Here is a great graphic tool that answers a question we’ve asked ourselves many times – what size does that image need to be? This graphic breaks down the layouts on all your favorite social sites, giving the dimensions so you can properly size your images, and get exactly the look you want. Link below, or you can find it in this post on our forum here.
Online Marketing Trends: Social Media Marketing: Most Used Tactics Across Social Media.
Upcoming Android 4.1 Jelly Bean devices, starting with Google’s recently unveiled Nexus 7 tablet, will not receive official Flash Player support from Adobe. Moreover, Adobe announced plans to pull Flash Player from the Google Play Store on August 15 for unsupported devices, and while you can expect Flash updates to roll out for older hardware running Android 4.0 or earlier, it’s clear the future lies in HTML5.
“Devices that don’t have the Flash Player provided by the manufacturer typically are uncertified, meaning the manufacturer has not completed the certification testing requirements. In many cases users of uncertified devices have been able to download the Flash Player from the Google Play Store, and in most cases it worked. However, with Android 4.1 this is no longer going to be the case, as we have not continued developing and testing Flash Player for this new version of Android and its available browser options. There will be no certified implementations of Flash Player for Android 4.1,” Adobe confirmed in a blog post.
MORE: Maximum PC | Adobe Not Developing Flash Player for Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.
Zeke Camusio, CEO of The Outsourcing Company, offers his advice on building your personal brand online with the help of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook
The goal for any business person jumping into social media marketing is not to add friends and swap stories and pictures, but rather, to make new business connections.
As soon as you start networking, you increase your chances of reaching new customers. However, be prepared to work at it. Here I’ll give you some simple but effective tips for the three big ones, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, to help you reach new customers, promote your business and drive traffic to your website.
MORE: 20 social networking tips for web designers
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Facebook appears to be testing a new “Want” button plugin similar to its popular Like button.
Developer Tom Waddington from Cut Out + Keep discovered that a Want button has been added to the Facebook Javascript SDK as an XFBML tag – <fb:wants>. The button is not publicly listed among the other social plugins on Facebook’s developer site. Waddington says the button will only work on Open Graph objects marked as “products.”
With Open Graph, developers have been able to create their own “want” actions, but users have to authorize a third-party app in order for those buttons to generate stories on Timeline and News Feed. If the Want button plugin works similarly to the Like button, users will not have to go through the step of authorizing an app. This means even more users will be likely to click it.
MORE: Facebook testing ‘Want’ button plugin.
A preview of the new version of Bing has been available for some time, but as of today the new layout and features are now available to everyone in the United States. So far there’s no word on when the same features might come to international users.
If social search features leave you feeling cold, fear not, the new Bing doesn’t follow Google’s lead and integrate social results right into the main search results. Instead Bing has completely overhauled its look and now sports a three-column layout. To go along with the new layout Bing has cut back on the chrome and other UI elements so even though there’s quite a bit more info on the page, it still feels relatively uncluttered.
The new look pairs the traditional search results — still on the left side of the page — with two new columns — a so-called snapshot column in the middle, and the new social results on the far right.
The most intriguing of the three is the snapshot info, which varies according to your search.
SOURCE Microsoft Goes Social With Bing Search Overhaul | Webmonkey | Wired.com.
Coupled with increasing reluctance from consumers to maintain distinct usernames and passwords on each frequently visited site, brands are rapidly seeking ways to leverage social network identities within their own properties. Through a secure process known as social login, these identities can be used to speed up registration on sites across the web. But which identities do people prefer both for sign-in and content sharing?
Each quarter, we seek to answer these questions by analyzing social login and social sharing preferences for online users across the 365,000 websites using Janrain Engage.
When it comes to social login, people want choice. While Facebook is the most popular option at 45 percent, a majority would rather use a different social identity, such as Google, Yahoo, or Twitter.
SOURCE The social log-in and sharing trends that may surprise you – iMediaConnection.com.
These days, most websites include buttons for sharing content via social media services. Bucking the trend, designer Oliver Reichenstein has, in a piece called Sweep the Sleaze, said such buttons should be eradicated. He states that buttons do more to promote social network brands than your site, can make you look desperate and that there’s really no need to remind social network users about the likes of Facebook and Twitter. “We find content through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and so on, not the other way around,” he said, and cited a recent Smashing Mag tweet, where the publication noted its Facebook traffic went up after removing social media buttons.
Designer Hilton Lipschitz told us he had much the same experience. Buttons were slowing his site by over a second, which made him concerned some potential visitors would leave, and many were rarely used: “One article got 22,000 page views, but there were no Google+ or Facebook Likes and no Tweet shares.” He said people are probably used to seeing these buttons but blank them out like adverts, and added that his traffic – which mostly arrives from Twitter, Reddit and Hacker News, has not been negatively affected.
Wanting to find out more about this subject, we spoke to Reichenstein (OR) about the thinking behind his article, possible dangers of social networking buttons and also the ramifications of removing them.
SOURCE ‘Drop social media buttons’ call | News | .net magazine.
Facebook is testing a series of cosmetic changes to the top of users’ Timelines, the company has confirmed.
Screenshots of the new design were posted on Talking Points Memo Tuesday morning. The images (below) show a condensed version of Timeline, in which a user’s details (name, occupation, education, location) appear in reverse type on top of — rather than below — the cover photo.
The carousel of thumbnail images highlighting friends, photos, places, likes, etc. has also been compressed. Images are now replaced by thumbnails. Next to these, a new “Summary” section appears, presumably to highlight key events on a user’s Timeline.
SOURCE Facebook Begins Testing New Timeline Design [PICS].
Rather than challenge Facebook and Twitter for mindshare, Google is a distant fourth to Pinterest, with its “pin it” button now appearing alongside Facebook, Twitter and email buttons on prime web real-estate such as eBay and Amazon product pages.
Google has never been able to ” succeed ” in any of its social media initiative and this infographic makes it clear why .
Nissan, was among the biggest brands on Google plus for having one of the best new Google+ brand pages, even down to the animated GIF in its header image that gives the illusion of a car speeding by. Nearly 424,000 users have added the page to their “circles” Google+ lingo for following a person or brand and yet Nissans agency decided early on not to invest in developing content specifically for the page, which mostly contains repurposed content from Facebook.
“The bottom line was that it was pretty bleak in its traffic,” said Brandon Kleinman, director of social media and strategy at TBWA/Chiat/Day.The broad consensus is that Google+ is an empty city where the masses go to set up a profile but then seldom return.
SOURCE Online Marketing Trends: Brands Flock To Pinterest, as Google plus sink to new low.
According to a recent poll by the Associated Press and CNBC, 46 percent of respondents think Facebook will “fade away as new things come along.” That’s an ominous data point for a company whose IPO dominated the news cycle last week, and claims some 900 million worldwide users.
Facebook seems to be infiltrating every facet of our lives. “Like” buttons appear on every website. “Like us on Facebook!” shouts at us during TV commercials. And more and more apps rely on Facebook to simply log in. It’s starting to feel more than a little oppressive — it’s like we’re living in a blue-and-white-painted jail cell.
And all this IPO madness is just foul icing on the cake.
So where do you turn when the world’s been stricken with Facebook fever? We rounded up seven apps that could satisfy your social networking needs should Facebook go down the tubes — or you just can’t take it anymore.
SOURCE 7 Social Networking Apps for When Facebook Jumps the Shark | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.