Last week, Facebook announced that it would officially activate hashtags, which have typically been associated with Twitter, on their social networking site.

On Twitter, hashtags are used to search for common topics which Facebook has essentially emulated. Any phrase which has a # symbol before it (example: #bigfuel) will become clickable and will link you to other users who have used that hashtag, regardless of whether you are friends or not.

Before this announcement, some Facebook users had already been using hashtags even though there was no actual functionality associated with them. This new move will help people easily discover what others are saying about a specific topic and participate in those trending conversations, with friends as well as the larger social universe.

Just hope your friends do not #overuse #hashtags #on #their #newsfeeds!

Have you ever thought about your Tweet’s journey through the Twitterverse, through the hands of your followers and complete strangers across the web? Have you ever been curious where and how far your tweets move through cyberspace? “Where Does My Tweet Go?” is a new Twitter analytics tool that traces the viral spread of a Tweet from person to person to person, and could change the way we analyze and track the impact of Twitter messaging.

“Where Does My Tweet Go?” was designed by Benoît Vidal and the team at MGF Labs in France. This unique online application uses a SpreadRank algorithm to track the flow of individual messaging activity and calculate a SpreadRank number. In addition, SpreadRank creates a graph to visually represent the movement of the message, with various rings acting as degrees of Retweeters. For example, the first white ring represents your immediate followers while the surrounding rings showcase Retweets from Twitter users beyond your community. The higher the SpreadRank number (more rings and lines connecting these rings), the greater reach that message has. Some features are limited because the tool is still in beta, however, its usage of real-time data visualization has a lot of value for any brand concerned with the true virility of their online messaging.

An article published by Wired compares the SpreadRank values of two of the most influential Twitter users, Justin Bieber and President Obama. Although Bieber has more Twitter followers (38 million) than Obama (30 million), the “Where Does My Tweet Go?” application shows that Bieber’s Tweets have a lower SpreadRank value, meaning his Tweets do not spread very far beyond his first circle of followers. On the other hand, Obama’s Tweets reach significantly further beyond his immediate following, ultimately reaching a significantly larger audience.

“Where Does My Tweet Go?” has the potential to shed significantly more light on the flow of information in social media. The way we understand the journey of our comments through the Twitterverse may never be the same.

Researchers at IBM’s Almaden Research Center are looking to create “deep psychological profiles” of potential customers to better understand their values and needs. Dr. Eben Haber and his team are building off previous research by Tal Yarkoni that matched bloggers’ posts to the 5 modern dimensions of personality: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience. Understanding these personality traits and how they relate to consumerism is critical for companies and brands because it can predict purchase: “Extroverts are more likely to respond to an advertisement for a mobile phone that promises excitement than one that promises convenience or security. They also prefer Coca-Cola to Pepsi and Maybelline cosmetics to Max Factor. Agreeable people though, tend to prefer Pepsi…”

Dr. Haber’s team is taking the Yarkoni research one step further by using linguistic signifiers to understand value systems. They have developed software that analyzes a stream of tweets and searches for words that reflect a user’s values (e.g. loyalty, self-enhancement) and needs (e.g. excitement, control). So far they have analyzed data for 90MM users and have found that they can reasonably predict a user’s personality and value traits from only 50 tweets.

As brands battle one another for the edge on Big Data, the importance of deep psychological research like the kind Dr. Haber is exploring will only become more significant. “What are people talking about on social?”  is a question very easily answered, and unfortunately, the results aren’t always as valuable as one would think. “Why are people talking about what they talk about on social and what does it say about how they will respond to advertising?” is a much more difficult problem to solve, but consequently, yields a much bigger and much more lucrative reward. Can Dr. Haber really tell us how we think about the purchases we make by analyzing a bunch of Tweets? Either way, marketing might never be the same again.

Click here to learn more

Yesterday at the Google I/O conference, Google launched a redesign of its social networking platform, Google+. The redesign has a new look and feel with a multi-column layout that echoes that of Pinterest. In addition to the design, there are 41 new features, among which a couple stand out as particularly innovative:

1. Google+ has now expanded their focus on hashtags with a feature called “Related Hashtags.” The network will now automatically scan your updates and add relevant hashtags allowing those who follow you to learn more about the subject of your content.

2. A photo feature, actually named “Auto Awesome,” takes a set of photos in your library and turns them into an animated GIF. Another feature called “Auto Enhance” improves brightness, contrast and saturation.

