When news broke last week that Facebook Timeline was coming to all Facebook users, it answered the question many people had been wondering: “What’s taking so long?” However, now we’re faced with a more pressing question: Is Facebook Timeline for All what all really wants? Mashable‘s poll sought to answer that burning question.
By one measure, the answer is, “Perhaps not.” At least that’s the sentiment Mashable’s poll, which asked, “How are you affected?”, uncovered last week.
In the poll, exactly 50% of nearly 1,600 respondents said they currently have Facebook Timeline.
However, a survey of the results would indicate that while some users are receptive to Timeline, most aren’t thrilled about the prospect of the feature becoming universal. In fact, 79% of more than 1,500 voters wish that Facebook Timeline were optional.
Of course, it should be noted that this data is merely anecdotal, and shouldn’t be seen as a comprehensive overview of how users feel about Facebook Timeline. Additionally, users were not required to answer all the questions, so some discrepancies persist. Regardless, it’s worth pointing out that the results don’t yield a landslide of early support for the new product.
Do you have Facebook Timeline?
Exactly half of responders already have Facebook Timeline.
As you’d expect, Facebook‘s iPhone app is exteremely popular. App version 4.1 comes complete with the new mobile Timeline design, so we thought we’d take a look at some tips and tricks for getting the most out of the app experience.
Eager for a better way to manage your notifications or more quickly access your BFFs? Try these 10 handy hints to become Facebook iPhone app fluent.
Facebook will file a preliminary prospectus for its long-awaited IPO Wednesday morning, but the company will raise less than expected — $5 billion — according to a report.
International Financing Review cites “sources close to the deal” who say the company is planning to raise half of the previously reported $10 billion because it decided to “start with a conservative base before deciding whether to increase.”
The company will then offer shares to the public in May, pending a “smooth registration process with the SEC,” according to the report. Morgan Stanley will lead the effort, though Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital and JP Morgan are also included on the list of intial bookrunners.
Reps from Facebook could not be reached for comment.
An upcoming share offering would also explain Facebook’s product roll outs of late. Last week the company announced it would be rolling out its new profile template, Timeline, to all users, at a speed that left us scratching our heads. The week before it revealed 60 apps that are tightly integrated into Timeline, and announced a process for developers to create more Timeline apps.
If and when Facebook does file its S-1 paperwork, it will be forced to enter a “quiet period” — without product announcements, interviews or any other public statements.
2004: First Offers Turned Down
Facebook launches with humble beginnings that most people have seen dramatized in The Social Network by now. It was a small social site backed by only a little money, and limited just to the undergrads at Harvard. Right out of the gate, Facebook turned down offers from an unknown investor and Friendster, each offering $10 million. This was, of course, when the company was still called TheFacebook.
Like McDonald’s before it, RIM has found there’s a reason open-ended Twitter campaigns are called “bashtags.”
The trouble started on New Year’s Eve, when the brand sponsored Dick Clark’s show and ran a billboard in New York’s Times Square: “Let’s #BeBold in 2012.” RIM claims it received more than 35,000 “appropriate” responses to its billboard ad. The responses, which included consumers’ resolutions for the coming year, were used to make the infographic below.
RIM used a superheroes motif for the infographic, creating what it called “the Bold Team.”
That led to hundreds of brand-bashing responses. “Let’s #BeBold and make a super #GoGoGirl with magic spatula powers she can come up with a strategy to save herself before @Blackberry dies,” wrote @Naweed Khan. “@blackberry You are boldly running your company into the ground #BeBold”, said benihime33.
RIM’s spin, outlined in a blog post, is that #BeBold isn’t a campaign per se, but a “bit of fun.”
“As we looked at the resolutions and the data, majority patterns and categories emerged. We decided to organize the data and share it in a fun way, and the result is the infographic. This is not a new ad campaign,” reads the RIM blog post. RIM reps could not be reached for further comment.
RIM’s attempt at a semantic fig leaf appeared to merely draw attention to the non-campaign. By Tuesday afternoon, most of the #BeBold comments on Twitter were about RIM’s lack of marketing prowess, rather than users’ takes on what it means to be bold.
