Call Friends for Free With Facebook’s Messenger App

Here’s the second thing people were hoping to hear about earlier this week at the Facebook announcment - Facebook Messanger Calls.

About the App, users can make calls via Wi-Fi or through their data plan and it works much like a standard web call since its powered by Skype. To place a call, go into the Facebook Messenger app, click on a user, then in the upper right hand corner there is a little “i” icon at the top. When you tap this icon users are given the option to call that user or view their Timeline. Note, only users with the standalone Messenger app can receive calls.

How big of a deal is this to Facebook? Well, they announced it via a Press Release and updating the app in the app store. Translation, not a big deal at all.

Next stop? Video calling. But lets see if this works first.

Source: Mashable

There’s a lot of buzz this morning regarding the Facebook announcement happening at 12pm CST. Most tech sites are predicting the announcement is a new phone or search feature. My money leans towards search and not a phone. Why is that? Apple finally integrated Facebook into iOS after it being years in the making. Ok, maybe not years in the making but it was something users wanted for a long time. If Facebook releases a phone that’s going to put Apple on the defensive and potentially remove that integration. Now, search on the other hand is a lot more intriguing to me. Remember, Facebook stores everything you post including your links, captions on photos, location from photos, check-ins, interaction with apps, etc. so they have a ton of information about you and your friends. Since this information is available to your friends, they could release a product that searches your network of friends for recommendations, interactions or activity for nearly any topic. Releasing a feature like this is a win-win for Facebook. For users, they get what they are looking for with friend recommendations and endorsements. This also follows Facebook’s mission “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” Search does this. Hopefully users start using Facebook’s search product for content within their network and not on Google. Which is another win for Facebook - Revenue. Google is making money hand over fist with search so with a new search in Facebook its likely they would expand their ad model to mimic Google’s Adwords making investors very happy. Google dominates search right now holding 65% market share and its been growing since Yahoo and Bing have had little innovation over the years. I think Facebook has identified this opportunity, knows they have rich data on their users and will be making a run at Google’s market share. As you can see, my hopes are pretty high their announcement is a search feature. What else could it be? Lowering the bar for myself, it could be something small like the announcement for their next F8 conference or a new area on their campus focused on connecting their users. Only time will tell.
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There’s a lot of buzz this morning regarding the Facebook announcement happening at 12pm CST. Most tech sites are predicting the announcement is a new phone or search feature. My money leans towards search and not a phone. Why is that? Apple finally integrated Facebook into iOS after it being years in the making. Ok, maybe not years in the making but it was something users wanted for a long time. If Facebook releases a phone that’s going to put Apple on the defensive and potentially remove that integration.

Now, search on the other hand is a lot more intriguing to me. Remember, Facebook stores everything you post including your links, captions on photos, location from photos, check-ins, interaction with apps, etc. so they have a ton of information about you and your friends. Since this information is available to your friends, they could release a product that searches your network of friends for recommendations, interactions or activity for nearly any topic.

Releasing a feature like this is a win-win for Facebook. For users, they get what they are looking for with friend recommendations and endorsements. This also follows Facebook’s mission “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” Search does this. Hopefully users start using Facebook’s search product for content within their network and not on Google. Which is another win for Facebook - Revenue. Google is making money hand over fist with search so with a new search in Facebook its likely they would expand their ad model to mimic Google’s Adwords making investors very happy.

Google dominates search right now holding 65% market share and its been growing since Yahoo and Bing have had little innovation over the years. I think Facebook has identified this opportunity, knows they have rich data on their users and will be making a run at Google’s market share.

As you can see, my hopes are pretty high their announcement is a search feature. What else could it be? Lowering the bar for myself, it could be something small like the announcement for their next F8 conference or a new area on their campus focused on connecting their users. Only time will tell.

LA Times Tech: Tumblr more popular than Facebook?

As much as I would like to believe this survey, I don’t. This afternoon the LA Times released a story that Tumblr and is more popular than Facebook for people aged 13-25. Complete image below:

Don’t get me wrong, I like Tumblr. Not only is it very entertaining, but its a very easy platform for blogging with their easy posting options for quotes, photos, video, etc.

With all that, I don’t buy for one second that its the #1 site for people aged 13-25. There are only 1,000 people surveyed here so I’m thinking they sat out in the parking lot of a high school 2 blocks away from Tumblr’s headquarters. Popular, yes. But not the absolute top.