3. Finally merging its disparate communications systems together, Google Hangouts will now be the unified messaging system across platforms, replacing Google Talk, Google+ Messenger and the original Google+ Hangout video chat service.

Check out this video published on Google+’s YouTube Channel to learn more about the new Google+:

Image Courtesy of Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha (the computational knowledge engine) recently published an interesting study on demos, interests and behavior of Facebook users, particularly around friendship and relationship patterns.

The key findings show:

• The median Facebook user has 342 friends
• Most users have friends around their own age, likely a reflection of aged-based classes in school or college
• Teenage boys have more friends than teenage girls, but this difference dwindles once users hit their early 20s
• Facebook users tend to have 3-4 “clusters” of friends with up to 100 people in each cluster
• Relationships on Facebook very closely match the patterns seen in United States census data, with most people marrying in their mid-20s. ”The fraction of people “in a relationship” peaks around age 24, and there’s a small “engaged” peak around 27. The fraction of people who report themselves as married continues to increase roughly linearly with age, gaining about 5% between age 40 and age 60—while the fraction of people who report themselves as single continues to increase for women, while decreasing for men.” (Stephen Wolfram)

To read more about the study and it’s findings, click here.

Remember those days when everything on the Internet was optimized for the desktop experience? Dot coms were the kings leading the charge in captivating internet users and driving commerce. Gone are those days now. On Tuesday, Facebook announced the rollout of its new revamped, fully mobile optimized  brand pages, starting with mobile web and iOS with the updates on Android devices coming soon.

Since its inception, Facebook has been playing catch-up in the mobile space, crafting its on-the-go experience to be a mere extension of its desktop platform. Continuing with this approach has proven to be problematic. Mobile usage is experiencing explosive growth and social media is leading the charge. Any platform that doesn’t get with the program will eventually fall behind.

Here are just a few statistics to back this up:

· eMarketer estimates that there will be nearly 100 million US mobile social network users this year and a significant percentage will be Facebook users.

· eMarketer also estimates that 79.4 million US consumers, amounting to 51% of digital buyers, will purchase online using a mobile device.

· According to a survey by Technorati, Facebook ranks as the social network most likely to influence purchases among US internet users, and ranks closely behind blogs and brand sites overall.

 So what are the changes?

1) Brand Information

While the old mobile brand page still presented information about the brand on the page itself, it was not at all efficient. The tendency was to treat a brand’s name and cover image as the primary identifier of a page. Now, with the Profile Image (usually the brand logo), the Cover Image (usually featuring brand themes or products) and Business Category all rolled-up on the top of the page, mimicking Twitter’s mobile page experience, Facebook has made it very easy for users to learn about brands without doing much digging.

2) Interaction

Unlike previous brand page designs that merely sought to engage with users via posted content, Facebook’s new page design now places every level of interaction (public or private) as high priority, driving both online and real world actions. With the interaction bar containing options to Like, Check In, Call and Message, placed right under the information bar, users are directly encouraged to interact with the brand, rather than just absorb posted content.

3) Location

Consistent with the intent to drive commerce and real world actions, the new brand page also now includes mapped locations. Flowing along with brand discovery and interaction, the location box is now a prominent fixture on the brand page, showing a convenient map of the brand’s physical location and hopefully driving foot traffic and in-store commerce. I guess this is part of where Facebook’s partnership with Microsoft comes in handy. Bing!

4) Content

Logically speaking, published content on a brand page has never been that high of a priority, perhaps the reason why Facebook’s old brand pages did not feature any posts at the top. However, community managers need not languish at this. Brand published content is still very important as it provides primary touch and on-going engagement points for users in the newsfeed, allowing users to discover more about the brand’s lifestyle, progression and history. Again, this is not to say that content is no longer important on the brand page. The rearrangement and consolidation of brand information has created space on the mobile brand page, which brands can now use to either pin posts as means to preview content on the timeline.

What do these changes mean for brands?

These changes mean that unlike previous mobile brand page designs that merely sought to optimize the desktop experience, Facebook has been working closely with brands to build a process flow that takes users from discovery to physical action (purchase), all while allowing them to easily engage in conversations with the brand and other users on an on-going basis. It means that brands now have more confidence in establishing a social presence and ensuring that how they present their information and how they publish can directly impact their business objectives. Social is now the king of the internet, while dot com has now become the extension piece where the actual transactions take place (at least for now). What remains to be seen is whether a similar approach can now be applied to brand pages on desktop, which our spies confirm is in the works.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth a million. However, whether or not words and dollars have a one-to-one ratio is a different story altogether.

