Posts Tagged ‘facebook’
Friday, March 22nd, 2013
When Facebook rolled out its News Feed in 2006, it redefined the way users interacted with its site, transforming its homepage into a stream of timely, personalized updates powered by users’ individual social networks.
Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine a Facebook that doesn’t organize and present your networks’ updates in a digestible, magazine-like manner. Not only does the News Feed deliver curated content for Facebook users, but it also allows businesses with Facebook Pages to increase the visibility of their updates.
Earlier this month, Facebook announced some changes to its News Feed, which point to an emphasis on visual content and make personal curation easier than ever before. As the News Feed’s user experience continues to evolve, businesses need to know how to adapt their Facebook presence and content to optimize for brand engagement.
To give businesses a better understanding of the redesigned News Feed, we’ve outlined some significant changes and what they mean for companies:
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Tags: content, facebook, news feed, share plugins, social data, social graph, Social Identity, Social Infrastructure, thought leadership, user engagement
Posted in Facebook, Thought Leadership | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 6th, 2013
Imagine this: It’s Friday evening and you’re making last-minute dinner plans with friends. Tired of your usual local spots, you type the following query into the search bar: “fun restaurants nearby.” The search pulls up a list of restaurants within a 10-mile radius of your current location, sorted by the number of likes and check-ins from your social network.
Facebook’s new Graph Search aims to do exactly that–make online search personal.
The implications of Graph Search for users are clear: Facebook members will soon gain access to a searchable database of their friends’ interests and whereabouts. However, the initial impact of Graph Search on businesses is often not so obvious.
Below are a few ideas about what Graph Search means for businesses:
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Tags: ecommerce, facebook, graph search, search engines, SEO, social data, social graph, Social Infrastructure, Social Network, Social Plugins, social search, Social Sharing
Posted in Thought Leadership | 2 Comments »
Monday, January 28th, 2013
In commemoration of Data Privacy Day, we’re exploring the implications of social data as both an instrumental marketing tool and a privacy concern for businesses.
As more and more users sign in and input personal data into social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, these sites accumulate mountains of actionable insight into their users’ backgrounds, interests, and purchasing habits. Businesses that tap into this user data can better understand their customers and gain a huge leg up over their competitors.
Sounds like a marketer’s dream, right? There’s a catch: Social data comes hand-in-hand with big responsibility. More specifically, businesses with access to social data must exercise transparency over data usage and make it a priority to uphold users’ privacy rights.
Users are both concerned about their privacy and generally uncomfortable with the idea of handing over personal data to corporations. In the wake of these concerns, it’s increasingly important for businesses to communicate clearly with their online audiences about how their personal information is being stored and leveraged.
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Tags: Authentication, data privacy, data privacy day, digital marketing, facebook, identity, social data, Social Infrastructure, Social Login, Social Network, Social Plugins, social sign-on, SSO
Posted in Thought Leadership | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
The Facebook ‘Like’ button began as one of the first connection points for brand sites and Facebook users. When it was unveiled at F8 back in 2008, marketers licked their chops over the prospect of being able to bring in fans to their companies’ Facebook pages and begin serving them with relevant content right on the Newsfeed. While the Facebook ‘Like’ button helped break down barriers between sites and an increasingly social base of web users, it hasn’t turned out to be quite the panacea that brands and publishers have been looking for when it comes to socializing content.
In fact, recent research from Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, an Australian marketing think-tank, revealed that the Facebook Like button seems to be failing to make much of an impression on users as they peruse their Newsfeeds. Ehrenberg-Bass’s study found that only about one percent of users actually engage with brand pages they’re subscribed to. While this data shows the failings of the Like button, the research also gives us a chance to rethink how brands can leverage Facebook (and other social networks) to reach a larger audience.
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Tags: Engagment, facebook, Like, Social Login
Posted in Thought Leadership | 4 Comments »
Friday, September 23rd, 2011
As many of you know, the tech industry has been buzzing over the last few weeks in anticipation of Facebook’s annual developer conference, F8. Mark Zuckerberg and Co. (including a hilarious bit from SNL’s Andy Samberg) did not disappoint – to say the least! While there has been no shortage of news coverage about the various announcements from the show we wanted to make sure you all know not just what the new changes are, but how they affect Gigya and the social functionality on your site.