David Berkowitz, vice president of emerging media at digital agency 360i, says brands with big vulnerabilities like RIM should avoid hashtag campaigns. “Hashtags are ripe for brandjacking, but some brands are more ripe for getting their hashtags jacked than others, Berkowitz says, adding that Apple and Virgin would be unlikely to suffer the same fate. “RIM is in a tailspin,” says Berkowitz. “It’s tough to do much with their marketing when their business is in transition, to put it mildly.”
The hashtag itself was another problem. Says Berkowitz: “If Delta does a campaign to win a free flight and uses #flydeltafree, it won’t be attacked in the same way as if it uses #whyilovedelta that invites sarcasm.”
When Google first rolled out Hangout video chats for Google+, part of the plan involved allowing hanger-outers to watch YouTube videos together. While many questioned the usefulness of the feature, we’re now seeing what Google had in mind all along: a Super Bowl post-game Hangout where users dissect the big game’s commercials.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t part of the Google+ Master Plan at the initial unveiling, but a Hangout based around Super Bowl ads does strike us as one of the better uses of the service’s YouTube integration. Google’s partnering with NBC to run the Hangout, tapping sports business reporter Darren Rovell to host.
“The day after the Super Bowl is when people head back to their office water coolers to discuss what they loved and what they didn’t,” Rovell said in a press release. “Our conversation is about taking all those water cooler conversations and bringing it to a national, digital stage.”
As part of the deal, NBC will promote YouTube’s Ad Blitz, the page where the site asks users to vote on their favorite Super Bowl ads. In turn, YouTube will serve up NBC ads and promos for the big game all weekend. This marks the first time YouTube has had any kind of partnership with the Super Bowl broadcaster. Rovell will reveal the winning ad of the Ad Blitz on his CNBC show, SportsBiz: Game On on Feb. 17.
Google+ Hangouts are generally limited to 10 users, but some users can create “Hangouts on Air,” which expand beyond that limit by allowing others to watch the Hangout as a live stream on YouTube.
Love the idea of an official Google+ Hangout about the ads? Will you join? Let us know in the comments.
BONUS: The Most Popular Super Bowl Ads So Far
1. "The Bark Side" (Vokswagen)
Not surprisingly, the sequel to the most-shared ad of last year's Super Bowl, and of all of 2011 for that matter, is leading the pack this year. Volkswagen released this video last week showing dogs barking to the tune of Star Wars's "The Imperial March." So does that mean there will be dogs in this year's ad? More Star Wars? We'll know soon enough.
That is, until TechDows wrote about Blogger‘s plan for country-specific URLs Tuesday.
At some point “over the coming weeks,” Google’s Blogger will begin redirecting users to country-specific domain names — think Google.fr in France rather than Google.com — to avoid universally removing content that would not be tolerated in specific jurisdictions.
Readers will be redirected to sites with their own country’s domain name when they try to visit blogs recognized as foreign, as determined by their IP addresses.
“Over the coming weeks you might notice that the URL of a blog you’re reading has been redirected to a country-code top level domain, or “ccTLD.” For example, if you’re in Australia and viewing [blogname].blogspot.com, you might be redirected [blogname].blogspot.com.au. A ccTLD, when it appears, corresponds with the country of the reader’s current location.”
If you would like to see a non-affected page, you can direct to google.com/ncr (NCR stands for “no country redirect”), which places a short term cookie that temporarily prevents geographical redirection.
Google says migrating users to local domains will help promote the freedom of expression while allowing the flexibility to abide by local law.
Do you think censoring content by specific countries is a good move for freedom of expression? Let us know what you think of Google and Twitter’s moves.
The speaker list at the Technology Entertainment Design conference, TED, has included well-known names such as Bill Gates, Al Gore and Jane Goodall.
But with an audition tour the organization announced Tuesday, the roster could soon include a new name: yours.
TED will host auditions in 14 countries on six continents this spring. Anybody can submit an application on the TED website, and include a short video if they’d like, but auditions are invite-only. Favorites from live auditions will record short videos to post on TED.com for public voting, and the top 50 most popular contenders will be considered for TED 2013 programming.