This summer, Facebook is set to roll out the next logical step in advertising functionality: video ads. If there’s one hypothesis that drives social media marketing it’s that the more comprehensive a piece of content, the more engagement and more conversion can be expected. As of right now, video remains the pinnacle of information-rich, engagement-worthy content and every brand is going all out to try and leverage it. We see video ads on YouTube, blog posts, editorial websites and on television, and Facebook is looking to join the party.

Concrete details haven’t yet surfaced, but the assumption is that the video ads will live in an external player that expands beyond a user’s News Feed, possibly stretching all the way across the browser window. Video ads will be active on mobile as well, but it’s unclear what that functionality will look like. As of right now, Facebook is offering four daily summer slots, each one capable of targeting men or women, over or under 30 years old. Videos will be capped at 15 seconds, a perfect number considering short attention spans and quick consumption, and frequency will be limited so that no user will see more than three a day. All seems well, right up until we get into the most important of all numbers associated with an ad campaign: budget.

It is being reported that each video ad will cost “upwards of” $1 million,  ”upwards of” most-likely meaning exactly $1 million or not much less. For Facebook, this means a potential revenue stream of $4 million per day, assuming they are able to lock down a client for each of the four demographic categories. It’s great for the platform, but the important question is whether or not it’s good for you. You as the brand or you as the fan.

If you’re a brand, one million dollars is a lot to spend on anything, let alone 15 seconds of ad time that may or may not lead to engagement or conversion. When venturing into the seven figure range, it’s safe to say that you’re going to want something that will have a lasting effect on the profitability of your brand, and a social media video advertisement just can’t make that kind of guarantee. Besides, it’s not like you can’t already post promotional video on Facebook as it stands, with ad dollars promoting the post. Forced views don’t justify the price difference, especially with such broad targeting as “Men over 30.” One million dollars also doesn’t include video production budget, which is an enormous investment itself.

The most important element to factor into any social media-based campaign is user-experience, and let’s be honest, pop out video ads can be annoying. Even on television, where ads have been ingrained in the experience for over sixty years, people are flocking to services like DVR, Netflix and On Demand specifically to get away from them. Are users ready to consume pop out video ads on Facebook in a positive mindset? Maybe, but more than likely there will be negative sentiment, at least in the beginning, and that could easily convert to negativity towards your brand. Advertising is a delicate art. It’s intrusive by nature, but with a little creativity and finesse, it can skyrocket the profitability and sentiment attached to your brand. But just like Real Estate, advertising is all about location, and whether or not Facebook is the proper location for forced video is an insight that may not be worth the price tag.

Why spend hours scouring the web when all the info you need is right below? Here’s everything important from this week in everything social. Did I miss anything? Send me an email: Daniel.Asulin@BigFuel.com.

1. Twitter Introduces a Music App - First video, now music. Twitter isn’t stopping until no piece of content is untweetable. Similar to Vine, the app will be a stand-alone music player that draws content from sources like Soundcloud and suggests new tracks based on data derived from user activity. One thing we can safely assume is that the new app will push to Twitter and tracks will be playable straight from the body of a Tweet. The 140 character limit will always loom, but Twitter is determined to make certain that lack of copy will never mean lack of content. Because leaving the platform is just not quick enough for the speed of culture.

2. LinkedIn Makes a Big Acquisition - Keeping pace with the competition, LinkedIn made a huge move of its own this week, officially acquiring news aggregator Pulse for a cool $90 million. It’s unclear how LinkedIn expects to use their brand new toy, but with the recent demise of Google Reader, they could be looking to upgrade their stream to be more rich content-heavy and less update-driven. Can LinkedIn become more than just a place to stick your resume? Time will tell.

 3. Vine Introduces Trending Topics - If you’re like me, you’re finding that no matter how many people you follow on Vine, there’s just not enough content to provide a steady stream. Enter the trending hashtag. Similar to its parent company Twitter, Vine has now introduced a Trending Hashtag tab that will allow users to enter a portal filled with content and not have to rely solely on who they follow to keep their stream populated. It should serve as a means for find new handles worth following and a great way for brands to intercept popular conversation topics with media-rich content. Vine provides the capability to create content with practically no creative limitations (other than 6.5 seconds of course), and it will be interesting to see which brands can rise to the top while the conversation continues to grow.

