Facebook To Help Users Burned By Profile-To-Page Migration
Facebook now offers a potential solution for users who converted their profiles into pages, only to regret the decision after the fact. As reported by Inside Facebook, Facebook has created ...
HOW TO: Improve Engagement on Your Brand’s Facebook Page [STATS]
If you’re looking to boost engagement on your brand’s Facebook Page, a new report from Buddy Media has some key findings for you. The social media marketing company collected data ...
Quora: The Stats Behind the Buzz [INFOGRAPHIC]
Quora‘s beautifully designed, elegantly executed Q&A might be burning up the blogs, but how is the site performing in the real world? Web analytics firm KISSmetrics has just published an ...
Multiple Logins of Gmail and Orkut Through Mozilla Firefox
Just follow the following steps and you will be able to login in gmail and orkut with multiple accounts. Through this you will be able to make profiles in your firefox.
Step 1:
Open system properties(by right clicking my computer), choose tab advanced, click to environment variables button. in system variables section, click new. type this information to each textbox.
Step 2:
variable name: moz_no_remote (should be all small letter).
variable value: 1
Step 3:
open firefox icon’s properties(from desktop and quick launch). add extension -p to command line(like “c:\program files\mozilla firefox\firefox.exe” -p). press ok.
When you will open firefox it will prompt for profile selection create a profile,open firefox login to orkut open once more use another profile login.
21 interesting Online Games
Today, I am here with a good list of Online Games. Nowadays, Online Games are a worth more famous than the Game which you buy….
Even, the oldest ones play online games {Just as My Father 
}…. I will introduce you with the best 21 online games which you might be playing.
Below is the list of the best online games you might have ever played:-
- Mafia Wars- A Very Interesting Game from Zynga about the Underworld Dons.
- RuneScape- An Adventurous Game with over 150 + Quests to solve and 24 Unique Skills to play with.
- Club Penguin- A Good Multipayer Game where peoples all over the world interact with others using Chat options and Playing Games in the Game such as Sled RAcing with friends.
- Dirt Bike 4- An Interesting Bike Game for you to pass your free time with.
- Street Sesh 2- A Good Skate Boarding Game with some Adventure for you to Play the Game.
- Terrorist Hunt- A Shooting Game based on the Game Counter Strike.
- Sock And Awe- A Game to hit George Bush with shoes {:P}.
- MotoCross Fever- A Bike Racing Game.
- 3 Foot Ninja 2- A Fighting And Adventurous Game.
- Become A Waiter- A Game where you become a Waiter and get orders and do a customer service.
- Blackjack Online- Perhaps the most popular among the games that are played on the Internet . Unpredictability makes the game a real challenge for the players who are left guessing most of the times. Yet it keeps the mind preoccupied and is real fun having a bit of element of luck.
- Super Mario World Revived- One Of the Great Game of Mario.
- Who Wants to be a Millionaire- Answer 15 Questions to win 1 Million Dollors {Fake but interesting game} . More than 1500 Questions to play with.
- Battle In MegaVille- An Interesting Fighting Game.
- Cone Crazy- Be A Crazy Man and Crash All those Cones next to you in time.
- Naruto Arena- A Multiplayer Naruto Game for you.
- Tom and Jerry- A Strategy Game to trap Jerry.
- Metal Slug Mario World- Another Mario Game.
- Street Fighter Flash- A Fighting Game {Famous too}.
- Prince Of Persia- A Good and Adventurous Game.
- Batman- An Adventurous Game.
Here Finishes My List…. Hope You Enjoyed It..
Facebook Testing In-House Questions App
Facebook is testing out a new “Questions” app, and not while not many details are available about it now, the concept is intriguing – and it’s perhaps a foreshadowing example of how developers should expect to see Facebook testing out more of its own apps this year.
The Questions feature appears above advertising on the right-hand column, and includes links to provide an answer, or ask your question. It also shows you the name of the person who asked a question — presumably a current Facebook friend, or someone in your geographic area, perhaps — with a link to their profile. While Facebook has run various interactive elements in this space before, like “become a fan,” this is the first time it has put direct user-to-user interactions in it. In terms of how the app will function, we’re guessing it will access user profile data about friends to decide which users will see which questions, like what Aardvark does.
The bigger picture, on that point, is that “Questions” appears to be a new communication channel, distinct from the news feed, messages, invites and notifications. It’s not clear what else Facebook might want to do with it. Perhaps we’ll start seeing questions and answers appear as news feed stories, for example, or somehow give third party applications, Pages and Facebook Connect sites access to it for their own questions, asked from their own destinations?