The organization began to open its prestigious and arguably elitist speaker selection list to contributions from the general public last year, when it launched a video audition application process. That process, which culminated in a live audition in New York, resulted in about five speakers for next month’s TED2012 conference.
TED expects to choose many more speakers, about half of its list, from its new live audition process.
That’s an ambitious goal. The invite-only conference is known for bringing the world’s top thought leaders together. Surely there are top thinkers with fresh perspectives who also have low profiles, but it could be hard to find them.
The description of the auditions on TED’s website says the organization is looking for “undiscovered talent,” perhaps “the inventor,” “the teacher,” “the prodigy” or “the artist.” It is not, it says, looking for “product-hawkers, jargon-junkies, dullards, wafflers, motivator wannabes, self-promoters, spouters of new-age fluff.”
But if the American Idol audition process is any indication, TED will likely sort through much of the latter category in its selection for the former.
President Obama held the first all-digital interview from the White House on Monday night. Like a modern day reincarnation of FDR’s fireside chats, the video chat brought the president directly into the homes of thousands of Americans via a Google+ hangout.
Over 227,000 people submitted questions, while the president spoke with five Americans from across the country. Google and YouTube selected questions for Obama from the videos that got the most votes from YouTube users.
Queries about the legalization of marijuana dominated the top-voted questions, but none were asked. President Obama previously addressed his drug policy in a 2011 YouTube interview.
At the beginning of the hangout, when the President delivered seemingly prepared remarks about unemployment and a living wage, some watchers took to Twitter to express disappointment that the President had received the questions ahead of time, though this wasn’t the case. (The hangout had no official Twitter hashtag, though #obamahangout gained some traction.)
this sounds scripted RT @youtube [LIVE NOW] Your interview with President #Obama is streaming on YouTube:
As the hangout progressed, the questions got tougher and the dialogue more democratic. This wasn’t an “ask and mute” hangout where the rest of the room was barred from speaking while Obama responded to questions. The conversation was two-way: follow-up questions were generally welcomed, there was some crosstalk, and participants vied for the chance to speak.
A query from Jennifer Wedel, the wife of an unemployed semiconductor engineer, seemingly caught the president off-guard. She asked the President a specific question about the White House’s expanded issuance of H-1B visas, which allow skilled workers to come to the U.S. for employment. Obama’s respond ended with a request for Wedel to send her husband’s resume to the president’s desk.
“I meant what I said, if you send me your husband’s resume, I’d be interested in finding out exactly what’s happening right there,” said Obama.
Wedel later told Politico that she didn’t find the president’s initial answer satisfactory.
When the President took a question on his administration’s use of unmanned drones, he responded by downplaying a report in The New York Times that suggested the U.S. is flying a large number of drones over Iraq.
His defense of the global drone program also happened to be his first official acknowledgement that the program existed, a fact which made headlines Tuesday morning.
When Obama gave a response about college education to California high school student Adam Clark, Wedel, a Texas mother of three, jumped in with her not-quite-contented opinion of the president’s answer. Ramon Ray, a small business owner from New Jersey, also joined in with his own views on saving for his children’s education.
Towards the end of the event, Obama was asked a YouTube question about the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. President Obama pointed to the recent indictment against Megaupload CEO Kim Dotcom as an example of how his administration was tackling intellectual property theft. It was the first time the President himself directly addressed the issue.
“I think that it’s going to be possible for us to make sure that we’re protecting intellectual property that creates a lot of jobs in this country,” said Obama. “It’s one of the United States’ biggest exports, but also do it in a way that it doesn’t affect the fundamental integrity of the internet as an open, transparent system.”
The hangout, despite the lack of muting, avoided the torrential crosstalk which has plagued other Google+ hangouts. How? Two ways:
1. The hangout was moderated by Steve Grove of Google, a former broadcaster. Grove allowed intelligent follow-ups while managing crosstalk and providing an even mixture of live and YouTube questions. 2. There’s an level of respect commanded by the office of the President. To quote The West Wing, “when the president stands, nobody sits.”