4. Tumblr Overhauls Android App - Not to be left out, on Monday Tumblr announced a series of updates to its Android app. In addition to completely redesigning the app’s interface, the blogging platform introduced a new function now popularly dubbed the “post anything” screen, which allows users to conveniently post videos, chats, links, quotes, photos and text directly from their mobile device, further solidifying the social network’s reputation as the easiest place to post anything. But Tumblr did not stop there. Advanced controls have also been introduced such as the ability to save drafts, schedule posts and customize Tweets. Looks like the Facebook and Twitter folks aren’t the only ones turning up the heat!

5. Facebook Status Updates Expand - If you follow the Big Fuel blog, you already know that Facebook is beginning to roll out emotions and activity tags on status updates. If you’re just checking in now, the functionality allows users to update their status like normal while also checking into a variety of activities (e.g. reading a book, watching a movie, drinking a drink) or their current emotional state complete with associated emoticons. It’s too early to say for sure, but we think Facebook might have finally bridged the real-time gap with this one. If your product falls into one of the new activity categories, get ready for what could become the most important metric in social.

I still remember the prehistoric days when every Facebook status update had to follow the word “is.” Needless to say, functionality has come a long way since then. At some point down the line, Facebook decided that status updates could be more than just a strictly present depiction of what you were doing or how you were feeling. A quote for instance, or image, or video or maybe just something you felt like telling the world at that particular second with no relativity to time. But with Facebook’s newest addition to the status update function, the question is why not both?

Like most updates, Facebook’s new change is rolling out slowly, but soon all Facebook users will have the option of adding an emotion or an activity to status updates. Much like you can presently tag your friends or a location in whatever it is you’re posting about, you can now also tag a movie or show you’re watching, a book you’re reading, the music you’re listening to, a meal you’re eating, a drink you’re drinking, or just simply how you’re feeling. Users will also be able to tag specific Facebook pages along with their activity (e.g. Watching [Tag]“Game Of Thrones”) or write in their own, similarly to in a user’s “Likes” section.

Why do we love this? It takes community to a whole new level by incorporating Pages into Facebook’s most iconic function in a manner that is fluid, logical and consistent with what has become social media’s greatest purpose: grouping people together. To continue with my previous example, I may have been able to tag “Game of Thrones” in a post before, however there would have been no way for Facebook’s Graph to determine whether or not I was currently in the act of watching it or just mentioning it for any number of reasons. By allowing me to tag “Game of Thrones” as an activity, Facebook’s Graph can now sort me and all of my friends who are also watching the new episode together and create a community experience in real time, the one ability that the platform has always lacked. It will serve the same purpose as a hashtag on Twitter, or a check-in on FourSquare or GetGlue, but what’s really impressive is that it solves an issue while still maintaining consistency with what makes Facebook, Facebook; a practically seamless addition that will ultimately make all the difference.

Our first question of course is whether or not brands will be able to join in on the fun too, but now we’re entering murky waters. We’ve already accepted the fact that brands can have an anthropomorphic presence in social with voice and personality. But can General Electric really be watching the new episode of “Game of Thrones?” Can Coca-Cola be listening to the new Rihanna song? Can Poland Spring be sad over the death of Margaret Thatcher? This conversation will require much more depth of discussion, but suffice to say, activities and emotions will bring brands into interesting territory. Would it even provide added value? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

Yesterday, Facebook announced the long awaited Facebook Home experience. As always with any social media announcement, our team was all ears, streaming the event on every computer in sight, live tweeting from every Twitter handle and providing some entertaining and insightful commentary. So, we thought we would share what we’ve learned so far:

What is Facebook Home?

It’s a new Android mobile experience that puts people (via social connections) before apps, offering upfront notifications and quick access to all the essentials for staying connected. It will primarily be available as a full package on the ‘Facebook Phone,’ which will debut as the HTC First on AT&T, but will also be available to download via Google Play on select Android devices on April 12th.

Here are some key features:

Cover Feed
It places photos, status updates, links and more right on your home screen so that you don’t have to open the Facebook app to browse your News Feed. No longer just a selection screen for individual functions, your phone will now be able to natively offer a constant window into your friends’ lives.

Chat Heads
This is a new and innovative function (despite the awkward name) that centralizes all chat conversations, and most importantly, allows you to chat from anywhere within your phone without having to switch apps or return to the home screen.

App Launcher
This is a function that allows users to group apps together based on importance, usage or favorites. We’re still not sure how this significantly differs from what Android already offers but what makes the App Launcher unique is that it allows you to post to Facebook without opening the Facebook app.

