Social Media

Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote at the f8 conference in San Francisco yesterday introduced the biggest changes seen on Facebook yet. Not one change, but several, all geared to enrich your Facebook experience.

So here’s an overview of what's happening...

Facebook recently introduced a major revamp of its privacy settings, giving users more control over their privacy settings by making them more visible. Five key changes have been implemented, all of which give users much more control over what appears on their profile to different groups of people.

The changes are being rolled out now, so not everyone will yet have access to these new features. When they do, Facebook will provide a step-by-step guide to the new privacy controls, so all users will be encouraged from the start to take advantage of greater privacy.

Back in April, we reported the launch of Google’s +1 sharing button – giving you the opportunity to give your seal of approval to websites and search results that you find interesting or useful. Google have continued their interest in social media and today have launched a series of new tools that are available in Google Webmaster Tools and Analytics to measure social media actions.

StumbleUpon have recently launched their new Widget Creator that allows members to display content through StumbleUpon directly on to their website or blog.

The new sharing tool enables users to display their personal recommendations and discoveries through the creation of a box that features chosen StumbleUpon content and can be placed on a member’s personal pages or websites. The widget will come in three different sizes and only requires a line of script to be added to a webpage.

Simple, easy, and further integrating Twitter into our day-to-day browsing - Twitter’s answer to the Facebook “Like” button is here, in the form of a "Follow" button.

Twitter's new follow button enables users to follow Twitter accounts of any business (and individuals!) directly from the website, in just a single click, without having to be directed to the Twitter.com website.

Social media – in particular Twitter and Facebook – might be generating a lot of buzz right now in marketing circles, but that doesn’t mean email is dead. Statistics continue to show that there’s a still strong preference for email among customers and subscribers as a means of contact. Email continues to play a critical role in online marketing – it’s accessible offline, and it still generates higher rates of return and positive feedback than campaigns driven purely through social media channels.

News has broken today that could shake up the Social Media space for businesses, potentially increasing Twitter's share in this valuable space.

Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo is leading a push to create brand new revenue streams, with Facebook style page's for business as one of the key items under consideration.

Google has introduced a new feature called Plus One, which will be the search giant’s equivalent of Facebook’s Like button. With social networking playing an increasingly key role in determining a site’s page ranking in search engines (the more popular and recommended a site, the higher up the rankings it goes), this is Google’s attempts to jump on the bandwagon by introducing its own recommendation tool to help deliver more personalised search results and curb the growth of spam.

Wondering why you’d want to use Twitter for business? When used correctly, it’s a great way to promote your brand through links, product coupons, news updates, photos and more besides, but it has other uses for businesses too. It can also be used to provide a line of communication with your customers, plus provide you with an easy way to stay abreast of industry developments yourself through those companies and analysts you follow.