Overall, the hangout was a successful way to use new technology to connect the president with a diverse group of Americans in an intimate, personal setting. The conversation wasn’t just for the benefit of the attendees, it was also a way for President Obama to better understand the worries and daily struggles of a wide swath of everyday Americans.
“President Obama had a great time with yesterday’s first-ever virtual town hall event, which offered the sort of genuine back and forth the White House strives for in all of our online engagement efforts, whether through social media, WhiteHouse.gov’s We the People online petitioning system or otherwise,” White House director of new media Macon Phillips told Mashable. “Meaningful online engagement isn’t easy, but it’s a highly effective way to tackle the challenges facing our country and discuss the best ways to move forward, including the policies the President laid out in his State of the Union address.”
Obama has previously held virtual town halls over Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Two of his possible rivals, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, have also hosted Google+ hangouts.
Did you watch the president’s Google+ hangout? What did you think? Let us know in the comments below.
President Obama held the first all-digital interview from the White House on Monday night. Like a modern day reincarnation of FDR’s fireside chats, the video chat brought the president directly into the homes of thousands of Americans via a Google+ hangout.
Over 227,000 people submitted questions, while the president spoke with five Americans from across the country. Google and YouTube selected questions for Obama from the videos that got the most votes from YouTube users.
Queries about the legalization of marijuana dominated the top-voted questions, but none were asked. President Obama previously addressed his drug policy in a 2011 YouTube interview.
At the beginning of the hangout, when the President delivered seemingly prepared remarks about unemployment and a living wage, some watchers took to Twitter to express disappointment that the President had received the questions ahead of time, though this wasn’t the case. (The hangout had no official Twitter hashtag, though #obamahangout gained some traction.)
this sounds scripted RT @youtube [LIVE NOW] Your interview with President #Obama is streaming on YouTube:
As the hangout progressed, the questions got tougher and the dialogue more democratic. This wasn’t an “ask and mute” hangout where the rest of the room was barred from speaking while Obama responded to questions. The conversation was two-way: follow-up questions were generally welcomed, there was some crosstalk, and participants vied for the chance to speak.
A query from Jennifer Wedel, the wife of an unemployed semiconductor engineer, seemingly caught the president off-guard. She asked the President a specific question about the White House’s expanded issuance of H-1B visas, which allow skilled workers to come to the U.S. for employment. Obama’s respond ended with a request for Wedel to send her husband’s resume to the president’s desk.
“I meant what I said, if you send me your husband’s resume, I’d be interested in finding out exactly what’s happening right there,” said Obama.
Wedel later told Politico that she didn’t find the president’s initial answer satisfactory.
When the President took a question on his administration’s use of unmanned drones, he responded by downplaying a report in The New York Times that suggested the U.S. is flying a large number of drones over Iraq.
His defense of the global drone program also happened to be his first official acknowledgement that the program existed, a fact which made headlines Tuesday morning.
When Obama gave a response about college education to California high school student Adam Clark, Wedel, a Texas mother of three, jumped in with her not-quite-contented opinion of the president’s answer. Ramon Ray, a small business owner from New Jersey, also joined in with his own views on saving for his children’s education.
Towards the end of the event, Obama was asked a YouTube question about the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. President Obama pointed to the recent indictment against Megaupload CEO Kim Dotcom as an example of how his administration was tackling intellectual property theft. It was the first time the President himself directly addressed the issue.
“I think that it’s going to be possible for us to make sure that we’re protecting intellectual property that creates a lot of jobs in this country,” said Obama. “It’s one of the United States’ biggest exports, but also do it in a way that it doesn’t affect the fundamental integrity of the internet as an open, transparent system.”
The hangout, despite the lack of muting, avoided the torrential crosstalk which has plagued other Google+ hangouts. How? Two ways:
1. The hangout was moderated by Steve Grove of Google, a former broadcaster. Grove allowed intelligent follow-ups while managing crosstalk and providing an even mixture of live and YouTube questions. 2. There’s an level of respect commanded by the office of the President. To quote The West Wing, “when the president stands, nobody sits.”