Why does Facebook Home matter?

For starters, Facebook is recognizing that in a vast sea of almost 1 billion Android apps, the mobile experience is getting fragmented. According to Nielsen reports, the average number of apps on a smartphone in 2012 was 41. This means that, with users downloading more and more apps, competition in app discovery and use will only get more fierce, resulting in less time spent per app. So why not be proactive? If Facebook wants to maintain its domination on mobile app usage, it needs a game changer.

According to comScore, Facebook’s app accounted for 23% of time spent on mobile apps in 2012. Given this disproportionate figure, it was only a matter of time until the folks at Facebook responded to these overwhelming usage stats with a customized mobile experience. For those critics out there, what would have been worse is if Facebook had chosen to do nothing with this insight.

Implications for Brands

Since brand posts appear on the News Feed just like your friends’ posts, they will also begin to appear on the home screen, but the question that begs answering is are they worthy? Considering how intimate and personal the home screen is, the demand will only rise for more compelling and relatable branded content, especially now that (image) posts will appear one at a time as standalone slides and not as a stream of linear posts. Brand posts could potentially become more prominent than ever, and users will undoubtedly be even more critical of this content, now occupying a space that has traditionally been reserved for self-identifying wallpaper. Since users can’t control every bit of content that comes on their News Feed, they will likely become much more selective about which brands they choose to “Like.” But on the other hand, this new function is bound to make the home screen more dynamic than ever.

Will other social networks follow suit by developing their own deeper mobile experiences? Will other mobile operating systems allow Facebook and other social networks to develop new mobile products with the same approach? How long will it be before Facebook decides your home screen isn’t too sacred for ads? It’s not clear at this point, but one thing is for sure. That last one is likely only a matter of time.

Another week gone by and another round of social news. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram all made big splashes this week with new products, new functionality and some interesting strategic changes. Here’s the full rundown on this week in social media. Did we miss anything? Send me an email at Daniel.Asulin@bigfuel.com.

1. Instagram Ads May be on their Way - Forgive us for speculating, but Facebook’s decision to have Director of Mobile Partnerships, Emily White shift her focus to Instagram likely means the platform will look to monetize in 2013. Insta has alluded to advertising before, but this move is their first big step towards finally cashing in on their over 100 million active users. Promoted Instagram posts would be a social marketer’s dream come true, but what else can we expect? Verification? Specialized brand pages? Links? Full desktop functionality? Rest assured, big changes are on the way.

2. Facebook Home Takes Mobile to Another Level - “What if phones were designed around people, not apps?” asked Mark Zuckerberg yesterday. Facebook Home turned out not to be a phone like most had imagined, but an app (for Android only currently) that will turn your phone’s home screen into Facebook. Home will allow users access to Facebook Messages, the ability to check notifications and view a constant stream of photos and updates generated by the news feed without needing to remain in or even click into the app. Home will be available for download on April 12th and will come pre-loaded on HTC’s “First” smartphone which is set to be released on the 12th as well. Apple might be a little less willing to let third party applications tinker with their iconic iPhone home screen, but Facebook Home for iOS can’t be too far off.

3. Twitter Diversifies Cards - You knew Twitter wouldn’t let Facebook be the talk of the town for long. Twitter functionality took some major leaps and bounds this week as they announced the expansion of Twitter cards, a function that has revolutionized the way content is shared on the platform. New cards include but are by no means limited to photo galleries, app installation prompts, deep-linking for already installed apps and a music player. If you use Twitter for business, no doubt the wheels were turning halfway through that last sentence. After all, content is king.

4. New Study Says Social Participation Equals Productivity  - Just one more reason why your Klout score means more in the workplace than your SAT score. A brand new study conducted by data-cruncher, Evolv determined that employees who are active on four or more social networks close more sales, stick around for longer and handle customer service calls more efficiently. The average Big Fueler uses six or more social networks, so we can’t say we’re surprised.

5. Facebook makes Replies Easier for Brands to Monitor - We’re all still beaming over Facebook’s introduction of the Reply function, and meanwhile, the news just keeps getting better. The “brand-friendliest” social network just announced changes to their API that will make it even easier to monitor comments and replies, and hopefully help marketers get more of a feel for what types of conversations are drawing the most participants within their communities. Developers can now build software that will track comments through three different streams: only top level comments, only replies to top level comments, or both together in chronological order. Big Data just grew a few more sizes.