Source: j.mp

Filtering coming to Facebook

When I found this article on The Verge today I got really excited. I thought, FINALLY filtering is coming to Facebook News Feed. But, no. It’s only coming to messages and allows you to restrict messages coming from strangers. Bummer.

I hope at the next F8 (Facebook’s version of Apple’s product announcements) they allow filtering on the News Feed. What is this? I’m sure we’ve all been stung by a spoiler alert in your news feed. At least I have. I wish they would allow the option to remove posts that contain certain keywords or phrases.

Take The Voice finale for example. NBC changed the timeslot of the finale to 8pm-10pm and we missed the beginning of the show. We said, oh well, we’ll just view it On Demand when available and avoid the news. Sure enough, 9:58pm my News Feed filled up with the winner. It would have been nice to hide all mentions that contain “The Voice” in Facebook.

Another great example would be around the elections. I’m everyone had at least one friend who you wanted to stick in the corner until voting was over. Maybe some the entire week. How nice would it have been to filter out a topic without having to unfriend them?

I’m sure brand pages and advertisers would disagree with this because people could filter out their messages but I don’t care. This would be a great addition.

Source: theverge.com

If you’ve created a new board on Pinterest lately I’m sure you’ve seen the new update pushed last week which is a great addition to the site and that is Group Boards.  Up until now, we’ve only had two options for who could post to boards and that was the owner or everyone.  Now, when you create a board, you can pick and choose who can collaborate with that board. Knowing the most people have their specific influencers for various topics this should be a heavily used feature.
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If you’ve created a new board on Pinterest lately I’m sure you’ve seen the new update pushed last week which is a great addition to the site and that is Group Boards.  Up until now, we’ve only had two options for who could post to boards and that was the owner or everyone.  Now, when you create a board, you can pick and choose who can collaborate with that board.

Knowing the most people have their specific influencers for various topics this should be a heavily used feature.

Source: blog.pinterest.com

We all know Pinterest has taken off in the last 4-5 months and here’s another chart to put it into context for you.  Pinterest has hit 17 million unique visitors faster than YouTube and Facebook.  Knowing 80%+ are female, that is a very impressive stat.  The question remains, can they keep it up? Yes, I know this is over a month old from CNNMoney but I still needed to pass it on.
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We all know Pinterest has taken off in the last 4-5 months and here’s another chart to put it into context for you.  Pinterest has hit 17 million unique visitors faster than YouTube and Facebook.  Knowing 80%+ are female, that is a very impressive stat.  The question remains, can they keep it up?

Yes, I know this is over a month old from CNNMoney but I still needed to pass it on.

Source: CNN

Want to learn about the history of music?  Yes, you could go to Wikipedia to get a very in-depth review and likely fall asleep 2 pages into it.  Or, you could visit Spotify’s Timeline page where they list over 1,000 years of music history with links to play that music within their profile. One of the coolest and interactive Timelines I’ve seen so far.
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Want to learn about the history of music?  Yes, you could go to Wikipedia to get a very in-depth review and likely fall asleep 2 pages into it.  Or, you could visit Spotify’s Timeline page where they list over 1,000 years of music history with links to play that music within their profile.

One of the coolest and interactive Timelines I’ve seen so far.

Source: facebook.com

Is anyone else surprised that Pinterest has only sent 7 tweets in 2012?  I mean, with all the brands joining Pinterest, articles online and just overall buzz I expected more from them.  I understand its a double edged sword once you start but I’m a firm believer of feeding the momentum of an initiative.  I wonder where they would be if they promoted themselves more on Twitter and were having conversations with fans and pinners. But, I guess when your hot, you can do whatever the heck you want.
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Is anyone else surprised that Pinterest has only sent 7 tweets in 2012?  I mean, with all the brands joining Pinterest, articles online and just overall buzz I expected more from them. 

I understand its a double edged sword once you start but I’m a firm believer of feeding the momentum of an initiative.  I wonder where they would be if they promoted themselves more on Twitter and were having conversations with fans and pinners.

But, I guess when your hot, you can do whatever the heck you want.

Source: twitter.com

Will Brands See User Engagement on Google?

I’d be curious to see how many of these people using Google+ regularly are in the SEO profession.  Google has SEO hooks with Google+ but I don’t think users have a reason to use Google+ yet.  They still see it as a copy of Facebook and yet another social network to manage.  Until that changes, I do not see people moving over to Google+.  Maybe their commenting tool that’s rumored to be announced soon will change that, but until then, there will be little traction.

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