Facebook brand engagement has risen 896 percent on a year-over-year basis, according to a new advertising study from Adobe. Adobe's Digital Index for Q3 2012 reports that the huge uptick in engagement is, in part, a result of Facebook's new Timeline feature.
Adobe's research points to its introduction as a major factor for engagement growth. Other studies tend to agree, as a report released earlier this year found that the feature garnered positive results for small to medium-sized brand pages. Read More
Almost one in five new Facebook fans came from mobile devices in August, an increase of 280% in four months, according to a new research report.
PageLever looked at more than 500 Facebook Pages with 100,000 or more Facebook fans and found only 5% of new fans came from mobile in May, but that number jumped to 19% in August. Read More
The app center Facebook announced last month could be very close to launch, as Facebook confirmed that it is being tested with a small percentage of users, and one of them leaked screen shots that were not previously available.
Since we announced the app center to developers last month, we’ve been testing it with a small percentage of users. We have no further details to announce at this time.
According to TechCrunch, the icon for app center appears when users click the left-hand navigation feature in the Facebook iOS application for apps with unread notifications.
Users who access app center on their iPhones will then see featured apps at the top, along with the option of browsing a list of social picks, based on apps their friends are using, or a list of top apps, meaning the highest-quality and most popular apps, as determined by the social network, TechCrunch reported.
Most executives don't want yet another platform to deal with. They aren't looking at it the right way.
"Join a new online network? I'd love to!"
In 15 years of helping business, government and nonprofit leaders make strategic choices about digital technology, I've yet to hear an executive utter those words.
Sometimes that's due to the risks of public embarrassment or conflict that come with online engagement. Sometimes it's painful memories of previous tech projects that ran over budget and behind schedule. And sometimes it's because executives would rather interact face-to-face than keyboard-to-keyboard.
But always, I hear a common concern: How can I add another platform, task list or set of relationships to my already full plate?
Social media have only made that problem more acute. While blogging, Twitter and Facebook have brought new opportunities for conversation, knowledge gathering and relationship building, those opportunities may feel more daunting than dazzling to overloaded executives.
The solution is to stop looking at social media as another platform you have to learn—yet another responsibility—and start seeing it for what it can be instead: a personal toolbox for improving your practice of leadership.
Each tool and activity described below requires a certain investment of time to set up. But once it's part of your routine, it will repay you with insights into work and leadership, and with freed-up time. Start with one, so you can see the payoff before adding more setup jobs to your busy agenda. But do start.
Here are six ways you can use social media to enhance your leadership.
Create a Leadership Dashboard
Don't just monitor the Web for intelligence about your business and brand; mine it for ideas, news and research that will help you develop as a leader. Use iGoogle, Google Reader or an iPad aggregator like Flipboard to subscribe to a range of blogs, columnists and news searches that offer insights into new leadership models, profiles of high-functioning executives, academic research on leadership and summaries of the latest business books. Set aside 15 to 30 minutes a day to read the articles that speak to you, or make this your end-of-day reading for the homeward commute. Read More
The premium advertising platform Facebook launched last week, which includes an increased emphasis on mobile, is getting mixed reviews from industry professionals.
"Bottom-line- this is gonna fail because People don't want to recommend an ad," said Natalie L. Petouhoff, a former senior analyst at Forrester Research. "They want to recommend a product, service or company that they have had an amazing experience with. (Or they want to share great content.) That expression of joy, surprise, wonderment... is a natural thing that people share with each other."
Facebook's revamped advertising program took second seat last week to news that the company was overhauling its brand pages by adding Timeline. Both initiatives are aimed at addressing concerns from potential investors about Facebook's revenue model as it nears its initial public offering, but the premium ad model is likely to have a bigger impact on users, according to a dozen advertising industry executives interview over the weekend by ReadWriteWeb.
One of the biggest problems, Petouhoff said, is that there's no incentive for users to share an ad: something that is fundamental to the rest of the Facebook experience. While the new program is a step up from previous attempts by Facebook to bolster revenues and returns for advertisers, the program may still fall short.
"Nice try Facebook, but its still not there," Petouhoff said. Read More
Sunday, November 4, 2012 at 7:49PM 
