Unmasking Fakers Online
April 26, 2010
Social Networking is a Team Sport
May 24, 2010

By Dean DeLisle

This changes EVERYTHING!
We suspected Facebook was changing their platform, and they changed it last week if you were paying attention to the Blogs and the entire Buzz at F8, their annual Developer Conference. The good new is that we believe, from a business perspective, that it is for the greater good.

They have removed the concept of being a Fan to just liking “Your Page”. That’s right, if you had a Facebook Fan Page, you now have a “Facebook Page”. It will take some time for the “Fan” term to wear off, and for some it might never, so you can feel free to still call your community around your business “Fans”.

The good news is that they are opening up this concept to the entire web. So if you are on YouTube, PRWeb, Article, Blog, Landing Page, Website or any place on the internet where you chose to publish the new “LIKE” Button, then anyone who clicks and likes your content or post, will automatically be connected to your page in Facebook.

The business effect will be that more people can flock to and “Like” your page. So if done correctly, this should drive your traffic and friends that “Like” Your page way up. There are also many other applications that can now connect people with like interests and also allow your friends to connect based on their “Like” preferences, which can be updated based on what they “Like”! A simple example is that if some of your friends all “Like” Green Day, you can now collectively communicate with your friends who all like the same type of music. Of course advertisers will also have access to get in front of you as well. This will redefine targeted and behavioral advertising as we know it.

Check out a great example by Levi’s:

http://us.levi.com/home/index.jsp

Of course the users are complaining because once again they feel the privacy issues creeping back in, but we will cover that in the next issue. In any case, I hope you “Like” the new fast changing world of Social Networks! Stay tuned!