed, found on the right side on your profile. View your friends’ feeds as it shows your blog’s and others’ updates.

Define Me: This app displays a cloud of words others use to describe your business. It can be your best friend depending on your quality of customer service and business.

GLPrint Business Cards: Create your own flashier digital business card using GLPrint app.

iEndorse: What is more credible than having your own customers’ testimonials. iEndorse allows the Facebook-ians to endorse your business!

Professional Profile: This useful business app creates a tab on your Facebook profile for all of your professional contacts, information, and activities.

COMMUNICATIONbusiness app on facebook

CalliFlower, Smart Phone, Telephone: Two of the best business apps that lets you make free conference calls on Facebook. With Smart Phone you can also make phone to phone calls.

SmartMessage Center:  This app allows you to send messages to a group of fans or individuals. SmartMessage gives you back one single result that you can share. Gather information and organize that in a single page instead of rummaging through pile of pages for the replies. You can also export the results in RSS, PDF and XLS format.

My LinkedIn Profile: This app creates a badge from your LinkedIn business profile and displays it on your Facebook profile.

SocialFly: Not able to manage the business’ online presence properly? Here is the best business app that let you create notes about your online contacts, setup reminders to talk to them, and manage your contacts on Facebook.

AUDIO / VISUALAudio Video for Facebook Business

Facebook Video (Default App): Share promotional videos, presentations, demos, or company commercials.

PodCast Player: You can share audio interviews on your profile, or your company’s podcasts with this business app on Facebook.Facebook business app

MISCELLENEOUS

Static FBML: With HTML or FaceBook Markup Language (FBML) you can make your business page a destination of your consumers. Add some advanced functionality to your Facebook business Page by changing the look and feel of the page. You can add apps, forms, and widgets from other places as well.

Some other useful business apps on Facebook include: Social RSS, Simplaris BlogCast, Posted Items (Default App), My BusinessBlinkWeb, Huddle by WorkSpaces (app by LinkedIn), My Office, My Money (useful for small businesses).

If you have the right combination of business apps on Facebook, you can easily run your complete business through Facebook. Arrange conference calls, manage virtual office, use collaboration utilities, finance apps, or create documents and have a separate tab for your business contacts and activities. You can definitely customize your Facebook uniquely using these business apps.

If you think we have missed some useful business apps on Facebook, then do let us know by giving us feedback.

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Best Facebook Games – Yes, They Still Live

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Facebook even after its so many annoying updates lies at number one in the social networking sites chart. Some of the best Facebook games have made millions in revenue just because of popularity. Twitter might be a heaven for intellectuals (pseudo), LinkedIn for employed, job searching people giving them quite a corporate environment or Google+ who has recently stepped in, the social networking world, but facebook is for ALL. No discrimination, no rules, plenty of things to do, options of online shopping, keeping yourself up to date with your fav-celebs. Everything is on Facebook for all!

And when it comes to catering to all the age groups and their priorities, choices, Facebook games and apps have been so far so good. In this post we won’t be talking about Facebook apps but would review some best Facebook games. Personally I don’t like receiving tons of Facebook games’ requests from Facebook pals but they seemed too enthusiastic about the game world. Let’s talk about some epic games that promise to keep you engaged even more on this monstrous site.

FARMVILLE:

When you talk about best Facebook games, no post can be complete without Farmville. Just go to this page and notice the number of fans. MILLIONS OF THEM!? Holy Cow! Have your own land, sow the seeds and milk your cows perhaps?

Farmville

CITYVILLE:

Don’t want a small piece of land for farming? More greedy? Here comes Cityville. Create and run your OWN city! You will have to literally work hard by the way. Starting from the ground up growing crops, supplying goods to your stores and building the tall buildings. Collect rents and expand your business in to the cities of your friends (sounds quite rich, eh) and build your franchises. Cityville is one of the best Facebook games you might get addicted to.

CityVille

Happy Island:

If you’re bored of your city life then let’s move to the island! Play for free and create your very own coolest islands ever. The best Facebook games are those that get you hooked and want to keep coming back, and Happy Island does that very well.