The right-hand column placement also suggests Facebook may want to provide companies and other organizations with access to the service for a fee of some sort. Like Facebook sells “Sponsored Events” as an ad unit, one can easily imagine “Sponsored Questions” going in here. Or, Facebook perhaps thinks Questions is a feature that will get users paying more attention to the right-hand column than they have been, thereby driving up clicks on ads?
All these questions imply that the company will need to carefully control privacy around the feature, as the new channel is an obvious place for inappropriate or sensitive questions and answers, that users probably don’t want to have made widely available.
Facebook’s Blake Ross gave a little more background yesterday on Quora:
Facebook’s experimentation in this “space” is actually a direct result of internal circumstances at the company rather than all this recent outside activity. For the last few years, we didn’t have enough engineers to make significant, sustained investments in our applications (e.g. photos and events). Earlier this year, we finally got comfortable enough with our recruiting numbers to reorganize the product engineering group into dedicated application teams of 4-5 people each. That’s why you’re suddenly seeing improvements to applications that haven’t evolved in years, such as our recent launch of higher res photos. One of our app teams is charged with experimentation and we decided to pursue this vision of real-time Q&A now that the resources were finally in place.
User-generated question and answer services have been around for years. But a couple very interesting ones have launched recently that try to take advantage of social connections to provide better answers. One is Aardvark, real time-driven service that was recently bought by Google. It lets you type simple questions into a variety of interfaces — instant message was the main one — then it sends your question to your friends who had the most relevant interests and expertise. Facebook profile data was a key way that it figured out which person to send which questions to.
A group of former Facebook employees have also recently started a site called Quora, that provides an easy-to-use interface for asking and answering questions. It relies entirely on Facebook for social features; it automatically has you “follow” all of your friends on the service without saying so, for example. By using Facebook, it retains the real-world connections that most people have on the service.
We still don’t have many details on Questions. But we do know one thing: Facebook is investing more in its in-house apps, something we predicted we’d see more of this year just last week.
[Image via All Facebook.]
Facebook Launches Help Center to Address Concerns About Child Safety
Facebook launched a new Safety Center today as part of the company’s effort to create a more comfortable social environment, and also in response to concerns from parents, educators and law enforcement, according to its press release and a blog.
The Safety Center offers tips, answers frequently asked questions, offers advice and other general information divided into main topics: General Safety, Safety for Educators, Safety for Law Enforcers, Safety for Parents, Safety for Teens.
Facebook’s Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan writes in a blog post that safety is Facebook’s “top priority,” and that the Safety Center was created in conjunction with the company’s Safety Advisory Board, created at the end of 2009, to present information in a way that’s easy to navigate.
The Safety Center provides content from Facebook as well as other organizations that focus on online safety, such as: Childnet International in the United Kingdom, non-profit Common Sense Media, Connect Safely, The Family Online Safety Institute and WiredSafely.
It includes content like “Addressing Personal Safety” and “Responding to Objectionable Content,” as well as information on cyberbullying, how to report pedophiles, information for parents like “How do I teach my teen to use the Internet wisely?” and “Can I ‘friend’ my teen on Facebook?”
Facebook seems to be moving to address problems that have been popping up related to safety issues on the social network. Most recently, after the death of a young girl at the hands of a man she met on Facebook, there was an outcry in the UK for the so-called “panic button” to alert authorities to potential pedophiles on the site. Facebook declined to do that, but this effort is another move intended to allay the inevitable safety concerns that arise from running a large social network.
Some Mayors Bypass Media, Government and Talk Directly to Constituents on Facebook
Mayors will sometimes use their Facebook Pages to bypass local media channels or government bureaucracies in order to communicate directly with their constituencies, or provide hard-to-find information, we found recently when we looked around Facebook for mayors’ Pages. As part of our ongoing series of how government entities use Facebook, we have reviewed a range of mayors with Pages — we know that these figure prominently in elections, but what happens once the candidate becomes the official?
We looked at about a dozen such Pages to see what they were doing. For the sake of easy comparison, we only looked at the Pages of U.S. mayors, although there were several Pages for mayors in other cities around the world, such as Talisay City, The Philippines mayor Doc Eric Saratan’s Page (about 1,100 fans), as well as elsewhere, like Karachi, Pakistan Mayor Syed Mustafa Kamal (about 68,500 fans).
