With continuing wrangling about the value (or otherwise) of Facebook’s recent shares launch, it would be easy to overlook the latest round of news, tweaks, updates, guides and other newfangled things that have been issued from Facebook HQ recently. So here are some of the ones that have come my way lately.
Just how big is Facebook? According to The Wall Blog, Facebook has now revealed that about 80m of its accounts are, in fact, phoney. While this doesn’t knock FB off the top spot as the most populated social network, it does cast some more doubt on its claims to have nigh on a billion active users.
It seems even Facebook’s view of Facebook is evolving: a new sub-site has been launched to celebrate some of the innovative ways that people are using the social network. Called Facebook Stories, the output will be selected by FB folks and will be themed each month. Thanks to All Facebook for this link.
If you’re worried that your FB posts are a bit too scatter-gun, then rejoice! According to Mashable you can now target your posts not only by language and location but also by gender and age (amongst other things). I haven’t seen this in action myself – is anyone using this?
There is also some sensible advice that comes to us via All Facebook, which suggests that we should be using our Insights to work out when the main segments of our page’s audience are online and – if possible – posting accordingly. This seems a much better and more intelligent strategy than the ‘post once a day or else’ rule!
Page admins may also notice the removal of the option to mark comments on your Wall as spam. All Facebook wonders whether this will prove problematic for admins, as now the only recourse for offensive comments is to report the comment or ban the user outright.
If you’re planning to use page ads, then you should read All Facebook’s digest of FB’s own advice to admins. This has some detailed and practical information which should make your page ads repay your efforts.
A list of Facebook’s own resources for page admins, marketers and developers is also available on Mashable.
I’m sure there will be more next week!
Hullo! Some useful links there – thanks loads! A big problem I have with FB currently is that there doesn’t seem to be a Share option when viewing the site on mobiles. Well, certainly on Android there isn’t (or perhaps it’s just me!). With more people using mobiles to access the site I think this must lead to lots of lost opportunities for our content to be shared. People Like our content but that doesn’t have the same impact as if they shared it. I find this quite frustrating! Anyone else got this experience or know a way round it? Do Facebook plan to sort this out?
Hi Kate
thanks very much for your comments, glad you found the post useful. I’ve not used the Android app for FB myself but I can see why not be able to easily share is very frustrating! I know that FB are working on improving their mobile access as the numbers of people using mobile devices to get onto the network is shooting up, so perhaps this will be a fix in the making. In the meantime, I’ve found this link – not sure if it will be helpful: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/share-links-android-facebook-app-27363.html
Thanks loads for the reply. Unfortunately I already have that app and, while it is good for the majority of Facebook browsing and status updating, it’s not so good on the sharing content front. Like you say, it’s surely something they must address soon!
Sorry it was no help! If I come across anything else I’ll let you know! best wishes
Thanks loads for trying anyway!