Happy Island

Mafia Wars:

Mafia Wars is the world’s most popular crime game and a valuable addition to our list of best Facebook games with more than 25million players. Fight mobs, build alliances and get your power. This is the game of alliance, deception and power.

Mafia Wars

Café World:

Café world is another one of the best Facebook games. Here you’re in the charge of your own restaurant. Choose dozens of dishes to cook, slice, chop, mesh and bake your own favorite, delish dishes and be at the top of the culinary world.

Cafe World

Pet Society:

Are you fond of pets? Want them to be over Facebook along with your best buddies? Try this best Facebook pet game Pet Society and have non-stop fun with your pet! Decorate your garden, visit friends and shop for stylish furniture, go fishing or hunt for the treasure. Do all this with your pet by your side!

Pet Society

Angry Birds:

When you speak of the best games, you cannot miss Angry Birds. Though this popular game didn’t originate from Facebook but many Angry Birds enthusiasts wanted to play it on Facebook too. What would be more fun than hitting pigs using birds and slingshots! There are many spam links on Facebook that claim to be the destination of this best game. Find the actual working Angry Birds game here.

Angry Birds

P.S. Please spare people from requests to join Farmville just ‘cause your cow is dying or you need an energy drink ‘cause your enemy is strong and you  can’t fight, pretty please? Heh.

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A quick review of Facebook’s New Features

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A quick run down of the new features of Facebook. If you’re a Facebook fanatic then you must’ve noticed these changed in a couple of weeks but if you’re a Google Plus fan like me, then you better checkout these new features.

 

POSTING

On top of your news feed there is the new publisher, a box where you post your status updates or share links. Some of the changes to this publisher box are:

1) Public – This was ‘Everyone’ before, now its called ‘Public’ (thanks to G+), it actually removes the confusion where everyone thought that ‘everyone’ means all of your friends, though what it really meant was, ‘Everyone including your non-friends’. Once you select a setting for a post, it will remember that and will use the same setting for the next coming updates as long as you don’t change it yourself. A good improvement regarding the security settings of Facebook.

Public and Friends Settings

2) Geotagging – does what it says, would tag your current place. If you want to add your current location either from your desktop computer or from your mobile device. It can be changed from post to post and you have the option of sharing either just a city/country or a complete address.

Geotagging in facebook

3) Tag friends – This is not a new feature but now it can be done more easily than before,  it worked like 4sqaure on mobile, you can tag your friends with check-in or by adding ‘@’ before their screen name. Now, you click on that little people icon with + on it (Google Plus has had its effects on Facebook) to tag friends. This will only tag people that you are friends with, unlike Google Plus where you can tag other people too. Keep in mind that tagging someone else will show your post on their wall too, for that check out our short tutorial ‘How To activate ‘Profile View’.

Tag your friends in posts

4)  Tag any Page – Whether you’ve ‘liked’ a page or not, you can tag it using the ‘@’ sign in your status update or any other content that you want to share. A drop down tag menu will appear as soon as you press @

5) Links – ‘How do I share a link?’. Answer to that question is that just copy/paste that link in the publisher box and it will show the preview below it. Once it has shown the preview, you can choose to remove the link from the text area and type/tag your message. This was actually a trick which worked in the previous layout with ‘Update Status’. Now it has become simpler, cleaner and more Google Plus-ish.

Preview Box and Page Tagging

6) Videos – There is no more a video button, just click the ‘Photos’ link, then ‘Add Photos’ and you’ll see an option to select the video file.

Add Photos to facebook

PHOTO VIEWER

8) The photo viewer is now white (and the “x” to close the light box has been moved farther out depending on the size of your screen!)

9) Last but not least, the ‘Privacy Settings’ has undergone biggest changes since the last update. You can view the new settings by going to the ‘Privacy Settings Page’.  We suggest you to go through the settings, especially the ‘How Tags Work’ one. Turn on the ‘Profile Preview’ and ‘Tag Review’ and Turn off the ‘Tag Suggestions’ and ‘Friends Can Check You Into Places’ for extra security.

How Tags Work in Facebook

 

Apart from that, you can now ‘Limit the Audience for Past Posts’, which will effectively change the settings for all the posts to ‘Friends’ from ‘Everyone’ status.

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