Sunday, December 25, 2011
Thursday, December 22, 2011
What's New Facebook?
With the new upgrade of Timeline unrolling on Facebook, that
is not the only change the new year holds.
From the beginning of Facebook, the goal was for the site to
be free for all users. With a upkeep cost of $1 billion per year, the only way
to keep the site running is to take advantage of advertising.
With the IPO (initial public offering) of Facebook in a
couple of months, it is no surprise that they are looking for a new way to add
revenue. How are they doing this? Sponsored stories.
What are sponsored stories? To understand sponsored stories,
one must first understand Facebook ads. With regular ads on Facebook, a
business creates an ad. If you have liked the business’s page, then the story
about you liking the page may be paired with ad for your friends to see. With
sponsored stories, a business pays Facebook to feature existing posts and
activity that mention the business. Like Facebook ads, they’re only visible to
friends you’ve already shared this information with. These stories will also look like other unsponsored stories
appearing in your news feed, however they will be identified with a “sponsored”
link.
What does the rollout entail? According to Ms. Ta, a Facebook spokesperson, only a select
number of advertisers will be participating in the rollout and users will only
see, at most, one sponsored story in their daily news feed during the launch.
Goals of this launch are to increase presence of marketers of Facebook and to
increase visibility of ads to Facebook users. These goals go hand-in-hand, with
an increase of visibility to users comes an increase of marketers wanting their
ads seen.
How does this affect mobile? While sponsored stories won’t
appear on Facebook mobile until late March, they will no doubt be featured.
Sponsored stories in users’ news feeds have been anticipated
and is an obvious step for the company in terms of generating revenue and
competing with other mediums as a legitimate placement for advertising.
Will users question the “cool” factor of Facebook now that
they are adding even more ads? Will users opt-out of using the site and force
Facebook into the “has been” category with MySpace? Will users even care? We
will see what happens as the rollout occurs and as Facebook goes from a private
to public company.
Some may ask, is this even legal? What about our privacy?
Well, you can read Eric Goldman’s discussion of the California privacy lawsuit
against Facebook here: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2011/12/facebook_sponso.htm
Sources:
http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-sponsored-stories-ads-2011-12
http://www.facebook.com
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Beats by Dr. Dre: What's the Hype?
Lately, I have been seeing these headphones EVERYWHERE. They
are the new “it” item with twenty-somethings and those who want to be
twenty-something flocking to get them and show them off.
From what I have read, Dr. Dre worked with Monster Cable and
Robert Brunner, an industrial designer in order to perfect the headphones, a
process that took over two years.
Part of the appeal of Beats headphones is no doubt the name
attached to them- the marketing and with Dre and Monster Cable behind it.
However, most reviews praise the sound quality of the headphones, commenting on
how the listener can hear new aspects of the same songs they have been
listening to, often as the artist intended for the song to be heard. The headphones,
while also noise-cancelling, pick up on otherwise unheard parts of music, for
example crowd noise in live versions of songs.
Features:
- Large speaker drivers and high-power digital amplifier for deeper bass, smooth highs, and clear vocals
- Isolation technology that cuts external noise
- Larger ear-cups for comfort
- Monster iSoniTalk headphone cable that has an answer button, allowing the listener to answer calls while listening to music
- Monster Cable headphone cable with Quadripole 4 twisted pair construction reduces signal loss for balanced sound and clarity
- Scratch-resistant gloss finish
- * The foldable Beats headphones offer a compact minijack connector to reduce bulk and an integrated mute button
Now, the headphones come in limited edition colors such as
silver, pink, and orange. They offer over-ear and in-ear headphones, as well as
speakers and an artist series features headphones connected to Diddy, Lady
Gaga, and Lebron James.
Beats Audio has partnered with HP to produce laptops and
desktops that have high quality speakers:
With so many places to get the headphones (Best Buy, f.y.e.,
Apple, Target, Amazon, Dell, and even Walmart) its easy to pick them up.
OK, so how much are these things going to cost me? Well,
there are a few models of the headphones, they are pretty much right around
$300- $350, which I admit is a little pricey, but apparently well worth it.
They must be doing something right if they have a warning
right on their website about counterfeit beats headphones.
Lastly, let’s take a look at the who’s who wearing Beats:
Sources:
Beatsbydre.com
Geek.com/articles/gadgets/review-beats-by-dre-headphones-20080730/
apple.com
Advertising on Facebook
How does advertising on Facebook work?
1)
The Like Button
a.
When someone visits your site, they can simply
click on the Like button to show they like and support your page. This enables
posts from your page to show up on their wall. Also, their friends have the
opportunity to see that they liked the page and check it out.
2)
Fan Pages
a.
Fan pages allow you to promote a business,
website, cause, place- pretty much anything. To set up a fan page you can just
log into your Facebook account and click on the “Account” menu. Then click on
“Manage Pages” and Facebook will guide you through the set up process.
b.
Pages can contain a lot of information such as
the website URL, address, telephone number, products you sell, photos, news
updates, etc. Good fan pages are a great way of attracting attention and
visitors to your website.
3)
Facebook Ads
a.
These ads can be clicked on, “liked,” or made to
disappear. Facebook ads can be set up as a pay per click or pay per impression,
but are different from most PPC ads because they have pictures. It is important
to have a good picture as this is what draws the audience in. If you use the
pay per click method then the price you pay for your ad will vary based on how
successful your ad is and the higher the click through rate, the lower your
cost per click.
b.
How does Facebook know what ads might interest
me? Well, when you set up an ad in Facebook, you can chose the demographics of
the people that you want to show the ad to. The target audience can be narrowed
down by age, sex, location, interests, etc. In that way, Facebook ads can be
more targeted than Google AdWords or Yahoo Ads.
c.
Before setting up your Facebook Ad make sure you
read how the auction for Facebook ads works. Basically, you bid on the ad the
amount that you are willing to spend per click or thousand impressions on that
ad. A bid range is then suggested based on how much other advertisers are
willing to pay for the same target audience. Past performance history of the ad
as well as the quality of the ad are also taken into account.
d.
Also Facebook doesn’t allow some types of ads,
so be sure to check that your ads follow Facebook’s policies.
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