DigitalAgency

Sneaky/inventive ad placement in FaceBook photos:

I was reading a article on the Unofficial FaceBook blog, about a photo set that was getting a lot of hits.

When I had a look at the shots I noticed somebody, presumably an advertiser had apparently joined the group and dropped an ad into the sequence of photos. It's picture 9 and looks like it's an ad for a mobile phone retailer.
It's probably easier to show you in a little desktop movie I shot of the photostream:

New Facebook/Typepad feature:

Typepad, the blog platform DigitalAgency have been using for about 18 months now, have been quick off the mark to add this new FaceBook feature.

When you write a post in Facebook, it also allows you to notify your friends of new stuff via your profile feed in FB.

I'll give it a whirl and see if it's useful or not.

I'm also interested in the new ways that FB is opening up the platform to brands, with things like brand pages.

Will report back on this when I have noddled about with it a bit.

The walled garden now has a gate:

This is interesting.

FB is opening up member profiles to Search engines like Google.

I think this is a good move and will accelerate membership/the usefulness of FB massively.

(As if it wasn't growing rapidly enough, this will probably put sign-ups into the stratosphere.)

And of course, members can still make full use of the privacy tools, revealing as much or as little as desired.

HSBC backdown after FaceBook campaign:

Read all about it:

Dept of: 'No surprises there then':

via: BrandRepublic.

Cool:

Prescient/Done-deal comment by engineer at the end?

LinkedOut?:

 
Is it just me, but is LinkedIn, dare I say, just a teeny-weeny bit old-fashioned nowadays?

Indeed, was it ever the high powered business networking tool it was cracked up to be?

Maybe for some, but not, I'm sorry to say, for me. (Which may, I hasten to add, say for more about me, than the power of LinkedIn, but I'll leave that sensitive discourse for another post if I may ;-)

It made sense to sign-up in the early days of course, (how else do we figure out the usefulness, or not, of online tools), but compared to FaceBook and the contact, network and introductions it facilitates; no contest.

LinkedIn always seemed a bit cold and mercenary to me, and strictly business.

Whereas a big chunk of FB is social, and it kind of neatly/seamlessly blends business and personal in a way that appeals to me.

Over the years clients have become friends, (though I'm not sure it's always a good idea for friends to become clients.)

A profile on FaceBook can work as a fast-track cv, a friends list can be seen as an ever-expanding team of  'benign' referees, photo's' a snap shot of a life, (or a business, more usually both), and as The Master of 500 Hats points out:

'Notes' are pretty much the equivalent of 'Blogs' for Facebook (see my earlier brief post on Status = Twitter, Share = Del.icio.us).

FB+BB:

I'm not a huge fan of BB, but if you are I think this is a great idea and a very switched on/shrewd move from C4. Thanks as always to the ever alert Robin at Brand Republic for spotting this:

'Embedded' marketing in FaceBook:

I found this interesting.

This morning, I sent a message within FaceBook to a pal of mine.

In it, I linked one of my client's flickr sets.

What I noticed was; that as well as sending my friend my message and link, FaceBook also appended the equivalent of a classified ad, (remember them) at the end of my message.

I can't decide whether that's cool,intrusive or naughty.

On balance, I'd go with the first.

My guess, is that this is FaceBook's take on the Google sponsored links behemoth.

And I wonder if it's part of the FaceBook plan to sell brand keywords to all comers, to tag along with a users sent messages?

Or am I just showing how little I actually know about FaceBook?

Probably.