Here’s a summary of the announcements made at F8 and how they will affect your site:
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Tags: F8, facebook, Open Graph
Posted in News, Thought Leadership | No Comments »
Sunday, May 1st, 2011
6 Best Practices for using Social Sharing to Drive Traffic from Social Networks
Wondering when to use the Facebook “Like” button on your site and when to use share? You’re not alone. Used together and in the right combination, “Like” and share are powerful tools for driving referral traffic from social networks, opening new communication channels with customers and prospects, and building relationships with your best advocates.
Driving referral traffic is the first significant benefit of social sharing, as shared activity, content and products are now pushed to the user’s network of friends, enabling them to discover what’s new and worthwhile with little effort. But sharing technologies have evolved significantly in the last several months, making social sharing a renewed area of focus for most companies. In this whitepaper you’ll learn the best practices for ”Like” and share and how to put them to work for your business.
1. Create a balanced “Like” and share button strategy
2. Enable sharing to multiple social networks
3. Make sharing dynamic
4. Use sharing to build relationships
5. Optimize shared content for the feed and profile
6. Track referral traffic from sharing activity
Tags: Best Practices, facebook, Like, Share
Posted in Thought Leadership | No Comments »
Sunday, May 1st, 2011
Social Strategies for Online Retailers
Rapidly or reluctantly, retailers are adding social channels and tools to their arsenal, urged on by customers and competitors who are already using them.
But these are not the only forces driving retailers towards social commerce. No longer hype, the opportunity for word-of-mouth customer referrals driven by social context and a shared shopping experience is simply too large to ignore:
- 67% of shoppers spend more online after recommendations from an online community of friends. (Internet Retailer, September 2009)
- 53% of people on Twitter recommend companies and/or products in their Tweets, with 48% of them delivering on their intention to buy the product. (ROI Research for Performance, June 2010)
- Facebook, blogs, Twitter and customer reviews are considered the most effective tactics for mobilizing consumers to talk up products online. (the e-tailing group survey of 117 companies, September 2009)
- On Black Friday 2010, there were more than 6x the number of Facebook status updates related to retail purchases as on the previous Friday. (Facebook, January 2011)
- Facebook in particular has become increasingly important to retailers in the past year. Half of the top 25
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Tags: ecommerce, facebook, Gigya, Social, Whitepaper
Posted in Thought Leadership | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 1st, 2011
Today Facebook announced that it has selected Gigya as a Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant. 
Facebook introduced the Preferred Developer Consultant Program (PDC) in December 2009 to provide brands, companies, and organizations a trusted list of companies experienced in integrating flagship Facebook Connect and other platform implementations that employ best practices and enhance existing experiences.
The Facebook blog post says “What separates a PDC from most other digital development firms is the ability to understand social mechanics and technical possibilities on Platform.” At Gigya we are focused on helping our clients by bringing these two areas of expertise:
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Tags: facebook, Gigya, Preferred Developer Consultant, Social Login
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011
One of the best ways to make your site social is to let users see what their friends have been doing on your site. It creates instant personalization and social context for users who login with identities like Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Google, etc. There are many ways to accomplish this using Gigya but here are two approaches to get you started:
1. Activity Feed Plugin
Our Activity Feed Plugin is one of our most popular plugins because it allows logged-in users to see a real-time stream of friend activities on your site. Think of it as having a complete activity stream without having to implement your own back-end solution.
The plugin is dirt simple to get up and running. Just call the socialize.showFeedUI API method from any page on your site and the Activity Feed renders in HTML. It has a single required parameter called “containerID” which is the DIV container where you want the plugin to show up:
<h3>Activity Feed Plugin Demo</h3>
<div id="ActivityFeedContainer"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
gigya.services.socialize.showFeedUI(conf, {containerID: 'ActivityFeedContainer'});
</script>
A complete working example of the Activity Feed plugin can be found here.
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Tags: activity feeds, activity stream, facebook, Social, social sign-on
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