Overall, the hangout was a successful way to use new technology to connect the president with a diverse group of Americans in an intimate, personal setting. The conversation wasn’t just for the benefit of the attendees, it was also a way for President Obama to better understand the worries and daily struggles of a wide swath of everyday Americans.
“President Obama had a great time with yesterday’s first-ever virtual town hall event, which offered the sort of genuine back and forth the White House strives for in all of our online engagement efforts, whether through social media, WhiteHouse.gov’s We the People online petitioning system or otherwise,” White House director of new media Macon Phillips told Mashable. “Meaningful online engagement isn’t easy, but it’s a highly effective way to tackle the challenges facing our country and discuss the best ways to move forward, including the policies the President laid out in his State of the Union address.”
Obama has previously held virtual town halls over Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Two of his possible rivals, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, have also hosted Google+ hangouts.
Did you watch the president’s Google+ hangout? What did you think? Let us know in the comments below.
You know who I’m tired of seeing on Facebook? Me. Whenever I post an update, no matter what idiotic thought pops into my head, it jumps right to the top of the pack.
That’s because back in September I signed up for the Subscribe feature on Facebook, which lets me run a feed for readers who know me through Mashable. The Subscribe program has been successful beyond my wildest dreams. I have 39,000 subscribers at this writing and I got them in about four months. I’ve been on Twitter for more than four years and have around 8,000 followers there. Because of all those subscribers, my posts tend to get more comments than average (often in foreign tongues) and, thanks to Facebook’s ranking method, dominate other people’s news feeds.
While this provides a nice ego boost, there’s a downside to Subscribe as well. No, I’m not just talking about the porn, spam and irrelevant messages that others have noticed. Since I subscribed to a bunch of other journalists and have a lot of journalists as friends, my News Feed looks more like Google News than Facebook.
Meanwhile, I almost never see what my non-journo friends and family are up to. Since Facebook tweaked its feed back in September, it’s like more than half of my Facebook friends have disappeared. Others have experienced the same phenomenon. Right after Facebook posted a blog item about the switch, thousands of people protested via comments. “Facebook, you’re not near as smart as you think you are. Your algorithms for deciding what I want to see, who I want to talk to or what I think is important are 99.999% of the time the exact polar opposite of what I want,” wrote Facebook member Raymond J. Schlogel.
Evidence
Anecdotal evidence supports this. A coworker recently told me she missed a friend’s engagement announcement on Facebook because it was lost in her journo-heavy feed. Kevin Cate, an entrepreneur, has also rolled out a Facebook app called Really Huge News that scours your Facebook feed to find the earth-shattering life events that the app’s name promises.
“Personally, there was just a breaking point this summer where I was overwhelmed with status updates and unable to keep up with my friends and family,” Cate says. “So it was either figure out a way to deliver these buried but important updates that my friends and families cared about, or be a bad friend. When I approached the eventual Really Huge News team, we all had the same issue.”
The fact that such an app exists shows that some believe that Facebook’s feed isn’t working as promised. However, the company hasn’t heard much criticism about the News Feed, says rep Michael Kirkland. “It’s tempting to take a personal experience and apply it,” he says, “but with 800 million people, it takes a lot to constitute a trend.” However, Kirkland notes that Facebook’s News Feed is a “work in progress and it’s always been.”
Do This
Nevertheless, I have a proposal for Facebook: Just as there’s a wild card berth for tournaments and playoffs, Facebook should modify its algorithm so that, say 30% of your feed is randomly chosen. In other words, apply the current method of choosing items (based on the number of responses a post receives) to 70% of the feed, but let the occasional oddball update slip through.
Another idea is to somehow divide the feed between public people like me and private people who don’t offer a Subscribe option.
I realize there are ways to do this manually. I could, for instance, put all my reporter friends into one group and my “for real” friends into another, but I’m too lazy to do that. I could set the feed exclusively to “most recent.” But that’s too random for me. I like the idea of having Facebook search for the most “relevant” stories. I just don’t want them to all be relevant, because over time, that’s making Facebook more irrelevant.