Here’s a snapshot of some US mayors and their fan counts: Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had just 2,500 fans, Houston mayor Annise Parker had 4,700 fans, the mayor of Wentzville, Missouri Paul Lambi had 392 fans, Mayor Jim Byard of Prattville, Alabama had 572 fans, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing had 728 fans, Buffalo, New York’s Mayor Byron W. Brown had 2,200 fans, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn had 855 fans, Utica, New York Mayor David Roefaro had almost 2,100 fans, Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton had 6,300 fans and San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro had 3,500 fans.
The Wall seemed to be the main hub of activity for most mayors — that’s where they posted the bulk of the information they shared on Facebook, as did their fans. More often than not the mayors posted news links or links to city web sites, blogs/notes and sometimes videos. Several also frequently posted notes and photos were a mainstay on most of the Pages.
Generally speaking, the mayors that used their Pages to speak specifically to their constituents in “localized” terms were the most successful, both in terms of the number of fans and the amount of interaction — and this was not limited to a city’s size. For example, Los Angeles has almost 4 million residents but Mayor Villaraigosa rarely updates his Page and consequently had a paltry 2,500 fans compared to Mayor Brown’s frequently updated Page with a fan base of 2,200 in Buffalo, New York, a city with about 271,000 residents.
Even cities with smaller bases to work with aren’t always able to maneuver fans to their Pages, as evident with Mayor Paul Lambi’s 392 fans from among about 23,800 residents in Wentzville, Missouri or Mayor Jim Byard’s 570 fans from the 32,500 residents of Prattville, Alabama. Both posted hyperlocal information regularly, Lambi going so far as to post his location, “Every Wednesday morning I meet with the City Administrator for a briefing. This morning, we’re meeting at I-Hop.”
Rather, what seemed to make or break these mayors’ Facebook Pages was the combination of genuine interactivity combined with smart promotion of this medium.
San Antonio, Texas Mayor Julián Castro, who we’re told runs the Page himself, seems to have accomplished this balance nicely, as with a city of over 1.3 million people and 3,500 fans, he had one of the largest fan Pages we saw. From what we observed on the Page, Castro managed to almost daily promote local issues like the influx of shoppers from Mexico over Easter weekend, or localize larger issues such as the Census, prompting fans to comment quite often (he occasionally comments back). There are lots of photos and videos, notes are added at regular intervals and he often shares news links on the Wall to prompt discussion.
We spoke to Christian Archer, Castro’s 2008 campaign manager and current political aid to the mayor for his Facebook Page, about how it figured in the election and how Castro now uses the Page to highlight his pet issues. Castro has been enthusiastically using different types of technology since his campaign, Archer tells us, noting not only Facebook, but also pointing to live town halls on his web site, Flip videos, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. During the campaign Castro began using his personal Facebook profile to communicate with supporters, and once elected, he created the Page and has been trying to migrate fans there ever since, Archer said.
“One of the promises we made during the campaign was (that) this Page wasn’t just going to be for the election,” Archer said, noting that Castro is the first San Antonio mayor to have a Facebook Page, although to be fair, there’ve only been two other mayors since Facebook was founded in 2004. “The percentage is still not huge that check our Facebook — it’s not going to win or lose an election — but it is vital to the people who are online.”
Castro’s Facebook Page was promoted on campaign literature and the same is being done now that it’s a part of the mayor’s official communication platform, Archer tells us; this may be one reason why Castro’s Page is much larger than others we saw. Growing the Page was important because Archer said Castro wanted the interactivity available on Facebook to constituents 24/7, allowing them to get involved without having to be activists and also because social media has become a way for the mayor to promote causes that might not draw the attention of the local media.
“A lot of this stuff will never get covered. We’re able to communicate a lot of smaller things that might not make the 6 o’clock news, but yet are still important,” Archer explained.
The amount of time and attention spent on Facebook Pages seemed to have a direct impact on the number of fans and interactions, but this wasn’t always the case. Sometimes mayors who only sporadically tended to the Page had larger followings than others who were on Facebook almost daily.
Case in point, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn constantly updated his Page but, in a city of almost 600,000 he only squeezed out 855 fans; meanwhile, Utica, New York Mayor David Roefaro added 2,000 fans from a city of 58,000 people. Lots of factors could have contributed to this difference, perhaps one Page has been around longer than the other or there are links to the Page on city web sites, but such differences are curious, nonetheless.
As previously mentioned, the quality of information on the Pages was also essential to success on Facebook. Houston Mayor Annise Parker was elected to represent 2.2 million residents and does a decent job of talking about her work on Facebook to her 4,700 fans, while Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton’s constituency of 670,000 has awarded him about 6,300 Facebook fans. Even more interesting, Detroit’s Mayor Dave Bing was once a popular basketball player, an entrepreneur and now mayor but has just 727 fans in a city of more than 912,000 people. What’s more, Bing posts regularly and includes pertinent government documents among his photos for people to more easily access information.
