If you have started a new business or planning to start a new one then its time to consider how to market it. There are many ways to market your business via print media or digital media. I better prefer digital media on print media. Print media can limit your business advertisement to an extent but using digital media can help you reach every corner of the world simultaneously. Internet provides you this facility. You can reach a million of concerned people within no time through the internet. Read the rest of this entry »

There are many social websites available on internet like MySpace, Orkut, Hi5 and most importantly Facebook. So, what is the difference in among them? Why Facebook is still on the top? The answer is that Facebook kept revolving the interests of the people by introducing new functionalities every few months. The big advantage of Facebook on other social networking sites is Facebook has plenty of applications to enjoy, work and play with. Facebook is also helpful in promoting your business in many ways.

Facebook is still living to the expectations because it doesn’t let the users get bored by amending according to the latest trends and interests of the users. On the other hand, other social sites just provide you the facility of changing the profile layout with some drag drop functions while Facebook knows what the users want and gets it done before the users ask for it. Every day more and more applications are added to its database, giving the users something to work on. Facebook applications are not only an entertainment but also facilitate you with business services by promoting your website among the users and much more. The main thing about Facebook is that its users are mostly authentic and its not easy to make a fake user profile. Research and development team of Facebook is working to keep facebook live till eternity and they aim to provide the best of social networking site to its user.

Facebook provides its users with two great free tools, Fan Pages and Groups, both have their own utility. There are several options with theses tools that you can use according to your need. Suppose if you want to publicize your business via Facebook then the best choice is to have Fan Pages rather to use Groups. Facebook Fan Pages act as personalized business pages.

These two tools differ from each other in the sense that Fan Pages are visible to guest users and search engine recognizes them as index pages, which also helps in SEO tasks. Fan Pages get you traffic on your site or Facebook Application.

In Groups, members can send invitations to other users, even to the non-members, making Groups work as a viral/events-oriented marketing tool.

The following table displays some facts about Fan Pages and Groups on Facebook:

We are looking for Facebook to introduce Groups and Facebook Applications’ interactivity. Fan Pages provide you this opportunity. Groups also are a good way to host discussions and getting attention by the user. On the other side Pages are the best in keeping long-term activities and also improve search abilities on social media.

Facebook provides you a platform for newbie developers, designers, game designers and other people related to such fields to check their worth and demand amongst people. Traditionally, conducting market researches was the sole means of reckoning the worth of your product. However, the popularity of Facebook has lessened the distance between consumers and producers offering a bridge for them to communicate. A producer can actually check how well his product interests people.  For instance, a game designer can launch a demo mini version of his new game and check whether it is appealing to the users or not and accordingly can amend the game.

Facebook has introduced API methods where developer can see their Facebook applications’ analytics on daily, weekly and monthly basis. These information will definitely assist developers in telling how popular is their application is? What are interests the users? There are many specialized analytics services also available. You can also build your own analytics system that is able to gather the user info related to your application. After seeing the analysis, you can check your app credibility and would be able to modify your Facebook application according to the trend and users’ interest. There are lot more things you can do with having those analytics.

With this, a rating system is also provided which alert developers about the “spaminess” of their applications. Easy to know when they are having high spam and make changes accordingly. Facebook strictly consider SPAMs and now the back-up actions of Facebook are visible to developers and they should know about their application, going to be banned for having over-activity.

A new scam was revealed today which is spreading on internet. The scammers are using the old Trojan mailing methodology attracting users to click it on the name of Facebook. These methods were introduced in the early days of emailing and it seems that Trojan horse models aren’t going to be obsolete. If you accidently or unknowingly download the file containing Trojan attached to the mail, anybody can have unauthorized access to your PC controlling it remotely.

The renowned emailing services like Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL etc, provides scamming filter. If a spam mail succeeds to deceive the filters, still you have a chance to safe yourself from those. First don’t open emails or download/open .zip files you receive from an unknown person.

Facebook applications don’t contain attachments so, if you get any email notification from Facebook or Facebook Applications don’t open it. It probably must contain Trojan/Virus. Think, Why Facebook mail you a friend’s picture? What Facebook needs by sending you zip files? They probably wouldn’t!
These are simply steps to avoid potential risk of having a Trojan virus in your system. There are several others ways to stay protected.

The popular social networking site like Facebook is becoming the center of attraction to hackers with some scamming techniques that can extract users’ login and passwords.
Facebook is working hard to avoid these kinds of risk, especially on the Facebook Applications. This can’t be completed overcome but can be minimized to some extent because internet is a wide word to explore.

Facebook has over 850 employees actively working all over the world and their employee circle is still expanding. As Facebook social circle is spreading continuously therefore it is necessary to hunt for new talent. The new built HR Function of Facebook is going to start a national recruiting tour in some universities including some business school. This tour will help in finding talented operations specialist, product manager and engineers.

The hunt for new innovative talent and the next generation Facebook Applications on this Platform is in progress! Facebook has also launched a HUNT for TALENT contest and within a month they received over 500 Applications with hundreds of videos, business plans and over 400 talented enterpriser developing Advanced Facebook applications.

The team was stunned by seeing the tremendous amount of creative work with dedicated and hard work put together in the applications. The intensity of the competition is too high!