There are lots of questions here that don’t yet have clear answers. Are some cities more Facebook-centric than others? Do some mayors promote their Pages more than others? Do different regions of the country feel more comfortable as fans of politicians? Are mayors just less interesting to Facebook users than a President, Governor, Congressmen or Senator? Is it just that some politicians are more beloved than others?
Facebook users currently seem less compelled to become fans of their mayors than of other politicians, for whatever reason. Some cities’ mayors don’t even bother to have Facebook Pages. New York’s Michael Bloomberg is a good example (but he does have Twitter, YouTube and Flickr). Creating a successful Facebook Page for mayors seems to be part work (updating, etc.), part promotion (including it on web sites and other official literature) and part luck (do people in your city care about mayors on Facebook?). All that said, we expect mayors, and their campaigns to do a better job figuring out how to use Facebook in the future.
Adapted: insidefacebook
Facebook Adding Offers to Payment Options for Credits
Facebook has been expanding payment options for Facebook Credits, its universal virtual currency used in Platform applications, in recent months. Today, it is partnering for the first time with two offer providers so users can earn Credits without having to pay directly.
For users, this means another way to get Credits without paying — this may increase spending on Credits for social games and other applications on Facebook. For developers, that means Credits might be able to bring in more money than they have to date. And for other offer providers, Facebook is now more of a direct competitor, although the payment option is only in early beta testing at this point, and the company’s long-term plans are not yet clear.
Offers are simply online ads, usually drawn from ad networks elsewhere on the web, that let users buy subscriptions and goods, complete surveys, or take other actions in exchange for virtual currency. They were a key early way for social applications to monetize on the platform, although direct payments currently comprise the vast majority of app revenue today (check out our Inside Virtual Goods report for more details on the social gaming payments ecosystem breakdown). Monetization services companies have typically included offers in an “offer wall” as a separate page in apps, beneath direct payment options like PayPal and mobile payments.
However, in the early days of the platform, most offer providers and game developers did not effectively filter offers for quality. So, many of the scammy ads you see on other web sites — quizzes that trick you into mobile phone subscriptions, surveys that craftily collect your personal information, etc. — were commonly found on Facebook. Many established brands stayed away from the ad product as a result; the scammiest offers were often the most lucrative, and so the most popular with many developers.
Facebook began cracking down on low offer quality last summer and fall, especially after widespread media exposure of low offer quality. While developers and monetization providers have worked to filter out bad offers and provide more good ones, Facebook’s move today is going a step further.
The New Offers Test
The current two partners are TrialPay and Peanut Labs, both of whom have made notable efforts to provide higher quality offers for the industry. They are providing the relationships with the offer advertiser, as well as other back-end support, like customer service. The first three developers to test Credits-offers integration are CrowdStar, Playdom and RockYou. Facebook is not disclosing the revenue share with its offer partners.
Offers will be available around the world. The number of Credits that can be earned is dependent on the type of offer, as usual, but ranges from 1 to well above 100.
Ethan Beard, head of Facebook’s developer network, tells us that Facebook has hand-picked specific offers from the partners to run within Credits, using offer quality standards that are higher than what it requires of third parties. All offer payments will be instant (or close to it); excluded offer categories include ads for credit reports, auto-recurring magazine subscriptions and most other recurring online and mobile subscriptions. “We wanted to take a conservative approach with this test” he says. “We work hard to make sure all advertisers and other providers are in compliance.”
Beard sees this test as an early, relatively simple step in understanding how the company can help provide more value to users, developers and advertisers on Facebook. “What we do in the future will be determined based on the information we gather here,” he tells us. “We want to get a better understanding of how we can help our developers be more successful in driving business on the platform.”
We first heard rumors about Facebook testing offers a few months ago, and others have heard the same quite recently. “We’ve been looking at offers, and working with providers as part of broader platform for quite a while,” according to Beard. “Think of this more in light of Credits being in beta beta, as a logical evolution of [already] having credit card, Paypal and mobile payments”The company has been widely testing Credits with developers since last year, and some, like CrowdStar, have made games like Happy Island (see screenshot) that exclusively use Credits instead of other virtual currencies.
Facebook has also been busy cutting deals with third party monetization partners, including mobile payments company Zong and more recently, payment service PayPal. While Credits currently amounts to a fraction of Facebook’s revenue stream, we expect it to grow in the coming year as the service becomes more full-featured and widely available on the platform.