Real Life Facebook wonderful video clip that is actually showing how Facebook works. Just that it is online or it is virtual so people take it as a joke or something but it is not. Whatever happened with guy who opened the door is actually what is happening with every one of us. This could include invasion into our privacy of people we don’t know and the like.

Politicians are now converting Facebook to a new platform to enhance their political career. With the popularity in youth of technology, many politicians are realizing the significance of Facebook. They are trying to find their votes on Facebook, as it seems effective to convince the youth. The last election young people are boosted on “Vote or Die” situation.

Marketing director for Facebook, Melanie Deitch said, “We wanted to provide a forum for politicians to have their ideas heard.”
The observers on political issues have noticed that Facebook is becoming a center of attention to people all over the world and it’ll prove to be effective to carry an election campaigns there. In addition to this Politicians are also taking Facebook Applications under their consideration, many applications are already present on Facebook promoting some candidates.

Professor of political science, University of Saskatchewan, David McGrane, in an interview to CBC News said “Facebook has picked up where blogs left off. This is sort of the first Facebook election,” he said. “Though blogs have been used in past federal elections, the feeling is — the feeling I’m getting — is that technology like this, information technology, is going to become more and more a part of elections.”

Larissa Shasko the candidate of Green party in the Saskatchewan riding of Palliser has a Facebook Fan Page and a Facebook Application. Within three days of campaign, she got 44 supporters on that politician page. She said that she uses Facebook to send messages to her supporters, but avoid being a spammer.

She also said, “I don’t believe in spamming. I think to use Facebook to spam people is irresponsible and it just hurts those of us that are trying to get our message across to a younger age demographic who believe Facebook is a great way to let us all speak.”

Ralph Goodale, Liberal candidate, had more than 600 supporters on his Facebook page. There are many like these on Facebook and all of them are seeking for more. Some Political candidates have their own Facebook Applications to promote their ideas and motives.

The latest update from Facebook is that it has introduced a new accessibility option to your Facebook applications. Previously, the new design didn’t provide a good accessibility to your applications and if you want to make changes to your applications you had to redirect to the Home Page but now you can have direct access to your applications from any page. It is an easier way for the users to find and bookmark their favorite applications. Facebook, with this new design, makes Applications prominent by displaying the most favorite applications in the bottom menu. All users’ bookmarked Applications are on the shortcut bar same as windows quick launch that contains links up to 6 Facebook Applications. Now, you can easily bookmark an Application while in use.
Josh Elman, Facebook Platform Program Manager, said:

“In the new applications menu, all of user’s bookmarks will appear and be easily accessible. In addition, up to six application icons will be shown to the right of the menu button. When a user is using your application, they will be able to easily identify and bookmark your application with just one click.
Feedback we received indicated that users were having trouble with the Applications link in the top menu. People weren’t easily finding their way to their favorite applications. By moving this menu and displaying a few icons at the new location, users will always be able to find the applications they use, as well as easily bookmark their favorite applications or the ones they use the most.”

The first thing is what Facebook actually is? Facebook is the largest and still growing social networking site in the Internet World. Facebook has proved to be the toughest competitor for all the sites that claim to have the biggest social networking circle.

Facebook surprised the world with its sudden popularity gain internationally. MySpace (launched in Britain on April’06) is the biggest contender of Facebook. Now, Facebook has outclassed other social networking sites in almost every feature. MySpace is getting started to try to compete with the fame of Facebook by implementing similar features. Now, some renown sites like Orkut, Bebo etc. are trying to get the same features like Facebook but still unable to compare to the amazing force of Facebook. All sites are now trying to clone Facebook Application feature to stay live in this Social Networking World.

Now, why should you prefer Facebook? If you have analyzed MySpace was started with the idea to allow people connected with each other (the same as Facebook), but its design is somewhat tawdry and was soon taking up by the spammer to make money, celebrities wanting themselves to appear cool by having 50,000 friends. But Facebook has overcome these issues. You can stay in touch with your relatives and lost friends that you haven’t met for long time in an efficient way. The main thing is the interface, a standardized and simple interface having drag drop facilities and much more, which make it easier and accessible to the “normal” users.

Facebook is a great platform for having some different experiences; it’s more than a two way interaction. Facebook Profile is a great way to show yourself in your own way. Creating a profile is too easy & then looking around for some friends. You can add extras to your profile, from gift applications to “hug war” application. Send and receive gifts from your love ones for FREE. Stay connected to people all over the world in the way you like. Few weeks ago Facebook has introduced its new looks with an easy to handle Interface. Everything fits in that decent interface.

Facebook was first developed for college students, but now anyone can join it. With its increasing popularity people have used it for business purposes in addition to socializing. You can add a Facebook Application for your business or get it done by a Facebook Application developer. Share your business experiences with the people around the world. If you want to bring out your products to the new people then Facebook is a great platform to start. Your business growth has value as well as your existing customers. Creating Fan Pages for your business is also a great way to enhance your relation with your existing customers and a chance to make some new. If you are looking to extend your business circle then Facebook has many Forums, Groups and Discussions etc. to participate and met your competitors.

Facebook users are not only college students, as its open to the entire world, average user’s age is around 27+. If you are looking for a date, flirt or want some online fun with your friends then there are millions of Facebook Applications available there.